“Your side looks fine,” he said, barely even glancing at it. I ignored him and started to re-fluff his side. As I moved past him, I breathed in his scent. He might not be in the best mood but at the same time he was built like Adonis and smelled just like Christmas—all fresh-cut pine and crackling fires. He might just be the perfect man. If only he liked Michael Bublé. And was a little more . . . festive.
“There,” I said, standing back, dipping to different angles to make sure I’d covered all the holes. “I think we’re done.”
“Finally.” He lifted the next section and slotted it in. “Now, let me guess. We fluff this big guy’s trunk?”
Big guy? “The branches,” I corrected him. “So how come I’ve not seen you in Snowsly before?” I asked as I worked my fingers through the branches.
“Busy. Ivy comes to London to visit.”
“This must be so much fun for you then,” I said, grinning up at him as he lifted the final section of the tree like it was nothing more than one of the baubles we were about to hang. Strong, handsome, smelled like Christmas. What did he have to be grumpy about? He snapped the last bit of the tree into place and all three sections lit up. Instantly the reception area looked more festive.
The familiar opening bars of “Last Christmas” spilled through the hotel lobby and my stomach began to churn. I didn’t want to think about this time last year.
Then suddenly, thankfully, Mariah took over. I glanced up. Had someone changed that deliberately?
“This is the exact opposite of fun for me,” Sebastian said, bringing me back to the moment.
I stood straight and put my hands on my hips. “Sebastian Fox, it’s like you’ve stabbed me through my garland-bedecked heart with a candy cane. You don’t like Snowsly?”
“I love Snowsly,” he said, making a rough attempt at fluffing the branches. I appreciated the fake effort. “It’s Christmas I have a problem with.”
I took a sudden step back from the tree, as if one of the wires holding the lights had given me a small electric shock. “You don’t like Christmas?”
He shrugged as if it was entirely reasonable not to like the most wonderful time of the year. I actually half-sang the thought in my head. How could anyone not like Christmas?
I took a couple of steps closer to him and looked right at him, into his eyes. I hadn’t noticed how blue they were—light, and flecked with silvery white, like he was looking at me through a snowflake. “But Snowsly is Christmas,” I said, reaching for him and putting my hand on his jacket in an effort to pull him into the wonderful world that was Snowsly at Christmas. “We have an all-year round Christmas shop. We’re known for our Christmas market. People come from miles around to drink the mulled wine from Oliver’s stall. He’s even bringing out his own takeaway bottle this year. And then there’s the present-wrapping demonstrations. The cake stall—not to mention the tree, the decorations, the hot chocolate, and the village-wide Secret Santa.”
He glanced at my hand. “The what?”
“These next couple of weeks will change your mind,” I said, smoothing my hand down his lapel and then jerking my hand away. What was I doing, stroking perfect strangers? I turned back to the tree and resumed my fluffing. “You’ll be pa-rum-pa-pum-pum-ing by the time the market opens in two days. I guarantee it.”
“I’ll be doing what?” He looked me squarely in the eye for the first time since we met. For a second it felt like the entire world had fallen away and it was just Sebastian and me decorating a Christmas tree. Just then, the opening bars of “The Little Drummer Boy” came through the speakers in reception.
What a Christmas coincidence.
“This,” I said, grinning. “This song. Guaranteed ear worm and Christmas classic. You’ll be humming it in no time.”
If Sebastian didn’t like Christmas, I was going to add him to my to-do list. He’d be right there at the top: Convince Sebastian of the joy of Christmas. Over the next two weeks, he’d come to see that Christmas in Snowsly was joyful and magical and a thing to be celebrated. These were the best weeks of the year for me—even if last year’s festive season had culminated in the worst day of my life. Who needed to think about that? Certainly not me. Not when there was a grinch to convert in just two weeks’ time.
Three
Sebastian
What I should be doing right now was sipping whiskey in the first-class lounge at Heathrow. Instead, I was “fluffing” Christmas trees with Christmas’s biggest fan. I kept telling myself that I was doing this for Granny and that I should just zone out, but it was more difficult than I expected. Maybe it was the Christmas music on a loop, or the fact that everyone was talking in hushed tones about how the Manor hadn’t been fully decorated—despite the fact that everywhere I looked, shiny baubles and candy canes stared back. Maybe it was the fact that Celia was like a puppy with a new bone.