‘Book,’ Lydia replied instantly, gratified to see he was impressed that she knew what his rather cryptic question meant.
‘Really? Really Capote’s Holly over Audrey Hepburn’s? The misery and bleakness over George Peppard bringing back Cat in the pouring rain? I would have thought most girls would pick the movie ending any time.’
‘The movie is wonderful,’ Lydia said. ‘And I love the idea of Holly getting a happy ending, but the book came first so it has to be the book … and, besides, I am not most girls.’ Lydia allowed herself to say the line she knew perfectly well he’d set up for her.
‘I can see that.’ He glanced down at his drink for a moment, and then back up at her face. He really was very good at this, Lydia remembered thinking. And perhaps that should have been a warning sign for her – the practised flirting – but she was too caught up in the moment.
They had introduced themselves, first names only, and shaken hands. Lydia remembered that, as he clasped her hand briefly but firmly, it sent a bolt of electricity through her.
‘Would you let me buy you a drink?’ Jackson asked her, and Lydia had hesitated, even though she knew she was going to say yes, playing the game as expertly as he.
‘I shouldn’t really,’ she said, slowly, thoughtfully, nipping her bottom lip between her teeth.
‘Please?’ Jackson pressed her. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone to talk about great American literature with, too.’
‘Oh, in that case, I’m afraid I will disappoint you, then, as this is really the only American classic I’ve ever read, well, unless you count Gone With the Wind.’
Jackson observed her with a long sideway glance. ‘You do have something of Miss O’ Hara about you.’
‘Why, thank you kindly, I think.’ Lydia let her lashes flutter, her chin dipping as she leaned forward a little, improving by just one tantalising fraction the view of her cleavage, quietly pleased that she still remembered how to flirt.
There had been a time when she and Joanna were the menaces of the male world, two finally honed flirting machines on an endless loop of dating and casual romances that never really came to anything. And then, one morning, Lydia had woken up with her mascara spread across the pillow, and a thumping headache, to realise that if she ever wanted to get ahead in chambers, she couldn’t try to keep up with Joanna any more. Her beautiful, vivacious flatmate already had it made; she had done ever since a talent scout for a modelling agency had spotted her in the shopping centre when they’d all been at university. From that moment onwards, Joanna had traded on her looks and personality to get ahead, and why shouldn’t she? If Lydia looked like Joanna, she’d have done exactly the same.
Joanna had quit uni before she completed her sociology degree – no one, including herself, believed she was going to pass her final exams, in any case. A brief career in underwear and catalogue modelling led to an appearance wearing a Chinese silk dressing gown on a shopping channel, where she had outshone the jaded and slightly drunk presenter and got herself a lucrative new job and a new beau – her director – all in one afternoon. The career had lasted longer than the romance, in fact, but while Joanna was still content to work her way steadily through London’s male population, Lydia had begun to tire of the dating scene. The plain truth was, she couldn’t keep up with Joanna, especially if she wanted to make a success of her career. Consequently, it had been a long time – almost two years, in fact – since she’d flirted with a stranger in a bar; two years of being professional, keeping her head down, and working her behind off to get where she was today.
Only today was hot and tinged with failure, and looking at a face like Jackson Blake’s was exactly what she needed.
‘I’ll have another G&T, thank you,’ Lydia said.
As the sun sank behind the skyline, leaving a trail of stars in its wake, and the heat mercifully ebbed away, Lydia found out more about Jackson. He’d grown up in New Jersey, son of a plumber father and a grade school teacher ‘mom’. He’d worked his way through college, pounding the streets of New York as soon as he’d graduated, knocking on the door of every big-name publishing company to try and get a break. Finally, he’d landed a job as an intern at Seinfeld and Sachs, and worked his way up to become publishing director, taking a transfer to London a few months earlier with the remit of getting the floundering London office back on track.
‘What no one tells a straight, single guy about publishing, though, is that it’s like throwing a tender little lamb into a pool of man-hungry, stiletto-wearing piranhas,’ Jackson joked. ‘As soon as you’ve stepped through the front door, they’ve got your place of residence, marital status, income, and bonus scheme out of you, and are asking which days you’ve got free next June.’
