Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-three

It had been Lexie's idea to hold the Christmas in July party in the flat above the office. For one, it saved money, but also, they could make it look properly Christmassy, whereas any bar or pub they went to would be in full summer swing. She and Ange had gotten really into it, and weirdly there was something even more fun about putting the decorations up in July, like they were breaking the rules. They'd hung fairy lights around the big windows and along the mantelpiece above the out-of-use fire, had put a wreath on the front door. Ange had cracked out the Christmas tree that they used every year down in the office—it was plastic, but apparently the fake ones could actually be more environmentally friendly if you used them year after year, so Lexie put her objections aside.

They'd had to open all the windows as wide as they could because it was so warm up in the flat—even in the evening—but they'd gone the whole hog and made mulled wine anyway.

They had the Christmas music on by the time everyone arrived, "Santa Baby" currently playing underneath the swell of chatter, but because they hadn't already been listening to the songs on repeat, the music felt fun rather than slightly grating, the way it usually did when you eventually got to Christmas itself. The whole office was here, and because most people had brought a guest or two, the flat felt buzzing. They were confined to the living room and joint kitchen—Theo's bedroom strictly out-of-bounds. Harry was there with a friend; Ange had brought along her son and his wife; Mike had brought his wife, Kate, who carried a faint air of disapproval around with her, like she was firmly against the concept of Christmas in July; and Lexie had brought along both Fran and her mum. Theo, she noticed, was flying solo, despite having encouraged everyone else to bring plus ones.

Everyone was in Christmas gear. Ange was in a reindeer jumper with matching reindeer earrings and Harry and Mike were both wearing Christmas ties. Theo hadn't exactly gone overboard, but had dressed more formally than usual, donning a shirt with the sleeves rolled up rather than his usual T-shirt and jeans. Lexie, however, had gone all out in a sparkly black dress, simple but classic, with high heels that she only braved every now and then. And because it was summer, she could wear this kind of outfit and not be freezing, which was a plus. She'd seen Theo glance her way a few times and knew it had had the desired effect. And OK, yes, she wasn't supposed to be going there with him, but that didn't mean she didn't want him to suffer, just a little, for stopping things in Madrid.

Lexie's mum broke away from a conversation with Ange, came over to stand near one of the windows where you could catch the odd breeze to counteract the steaming mulled wine. Lexie had thought it might be weird for her, to come along to something that had once belonged to her ex-husband, to be around people who had valued him, but her expression showed no sign of discomfort.

Instead she beamed at Lexie. "Thank you so much for inviting me, my love. This is such fun!" Lexie raised her mug, and they clinked. "Ange is just lovely. I've only ever seen her in passing before, but we're going to lunch next week—she's going to take me to this café at the garden center near her, apparently they do the best toasted sandwiches you've ever had." Lexie smiled. Her mum's cheeks were a little pink, her eyes shining. "And Mike, you know, I knew him a bit before, but it's lovely to catch up. Though I'm not sure about that wife of his."

"You knew Mike?" It was weird, to think of their lives all being intersected like that.

"Oh, not really. But Richard became friends with him back when we were together."

"Really? They knew each other for that long?"

"Oh yes. It's nice, isn't it, that they kept in touch? I think they met in the sales job your dad used to work at." Her mum frowned. "Astra something or other."

Lexie grinned at her mum. "You don't know what Dad did either."

Her mum gave her a weird look.

"What?"

Her expression immediately softened. "Nothing. You called him Dad, that's all. But no, I never totally learned the ins and outs of his job. He explained it a few times but, well…" She broke off, looking at her phone, which she'd kept in her hand the whole evening—something that was uncharacteristic. A smile spread at whatever she saw there.

"Who—?"

But Lexie didn't get to finish, because Fran came over, clutching a glass of Prosecco, having declared earlier that "July is not the time for stewed alcohol, Lexie." She was in a dress too—a knockout red one that Lexie had encouraged her to wear, along with a pair of heels, so that she wasn't the only one.

Fran swept her long dark hair over her shoulder. "For the record, I'm totally loving this."

Lexie smiled, and risked a glance over at Theo, who was standing with his back to her now, chatting to Harry by the sofa.

For the record, I doubt very much that it was just a one-time thing.

