Married By Christmas Read online

  ‘What?’ Anna said, testily, as if she’d really rather be asleep than deal with all these questions, which to be fair to her was in fact the case. The tequila was sort of insulating her from the significance of the occasion, and the fact that Charisma and Tom were in the same room once again after eight years. Not that Tom had even glanced in Charisma’s direction since her attempts to kiss him. Having been put firmly aside, she seemed quite content to watch on the sidelines, at least for the moment, her big chocolate-brown eyes taking everything in.

  ‘What is Miles doing in your hotel room?’ Liv prompted Anna, sharply. Wasn’t it enough for her that the man Liv loved was rushing across the Atlantic to be with her? She had to have a hot rock god in her bedroom too?

  Anna sighed. She could have tried coming up with some sort of excuse to explain Miles away that didn’t involve cohabitation, even if it was mostly in separate rooms, but she was too tired, too fraught and too drunk, as well as too annoyed by Charisma’s smirk and Liv’s moral high ground, to be bothered.

  ‘We’re sharing it,’ she said, rolling her eyes, and gesturing vaguely at Miles. ‘We happened to arrive at the same time, we needed a place to stay, it made financial sense, blah, blah, blah, blah. At least I haven’t accidentally got married and then forgotten about it.’

  She raised an eyebrow at Tom who was still standing by the door, rooted to the spot, as if he still could not make sense of what he was seeing.

  Charisma giggled delightedly. ‘She has kind of got you there, babe,’ she told Tom coyly over one shoulder. Tom simply refused to look at her as if ignoring her might somehow make her disappear.

  ‘You were just sharing a room, and nothing was going on?’ Tom asked, looking at Miles.

  ‘God! Miles, tell him,’ Anna said, furiously.

  Crucially, Miles hesitated as he looked at Anna, the expression on his face unreadable and then, squaring his shoulders, Miles looked Tom right in the eye and shrugged, in a decidedly ambiguous fashion.

  ‘What can I tell you,’ he said, ‘we hooked up at the airport.’

  Which was when, out of the blue, Tom ran three strides forwards and sent Miles staggering backwards with a swift right hook that threatened to knock him right off his feet, and almost did.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Anna shrieked as Miles steadied himself, gingerly touching his hand to his jaw, tasting blood from his split lip. ‘Oh my God, you hit him, Tom, you hit him!’

  ‘Yeah, and I’ll hit him again,’ Tom said menacingly, narrowing his eyes. ‘See these hands, pal? These hands are lethal weapons.’

  ‘Tom, you do kick-boxing,’ Liv reminded him under her breath.

  ‘These feet are lethal weapons,’ Tom added. ‘Too.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’ve got an AK-47 in your pocket, that was a big mistake, my friend.’ Miles shook out his arms, and bounced on his toes for a bit.

  ‘What are you going to do – aerobics him to death?’ Liv asked.

  ‘You hit him!’ Anna pointed at Miles, still quite clearly on the last page.

  ‘Bring it on, mate,’ Tom told Miles, assuming a kick-boxing stance, and giving Miles a little Bruce Lee-style beckon. ‘If you think you’re hard enough.’

  Anna and Liv watched in horror, as ignoring the niceties of martial arts, Miles simply launched himself at Tom, and seemed to fly almost vertically towards him through the air, knocking him to the ground in something like a rugby tackle.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Anna screamed as she watched Miles and Tom wrestle on the floor. Neither one was really hitting the other. It seemed to be more like a lot of angry grabbing, grunting and tussling.

  ‘Get his head in a knee lock!’ Liv called presumably to Tom. ‘Crush his windpipe, cut off his air.’

  ‘Liv!’ Anna was horrified, her body numb and slow to respond to what she was seeing.

  ‘What, presumably you are on Tom’s side?’ Liv asked her archly.

  ‘I am on the side of justice!’ Anna said, although she wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that.

  ‘How does it feel to have two men fight over you?’ Charisma said with mild interest, as the men continued to wrestle each other, any iota of training they might have forgotten in the primeval need to simply roll about, pointlessly. ‘They’re both pretty hot, so that’s a plus, it’s just a shame they have clothes on and that they aren’t very good at it. For a really good brawl you need Texans. English men are too polite.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘What are the chances we might get them to take their clothes off?’