‘Oh, poor you, are all the ladies in love with you?’ Lydia pouted playfully. ‘How awful it must be for you.’
‘It’s terrible,’ Jackson confirmed solemnly. ‘And worst of all – they all get PMS at the same time! It’s the group crying I can’t take.’
‘Jackson, you chauvinist!’ Lydia had half gasped, half giggled, punching him lightly on the shoulder and feeling a frisson of excitement as he caught her hand and held it.
‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s not like that at all.’ He raised a brow. ‘Much.’
Lydia had held his gaze as he had used her entrapped hand to pull her closer to him until their lips were millimetres apart.
‘You are like a long, cool glass of water,’ he said.
Lydia had let their lips meet for a moment and then pulled back, slipping off the bar stool and picking up her briefcase.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘It’s been very nice to meet you, Jackson Blake.’
‘Would you like to meet me again?’ Jackson asked her. ‘I work just round the corner, maybe we could have lunch?’
‘I don’t really have the sort of job where you get a lunch break.’ Lydia shrugged, enjoying pushing her luck for a moment more.
‘Then will you meet me here again tomorrow night? I’ll make reservations and take you to dinner.’ Lydia had hesitated; she was supposed to be having dinner with Alex and the girls to talk about bridesmaids dresses, and the fact that Alex seemed determined to make them all look as hideous as she possibly could, having unexpectedly developed a new-found interest in puffed sleeves. As much as she’d enjoy an evening of looking at this sexy man across a table, a wedding planner dinner with your best friend was not something you could just duck out of, even for a lantern-jawed, prime specimen like Jackson.
‘Sorry, I can’t. I have plans.’ Lydia mentally crossed her fingers, hoping he’d persist just once more.
‘Wow, you really are playing hard to get, very unusual for an English girl, you are usually all so easy.’
‘Hey!’ Lydia scolded him.
‘Sorry. Look, I would really like to see you again. How about Saturday?’ he asked her apprehensively, cringing as if he expected a slap just for asking.
‘Yes, okay, then, I suppose.’ Lydia was very careful not to sound too thrilled. ‘But not here. I live on the other side of town, and I don’t like to come back to where I work on my day off. I’ll meet you in The Porcupine on Tottenham Court Road at seven-thirty. Look it up and find somewhere wonderful to take me for dinner.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Jackson saluted. ‘Now, please allow me to escort you to the subway station.’
‘But why, it’s only over the road?’ Lydia asked.
‘You need to ask why?’ Jackson chuckled, shaking his head as he picked up her hand. ‘Because I need a good reason to kiss you goodbye, woman, that’s why.’
As Lydia let the rattle and rumble of the tube train lull her half to sleep on the way home, she had leaned her back against the seat and, with a slightly tipsy smile, concluded that as good night kisses go, it had been a great deal more than satisfactory.
The following day had been spent entirely fixating on two things. What to wear and would he turn up? In all the heated, sultry promise of last
night, she and Jackson had failed to swap phone numbers. He had no way of letting her down gently if he’d decided to back out, and the only way she was going to find out if he’d been real or just a symptom of heat stroke, was to turn up. The thought of being stood up caused Lydia serious alarm, remembering the awful sense of humiliation she’d felt when, at the age of sixteen, she’d gone to meet Tony Bellamy outside the cinema on the high street, in shoes she couldn’t really walk in and far too much lipstick. And how she’d had to endure the laughter and taunts of her school mates as she stood there, until one of Tony’s friends told her he wasn’t coming. He was down the graveyard getting off with Melanie Davies.
Which meant that with every outfit that Lydia now tried on, she found herself imagining not how she’d look in the arms of Jackson Blake, but instead how she’d look standing like a lemon in a silk print dress and strappy-heeled sandals on a Saturday night at the bar of The Porcupine on Tottenham Court Road, waiting for a date who didn’t turn up.
For every third minute out of five from then on, Lydia decided she wasn’t going to go. And then she remembered that goodnight kiss, and butterflies would leap and whoop and loop the loop in her tummy.
