Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Twenty-One

This,” Ava said cheerfully, “is so romantic.”

“It’s not, actually,” Charlotte said patiently from her spot on the floor, folding up gift bags to be reused for next year’s Christmas. They’d allowed the Christmas morning mess to linger in the living room in an unseemly pile next to the tree for close to a week, but Ava had awoken this morning in a strange fit of virtuous productivity and had put them all to work. Kit was currently vacuuming in the spare room with Alice strapped to his chest, which seemed like a recipe for disaster to Charlotte, but she’d refrained from offering commentary.

“But your one true love has apologized and laid his feelings bare, and now you are going to offer him a Grand Gesture!” Ava said dramatically.

“A what now?”

Ava sighed. “A Grand Gesture, obviously. Have you never watched a rom-com, Charlotte? Wait, what am I saying? You have a cold, dead heart and you don’t believe in romance.”

This struck close enough to home to flare a spark of anger in Charlotte. “That’s not true,” she said quietly. “Also,” she added, “I’m friends with Padma, so of course I’ve seen a fucking rom-com. I’ve seen more of them than anyone should be required to see in their entire lifetime, in fact.”

“Then you should be familiar with the Grand Gesture,” Ava said impatiently.

“It’s not a Grand Gesture,” Charlotte objected. “It’s a… declaration of feelings.”

“At a ball, at midnight, in disguise,” Ava said, snapping shut the lid on the rubber box that contained all the Christmas wrapping supplies.

“Almost none of that is true,” Charlotte said. “Also, it’s not a ball , it’s a party. It’s 2024. Get a grip.”

“Hear me out, though,” Ava said, looking delighted. “You show up at his ball in your mask, allowing the minutes to tick by, leaving him to believe you haven’t shown up, and then you dramatically reveal yourself at an opportune moment and confess your love!”

“That seems unnecessarily dramatic,” Charlotte said skeptically. Drama of any sort wasn’t really her style, much to the dismay of every other member of her immediate family.

“It’s a Grand Gesture!” Ava said impatiently. “That’s what it’s for !”

“Do I need a Grand Gesture, though?” Charlotte asked. “Since he was the one in the wrong, you know? With the lying and deception?”

Ava waved a hand. “Details. Have you considered nudity? Men love nudity.”

Kit chose this convenient moment to switch off the vacuum cleaner, evidently in time to overhear this last comment. “It’s true!” he shouted from the next room. “Big fan of nudity!”

Charlotte crumpled up a scrap of wrapping paper and lobbed it at her sister’s head. “I’m never asking you for advice again.”

“I think you’re discounting this too quickly. A Grand Gesture on New Year’s Eve—what could be better? It’s the stuff holiday movies are made of!”

“Have I ever given you the impression that I want my life to look like a holiday movie?”

Ava sat back on her heels, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Actually,” she said slowly, “don’t you think that’s exactly what your life has turned into, for the past month?”

“No,” Charlotte said instinctively, without even pausing to consider.

“Yes,” Ava said definitively, a gleeful smile crossing her face. “Do you remember all the things you told us you hated about Christmas movies?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said slowly, feeling very certain that she did not like where this conversation was going.

“Well,” Ava said, leaning forward and raising a finger to begin keeping count. “Meet-cute under implausible circumstances? Check.”

“Not implausible,” Charlotte argued. “Perfectly plausible!”

“Charlotte, he was removing a felt reindeer suit . Shut up.” Duly chastened, Charlotte fell silent. Ava raised another finger. “Some sort of festive task that requires the hero and heroine to band together and discover the joy of Christmas? Check.”

“Not check! Not check! There was no Christmas joy!”

“But you two certainly banded together , in every sense of the phrase,” Ava said, with a lascivious eyebrow waggle. “Cast of charming supporting characters to egg the protagonists on toward their happily ever after?” Ava beamed, waving a hand at her own face. “Check.”

“Check!” Kit echoed from the guest room.

“ Waaaaa! ” said Alice.

“Quirky, borderline-contrived Christmas rituals and activities? Let us not forget the roving caroling troupe. Check.”

Charlotte was too worn down to even protest at this point.

“Third-act fight that casts our protagonists’ happy holiday into doubt? Check. Ending with a Grand Gesture, and a kiss in front of the Christmas tree!” Ava finished happily, then straightened. “Charlotte, it’s very important that you kiss him in front of the Christmas tree—it’s the only thing you’re missing!” She paused, frowning. “Except for some improbable, unexpected snowfall, I guess. Can’t do much about that, though—this is England.”

“Flurries forecast for tonight!” Kit called from the guest room, and Ava looked as delighted as anyone in human history has ever looked upon hearing a weather forecast.

“Charlotte Lane,” she said, leaning forward and taking both of Charlotte’s hands in hers. “Welcome to your holiday romance. Now go get your true love!”

