Married By Christmas

by Bailey, Scarlett

  ‘Something’s happened between us, Anna,’ Miles said, sliding his hand across the table so that just the very tips of his fingers were touching the very tips of hers. And even that slightest of contacts made Anna close her eyes and catch her breath. ‘Look at me, please.’

  With some force of will, Anna opened her eyes and looked into Miles’s, terrified and enraptured by the naked desire that she saw there, a desire she knew was clearly visible in her own.

  ‘When I’m anywhere near you,’ Miles told her, his voice low and urgent, ‘I long to touch you, to wind my fingers in your hair, to kiss you, to hold you close enough to be able to feel the beating of your heart against my chest. But it’s not just your incredible beauty and your amazing body that make me feel that way about you, Anna, and I have never felt this way about anyone. It’s what’s inside, behind the hair and the outfits, the girl who hides behind all the certainty and plans. You let me see a little glimpse of the real you, and in that second I knew you were the girl for me. What you don’t seem to realise is that nothing frightens you, Anna, you who’ve had so many reasons to be afraid, that’s what made me fall for you.’

  ‘Everything frightens me,’ Anna said, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘You sitting here, saying these things to me frightens me, more than I can say.’

  ‘But you want me to say them, don’t you?’ Miles asked her. ‘I can see it in your eyes – you have feelings for me too.’

  ‘Miles,’ Anna breathed. ‘I’m getting married … I can’t just …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Miles said. ‘And I’m not trying to stop you, I’m not. But if I let you go to your wedding without telling you how amazing you are, how much better and more special than you think or know you are, then … I could never forgive myself for not letting you know how very much I want you, Anna, how very much I long for you. I just had to say it. I don’t expect you to run into my arms. I just hope you know that you deserve to be happy and I really hope you are with Tom. Although it’s hard to accept that any other man could make you feel as happy as I know I could.’

  Anna looked at their hands, grazing each other on the tabletop, and thought of her mother, closing the front door quietly so that she wouldn’t wake Anna up when she walked out on all the promises she’d made her. A pair of beautiful blue eyes and a touch that set her alight was not reason enough to turn her back on Tom.

  ‘I’m getting married, and you are going round the world,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ Miles said. ‘And I know I can’t ask anything from you, or kiss you goodbye but …’ Miles leaned across the table, a little closer to her, his eyes so magnetic that Anna found herself mirroring him, as the tips of his fingers ever so lightly ran the length of hers. ‘But if I could kiss you, Anna, then I would trace the outline of your beautiful mouth with my fingertips. I’d hold your waist, fitting my hand into the curve of your hips, and I’d pull you close against me so you could feel exactly how much I am burning for you. I’d put my lips against yours, so soft and warm, and, once we started kissing, I know I wouldn’t be able to stop, that if I kissed you for a million years, it still would not be enough. If I could kiss you goodbye, Anna, it would be the kind of kiss that you would never be able to walk away from and neither would I.’

  Abruptly, Anna drew her fingers away from his, breaking the hypnotic connection that buzzed in the air between them.

  ‘Miles,’ she repeated, trying desperately not to picture what he’d described, not to feel his lips on her skin, his hands in her hair. ‘I’m getting married in a few days. I’ve been planning getting married on Christmas Eve since I was nine years old and it’s happening, despite everything that has been thrown at me, it’s happening. And the man I’m marrying, he is a good man. The only man who’s ever been able to put up with the mess that I am. And I can’t … even if I do feel … things around you – strong, strong things, I can’t be the sort of person who would throw away everything I’ve got with Tom for … what? We know nothing about each other, not really.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to leave Tom for me,’ Miles said, so bluntly that it caught Anna off guard. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Anna. I know that you need certainty and nothing could be less uncertain than what might happen next between us. I’d never ask you to risk all of that for me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said. ‘So you are not asking me to leave Tom for you, then? Just to be clear? It’s just that … well then, why all this talk of kissing?’

