Love At Frost Sight (The Charlie Novak Christmas Collection #1)

Chapter One

MARCH

Toby

“Run that by me again. You want to do what?” I could hear the exasperation in Malcolm’s voice and practically see him rubbing his forehead as he stared out of his office window and wondered why he’d kept me on as a client.

The fact I knew exactly what he was doing when this wasn’t even a video call wasn’t a good sign. Then again, being able to predict what my agent would say to my more outlandish requests was a skill I considered rather useful.

It meant I knew what I could get away with.

“I want to be on Come Dancing With Me,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me where I was sat on the studio floor, my open notebook resting on my knee with lyrics scrawled across the pages. “I think it would be a ridiculous amount of fun!”

“Toby—”

“I don’t even need to be paid much, just their standard appearance fee. Or not at all! They could donate it to charity.”

“Toby—”

“Come on, Malcolm. It’s a celebrity dance show.

What could possibly go wrong? I’ve been out of Underground Dreaming for nearly three and a half years now, and yes, we still get some crazy fans, but I could hire a bodyguard to come to the practice studio if that worries you.

I don’t see what you’ve got against it!”

I really hadn’t thought it would be this much of a hard sell to get Malcolm to make enquiries about getting me on Come Dancing With Me.

The show was a beloved British institution and about as wholesome as they came.

It wasn’t like I was signing up to eat kangaroo testicles or get married to someone I’d never met.

Besides, I’d done plenty of TV in my boy band days and I had some vague dance skills. It would be perfect! Plus I could still write songs and model around it, so it wouldn’t interfere with the other parts of my life.

Not that I really had a lot going on.

Maybe that was why I was desperate to find something, anything, to do.

Being retired from superstardom might have been better for me, but it wasn’t half boring.

Malcolm sighed and I grinned because I knew that was the sound of him starting to give in.

“Technically no, I don’t have anything against it.

The show is popular, wholesome, you’d reach a lot of your fanbase as well as a wider demographic, and it would likely have a positive effect on streaming numbers for Underground Dreaming. But—”

“I knew there was a but coming,” I muttered as I wiggled my feet, making the ears of my dog slippers flap softly.

“We don’t want you to look washed up or desperate, and since we won’t have anything for you to promote, it could really give that impression,” he said in his most tactful voice.

“What? That I’m just doing it for the money?”

“Exactly.”

I sighed. I knew Malcolm was just doing the job I paid him a lot of money to do, which was to protect me, my career, and my reputation, but it still stung. He was right, I didn’t have anything to promote, but that didn’t mean I was desperate. I was just bored.

After Underground Dreaming had split, several of my bandmates had moved sideways into other entertainment careers, but I wasn’t one of them. I did some modelling, but the rest of my talent lay in songwriting, which I did under a pen name.

I was very good at it. In fact, songs I’d written had hit number one all over the world multiple times in the last few years, but that wasn’t something I could get on a TV show and promote.

Not if I wanted my songwriting career to stay a secret, at any rate.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” Malcolm said. “Maybe in a few years, especially if you end up doing a reunion. Then we can look at it.”

“I suppose,” I said, even if a reunion was the furthest thing from my mind.

Dai had joked about it a few times, but it wasn’t something any of us ever took seriously.

It was an outlandish suggestion at best, one we’d all started attaching ridiculous conditions to, like individual tour buses and whole weeks between dates so we could recover from one night on stage, like the divas we all pretended we were.

“What about the Christmas special? You know, the one they air on Christmas Day. It’s like a mini, cut-down version,” I said.

It was a last-ditch attempt, but it would be better than nothing.

I didn’t quite know why I was so fixated on getting onto Come Dancing With Me, but I was.

It always looked so much fun, and I was a sucker for sequins.

I could cope without the fake tan, though.

“That could work,” Malcolm said slowly, and I did a little shimmy on the spot at the idea he might be coming around to it. “And we could say you’re donating a portion of your earnings to charity.”

“Donate all of it. I can manage.” I winced, aware of how much of a pretentious asshole that made me sound.

But boy band superstardom had given me more money than I needed, and I’d made a fair amount recently through writing some hit singles, so I wasn’t exactly desperate for cash. Just entertainment.

“Okay, let me see what I can do. No promises, obviously. They may have already cast this year. I don’t know how early their process starts.”

“I appreciate you just asking.”

“Also, while I’ve got you, I’ve had an inquiry for two fashion shoots and a runway.

Giovanni wants you as part of his show that he’s doing in some ruined Italian monastery—very avant-garde by the sound of it.

I’ll send you all the details to look over.

Also, the American Music Awards are in May, and they’d like you and Haru to present an award together.

I think it’s because he’s likely to be up for a couple of awards.

I told them yes and added it to your diary,” Malcolm said.

“Sounds good, thank you,” I said. “And say yes to the fashion show. It sounds fun. I’ve always wanted to do something avant-garde. Maybe Giovanni would dress me for the AMAs too?”

“You read my mind. I’ll put some things together for you. And I’ll get back to you about the dance show as soon as I can.”

“I appreciate it.”