‘You may well be an utter idiot, Lydia Grant,’ Lydia told her reflection in the full-length mirror, ‘but you can’t risk missing out on being kissed like that again.’
Just before she was due to depart, Joanna had emerged from her bedroom with her hair all tangled and last night’s make-up smeared under her eyes. Yet still she looked beautiful.
‘Ouch,’ she said as she flopped across the kitchen table. ‘I think I might have officially had too much sex. Make me breakfast, darling.’
‘Breakfast? It’s almost seven in the evening, Joanna. And besides, where did you disappear off to last night after the Great Bridesmaid Debacle? One minute we were all trying to persuade Alex that no one suits puce, and the next you’ve vanished into the night.’
‘Not the night, darling, Cuba,’ Joanna said, pouting meaningfully at the kettle, which Lydia filled and switched on in spite of her exasperation. ‘There was a salsa party happening on the first floor, so I thought I’d just pop in after I went to the loo, and have a little look. Which was when I bumped into Enrique. I was going to come back and argue about the puffed sleeve thing, but darling … the hot Latin rhythm was calling me, so I thought I’d leave it up to you to persuade Alex not to dress us as mutants. You do sort of argue for a living, after all. Enrique taught me all about hip action … and we did a bit of dancing too!’ Joanna giggled, making Lydia smile despite herself.
‘And what about Ted?’ Lydia asked, reminding her friend of her fiancé, whose ring she was even now sporting on her left hand.
‘I love Ted, I do. But I just needed a little bit of Latin spice to get me through the endless discussions about duchess satin. When Ted and I get married, I’m not going to have any bridesmaids, just … swans, with ribbons round their necks.’
‘Nice, well, I’ll see you later …’ Lydia had attempted to exit, a little too hastily.
‘Hang on, why are you neglecting to lecture me on my alley cat morals, and where are you going looking so lovely?’ Joanna asked her, gasping as the realisation of Lydia in a pretty dress on a Saturday night hit her befuddled brain. ‘Oh my God, Lydia’s got a date! Where’s my phone, I need to text everyone.’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Lydia cried, grabbing Joanna’s phone before she could. ‘It’s not a date. It’s a business meeting.’
‘Do you normally get your knockers half out on display for a business meeting?’ Joanna asked her, nodding at Lydia’s cleavage, which she had secretly dusted with a little bit of bronzer and just a smidgen of glitter.
‘It’s the fashion,’ Lydia replied.
‘In the porn industry!’ Joanna pressed her fingers to her forehead, and groaned. ‘Oh, God. Never, ever drink tequila. Not even with a mixer, it’s death. Okay, you may go, but only because I am too poorly to get the details out of you now. But I shall when you return, you mark my words, missy.’
‘Fine,’ Lydia said, handing Joanna back her phone and giving her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Give my love to Ted, oh, and Enrique.’
Lydia was fairly certain that Joanna had thrown her phone in the general direction of her head, just as she closed the door.
The hours of self-doubt and uncertainty had been wasted because Jackson was waiting for Lydia as she’d arrived, himself looking utterly delicious in a pair of dark chinos and a black T-shirt that was not so formfitting as to indicate a vain and body-obsessed man, but was tight enough to show that what lay beneath would be worth a lick – a look, Lydia corrected her unruly train of thought, stifling a giggle as she went to greet him.
‘Wow, you came,’ Jackson said, a slow smile spreading over his face.
‘Did you doubt me?’ Lydia asked him, channelling Lauren Bacall cool to hide the fact that she was a bag of nerves.
‘Sure I did, I had to practically beg you to meet me tonight. You are one cool customer.’ Lydia smirked, thinking that she so wasn’t, but rather liking the perception of her that Jackson had somehow formed. ‘It’s okay, though, you know us guys. We always want what we can’t have.’
‘So what you’re saying is that, if I want to keep you interested, I’ll have to keep turning you down?’ Lydia asked him. Jackson’s smile was wry as he shook his head, his eyes growing suddenly intense as he looked at her.