  Unable to watch their red, distorted stupid faces for a second longer, Anna clumsily threw herself into the fray, attempting to separate the two by grabbing at the first thing she could find in the tangle of men. It happened to be Tom’s hair and he yowled. The momentary break in his concentration allowed Miles to bloody his lip in return with an unexpected elbow jab, which was probably more of an accident than intentional.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop it, you’re hurting him!’ Anna said, not sure exactly who she was defending, but knowing that whoever it was, this was not a good thing for the other. Desperately, she tried to insert herself between them and lever them apart. She found herself, for one confusingly exciting moment, in the grip of both men, a moment intensified when she realised that the sound of material tearing was actually the neckline of her dress, revealing a good deal more of her red lace bra than she should probably be showing to anyone in that room, except her fiancé.

  ‘Oh, let them get on with it,’ Charisma said, trying to drag Anna away by her wrist. ‘It’s funny and God knows why they’re fighting over your sour little ass, but you should be pleased. You don’t look it, but you must be one hell of a lay.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Anna said, thinking in that exact moment that she sounded more like a nanny chiding a cheeky child than a woman, in a ripped dress, about to embark upon a catfight. Still, undeterred, she jumped up with what she considered to be verging on ninja-like speed, particularly considering her levels of intoxication, and slapped Charisma so smartly around her face that her chin whipped over her shoulder, leaving a wake of hair across her face.

  ‘Take that back!’ Anna demanded, thinking that Joan Collins would have been proud of her. But the moment of self-congratulation was short-lived as Charisma, recovering quickly, grabbed a handful of Anna’s hair and started dragging her around the room, intent on yanking it out by the roots.

  Anna wasn’t sure for how long Charisma had her hands in her hair, scalping her, one golden thread at a time, or for how long she dug her nails into Charisma’s wrists in an attempt to make her let go. Although it seemed like an eternity it must have taken much less than a minute for Liv to expertly break Charisma’s hold on Anna, twist her hand behind her back and slam her up against the wall.

  ‘You stay there,’ Liv informed her. ‘Otherwise I’ll break more than a fingernail, got it?’

  Impressed more than intimidated, Charisma shrugged, turned around and leaned back against the wall with a definite smirk on her pretty face, as Anna rubbed her sore head.

  ‘And as for you two, stop it this second!’ Liv yelled, with such authority that she didn’t really need to knock Miles off Tom with a well-placed kick to his shoulder, and then stand over them, with her hands on her hips, like a latter-day Boudicca, as they lay panting on the floor, although that is exactly what she did.

  ‘Put in some electric guitar and we’d have ourselves a porn film,’ Charisma said happily, clearly delighted with how her reunion with her husband was going.

  ‘You shut it,’ Liv warned her. ‘I am too tired, too bored of everyone else’s crap constantly landing at my feet, to take a single second more of any nonsense from anyone. Now let’s all act like grown-ups and get to the bottom of this, shall we? Fighting like children, honestly.’

  Miles and Tom clambered to their feet, brushed down their clothes, straightened their dishevelled shirts and looked decidedly sheepish, as it began to dawn on them they’d both been brawling over
nothing in particular, and had not been doing a particularly good job at either.

  ‘Look at yourselves,’ Liv said, disgusted. ‘Anna, look at your dress. Do any of you even know what you are fighting about?’

  The four of them stood there, three of them with their heads hanging, casting sideways looks at each other, Anna holding her dress together over her underwear, while Charisma shrugged and said, ‘Well, this is the most excitement I’ve had in ages. Sexually repressed nuns are no fun at all.’

  ‘I wasn’t fighting,’ Anna interjected. ‘I was trying to stop fighting until she got involved.’

  ‘I think,’ Liv said taking a deep breath, ‘that we are all a bit overtired and emotional. Tom and I …’

  ‘Tom and I,’ Anna found herself repeating in a sarcastic tone, unfairly annoyed with Liv for being there, being sensible and most of all being sane.

