Page 69 of A Merry Irish Christmas
‘If I’m not in training for getting into the Spidey suit, yes. I have a huge blowout and eat all the carbs known to man.’
She grinned gleefully. ‘This is starting to sound like my kind of Sunday.’
‘You should come.’
‘Me?’ Her voice came out as a startled squeak.
‘Yes, you. You eat brunch, right?’
‘I love brunch!’ But she couldn’t believe Evan Prentice was casually inviting her to hang out with him and his friends. ‘Who else would be there? Who do you usually go for brunch with?’
A shadow passed across his face and she was sorry she’d asked.
‘Well, normally it would have been Olivia and me?—’
‘Right. Sorry.’
‘And Josh and Amy if they can make it. Sometimes they’ll bring Oscar along with them. And then depending on who’s in town, maybe my friend Seb and his boyfriend, and Mark and Jade if they’re around.’
She knew who he meant by Mark and Jade, even though he only said their first names. He reeled off the names of his famous friends so casually – people who she’d seen pop up alongside him in images when she’d googled him. But it was nice. He wasn’t trying to impress her; he wasn’t name-dropping. They were just his friends.
‘You should come. They’d like you. And it’s always nice to have fresh blood in the group.’
She tried to picture herself sitting around a table in a diner with all these young movie stars, but she couldn’t quite see it. ‘So, what next? After brunch?’
‘In the summer, we’d usually go hang out in Central Park. If it’s cold, we might go to a gallery or catch a movie. It depends on the weather and what’s on.’
‘There’s always so much happening in New York.’
‘Yeah. And people there are cool, you know? With the whole fame thing. You can walk down the street and no one bothers you much.’
‘Yeah, I love that you can see big stars just walking around like regular people. I saw Barbra Streisand in Bloomingdale’s once.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. And I acted totally cool about it, like a native New Yorker. I didn’t say hi to her or anything.’
‘But you thought about it?’
‘I wouldn’t say I thought about it exactly. It was more subconscious than that. I wasn’t thinking “Barbra Streisand”. It was just like I saw someone I knew, so I automatically went to say hi to her. But then I realised who she was and I stopped myself in time.’
‘Phew.’
‘Right? What do you like most about living in New York?’
‘Definitely the seeing celebrities out and about thing.’
She punched his shoulder playfully.
‘Okay, okay. I love Sundays in Central Park. And I love going out for an early run on a frosty morning when no one much is around. But it’s where my friends are. I guess that’s the best thing about it.’
‘Except at Christmas when you skip town to avoid them. Seriously, what makes you so convinced people don’t want you around for the holidays?’
‘I kind of know they don’t.’
She looked at him questioningly, waiting for him to go on.
He took a deep breath, seeming reluctant to say whatever he was thinking. ‘After Mom and Dad died, I used to go to this friend’s family for Christmas every year,’ he said finally. ‘Taylor – he was my best friend in high school, and his family was great. I spent a lot of time with them. His mom always had me over for Sunday dinner, invited me to family parties…’
