Chapter Four
Nash
God, what a fucking day.
What a fucking day.
This all serves him right really. Maybe it’s some kind of karma? Run away from your responsibilities and bam, you’re stuck in a freak snowstorm in Europe begging a barista who might hate you to make you a hot drink.
All Nash had wanted was a Christmas alone where no one could bother him.
That was why he picked somewhere no one would expect him to go, after all.
He’s never even been to the UK before, and so, rather than go for the usual touristy experience of London, or even Edinburgh at the very least, he’s now in the middle of nowhere in Wales.
The thing is, he had to get out of LA. Even just for a little while.
In fact, Tessa, his assistant, is the only person who knows where he is.
She’s a great assistant so didn’t pry into why he was fleeing the country.
Didn’t even enquire. Discreet is part of the job description, and her general demeanour of being slightly uninterested helps too – if he remembers right, she’s some director’s kid writing a screenplay and wanted some experience ‘doing a normal job’.
Although, thinking about her, he should probably let her know he is alive at some point. Maybe when he’s not completely soaked. His parents would never let him live it down when he was a teenager if he dressed weather-inappropriate, and he gets a pang of that old well I told
you so in his head as he peels away his sodden jeans. Critical error, there.
Not helped by the fact that what he’s going to put on . . . are also jeans.
Maybe he can find a Walmart or whatever the equivalent is here when the weather is a little less apocalyptic.
Either way, he’s definitely stuck here for now. Serves him right for leaving.
People were always fleeing the city – it was easy to get tired of LA.
The cars, the smog, the people. Well, not all the people, but a lot of them.
Plus, he’d been getting tired of the whole one-season thing.
You don’t grow up in Canada without occasionally missing snow, though he’s pretty sure after this snow-cursed trip he’ll never think that again.
Anyway, now it seems he’s stuck here. And it had all seemed like a great idea at the time, or if not great it was certainly an idea. And when he left LA yesterday there was no sign of a storm. As far as he knew, anyway. There were probably meteorologists talking about it somewhere . . .
And so, it was a shock to land in Manchester to snow everywhere.
It turns out that snow grinds everything to a halt in the UK.
For some reason, everyone seems to be surprised that it snows here.
And yes, this might be snow beyond the usual levels (from what he can tell) but still, it’s not as if the UK is a tropical country?
Why was no one prepared? Maybe he’ll email Hugh Grant about it when he’s back home. Hugh loves a cause.
So far, it was not the relaxing escape into obscurity he was hoping for, let’s just say that.
They were the last plane to land on UK soil, as all the rest seemed to be diverted to mainland Europe (just his luck that he didn’t end up stranded somewhere not snowed under), and then it turned out all the trains had been called off too – definitely a problem when he was planning to get one the whole way from Manchester to the apartment he’d rented.
Uber was so in demand, the app wouldn’t even load.
He considered walking to the nearest airport hotel and begging for help, but something in his jet-lagged lizard brain told him he had to get to Wales. That address was the only guaranteed bed he had. Plus, how far could it be? A few hours’ drive? How bad could that be?
Apparently, pretty bad according to the fourteen taxi drivers in a row who insisted they weren’t leaving Manchester for love nor money.
Taxi driver number fifteen agreed to drive him as far as he thought safe for a significant bank transfer and an autograph, once he’d wheedled out of Nash that he was an actor.
Unfortunately, as far as he could go turned out to be a service station outside Chester, which wasn’t even in Wales.
The man simply refused to cross the border, as though things were going to get that much worse if he tried.
Granted, he might have been onto something.
It was pure luck (or perhaps, on reflection, terribly bad luck) that, just as the taxi zoomed off, a huge truck full of sheep had pulled up alongside him, ready to fuel up at the gas station.
Nash is recognisable, he knows that. He has ‘The Look’ of an actor, so to speak, and globally, enough people have the streaming services that host his various films that they’ve at least scrolled past his face, if not watched something he was in.
Unless he meets a real connoisseur of the romance genre, he doesn’t get outright recognised as much as hey you look familiar-ed.
This together with his generally helpless situation made it even more improbable that the driver of said sheep truck, Gethin, the very Welsh farmer, was not only a huge Nash Nadeau fan, but was heading back home to Wales and would be passing the town where Nash was staying.
Despite years of festive-themed films, Nash has never stopped to consider whether a Christmas miracle was a real thing, until now.
And sure, Gethin’s truck reeked of sheep – a smell he’s convinced he’s never experienced so intensely before now – and Gethin was a little strange and over-enthusiastic, but he was also Nash’s best chance of escaping that service station.
Nash paid for the gas, because that only seemed polite, but wow is it expensive in the UK.
The drive took a couple of hours, and from Gethin’s enthusiastic questioning, Nash isn’t entirely convinced the man didn’t go well out of his way for an exclusive interview.
But what was the cost of a few incredibly invasive questions in exchange for a possibly lifesaving lift?
A few sanity points that he would have definitely lost if he’d been stranded in Chester.
Anyway. At least he’s here. Well, he’s definitely .
. . somewhere, and Gethin was insistent this was the right place.
If only Nash’s phone would work, he could dig all the information out.
This is why people print things still; just in case they’re stuck in a catastrophic snowstorm in the middle of nowhere.
Now, he rubs at his soaked, wind-blown hair with the damp top he just took off, which typically just makes his reflection in the mirror look even more like he’s been on the journey from hell. Which, well, he might have been.
The dry, clean, and crucially not-smelling-of-sheep clothes do brighten his mood enough that he can face leaving the bathroom and talking again with the ornery café owner.
God knows why that guy is acting as if Nash’s entire existence is his own personal cross to bear.
Like, come on, it’s a snowstorm, dude. Help a guy out?
Nash only asked him for a coffee. It’s not as if he asked the man to polish his boots, or give him a piggyback through the snow.
Though, given he’s going to have to go out into the snow in jeans again, maybe he should ask to be carried.
All he needs to do is get this weird, gangly British man to direct him to the place Tessa booked, and then he can get out of here. Be alone, finally.
Thank fuck he packed too many clothes and a full bottle of testosterone gel.
Get it together, Nadeau. The show must go on and all that crap.
All he needs to do is slap on some good old North American charm, like every miserable press circuit has taught him to do.
This is nothing. This is just one weird dude.
He can do this.
Be polite, ask for help, get the fuck out of there. Easy.
And with that, he opens the bathroom door.