  ‘Tom and I have been up for hours waiting for you, Anna. Tom has come all this way for you. And because you haven’t answered your phone or called anyone pretty much since you arrived, we didn’t know that you were not here, you were out on the town with these two.’ She gestured at Charisma and Miles, who exchanged the sort of conspiratorial smiles that made Liv feel cross. ‘It seems to me that everyone has gotten into a pickle and overreacted. Let’s just take a breath and remember why we are all here. It’s so that Tom and Anna can get married in a few days’ time. Not so that Tom and Miles can fight like a pair of toddlers after too many Smarties, and Charisma and Anna can scratch each other’s eyes out like … like a pair of alley cats!’

  Liv sat down heavily on the sofa, burying her head in her hands. ‘Oh God, I need a life. Now, Anna, tell your fiancé why Miles is in your hotel room, preferably in a way that is not going to incite a riot.’

  ‘Fine, but before I begin I want to say it’s not as if I forgot to mention to my impending bride that I was already married …’

  ‘How many times!’ Tom exclaimed. ‘I’m trying to get it sorted!’

  ‘Fine,’ Anna repeated, taking a breath and forcing herself to climb down from the combative stance she’d slipped into. ‘So the reason that Miles is here is because coincidentally, he was on the same flight as me out here, sitting right next to me.’ She turned to Tom. ‘We had a really awful date, once, before I met you and, trust me, he was the last person I wanted to see on that day, after everything that had happened. But we talked on the flight and when we got here he offered to take me to a hotel.’

  ‘I bet he did,’ Charisma chimed in.

  ‘To keep me safe,’ Anna said firmly. ‘And then it turned out there was only one room left in New York, and it cost a lot of money so we decided to share it. Miles helped me look for Charisma. There had been no inappropriate behaviour at all, he’s been on the sofa the whole time.’ She looked at Miles, whose swollen bottom lip oddly suited him, and smiled faintly. ‘He’s been a really great friend, actually.’

  ‘Friend only?’ Tom asked, looking at Miles. ‘Be straight with me.’

  Miles nodded, looking suddenly very tired. ‘Friends only,’ he told Tom, his shoulders dropping. ‘I’ve been helping Anna find Charisma, while I waited for an audition. All she’s talked about is you and how much she wants to marry you, and it’s pretty clear the lengths she would go to for that. There is nothing going on between us.’

  Tom’s expression softened a little, as Anna wondered if that was strictly true, because there was something going on, in her heart, and her body, whenever she looked at Miles, or was near him. It had crept up on her during the hours they had spent together and now seemed to have some sort of hold. And even if it was just physical, some kind of chemical reaction that her heart had no control over, it was still something. Would Tom be able to sense that, see it in her face? Or worse still, would Miles?

  However, Anna realised it was Liv who was watching her intently, probably sensing that something was up. She would certainly want to know why Anna hadn’t told her about Miles when they had spoken on the phone. The trouble was Anna wasn’t sure that she had a very good answer.

  ‘Look,’ Liv said, sending Anna a coded ‘we’ll talk later’ look, ‘Anna and Tom obviously need a minute to … say hello, so shall we just …’ She gestured to the door. ‘Give them a bit of space, and go and have some strong coffee in the bar? At least you lot are less likely to start a riot in a public space.’

  ‘Hold on a second, honey,’ Charisma said, pushing herself off from the wall where Liv had told her to stay. ‘I get that you’re defending your friends here, and I like it. But you’re not the boss of me, and that’s my husband there. I might not have seen him in a very long time, I might not have wanted to, but you don’t get to just tell me to skedaddle until we’ve had words.’

  Charisma walked over to Tom and took a long time looking him up and down.

  ‘You look good, Tom,’ she said, holding out a hand. “I’m sorry I inappropriately kissed you. I was a little drunk, and a lot more pleased to see you than I thought I was going to be.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Tom said, shrugging awkwardly. He smiled at her. ‘You look good too, Charisma. Although I’m sorry we’re still married.’

