Married By Christmas (18 page)

Anna looked up at him and for a moment they were silent as they watched each other over the table, and Anna found herself imagining what it would be like to sweep aside the stack of pancakes between them, climb over the table, entwine her fingers in Miles’s hair and kiss him until her red lipstick was smeared all over his face and he was unable to stop himself from sweeping her up into his arms, throwing her down in the booth and making mad reckless love to her right there. And then the practical real her emerged as she thought how the tightness of the skirt she was wearing would make that almost impossible without splitting a seam, and that they’d almost certainly get arrested for indecent behaviour, but not before at least a little of the heat of what she had been picturing must have seeped into her eyes, because suddenly she noticed that Miles’s cheeks were a blazing red, almost matching the colour of her dress, and that he could not look her either in the eye or the cleavage any more.

Guiltily, Anna excused herself and went to the ladies’ room, where she reapplied her lipstick, noticing the flush that burnished her own cheeks. It was just stress, she told herself, and the whole being far away from home and Tom and normality that had made her think in an inappropriate way about a man who just simply wasn’t her type, not even if she had been single. It was all of those things and her tight little red dress that momentarily made her feel like someone else, like the kind of woman who strode down the streets of New York City leaving men gasping with desire in her wake. All this silliness, all this falling asleep on sexy men’s chests, looking at them whilst they slept and worst of all imagining them with you in compromising situations had to stop at once. Poor Miles had been nothing but kind and supportive to her, full stop. OK, their friendship had started out a little unsteadily, what with the near-death experience and his unwavering ability to completely annoy her, but in the last couple of days Anna knew that she’d been lucky to have him by her side. What she could not, and would not do, was to draw him any further into this mess than he was already. She could not let him catch glimpses of the strange feelings he seemed to be inspiring in her, because they were fleeting and, more than that, they simply weren’t real. In a few minutes’ time, when the box office opened at the theatre, she’d go and see Charisma, and get the papers signed. And then she’d take a cab with Miles to the Village, where his audition was being held, and, after that, she’d book the first available flight to London and go home to Tom, where in just under a week she would marry him, and that would be that. She’d never have to think about anything else to do with men ever again.

When Anna returned to their booth, she found Miles pushing her still uneaten pancakes around the plate, his head bowed, deep in thought.

‘Are you OK?’ Anna asked him. ‘Nervous about the audition?’

He looked up at her, his ice-blue gaze taking her aback a little. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘And …’

He frowned as he looked at her, some internal struggle etched on his face, until eventually he shook his head, as if deciding not to complete his sentence, except that he did it in a way that caught Anna completely off guard.

‘What time did you go to your room last night?’ he asked, his steady gaze somehow preventing her from lowering hers.

‘Oh, I don’t know, late, I suppose,’ Anna hedged.

‘I missed you,’ he said, causing Anna’s heart to plummet into her shoes. ‘When you went, it was cold and I missed you.’

‘So that’s all I am to you, a glorified blanket,’ Anna laughed awkwardly, and Miles’s answering smile wasn’t quite up to his full capacity.

‘Sorry, Annie,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to make you feel awkward.’

‘Anna,’ Anna repeated her name, slowly and heavily. ‘My name is Anna and if my watch is right, now I can go over there and get the signature on this piece of paper that means I can marry the man I love.’ As Anna looked into Miles’s eyes she knew exactly what she had to say for both their sakes. ‘And given that that is exactly what I intend to do it’s probably not a good idea to mention the fact we’ve been sharing a room or sleeping … falling asleep together to anyone, you do understand, don’t you?’

‘Course I do,’ Miles said, shrugging a little stiffly. ‘I know, I get that. Just answer me one thing.’

Anna nodded.

‘They’ve been up in the UK for a good few hours now, have you spoken to Tom yet?’

Anna’s eyes widened as she realised that she’d completely forgotten the promise she’d made to herself to call him last night. In fact, until Miles had forced the issue, she’d more or less forgotten Tom completely she’d been so busy thinking about what to wear to impress Charisma.

‘Yes,’ she lied, getting up. ‘Yes. I spoke to him before we left. We’re fine, he’s so pleased that I found Charisma, and that I’m sorting it all. It was really lovely to hear his voice.’

‘Good,’ Miles said. ‘I’m pleased for you, Anna, really I am. Now go get your annulment. I’ll wait here for you.’

‘You’re not coming?’ Anna said, a little crestfallen. She’d sort of got used to having Miles around as her sidekick.