  ‘I needed you to know how much you moved me,’ Miles said. ‘How much you mean to me, right in this moment, and that I don’t think any man has to “put up with” you because any man would be lucky to have you in his life. And if you weren’t about to get married then you bet your life I’d be asking you to run away with me. But even though I’ll be thinking about you for a long time, Anna Carter, I would never try to break you and Tom up now.’

  Anna had pushed her coffee away untouched, as it dawned on her that what Miles was really saying was, in an exceptionally erudite way, that he quite fancied her and if she’d been free he’d have given her a spin, seen how it worked out. Feeling foolish and hurt, tears suddenly prickling at her eyes, she stood up abruptly.

  ‘Right, well, thank you,’ she said. ‘Thanks for letting me know. I’d better get back now, go and see my fiancé.’

  ‘You don’t get it do you?’ Miles asked her, rising out of his seat as she left. ‘Is it that you want me to steal you from Tom, is that what you want?’

  ‘No,’ she said, turning back to look at him. ‘No, that’s not what I want. All I want is to get married on Christmas Eve just like I always have since I was a little girl. Thank you for everything, Miles. I truly do hope you have a nice life.’

  It was only when she arrived back at the hotel after that last meeting with Miles that she’d discovered that Tom had taken a cab to the bar they’d been at the night before and recovered the annulment papers. As a result, she returned to the suite to find that Charisma had signed the papers without any drama at all. It felt like fate telling her what she should do and she had been so relieved to have that one decision taken out of her hands that she had invited Charisma to the wedding on an impulse, and incredibly Charisma had accepted.

  ‘Round yon Virgin …’ Charisma gestured at Anna as she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs Basic Instinct-style. ‘Who should lighten up …’

  ‘Cab’s here!’ Liv popped her head round the door, resplendent in a little Christmas fairy outfit, her face and hair covered in glitter, a pair of net wings bouncing chirpily on her shoulder blades.

  Since they had gotten back, plus one, Liv had gotten into the swing of making the last-minute arrangements for the wedding and the catering, deciding to sort out a hen night, which Anna didn’t even especially want, stating that some of them needed a party whether she liked it or not, and no the wedding did not count as a party. It was Liv who embraced Charisma’s presence first, inviting her to stay in their flat with what Anna thought was almost relief, as it meant the two of them would not have to be alone in the run-up to the wedding. And as it turned out, Liv and Charisma got on surprisingly well, the former showgirl slash wife making Liv laugh almost as much as Anna did, to the point where Anna felt a little bit left out. It was to be expected though, Anna told herself. Soon she would be married to Tom and living in his flat and Liv did need to move on to a certain extent; a new friend was a good thing, even if it was Tom’s ex and even if it meant things between them were not quite the same as they had been before Anna had run away to New York. Anna just wished she could work out exactly what it was that she had done to put this small but clear distance between her and Liv, sometime before the wedding.

  ‘Where are your wings, Anna?’ Liv asked her impatiently as the taxi driver beeped his horn again. ‘You know we’re sexy Christmas fairies, you have to put your L-plate wings on, and your flipping halo, it took me ages to glue on all that tinsel.’

  ‘What if I don’t want L-plate wings and a halo,’ Anna
protested, slipping on the offending articles reluctantly. ‘A fancy dress hen night was not in my plan, Liv, you know that.’

  ‘Well,’ Liv said, putting her hands on her waist, ‘believe it or not, the world does not revolve around you. You have friends, amazingly more than just the people in this room, and whether you like it or not they want to send you off to your wedding in style. So you are having a Christmas-themed hen night – to go with your Christmas-themed wedding – whether you like it or not.’

  And that was how had it been since the moment they had gotten back. Liv didn’t seem angry with her exactly, but neither was she her usual fun, sweet, easy-going self. There hadn’t been the right moment to talk about what had really happened in New York. There had been last-minute wedding errands. There had been Charisma as a house guest. And so Anna couldn’t tell Liv about her near miss and mixed emotions over Miles. And curiously Liv didn’t ask. She seemed wrapped up in her own problems and equally intent on not discussing those with Anna either. And without that crucial private moment, almost everything Liv said came with a barbed comment and a distinct air of reproach. And as for Anna, all she had been doing was focusing on her life plan, her lists, her flip charts, her files, blocking out the kiss she never actually shared with Miles, the invitation to run away with him that he had never actually issued, and the more she tried the better she got at accepting the fact that marrying Tom was what she was meant to do – what she wanted to do.