  ‘It’s not all your fault. It’s not like we didn’t both have plenty of time to sort it out.’ Charisma smiled warmly. ‘Every time I thought about doing it, over the years, I’d look back at the time we spent together and realise that it was the happiest I’ve ever been with a guy. I was just waiting to be that happy again before I finally let my last little connection to you go. What’s your excuse?’

  Tom pressed his lips together, before admitting, ‘I forgot about it. And actually I didn’t ever think we were legally married until quite recently. Sorry.’

  For one moment, Charisma’s big brown eyes were filled with sadness, but it was a moment so fleeting that if you hadn’t been looking for it, like Anna had, you would never have known that it was there. Charisma laughed, slapping Tom hard on the shoulder, tossing her hair back as she turned to smile at Anna.

  ‘Well, then, am I pleased you’re marrying this little firecracker, because if we’d left it up to your lazy ass, then I would never have seen you again, eight years older, with quite a lot less hair, and I would have pined for you for at least another eight years.’

  ‘So you will sign the papers then?’ Anna asked her. ‘Without any games or attempts to get Tom back by taking your top off?’

  ‘Look,’ Charisma said, the persona she’d been wearing all night dropping off her as easily as a tie-at-the-sides thong, ‘I won’t say I haven’t thought about you, Tom, or wondered if I should have just walked out on you the way I did. Sometimes over the years I have dreamed about what it might have been like if I’d stayed. But I didn’t stay, and actually, having seen you fight, I’m glad I didn’t. You are way too British for me. But I’m glad I’ve seen you again. And met Anna, and this cool scary chick here. I’m not evil, I just couldn’t resist pranking you a little bit, Anna. Of course I’m going to sign the papers. And then, you know what, I’m going to get on with my life, just the way I planned it.’

  ‘Then thank you,’ Anna said, managing a smile at the beautiful woman who’d just solved all of her problems in one fell swoop. ‘You didn’t have to be so helpful.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Charisma said, dropping a light kiss on first Anna and then Tom’s cheek. ‘I was never going to stand in your way. Now, you rock god, you can buy me a drink. That girl might be scary, but she’s way too short to scare me sober.’

  With one last long look at Anna, Miles took a breath, found a smile, picked up his guitar and walked past Tom, towards the door.

  ‘Come on, babe,’ he said to Charisma, ‘let’s go start a country sing-song in the bar of the Algonquin.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Liv told Anna and Tom just before she closed the door behind her. ‘Not that you need me to give you permission to take your time. I mean take as long as you need … I mean … See you later!’

  Anna and Tom were alone at last, and
although it had only been a few days since they had last been together it felt like an age, almost like another life since they had been intimate. And as Anna stood there, looking at the man who she’d once been so certain was better than she ever could have deserved, she wondered if she had done the right thing by coming to New York to save their Christmas wedding day. Because one thing could not be denied, she was a very different person now than she had been when she boarded that flight.

  More than a year and a half they had been together, but there was so much they still didn’t know about each other, even now. There was so much that Anna felt she still didn’t understand about Tom and there were certainly things that Tom didn’t know about her, especially not the new and hard-to-understand feelings that Anna felt whenever she was near Miles. Or the odd sensation that she had that the two of them had become closer, understood each other better in less than forty-eight hours together than she and Tom had in all the time they’d been together. It was Tom who hadn’t thought to tell her about Charisma until it was almost too late and Tom didn’t know the truths and secrets that she’d so readily told Miles. Yet this was the man she was moving heaven and earth to marry in a few days’ time, and Miles would soon be in the grip of his exciting new life and she wouldn’t even be an afterthought for him. All of this was artificial, Anna reminded herself sternly. A set of extraordinary events, taking place in her snow globe, a fragile little bubble that had nothing to do with the real world. In the real world she was going to marry Tom, and that was what she had to stay focused on, because apart from anything else she was certain that Miles wasn’t sitting in the bar, brooding over her.

  ‘I’m sorry I hit Miles,’ Tom began, cutting across her train of thought and breaking the silence between them. It was obvious that he thought that was the last bone of contention between them. ‘It’s just that you left, almost without saying goodbye, without giving me a chance to think about what was happening.’