"My Christmas party wasn't nearly as fun," Fran was saying as Lexie forced her attention away from Theo's back. "It was a sit-down dinner. My boss got way too drunk and told me how much he regrets the last twenty years of his life." She wrinkled her nose. "That'll be me in twenty years."

"Drunk? Or regretting your life?" Lexie cocked her head. "A boss?"

"Probably all three at this rate."

Lexie's mum said nothing to any of this, still intent on her phone, as Ange bustled over, her reindeer earrings swinging. "Lexie, I love the wish jar! What a fun idea! We should take the wishes out next year, see if any of them have come true. Or put wishes in for the company? Or…" She flapped a hand. "I don't know. There's an idea on the tip of my tongue, I know it, I'm just a little woolly at the moment after the wine. Anyway, I love it, and Theo said it was your idea?"

Lexie shifted uncomfortably. "Ah, sort of."

Beside them, her mum finally stopped texting and looked up.

"Have you put a wish in yet?" Ange asked.

"I did," Fran announced. "I wished for the love of my life. Although, actually, are we allowed to put two in? Because I might wish to win the lottery, so I don't have to do any more paperwork for the rest of my life."

"You're not supposed to tell us the wishes," Lexie said, nudging Fran in the ribs.

"Why not?" Fran asked, her lips twitching. "Because then they won't come true?"

"Oh, I love that you've brought the wish jar here," Lexie's mum said, beaming. Her eyes shone a little more brightly, and for a moment Lexie was worried she might start crying. "I can remember the first year you did it. And I know it's silly—I moved on from your father a long time ago—but in some ways I wish he were here, to see the tradition still going strong."

Lexie frowned. "Why?"

Her mum fluffed up her hair a little. "Well, it was him who started you on it, wasn't it?"

"No," Lexie said slowly. "It was your idea—remember? We made the first one together." She had that memory, sitting on the living-room floor, sticking gems onto glass.

"We decorated it together, yes, but it was your dad's idea in the first place. He was the one who encouraged you to get it out the year after, too. I think he might have done it when he was a kid, actually. I'm sure that's where the whole thing came from."

Lexie stared at her mum, trying to process her words. It had been her dad's idea? She knew she'd always talked to him about it, knew she'd shown him the very first one she'd made, but she hadn't realized it had been his idea in the first place. That particular detail had gotten lost in her memories, somewhere along the line. So it had been his tradition she'd been carrying around with her all this time, without even realizing it. And she couldn't quite work out how she felt about that.

"Are you OK, Lexie love?" Her mum was looking at her with concern now, an expression at odds with the sparkle of her bright red-and-green knitted Christmas jumper—the one and only Christmas jumper she owned, to Lexie's knowledge. "I'm sorry to bring it up if it upsets you."

"No, it's OK." Lexie forced a smile. "I'm fine."

For a moment her mum looked like she might say something else, but then her phone buzzed again and in her distraction Fran pulled Lexie away, saying they needed drink top-ups. Within half an hour her mum made apologies to leave early, and the whole thing was forgotten about.

At around nine p.m. , they decided to head to the pub. Fran bit her lip at the suggestion, drawing out her phone to look at the time.

"What's up?" Lexie asked, gathering a bunch of empty glasses and dumping them into the kitchen sink as Theo switched off the music and the others all headed out the front door, talking loudly as they clambered down the stairs.

"It's just…Tom said I should meet him this evening, if I'm free…" Fran had been on two dates with Tom so far, and apparently he seemed nice, normal. Given Fran's track record, Lexie was a little worried that he sounded too good to be true, but she had decided to keep that concern to herself.

Instead she said, "Go! Meet him. Everyone will be calling it quits soon anyway, I reckon. Have fun."

Fran gave Lexie a quick hug, then bounded off out of the flat and down the stairs. Really, you had to admire the hope.

"Where's she off to?" Theo asked, and Lexie spun around to see him bringing the rest of the glasses into the kitchen.

"She has a date."

"Ah." It was quiet, now that everyone had left.

"My mum left early too."

"Maybe she has a date as well."

Lexie made a face. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Is it that ridiculous?"

Lexie frowned at him. "She would have said."

"OK."