  She hoped that perhaps tonight – somewhere amongst the karaoke, crackers and Christmas stocking tops – there would be a chance to get things between her and Liv back on an even keel, to iron out the little niggles that remained, because nothing felt right when she and Liv weren’t completely as one.

  ‘Go on now go!’ Liv was singing at the top of her voice, standing on a table at Rowan’s Bowling Alley in Bloomsbury, a curiously unexpected venue in such a normally sedate and serious part of London. Karaoke blasted out side by side with the bowling and a seriously retro disco, and reams of stags and hens danced their last nights of freedom away to Abba. Liv was currently belting out Gloria Gaynor as if every single syllable meant the world to her. They were several hours into the night, the girls from work had taken it upon themselves to sing Queen’s greatest hits one by one, Angela had done Tom Jones’s ‘Sex Bomb’, much to the hilarity and embarrassment of her daughters. So far the only two people not to sing were Charisma, who was wearing the skimpiest Christmas fairy outfit, so tiny that it barely constituted a bikini, and Anna herself, who was watching Liv’s passionate reinterpretation of ‘I Will Survive’ with some alarm.

  ‘Anyone would think she’d just been dumped,’ Anna said.

  ‘Must be her time of the month,’ Angela said. ‘We’ve always been martyrs to her PMT, yours too, and when the pair of you synchronised, well let’s just say it was a minefield. And it cost me a fortune in chocolate, Nurofen and feminine hygiene products.’

  Angela put her arm around Anna and hugged her. ‘Are you OK, my love? You look a little bit … not quite yourself.’

  ‘I’m fine, Angela, honestly,’ Anna reassured her.

  Anna had wondered about how wise it was to bring her foster mother on the hen night, particularly because no one aggravated Liv more than her mother, but Angela had assumed that she was invited and no one had the heart to tell her otherwise. And besides, Anna liked having her there. Although Liv had opened the door, it was Angela who had made a strange little girl so welcome in her family. Anna had never been exactly sure how to say thank you for a gift of such magnitude, and so she’d never really said anything. Having Angela along on her hen night was a small gesture towards acknowledging that she was the nearest thing to a true mother that she had ever known.

  ‘She’s never usually this snippy,’ Angela continued cheerfully. ‘It’s sexual frustration probably. I don’t know when she last had sex. Perhaps I should get her a male prostitute for Christmas. Or a female one. Which one do you think she’d prefer?’

  ‘I think that’s probably not quite what she needs to cheer her up,’ Anna said, as Liv – whose singing was almost as bad as hers – forced the girls standing closer to her to press their hands over their ears and cringe at the same time as they laughed.

  ‘She’s in love, that’s her problem,’ Charisma said, dropping into the conversation uninvited, while flirting shamelessly with a group of men in Santa hats a few tables down. She perched on the edge of the sofa, next to Angela. ‘Unrequited love, there’s nothing worse for putting you in a bad mood.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s not that, dear,’ Angela said. ‘If Liv had met a boy she’d have said. She tells me everything, you know. Me and my girls, we are more like sisters really, aren’t we, Anna?’

  ‘Um …’ Anna grinned, kissing Angela on the cheek. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, tell me,’ Angela asked Charisma, staring pointedly at her breasts, ‘how do you to get that material to stick to your boobs, is it tit tape? I’ve often wondered where you get tit tape. I think I’d like some. I imagine it can come in awfully handy.’

  ‘I use a roll-on glue,’ Charisma told her sweetly, dipping into her purse and producing a tube. ‘Here, have it, I have tons of the stuff. And yes, Liv is in love, the poor sweetheart. She’s got it real bad, about as bad as I’ve ever seen it, poor, poor girl.’

