Chapter 4
Chapter Four
EMILY
I’m not this girl.
I’m really not.
I haven’t been on a date—not even a casual one—since Stephen broke up with me over WhatsApp last summer. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up past ten for anything but work, rarely drink, and have never, repeat never, picked a man up at a bar.
I’m a “meet through friends” or on a dating app person. I like a guy who’s been vetted—either by mutual acquaintances or by me, via several days of intense texting and stalking of his social media.
But here I am, two beers in with a sexy British stranger with mischievous blue eyes and a panty-melting accent even better than Colin Firth’s.
And not only am I allowing him to buy me a third beer before I beat him at another game of rummy, I’m pressing my knee against his under the table and hardly thinking about the nativity fiasco at all.
I’m even considering asking Olly back to my hotel for a nightcap when the pub closes, and I don’t even know his last name.
That therapist who thought I was too uptight and controlling would be so proud.
Or concerned.
Maybe both!
But for some reason, that suddenly feels exciting instead of terrifying.
“Gin,” I purr, laying my cards down with a flourish.
“Again?” Olly groans, but he’s smiling as he adds, “You’ve hustled me, haven’t you?”
“I don’t hustle,” I inform him primly. “I strategically withhold information about my card-playing abilities until it’s too late for my hapless opponent.” I grin as I scoop the small pile of coins into my hand. “Now, all your ten pence pieces are mine.”
“Diabolical,” he mutters. “How did you become such a beastly little card shark?”
“I could tell you…” I shrug. “But then I’d have to kill you.”
The truth is, I learned gin rummy from my grandmother during Isabelle’s endless skating practices, back when I was too young to stay home alone and mom and dad were still at work. It was either that or watch Isabelle do the same leapy, turny thing eight hundred times in a row.
But Olly doesn’t need to know that I spent my formative years in ice rink waiting rooms, making the best of being the “less interesting and talented” sister.
He also doesn’t need to know that this is the longest I’ve gone without checking my email in months.
Or that I eat lunch at my desk every day to squeeze more work in.
Or that, lately, my list-making habit is inching past “cute coping mechanism” into “pathological” territory.
No, all he needs to know is that I’m a wild and fabulous redhead who crashes nativity plays, picks all the best Christmas songs, and can drink him under the table.
At least, I think I can…
I don’t drink that often, but when I do, I’m usually the last girl standing at the bachelorette party.
I never lose a shoe on the dance floor or ask the male stripper if I can take a picture of the “junk in his front trunk.” (That last one was Maya, who still has an impressive collection of “front trunk” shots on her phone from our friend Georgia’s bachelorette party in Atlantic City last year.)
Still, by the time we’re on our fourth—fifth?
—drink, my lips are starting to tingle and my words slur a little as I say, “Yes, the seagull stealing the toupee was bad, but nothing compared to what happened in Florida. It was a destination wedding at the Everglades Botanical Gardens. We were halfway through the toasts when suddenly the swans turned feral. They just started honking and snapping at people, and one chased the mother-of-the-bride into the lagoon.” I gesture Olly’s way with my pint glass.
“Which might not have been so bad, but there were also alligators in the lagoon. Because of the Florida of it all.”
His jaw drops. “Christ. I forget how terrifying America can be.”
“So terrifying,” I agree. “I’m never going to Florida again. A place with killer dinosaurs in the water is not a place where I belong. And the humidity is horrible. My hair was a giant frizzy fuzzball the entire time.” I sip my beer, willing myself to take this one slower than the last.
“So?” he prods after a beat.
I blink. “So what?”
“So did the mother-of-the-bride die a horrible, bloody death by swan and/or alligator?” he demands, giving my thigh a teasing squeeze beneath the table. “You can’t leave a man hanging like that, Red.”
I giggle. “Oh, sorry. No, she didn’t. But she did have to fight off two giant male swans with her high heel before the garden staff were able to fetch her out of the lagoon.
Apparently, she’d crashed through their nest while she was running from the other swans, and they were angry that she’d bothered their babies.
Even though they’d obviously stolen the babies from some poor mama swan while her back was turned.
” I take a quick drink to wet my parched throat before adding, “Did you know that twenty-five percent of male swans are gay?”
Olly throws his head back and laughs, a rich sound that makes dangerous warmth pulse through my veins.
God, he’s sexy. And gorgeous. And has the best laugh.
