Christmas with Her Ex

‘For goodness’ sake, Connor. If you won’t drink it, I will.’ She waved at the man and the obliging fellow bowed and put the second glass next to the other one.

Great, Connor thought. Now Gran was going to get tipsy and she’d be uncontrollable. This trip was assuming nightmare proportions. ‘I’ll drink it.’

‘Good.’ His grandmother sat back smugly and he realised he’d been conned and she’d never intended to have two glasses. He sighed and had to smile. She winked.

‘Much better. You don’t lighten up enough, my boy.’

He narrowed his eyes at her but he couldn’t stay cross. She was a minx. ‘It’s my training. Normally, I’m responsible for people’s lives.’

‘You’ve thought you were responsible for people’s lives since you were a child. Makes you bossy.’ His grandmother shrugged that away. ‘You’ve been too responsible for too long. You’re becoming downright boring.’

Connor froze in the act of sipping and frowned at her. Did she mean that? Nobody else had complained—but, then, who else was there to complain?

There was a distance between him and most people that he’d acquired early, since the loss of his mother and advent of his stepmother, to be precise, and had never lost. His patients wanted him to optimise the course of their pregnancies. Fertility assistance required set boundaries of safety and precautions. Still, her comments seemed a bit harsh. ‘You don’t know the real me, Gran.’

‘Hmph.’ She snorted and he looked at her quizzically. So older ladies really did that?

She snorted again just to prove it. ‘Hmph. Nobody knows you. Except maybe that girl at the end of the train.’

So this was what it was all about. And how the heck did she know where Kelsie was sitting? He’d bet Winsome had bribed the porters already, though goodness knows when as he’d only been gone a few minutes. The she-menace had probably rung the bell as soon as he’d left.

She knew them all by name because she’d been on this train every year for the last twenty years with his grandfather. Her yearly birthday trip in February she’d missed this year because of his grandfather’s death.

That had really knocked her badly and Connor, alarmed his grandmother might just fade away with grief, had hired a nurse to look after her for a few weeks to ensure she ate enough to survive. She’d begun looking much like her old self since he’d agreed to share a last journey on her favourite train.

But he was very aware this was her first Christmas without her husband and they’d decided this was as good a way as any to get over the lead up to festivities on her own.

So this was effectively a ten-month delay on her birthday train trip.

He didn’t understand how she didn’t get bored.

He was halfway there already, and it would be worse if it wasn’t for the unexpected arrival of Kelsie Summers, and they were only a few minutes out of the station.

He sighed. So she was all over the fact that Kelsie was here! He should have known.

He enunciated carefully, as if to a child, ‘You’ve blown it all out of proportion. She was a kid at my school and I was like the big brother she never had.’

His grandmother nodded and he could tell she wasn’t listening.

She proved it. ‘When you came to me you told me you’d been going to marry her.’

‘Childhood nonsense. An impulse.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl is nothing to me now.’

She nodded, all sweetness and light, and his head went up. ‘I’m pleased. I wouldn’t like to see you upset.’

For some reason he didn’t like the sound of that, or the way she’d said it. She glanced out the window and then back again and a horrible premonition hit him just before her next words.

‘So it should be fine with you that while you were admiring the view I sent her an invitation to join us for lunch.’

Kelsie’s golden envelope arrived, along with her glass of champagne, its embossed VSOE paper and the spidery writing giving a clue to its origin. She’d bet it came from Winsome.

Wolfgang hovered as she opened it and glanced at the bottom. Sure enough, the flamboyant W rolled into an exuberant salute. ‘Please. Come!’

An invitation to join them for lunch at the first sitting. Fun. Not! How the heck did she answer this?

‘Perhaps I should return for your answer in a few minutes?’ Wolfgang wasn’t slow on the uptake.

She guessed he’d been exposed to many such missives and their impact.

Kelsie smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks, Wolfgang.’ His head disappeared from the door and Kelsie looked down at the embossed paper again. So how did she decline politely?

She sipped her champagne, the golden fluid so surprisingly light and dry that the bubbles jumped and tickled her nose until she took it away from her mouth and looked at it. So this is what the other half drank?

Like drinking golden sunshine—no hardship at all—and she needed the courage to make a decision so she took a bigger gulp.

Or maybe she should go? Maybe that was what needed to be done. Surely inside Connor Black there was still a vestige of the hero she’d admired as a young girl and that man might understand her adolescent thinking all those years ago. He’d been her best friend and she had let him down.

The perennial questions of youth had been so important back then.

The indecision of it all. Who does he think I am? Who do I want to be? And if I went with him would I have any choices left to me? That had been the big one.

She still believed she’d done the right thing, but she shouldn’t have been such a coward about it.

Maybe it wasn’t too far-fetched that they could reconnect as friends. She hated the constraint she’d caused between them and the added bonus was she genuinely liked his grandmother.

If she sincerely apologised then surely a lot of the ill feeling would be over? It seemed he didn’t mind if she came to lunch so that was a good sign.

And afterwards she could get on with enjoying her trip. Soak it all up in the way she hadn’t yet started to do because of remembering her youth and Connor and her last-minute aborted wedding.

The whole trip would be over by tomorrow evening and she would have wasted it dwelling on the past.

She felt a strange sense of settlement as the decision was made. Funny how things worked out.

Wolfgang returned with the bottle of champagne and offered her a refill. She appreciated his generosity in the circumstances. ‘You can tell her, yes, thank you.’ She looked at her brimming glass. ‘Just make sure I don’t fall over on the way to lunch.’

He nodded with a smile. ‘My pleasure, madam. I will return at five minutes to the hour to escort you to the correct dining car.’

‘Lovely, thanks.’

Kelsie put down the glass and glanced at her watch. Eleven-thirty. And how long would lunch go on for? It couldn’t be too long because the second sitting had been set for an hour and a half later and they’d have to reset the tables.

She glanced at her satchel, still unpacked. Clothes!

As the magnificent scenery of the white-capped Italian Dolomites passed, Kelsie refreshed her make-up, brushed her hair, and with a certain excitement hung up her clothes for the meal after this one.

Her aunt had always stressed it would be black tie for the evening meal on the train when she’d first mooted the idea of realising her dream, and Kelsie wanted everything to be ready when she came back after lunch.

They’d often laughed about Kelsie wearing off-the-shoulder velvet on the Orient Express, and while it wasn’t velvet or off the shoulder, the black uncrushable gown was suspended by gold links of chain above her breasts and fell from beneath her bust to the floor.