“Can I take a shower first, at least?” Charlotte asked dryly.

“If you must,” Ava said, sighing dejectedly.

Charlotte laughed, and continued tidying, and then eventually showered, dressed, did her makeup, prepared for an evening out—and not once did she tell Ava one key fact:

Charlotte had already made a Grand Gesture. And tonight, she was going to tell Graham about it.

Her first mistake, Charlotte thought, a bit grumpily, several hours later, was allowing Ava and Kit to accompany her on this outing.

“A New Year’s Eve out!” Ava said brightly, standing before her closet and surveying the many, many dresses she had to choose from. She held up a slinky green silk dress with a very high slit, pouting at herself in the mirror. “Do you think green makes me look sallow?”

“You wear green all the time,” Charlotte said from Ava and Kit’s en suite, where she was carefully pinning her hair up, an endeavor that required enough bobby pins to supply a small country.

“But what if I’ve been wrong all along? Alice has aged me, you know—”

“She’s aged all of us,” Charlotte muttered around a mouthful of bobby pins.

“—and what if my face can no longer tolerate green?”

“Ava?” Charlotte called, carefully extracting another bobby pin from between her teeth.

“Yes?”

“Please shut up.”

Ava, miraculously, had complied—though she had ended up donning an off-the-shoulder red dress with an extremely low neckline, on the off chance that her fears about green were accurate—and by six they were on the road, slowly inching their way out of London holiday traffic, John and Simone having been left with a disgruntled Alice, who had appeared unamused to discover that both of her parents were leaving at once.

“We’ve not gone out together since she was born,” Kit explained weepily to Charlotte as he eased the car away from the curb, his eyes red-rimmed. He frowned in the rearview mirror. “Perhaps I should stay—”

“No.” Ava reached over and clamped a firm hand on her husband’s forearm. “She’s with your parents; she’ll be fine. This is good. This is healthy. Charlotte, do you know of any secluded, unused bedrooms at Eden Priory?”

Kit brightened. “I do like the way you think, love.”

“Oh my god,” Charlotte said, and spent much of the rest of the car ride trying to ignore the waves of almost obscene anticipation emanating from her sister and brother-in-law.

They were at Eden Priory just after seven thirty, only half an hour late, but the car park was already nearly full, Charlotte noted. Hopefully they’d sold an absolute shit ton of tickets—anything that would alleviate Graham’s stress she’d consider a positive, even if it did increase the odds that a Christmas, Truly megafan would be in attendance. She was pretty sure this was going to be an occupational hazard of dating Graham, going forward—and she was terrified by how unbothered by that fact she’d become.

The path leading up to the house was lit by a series of lanterns, and the house itself was ablaze with a warm light—candlelight, Charlotte realized, once they walked through the front doors and had their tickets scanned on their phones. Lizzie was on ticket duty and had immediately recognized Charlotte despite the half mask blocking much of Charlotte’s face; Lizzie’s jaw had dropped, an expression of dawning glee creeping across her face, and Charlotte had simply held a finger to her lips and smiled at Graham’s sister.

The entrance hall was lit by candlesticks in sconces mounted on the walls, and the electric light of the Christmas tree and the white lights in the rafters above, but there were no other lamps in use, giving everything a cozy, romantic glow.

“Straight through to the ballroom!” Lizzie called behind them, sounding as cheerful as Charlotte had ever heard her, and they trailed behind a couple of men in sharp-looking suits, following the sound of music as they passed through a corridor and emerged into the ballroom. The last time Charlotte had seen this room had been on the day of the ornament workshop, and it had been transformed since then—lit with hundreds of candles and strings of lights, the tables that had occupied the room gone, the floor now cleared for dancing. A full bar appeared to be operating along one wall, staffed by a couple of bartenders in sequins and masks of their own, and a live band played at one end of the room. Potted plants—palms and ferns and even potted citrus trees, mixed in with the obligatory poinsettias and rosemary bushes that the season demanded—filled the corners of the room. Along the wall above the bar, several original Christian Calloway pieces had been hung—sketches for patterns that would eventually be made into wallpaper; original versions of some of the illustrations he created for books; intimate portraits of his family, ones Charlotte had never seen before. The dance floor was crowded with couples and groups, everyone in suits and dresses of varying degrees of sparkle, and every single one of them was masked.

“This is a vibe ,” Ava said, impressed. She turned to Kit. “A dance, handsome masked stranger?”

Kit kissed her hand. “But of course, mysterious lady,” and he led her onto the dance floor. Charlotte watched them walk away and be absorbed into the crowd of dancers, before she allowed herself to turn and look.

She spotted him almost instantly. He was at the far end of the room, arms crossed, face hidden by a simple black half mask that emphasized the sharp line of his jaw. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, she realized. It made her feel a little unsteady, when she was preparing for a declaration of—of something , of a feeling she still, even to herself, in the quiet of her room late at night, struggled to name, because doing so made her feel so vulnerable—that he should look ever-so-slightly not like himself, not like her Graham.