But I can’t have a one-night stand with a complete stranger.
Can I?
I can invite him back to the hotel lobby for one last drink and get his number and maybe kiss him on the sidewalk before he gets in his cab, but that’s it.
After all, I’ve never had a one-night stand.
Ever.
Not even in college, when one-night-standing was all a girl on scholarship at an Ivy League business school, who was also secretary of her sorority, had time for.
No, I’m not that type of person.
I’m not impulsive, especially not in a sexual way.
But maybe it’s time to start, a wicked voice whispers in my head.
I’m still blushing when Olly squeezes my thigh again and declares, “You’re making that up.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not. One in four male swans are full-blown gay.”
His lips twitch. “As opposed to just a wee bit gay? The way I get when I watch too much Outlander.”
Now, it’s my turn to snort-laugh. He grins wider in response, clearly pleased with himself for getting a snort out of me. And damn, I think I might be falling in lust with his chin dimple. Who knew a chin dimple could be so delicious?
“Understandable,” I say, once I can breathe again. “Jamie Fraser is insanely hot.”
“You’re not too shabby yourself, Darling,” he murmurs, making my cheeks heat as he leans closer.
I lean in, too, my pulse fluttering wildly in my throat.
I’ve never kissed a man in a bar, either, but our lips are about to meet over our forgotten cards when a creaky voice behind me calls out, “Oi, young people! Come settle a bet.”
Olly and I startle apart, turning to face a man in a plaid vest standing beside the jukebox, flanked by two shorter gentlemen, both with magnificently thick gray moustaches. “You’ve obviously got decent taste in music, but can either of you do the Lambeth Walk?”
“Excuse me?” I start, but Olly’s already standing, offering me his hand.
“Dance from the 1930s. Bernard forces it upon the bar at least once a year,” he says with mock annoyance. “He forgets we’re not all older than Father Christmas.”
“Aw, you love it, Oliver,” Plaid Vest—Bernard—says, waving us over before hollering at the other men still camped out by the fire. “Come on, you lot. Get off your asses and join the fun. Lord knows you could use the exercise, and it’s Christmas dammit.”
I abandoned my broken shoe an hour ago, so I pad over in my stocking feet, already grinning as Bernard and his friend Albert—shorter moustache man— demonstrate what looks like a cross between the hokey pokey and someone having a seizure.
“It’s all in the hips, love,” Albert insists, demonstrating with an impressive amount of flexibility for a man his age. “Then you shout ‘Oi!’ and slap your knees. It’s great fun.”
“Looks like it.” I giggle as Olly gets in on the tutorial, hips swiveling right along with Bernard.
What follows is the silliest fun I’ve had in a long time. Olly and I follow their increasingly elaborate instructions while a bizarre song called “A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” plays on repeat on the jukebox. We stomp and swivel and “oi!” until we’re all laughing so hard, we can barely breathe.
Then we switch partners and go for another promenade around the bar.
“Brilliant work,” Bernard cheers as he hands me off to Olly again, “but you’re meant to turn left, love, not right.”
“I did turn left!” I protest with a laugh.
“Your other left,” Olly says in my ear, spinning me back in the correct direction.
His hands are warm on my waist, and he smells like expensive whiskey and woodsy cologne. He’s also smiling down at me like he thinks I’m the best thing since figgy pudding, and suddenly, I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t take him back to my room.
After all, you only live once, and so far, in my life, I’ve managed to make it twenty-eight years without ever meeting a man who made me want to jump straight into bed with him.
Who knows how long it might be before I meet another?
At this rate, I’ll be fifty-two by the time lightning strikes a second time, and I don’t imagine getting naked with strangers is something that gets easier with age.
By the time the coconut song finally gives way to an instrumental of “Good King Wenceslas,” the old men are beaming like they’ve just taught their grandchildren to ride bicycles, and I’m blushing bright red.
But it’s a determined blush, not an embarrassed one.
Now, I just have to figure out how one asks a man if he’d like to get naked together in a low-key, temporary sort of way…
“Right then, I’m off,” Albert says, bundling into his coat. “Got an early boxing class tomorrow. Mind how you go in this snow, ladies and gents.”
“Us, too,” Bernard agrees, holding his friend’s coat. “Best get tucked into bed before the drifts are too deep. Happy Christmas, Olly and Emily. It was a delight.” He shoots us a knowing wink as he joins the old man posse shuffling toward the door.