‘No, not this time. I think you need to do this on your own,’ Miles told her. ‘Go on, Anna, you can do it. I know you can.’

Anna nodded and, bracing herself against the freezing wind, she prepared to meet her nemesis head-on.

‘No, they’re not in their room,’ a polite young woman, whose name badge declared that she was called Kimberly, told Tom and Liv as they stood at the impressively appointed reception desk in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel. ‘I think they went out pretty early. There’s no one answering the room phone. Are they expecting you?’

Tom said nothing, his gaze remaining fixated on Kimberly, just as Liv knew that he was fixated on the one word that she kept innocently repeating. They.

‘Um, no,’ Tom said. ‘It’s a surprise. I’m her fiancé, you see. I don’t suppose you could tell us her room number, so I could leave a note.’

‘Oh no, sir,’ Kimberly said. ‘But if you want to write a note, I’ll make sure they get it as soon as they return, I promise.’

‘
They
?’ Tom finally asked the question. ‘Only I understood that my fiancée was staying here alone?’ Liv thought of that snatch of male voice she’d heard at the dress fitting, and then dismissed it again. This was Anna they were talking about. Anna just didn’t pick up random men and share hotel rooms with them. She just didn’t. And anyway, even if she had had some sort of psychotic break and done exactly that, then she would have told Liv, of course she would have. They told each other everything.

‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ Kimberly said pleasantly, her be-discreet-at-all-times training suddenly going into overdrive, as she pushed some headed notepaper towards him. ‘It must be my mistake. Here, why don’t you write a note and I’ll be certain Miss Carter gets it as soon as she returns.’

Tom took the paper and scribbled a hasty message on it before stuffing it into a thick cream envelope and returning it to Kimberly.

‘So, what shall we do?’ Liv asked, looking around the luscious lobby, trying to imagine Anna swishing back and forth through it all on her own, and failing. This seemed like far too ‘adventurous’ an adventure for Anna and, to be honest, she had been a little surprised when her friend hadn’t come back home on the first available flight. ‘We can’t really sit here all day, who knows where she is and how long she’ll be.’

‘Or they,’ Tom said darkly.

‘Tom.’ Liv grabbed his arm and shook it, making him look at her. ‘I don’t know what that receptionist was talking about, but I promise you, there is no “they”! I know Anna, better than anyone, and I know that if anything like that had happened she would have told me about it. We always tell each other everything, we always have.’

‘Then why …’ Tom gestured towards the reception desk where Kimberly was booking in a new set of guests. He looked terrible, with dark circles under his eyes, unshaven. He looked like all he wanted from life was a hug and a decent cup of tea, and for someone to tell him everything would be OK. Unfortunately, Liv could only do one of those things at the present moment. ‘I mean, she wouldn’t, would she? For revenge?’

‘Tom, don’t you know Anna at all?’ Liv grabbed his stubbled cheeks in both hands, making him look into her eyes. ‘I promise you, if there was anything going on I’d know about it. And I don’t. OK?’

Tom nodded. ‘Her phone’s just ringing straight to answerphone.’

‘Right, well then,’ Liv said, tucking her arm in his. ‘You’ve left her a note. I’m sure as soon as she gets it she’ll call. In the meantime, this is my first visit to New York and it’s Christmas, and I can’t help but be a little excited about it! Come on, I know we’re exhausted, but what’s the harm of finding a decent cup of coffee and something to eat, maybe even a little explore while we wait for Anna to call?’

Tom smiled faintly at the enthusiasm that shone in her eyes.

‘No harm at all, I suppose,’ he said, letting Liv drag him off to discover the greatest city on earth, skipping like a little girl as she went.

‘You buying a ticket or not?’ the woman behind the ticket booth asked Anna for the fourth or fifth time.

‘Um, well, no, you see, as I’ve explained previously, more than once as it happens, I don’t actually want to see the play. I’m trying to get in touch with Erica Barnes, we’re old school friends and …’

‘See this?’ The woman, who had dyed her hair a bright red several inches of root ago, and who wore 1950s-style spectacles which swept up at the edges despite being no more than thirty, pointed at the sign above the booth she was sitting in, lodged behind thick bulletproof glass. The sign read
BOX OFFICE
.

‘I sell tickets for the play,’ she told Anna in a flat monotone. ‘I don’t make nearly enough to reunite long-lost friends. Shit, have you never heard of Facebook?’