We chatted for a few more minutes before Malcolm went back to work, undoubtably packing all his clients’ schedules full of projects and promotions.

For all that I considered him a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes, Malcolm was an excellent agent.

Then again, I was sure he’d considered me an utter pain in the arse sometimes, so it all worked out in the end.

I sighed as I wiggled my feet again, smiling as the ears on my slippers flapped.

They’d been a random novelty purchase from some store in New York when I’d been there for fashion week last year, because I wanted a little more whimsy in my life.

I’d be terribly sad when they finally bit the dust because I had no idea where I’d gotten them and therefore wouldn’t be able to get another pair.

Humming to myself, I picked up my pen to toy with the lyrics scribbled randomly across the page. I always preferred to do my first drafts in pen. Then I got a visual map of my thought process and it was easier to move things around.

Neil, who was another songwriter I often worked closely with, had sent me a rough clip of a melody overnight and I’d had it stuck in my head as soon as I’d heard it.

It was giving me unrequited love, heart-wrenching pining ballad vibes with a sweeping chorus—something you could sing in your shower, your kitchen, or in a stadium with fifty thousand other people as you all experienced the same flood of emotion.

Now I just had to figure out what those unrequited, heart-wrenching words were.

That was the one problem with never having properly been in love. It meant I didn’t have a lot of lived experience to draw on.

I’d had crushes and relationships and felt the full onslaught of lust, but love… love was a different matter.

But it was hard to fall in love when most of your life was an act and your personality had been carefully constructed to appeal to your target demographic.

It was something all of us who’d survived Underground Dreaming had felt in some way or another, and it wasn’t easy to unpick.

Perhaps the two who’d had the most success were Kane and André.

Kane had found a way to hold on to himself through secret hookups with his now husband, Austin, and standing up for himself to the record label so he could come out.

André had always been the quiet one, and maybe that had helped protect him a little, but he’d also found love more recently with Luke, the actor turned cake baker who’d once been the company-approved fake boyfriend assigned to Kane.

It had been cute watching André fall head over heels for Luke at Kane and Austin’s wedding the Christmas before last, if a smidge sickening.

Although maybe I associated nausea with that weekend because I’d been grossly hungover. I didn’t even remember most of the reception.

“It’s not over until my heart… No, that sounds creepy,” I muttered to myself, scratching the second part out. “We want pining, not sinister. I’ll always love you but I’m not going to follow you or any of that.”

My butt was starting to go numb from sitting on the floor, so I heaved myself to my feet, notebook still in hand. I kept humming Neil’s melody as I put the notebook down on the piano stool and stretched my arms above my head.

The piano was a simple upright which I’d found in a junk shop and had restored and repainted, adding some whimsical flowers and patterns to the side. It reminded me of the piano my first music teacher, Mrs Chapman, had used when I was six and starting to learn.

I wasn’t usually the one who wrote the melodies for the songs I composed, but having a piano was very useful for figuring out how lyrics might fit, and occasionally I could fill in the parts Neil hadn’t gotten to yet.

Since we worked from two completely different cities, eight hours and about five and a half thousand miles apart, we tended to throw things back and forth to each other and piece songs together like a puzzle, rather than getting in a studio and hammering things out in a day or two.

It worked for us, and since we’d been pretty successful, nobody could really complain.

The words were right there, niggling at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite vocalise them. Not yet.

Tea… I would make a cup of tea, maybe have a rummage in the biscuit tin to see what my lovely housekeeper, Mrs Nolan, had left me, and then I would come back to writing. And if I was very lucky, I could have the first couple verses figured out by lunchtime.

As I walked downstairs to my kitchen to stick the kettle on, another thought popped into my mind.

If Malcolm managed to get me on the Come Dancing With Me Christmas special, I’d have to insist they didn’t use Underground Dreaming’s Christmas song because I would hate that beyond all reason and measure. It made me shudder just thinking about it.

I’d have to make a list of Christmas songs I’d be happy for them to pick from and hope I got a choice.

I mean, I should get a choice. Shouldn’t I?

Hopefully, I’d get a nice partner too. I wasn’t fussed who—in fact, I should tell Malcolm I didn’t mind a male or female partner—as long as they were fun to work with.

Yes, I had my favourites but not all of them came back every year and only six of them were on the Christmas special, so the odds of me getting someone like Nico Hamilton were slim to none.

But who wouldn’t want to be paired with the bad boy of ballroom?

A man so sexy he’d reportedly made three audience members pass out just from seeing his abs.

A man who’d picked two fights with the judges last series over his choreography and who’d reached the final of Come Dancing With Me a record six times, winning two years back to back, the second time with a partner nobody had taken seriously.

He wasn’t only gorgeous; he was passionate too. Fiery. Determined. And handsome.

Very, very handsome.

Maybe, if I was lucky, all my wishes would come true and I’d not only get on the show but get him as a partner.

But life very rarely worked that way, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

I hummed the melody again as I flicked the kettle on and opened the biscuit tin, delighted to find some chocolate chip shortbread inside, and made a mental note to ask Neil how he felt about Christmas songs.

After all, it was never too early to start planning.