‘We could do this all night, this banter and flirting, back and forth. And if you want to, I don’t mind. I like it. You’re smart and funny as well as beautiful. But here’s the thing: I like you, Lydia, I like you a lot. Maybe that’s not the cool thing to say, but it’s how I feel. I don’t want to play games with you because, well, I get the feeling that this could be the start of something … So, how about you let me buy you dinner and we just talk? I want to know everything about you. I want to know what makes you smile, and see you laugh, and hold your hand and kiss you some more. Would that be okay with you?’
Lydia paused for a moment, mentally running the scripts of all the romantic movies she had ever seen in her whole life, which was many, just in case Jackson had memorised that impossibly romantic speech.
‘I’ll have a gin and tonic, please,’ she said, sliding into the seat next to him. ‘Well, let me see, where shall I start? I was born in Broadstairs to the world’s least compatible couple …’
It had taken about another hour for Jackson to kiss her again, standing outside an Italian restaurant on Waldorf Street. They had kissed for a long time, such a long time, in fact, that they were a little late for their reservation, which was at the very restaurant they were standing outside of. Eating very little and kissing very much, they hadn’t been able to keep their lips apart for more than a few minutes, their kisses growing so fevered that the waiter came over and very politely asked them if they would like their bill, even though they hadn’t made it to dessert yet.
Giggling like teenagers, they fell out onto the street, and Jackson kissed her again, in exactly the same spot as where they had been standing on the way in.
‘So what now?’ Lydia asked him. ‘We’ve only got up to the time I was thrown out of ballet for swearing … You’re never going to hear my whole life story at this rate.’
‘How about we skip to the next instalment?’ Jackson grabbed both her hands in his. ‘Come home with me, Lydia, I want to make love with you.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Lydia had giggled.
‘Please, please come home and spend the night with me. I don’t want this evening to end with having to say goodbye to you.’
Suddenly a little more sober, Lydia had hesitated. Quite what she had been planning when she left Joanna that evening, she wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t this. She wasn’t even entirely certain that she had ‘acceptable for sex’ knickers on, never mind the fact that it had been a very long time since she had engaged in sexual congress with a man. Self-doubt and anxiety engulfed her once again.
; ‘I’ve asked too much, haven’t I?’ Jackson said, abashed. ‘You’re not the sort of girl who likes to be rushed.’
‘No, no … you haven’t, I am … um.’ Lydia touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘No, you haven’t asked too much, I don’t want this evening to end, either. It’s just that I’m … I don’t usually … The thing is, I’m not entirely sure I know what to do any more.’
Jackson smiled at her, picking her hand up and kissing it.
‘Come home with me and I’ll show you,’ he said, so softly, so sweetly, that Lydia felt her knees momentarily buckle.
‘Okay, then,’ she said, flinging what little caution she had so easily to the wind. ‘Yes, I will come home with you.’
Jackson had hailed the next black cab and given the driver his West London address. Looking out of the window as the cab drew away from the curb and merged into the traffic, Lydia felt the tips of Jackson’s fingers touch hers as they rested on the seat between them, and that is where their hands remained until the taxi pulled up outside an impressively large, rambling old rectory.
‘Wow, this is amazing,’ Lydia breathed, looking up at the old house. ‘All this is yours?’
‘Sort of, I’m a custodian tenant,’ Jackson told her, as she followed him through the front door and into the hallway. ‘It’s owned by the diocese, but there’s no rector in situ now. So, to keep squatters and vandals at bay until they work out what to do with it, they let it to me on a short-term basis for a fraction of what I’d pay for one room around here. They can throw me out any time, of course, but until they do, I have this whole amazing house. And practically no furniture except for a futon …’
‘A futon?’ Lydia echoed, suddenly feeling very nervous.
Before Lydia could ask any more, Jackson, his hand on her waist, manoeuvred her against the wall and kissed her hard on the lips, his hungry mouth tracking its way down her neck. Pausing for a moment to look at her, he whipped open the knot that held her wrap dress in place, exposing her flesh to his gaze. For a second longer, his eyes devoured her, pinning her to the spot with their desire, and then in one deft and practised move, he unhooked her bra, tearing it from her.
The Night Before Christmas Page 5