‘I know that,’ Anna said, poshing up her accent once again in the hope it might give her extra gravitas. ‘And I understand your point, but the thing is, just this once, could you maybe at least pass a message to her? Ask her to see me? My name is … well if you mention Tom Collins.’

‘Are you buying a ticket for this evening’s performance or not?’ the woman asked her, her arms crossed over her chest, staring blankly into space as she repeated the question.

‘Yes,’ Anna said, recognising defeat when she felt it. ‘Two, please.’

‘Forty dollars.’ The woman pointed at the tray under the glass division, which Anna dutifully dropped her cash into, before punching out two tickets for a performance that began at seven.

‘Have a nice day,’ the woman said, already opening a magazine.

When she got back to the diner, Miles was no longer in the booth but sitting at the long counter, chatting to the pretty young waitress, whose big dark eyes sparkled and black glossy curls bounced when he said anything that made her laugh, which seemed to be pretty much every word he uttered.

‘That was quick.’ Miles turned to smile at her as she walked over, any hint of the tension that had lingered between them when she left entirely gone. ‘This is Anna,’ he said, turning back to the waitress, who was pouring him another coffee. ‘And Anna, this is Inez. I was just telling her about your predicament. How did you get on, did you get the papers signed?’

Anna seethed behind the tight, polite smile that she gave Inez, who could not have been more than twenty and looked altogether far too pretty in her candy-striped uniform, but not because the woman in the box office had been so rude and unhelpful, or because Miles had seen fit to reveal her story to a complete stranger. No, for some reason that she couldn’t fathom, Anna was annoyed that Miles had all of a sudden stopped calling her Annie.

‘No,’ she said, sliding on to the stool next to Miles. ‘I had to buy tickets for tonight’s performance. I’ll have to try and find a way to sneak backstage while you keep lookout again.’

‘Me?’ Miles asked her.

‘Well, you’ll come too, won’t you?’ Anna asked him.

‘I’m not sure,’ Miles said, glancing at Inez who was still hanging on his every word even as she refilled the sugar, a few stools down. ‘I was thinking about what you said, about how people might get the wrong idea if they knew about the time we’ve been spending together and, erm, about the sofa. I’m wondering if maybe now wouldn’t be a good time to go our separate ways. I mean, you’ll be flying home pretty soon anyway and who knows where I’ll be next week.’

‘Really?’ Anna asked, uncertainly. ‘I mean, of course, if you think so, then yes, of course. So you won’t want me to come to your audition then, like you said, and you won’t come with me to the play and …’ She trailed off, feeling suddenly bereft and, for the first time since she’d arrived, alone in a big and scary city. ‘Of course, that’s totally fine.’

Sliding off the stool, Anna smiled at him. ‘OK, well, I think I’ll get back to the hotel then. Perhaps I might go Christmas shopping or something to kill time before tonight. I have left it rather late to get gifts what with all the wedding planning, this could be my perfect opportunity.’

‘Good idea,’ Miles said, nodding pleasantly. ‘I’ll sort out another place to stay this afternoon if I have to and I’ll settle my half of the bill before I go. So I’ll see you around, yeah?’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. She picked up her bag and took several slow steps to the door, where the snow was still lashing down with unremitting force and there wasn’t a cab to be seen in any direction. Every sensible bone in Anna’s body told her to open the door and walk away, that she was more than capable of negotiating the subway if it came to it, and that leaving her acquaintance with Miles now really was for the better. Maybe it was the red dress, maybe it was the newfound sense of freedom that had somehow engulfed her since she stepped off the plane, but Anna Carter found that she was in no mood to be sensible.

Turning on her heel, she strode back to where Miles was still sitting, Inez leaning over the counter, her chin resting in her hands.

‘Actually,’ Anna said, ‘it’s not OK. It’s not OK for you to more or less force me to let you hang around with me, for you to make me like you and trust you and … and tell you things that I never tell anyone if I can help it. It’s not OK for you to write a song about me, to make me sing in public, have a really, really good time, then pour my heart out to you and then laugh all the way back to the hotel. Or to be helpful, and kind and the sort of person who I think could really, really be a friend and then just take it all away like a spoilt child because I won’t be one of the millions of girls who are apparently stupid enough to be seduced by your eyes, and your hair and your –’ Anna gestured wildly up and down ‘– other stuff. It’s not OK, Miles, to pretend to be someone’s friend, just because you fancy a bunk-up.’