  ‘Liv is most certainly not in love,’ Anna objected. ‘You’ve been her friend for five minutes, I’ve known her most of my life and, trust me, if Liv was in love then I would know about it. I would be the first to know about it. Most likely I’d know about it even before she did, because we are that close.’ Anna crossed her fingers and waved them in Charisma’s face to illustrate her point.

  ‘Really?’ Charisma’s grin was so knowing that it would have given Alice’s Cheshire Cat a run for its money in terms of smugness.

  ‘You know the only reason she likes you is because you lent her your stripper shoes and they make her feel tall,’ Anna said.

  ‘All of my shoes are stripper shoes,’ Charisma replied. ‘And the reason you don’t know about Miss Olivia’s broken heart, my dearest sister wife, is that she is far too good a friend to ever let you know that she’s secretly in love with the man you are about to marry!’

  When Charisma sang, she drew quite a crowd, which was nothing to be surprised about; after all she was a trained performer and practically naked. The moment she dropped her inflammatory little observation into the conversation coincided exactly with Liv taking a drunken bow, falling to her knees and literally shouting the last few words in the manner of someone who perhaps should be taking a break in the sort of institution where you might also get unlimited medication.

  ‘My turn.’ Charisma beamed, taking the mic off Liv as she stormed back to where Anna and Angela were sitting.

  ‘Oh you poor darling,’ Angela said, engulfing her confused daughter in a hug. ‘I don’t know how I didn’t see it, it all makes sense now, and there you’ve been carrying this burden alone for so long. So tell us, how long have you—’

  ‘Been hiding your light under a bushel,’ Anna cut over her foster mother before Liv realised exactly what Angela was trying to say. ‘Wow, Liv, you were brilliant.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t brilliant, I was drunk,’ Liv said, turning back to the stage where Charisma was doing everything short of taking her top off, keeping a room full of men in her thrall. ‘Look at her, this must be the only hen do in London where the stripper is also a bridesmaid.’

  ‘She is not a bridesmaid,’ Anna said. ‘I don’t care how delusional she is, if she has to be there at all, she can stay at the back, shackled to the font. Although she’d probably like that.’

  ‘I think she is terribly refreshing,’ Angela said, kissing Liv on the temple and hugging her again. ‘And she was the only one to spot your little secret, you poor dear lamb.’

  ‘Mother for the very last time,’ Liv said, downing a random drink from the collection that had accumulated on the table in one go, ‘I AM NOT GAY!’
>
  Liv’s outburst happened to coincide exactly with a moment of complete silence that just for a second engulfed the club, as some ancient pieces of wiring failed briefly before kicking back in.

  ‘Oh no, dear, no, not that secret,’ Angela said. ‘The secret about you being in love with Tom, you poor darling, you should have told me. Anna would have understood and I could have helped you get through it. Of course, Charisma hit the nail on the head, now everything makes sense, your sulking, the weight gain …’

  As Liv stormed towards the toilets, Anna raced after her as best as she could in her crystal-encrusted high heels. As she charged through the crowd, she saw Liv rush straight past the ladies’ and through the fire exit into the freezing night.

  ‘Liv,’ Anna said, propping the fire door open with a box of toilet rolls that were languishing in the corridor. ‘Don’t let your mum get to you, you know what she’s like. She doesn’t mean any harm. And anyway it’s not her fault, it was Charisma who said you had a thing for Tom. That woman can’t resist stirring up trouble. Come on, Liv, please, tell me what’s really up, so that I can say sorry, or change, or do whatever it takes to make you happy again.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Liv said so quietly that Anna wasn’t sure she heard her right.

  ‘Pardon?’ She tilted her head to one side.

  ‘I do have “feelings” for Tom,’ Liv said, sitting down on the frosty step with scant regard for her bare upper thighs. ‘I liked him from the first moment I met him and, for a little while, I think he sort of liked me back. And then … then he met you. And I thought it would stop – the me having feelings for him part, not the him loving you bit, but it didn’t. And then you got engaged and I tried to get rid of the feelings, but they just wouldn’t go away.’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Sometimes secret feelings do have a terrible habit of hanging about.’