She was learning that Theo often said "OK" when he disagreed completely. She supposed her mum could have a date. She must have had dates since her dad left. And she was pretty sure there had been a time when she'd been close to bringing a guy home to meet Lexie, in her teenage years, but Lexie had never given her mum's dating life a huge amount of thought—she'd always presumed that she was just happy being single, after what Richard had put her through.

She was lost in her own thoughts as she continued clearing up some of the mess they'd made—and belatedly realized that Theo was doing the same. Maybe he didn't want to come back to a dump later. She cleared her throat as she put the mugs into the dishwasher, feeling the need to fill the silence. "So what do you usually do at Christmas?"

He poured the last dregs of the mulled wine out of the pan and down the sink. "Work, mostly. I go on the trips quite often, which is fun."

"You weren't working last year," Lexie pointed out. He'd been there when she'd tried to sneak into the office on Christmas morning—coming down from his flat.

"I wasn't abroad, but I was still working."

"Oh."

He smiled at her. "Feeling sorry for me now, are we? Don't be—Ange invited me round for Christmas dinner in the afternoon, so I had the full Christmas experience."

She could imagine that of Ange. Though if he'd told her that on the day itself, she wouldn't have had to feel momentarily guilty, leaving him in the office.

"You don't ever go home to your parents or anything?" she asked as she finished loading the dishwasher. She knew he didn't get on brilliantly with them, but still. And yes, OK, maybe she was trying to dig a little deeper there.

"My parents were never really big on it. We went to church when I was a kid, but I think out of a sense of obligation—my parents weren't overly religious. But the rest was just awkward."

"Because it's an ‘overly chaotic and hyperactive celebration'?" Lexie asked, remembering.

He shot her a glance. "Yeah, that's about the sum of it. Although Mum wanted to do Christmas as it should be done. But for her that meant it was all calm, and that we were seen to be this, like, I don't know, perfect little family with a well-behaved, grateful child or whatever. So she'd host everyone for Christmas Eve drinks and serve these incredibly posh canapés that I hated—and generally she tried to encourage other parents to leave their kids behind, but those that were there were supposed to be dressed up in suits. Like a ten-year-old in a suit munching on a goat cheese canapé for Christmas—the whole thing was a little ridiculous." His voice was wry, like he was making a joke, but Lexie couldn't help but wonder what was beneath that. "Anyway," he continued, "the day itself was always painful. Like sitting there and opening our one present each—mine was always something to do with school—and then having this meal that my mum had slaved over while my dad read quietly in the living room by the fire, drinking sherry."

"My mum likes sherry," Lexie said—because she wasn't really sure what else to say.

"Well, there's something we have in common—parents who like sherry."

She laughed a little, and he gave her another of those glances as he got out a dishwasher tablet from beneath the sink.

"I spent the past few Christmases—before this last one—with your dad, actually."

She wasn't sure what to say other than "Oh." She wondered if he'd leave it there, and realized she didn't want him to. "What did you do?"

"Well, three Christmases ago we were in Edinburgh—for work, on the trip there, which always does pretty well as a lot of people want to hang around for Hogmanay."

OK, for work. That made it a bit easier to hear—given all the times she remembered wanting to spend Christmas with her dad, and him not being there.

"I actually think he could have gone on the trip himself, but we'd had a rough couple of years with the business, and I think he knew I didn't really have anywhere to spend Christmas, so he got me to come along." He smiled a little at the memory. "Then the year before last we were in Vienna—we were there for a recce—for the trip that's going to be running this year. We had to postpone it once we realized how ill Richard was."

"Right," she said, thinking she ought to show she was following.

"And Richard flew Rachel out too—not on the company, but she was having a bit of a hard time, so…"

He'd flown Rachel out to Vienna, for Christmas, because she was having a hard time. How had he been that good a father to her, and completely absent for Lexie? It was also after he'd left Jody, wasn't it? So apparently he hadn't abandoned Rachel when he left Jody, the way he'd done with Lexie.

Lexie realized Theo was watching her carefully, as if wondering how she was taking all this, and she tried to school her face. "So what did you do, on Christmas Day itself?" she asked him.

