LITMIR.BIZ

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pulled away to avoid having to talk to the driver. The soothing sound of Christmas music reminded her that she was going home. Home, at last.

      Things could be a lot worse, she told herself, and almost believed it.

      She got lucky with trains and made it to the airport in the early hours. It was Christmas Day and she was going home come hell or high water. Her eyes were scratchy and sore, her whole body ached and she knew that if she stopped moving for a moment she’d start crying, so she kept going.

      The airport was eerily quiet for the holidays; she supposed the number of people wanting to fly on Christmas Day itself wasn’t huge. Dragging her bag along behind her, she scanned the boards for flight times. The next flight to London left at six a.m. and her luck must have changed because she managed to get a seat on it for less than the limit on her emergency credit card. Checking her bag, Dory headed for security.

      But when she got there, she found Lucas Alexander leaning against a pillar in the almost-empty terminal, watching her approach.

      Her heart, which had stopped sometime in that hallway with Felicia, started thumping again, blood pulsing in her ears. ‘How did you get here?’

      ‘I drove,’ he said, as if the last few hours hadn’t happened. ‘Quicker than the train.’

      ‘I meant… What are you doing here?’ Dory let her carry-on bag drop to the ground. Apparently her miserable Christmas Eve wasn’t over just yet. She had to deal with the man she’d fallen for, hating her in person, first.

      ‘Catching you,’ he replied. ‘You forgot these.’ He tossed something at her and she caught it, just.

      She blinked at the packet in her hand. ‘You drove all the way here to give me ginger chews.’

      Lucas shrugged. ‘You get travel sick. Besides, you left before we could talk.’

      ‘I’m leaving,’ Dory said. ‘I’m going home, confessing everything and staying there. There is absolutely no need for us to talk.’

      ‘Confessing what?’ Lucas asked. ‘That you skipped a family Christmas to pretend to be my brother’s girlfriend?’

      ‘That I lost my dream job in PR. And my fiancé. And my apartment. That I’m just an assistant now, not the high-flying executive they think I am. And that I’m so broke I had to agree to this stupid stunt just to be able to get home for New Year.’ Her skin burned, itching with embarrassment. Shame. God, what were her parents going to say? ‘That I used my emergency credit card, the one Dad said only to use in case of near-death, to get a ticket home. And it doesn’t matter that I can’t afford to fly back to the States because I’ve got no job to come back for, and I just screwed up the one really good thing that’s happened to me this year. You.’

      ‘You’re not coming back?’ Lucas stepped closer. ‘I don’t like this plan. And I want to know more about this fiancé.’

      ‘He doesn’t matter. He never did.’ Dory swallowed around the lump in her throat, feeling tears burning behind her eyes. ‘Look, Lucas, I’m sorry. You have to know that. But now… I just want to get the hell out of this. I want to go back to my real life, whatever that’s going to be. But I think it’s pretty clear it’s not going to have anything to do with the Alexander family.’

      Lucas shook his head. ‘Not good enough. You promised me a date when you got back to New York.’

      Was he serious? He’d practically kicked her out of his parents’ house himself, before his mother actually had, and now he wanted to take her on a date? What had she missed?

      ‘I spoke to Tyler,’ Lucas went on, when it became clear she wasn’t going to respond. ‘He knows he screwed up, and I know it was a hell of a lot more his fault than yours. So if you still want your job when you get back, you have it.’

      ‘I told you. I can’t come back.’ The ticket she’d used her emergency credit card to buy was one-way. And even if Tyler came through with a ticket back, even if she still had a job… it was time to tell her family the truth about her life.

      ‘Then I’ll have to come with you.’

      Dory stared at him, standing there with his arms folded across his chest, watching her steadily. ‘Did you eat the mistletoe? Is this some sort of poison-crazy you’re talking?’ She needed to know. Because something was rising up inside her and it felt an awful lot like hope. She couldn’t let that happen if he was crazy and all this was going to fall apart again.

      He laughed, and it sounded more carefree than she’d heard from him since they met. ‘No, Dory. I did not eat the mistletoe.’

      ‘Good. That stuff will kill you.’ She looked up at him, desperation filling her. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on here, Lucas.’

      ‘That’s how I’ve felt since I met you,’ Lucas admitted. ‘But now, finally, I have some answers. And while I don’t like all of them… I can’t let them stop me finding out what there could be between us. Learning all the truths about you, instead of the lies. Why you came to New York, what happened to your dream job. What your family are like. Everything. Because somewhere in the craziness of the last few days… I fell for you, Dory. Hard. And I’m not going to let you just disappear out of my life without giving us a real chance.’

      ‘So you’re… what? Going to come spend Christmas with my family?’

      Lucas shrugged. ‘Why not? You were going to spend Christmas with mine, and they’re horrible people.’

      ‘You have a point.’

      ‘So I can come?’

      ‘You’ll need a…’ He held up a boarding pass. ‘Ticket,’ she finished, lamely. ‘We should, I don’t know, talk about this.’

      ‘Flight leaves in thirty minutes. We can talk on the plane.’ He pulled an envelope from his pocket and Dory recognised the bow. ‘And if you do decide to come back, the return part of this is still valid.’

      ‘But—’

      Lucas stepped forward, one hand at her waist, and it felt so much more right than it had with Tyler, or anyone before. ‘The only question is, do you want to spend Christmas with me? No charade, no lies, just us, your family, some mulled wine and probably cake.’

      ‘Mince pies,’ Dory corrected. ‘My mum makes the best mince pies in England.’

      ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a mince pie.’

      Dory looked up at him, at his bright-blue eyes and cropped hair, at the shoulders she’d cuddled against, the lips she’d kissed and the face she’d fallen for, totally and completely. And she knew, whatever happened next, it would be better with Lucas beside her.

      ‘Well, then,’ she said, moving closer into his arms. Maybe things could be okay, after all. ‘You’d better come home with me. Everybody should taste a mince pie at least once in their life.’

      Lucas flashed her a quick grin, then bent down to kiss her again, hard and fast. ‘They have mistletoe in England too, right?’

      ‘Forests full of it,’ Dory promised, feeling giddy. This, this was the life she wanted to go home and show her family she was living. A job she liked and a man she adored. But more than that, she wanted to show them how happy she was. ‘And I’m going to kiss you under every single bunch we see.’

       The First Christmas Without You

      Michelle Betham

      A division

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