And then, I do something I’ve never done before—I hang up on my Grandmother.
“Well, shit,” Edward says, the rare curse confirming this is bad.
Perhaps even very bad.
I try to pull in a deeper breath, but my chest is tight, and it suddenly feels like the tinsel-covered walls are closing in.
“Do you think she realized it was rigged somehow?” Edward asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But I need to talk to her. In person,” I say, scrolling over to my Find Your Folks app. “Is it creepy to track her down with technology?”
“Yes, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” Edward says. “And as long as she shared her location with you willingly.”
“She did. It was actually her idea, in case we…” I trail off as I find Emily’s dot on the screen.
It’s moving. Fast. And not toward the café or the flat. She’s clearly in a vehicle, headed west.
Straight for the airport.
“She’s headed to Heathrow,” I say, already out of my chair and reaching for my coat. “I have to go.”
“I’ll drive you,” Edward says, on his feet beside me. “My car’s in the garage at the end of the block, by the hotel.”
We explode out of the café just as Bagpipe Father Christmas launches into a torturous version of Jingle Bells. The street is packed. Holiday shoppers swarm the sidewalks, and a massive group on a historic walking tour clogs the corner, making it take twice as long to get down the block.
By the time we reach the garage, panic is setting in fully.
Emily must have found out about Grandmother’s interference somehow, in a way that made her feel so thoroughly betrayed that she headed straight for the airport without saying goodbye.
It must have been something truly awful.
And she probably thinks I had something to do with it.
Fuck!
Please don’t let her get on a plane,I beg the universe as we finally reach Edward’s car and begin the impossibly slow crawl out to the street.Please, please, please.
She has to at least give me the chance to explain.
Right?
“She’s not going to want to hear a word out of my mouth, is she?” I ask Edward. “She’s going to think I’m a liar who can’t be trusted.”
“No,” Edward says. “She’s a reasonable woman. Surely, she’ll?—”
“I lied to her the night we met,” I cut in, needing to confess my sins. Needing Edward to know just how dire this could be. “I lied about who I was, and she was so angry, she tried to end it immediately. Even though we’d just had a fantastic night and even more fantastic…you know.”
Edward sobers, then grunts, offering no further comfort as he cuts through side streets, moving fast toward the motorway.
But his silence is a response of its own.
It means, if I want a shot in hell of getting through to Emily, I’ll have to pull out all the stops.
Which gives me an idea…
A wild, mortifying, but possibly irresistibly romantic idea.
I glance at my brother, who’s wearing an only moderately festive holiday jumper. It’s red-and-white striped, with a tinyholly leaf embroidered on the chest above his heart, but it will have to do.