"We actually got a bit carried away on Christmas Eve, which is the big celebration over there—Richard had found this amazing family restaurant that was open on the day. No idea how he found it, to be honest, because it was very much geared toward the locals, but it was amazing. The traditional Christmas food in Vienna leaves something to be desired—it's all about breadcrumbs. But these guys managed to merge the traditional and the modern and the food was incredible. And there was so much wine—Rachel ended up almost passing out on the table and we had to practically carry her home." His brow furrowed a little, while Lexie felt a pang at the family scenario he was describing—with her dad and her sister. "Which in hindsight was a little irresponsible of us, given Rachel must have been like, what, nineteen or something?"

"She's twenty-two now," Lexie said, her voice quieter than she'd meant it to be. But at least she knew that.

"Right. Well, anyway. On Christmas Day itself we wandered around the city—Rachel had been hoping for snow but there was none. It was still so beautiful, though, and we were trying to figure out where we could take clients for the day itself, for those people who didn't want to be alone, and it became sort of, I don't know, like a game." He shook his head, clearly thinking about it; then his voice changed a little. "It was just before he found out he was ill, I think. I mean, I can't know that for sure, since he never told me, but I think it must have been before he…" He broke off, clearing his throat, and seemed to force lightness back to his voice. "Anyway, it was a lot more fun than Christmas with my parents. What about you? You spend it with your mum usually?"

As a change of subject it left a little to be desired, but Lexie went with it. "Growing up, yeah, it was mainly me and Mum. She always made such an effort, and we played games, and on Boxing Day we'd always go and meet friends. It was nice." The absence of her dad in that sentence seemed to hang in the air around them, after his story. "But, ah, then I moved away and I'm usually doing something to do with work on Christmas now—or spending it with people I've met through work that year. I stopped wanting to come home for it," she admitted, though that made her feel guilty, because of her mum. She sighed. "I know it sounds stupid—it was so long ago—but it never felt the same after my dad left. I was always too aware that he was somewhere else, enjoying it with his new family, and I couldn't shake the feeling of being…"

"Second-best?"

"Yeah." She blew out a breath. "Something like that. It's stupid, I know," she said again.

"It's not."

She glanced around. It was tidy enough. "We should go. Ange said they were heading to the Lamb."

They walked to the front door together. "So, we have an Irish trip coming up in August," he said conversationally. "In Warrenpoint. Ever been?"

"No—do you know what? Weirdly, I've never even been to Ireland."

"Well, you should come with me, then."

She glanced up at him, as he opened the front door a crack. "You're going? Thought you didn't like going to Ireland."

"I don't hugely love going back near Dublin, which is where I grew up, but this is Northern Ireland. Besides, Mike hates this one, so he won't go, but we have a tricky customer coming so one of us needs to be there."

"One?"

His lip quirked up at the corner. "Or two. Our usual local guide isn't available this year, and to be honest I could use your help, given I know Miranda is going to make life difficult."

"I don't know," Lexie said slowly, still waiting for Theo to open the door wide enough for them to step out.

"Don't trust yourself around me?"

She huffed out half a laugh. Though really—maybe there was something in that. "The others will be wondering where we are," she said by way of deflection.

He opened the door all the way, then very deliberately looked up. Mistletoe was hanging there. Mistletoe she was sure she hadn't hung herself. Where did you even get mistletoe this time of year?

Lexie gave him a suspicious look. "You put that there."

His face was the picture of innocence. "Ange did."

"Is that so?"

"Yep. She's big on mistletoe. She met her husband under the mistletoe one year."

"Really?"

"No idea. Wouldn't put it past her, though." He waited, one hand still on the door.

She told herself it was a silly thing, playing at Christmas, a quick kiss under the mistletoe—even if the thought that he'd hung it there just for her made her want to smile.

She thought she was prepared, as she pressed her lips to his. As his hands came up her arms, a soft caress. But he didn't deepen it. She didn't taste the hunger like in Spain, that gut punch she'd been ready for. Instead it was slow, and sweet, and she felt her body go loose and liquid as her eyes fluttered closed. Barely a whisper of a kiss, really. Still enough to bring the heat, still enough that she had to fight not to pull him closer. More than that, though, it was enough to make her heart stutter as he pulled away and took her hand to tug her down the stairs.

She did her best to ignore it. Told herself that it was a physical reaction, that was all. Because kissing Theo was one thing. Falling for him was not an option.