Hers.

That was all she really wanted him to be.

That was what it felt like he already was.

Despite the fact that she couldn’t have been in the room more than a minute, couldn’t have hesitated, watching him, for more than twenty seconds, it was enough time for him to notice her. Across the room, he straightened, turned his head sharply, as if she’d called his name. His gaze landed on her, and she didn’t doubt, even for a single second, even with her mask in place, that he’d recognize her.

Charlotte. She saw his lips form her name, unheard from this distance. She began to walk toward him, even as he began to elbow his way through the crowd…

Which is how she learned that this sort of thing looked much easier in movies than it was in real life.

“Ow,” she muttered, as she was accidentally elbowed by a dancer for the second time. She dodged out of the way of a couple that was completely ignoring the jazzy take on “O Christmas Tree” currently being played by the band and instead doing some sort of modified swing dancing, and glanced up, trying to find Graham in the crowd again. He was tall enough, fortunately, that she was able to see him, even as she weaved among the dancing couples, avoiding more rogue elbows and nearly getting knocked over by a guy dipping his partner dramatically for a kiss. Just past them, she saw Ava and Kit making out like a couple of teenagers, and took a great amount of pleasure in howling, “Get a room!” at them.

But then she turned around—

And he was there.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Rebellious curls threatening to break ranks from his carefully combed hair. That jawline. And, tellingly, a dimple in one cheek, a warning of the smile that he was trying hard to suppress.

“Lane.”

“Calloway.”

“Nice dress.” His eyes dipped shamelessly to the neckline, which was plunging enough that Charlotte had to employ the liberal use of body tape to ensure that no one got more of a show than she intended.

“Nice contacts,” she replied, which sounded cooler in her head than it did aloud. His dimple deepened.

“It’s interesting,” he said, oh-so-casually, tilting his head at her, “that you should be here tonight.”

“Is it?” She frowned at him. “Did I completely misinterpret your romantic grocery store declaration?”

“No,” he said quickly, reaching out to take her hand. “But I’ve had Lanes on the brain today, because I opened my inbox this morning and found an email from one Peter Lane, wishing me a happy new year and asking if I’d mind if he passed on my contact information to some industry friends who he knew were in the process of scouting filming locations for period pieces.”

“That was fast,” Charlotte said, impressed; her dad had sounded surprisingly pleased to help her out when she’d called him the evening of her run-in with Graham (“Anything for young love!” he’d said dramatically, then spent ten minutes telling her about the new film he was developing, in which, from what she understood of the plot, every single likable character died), but she hadn’t expected him to spring into action so quickly. “You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to,” she added hurriedly. “I just told Dad to email you and ask—I didn’t even give him your phone number; I wanted you to have time to think about it and not feel put on the spot. But…” Here, she took a breath, then squeezed his hand. “I know how much you love Eden Priory, and I don’t want you to lose it. And I thought, after we watched Christmas, Truly , and had that conversation about your dad… I thought you might be more open to it. And I wanted to give you the chance, at least, to say yes—especially since the money would give you guys some breathing room, while you worked out the future of the house, and how to make it sustainable.” She paused, then added, “Sustainable in a way that doesn’t involve you working at a soulless job that is chipping away at you—at your life. Because, Graham, I—I think you deserve so much more than that, and it would break my heart to see you work a job like that again.”

He drew her slowly toward him. “I had some long chats with Mum and Eloise and Lizzie this week, and I told Mum we should let the BBC shoot on the grounds this autumn. And Eloise is going to come up with an idea for some sort of holiday-film-themed event program, next year, to go with your print collection’s sale at the gift shop.” He grimaced. “She wants to call it ‘Twelve Days of Christmas, Truly ,’ but I told her we’d need to workshop that.” Charlotte bit her lip to prevent a smile as he continued, “Some of the things we’ll try, my dad probably wouldn’t have liked, but…” He shrugged. “It’s our house now, not Dad’s. And we’re going to do whatever it takes to save it. But this…” He waved his phone at her. “If this pans out, it would make everything else so much easier. I can’t…” Here, he broke off, swallowing. “I can’t thank you enough. And I can’t believe you were willing to do this—to reach out to your dad, to call in these connections, given everything—especially after how we treated you.”

“The thing is,” Charlotte said slowly, “I think I overreacted, when Eloise told me about her scheme. She made it clear from the beginning that you’d had nothing to do with it, but I freaked out, because I always freak out whenever Christmas, Truly comes up—but I talked to Ava, and she helped me realize that maybe… maybe I should just be grateful for all it’s given me.” She inhaled, preparing to take the plunge. “And I am feeling grateful, because I guess… I guess, in a way, it gave me you.”

“If my understanding of holiday film tropes is correct, this is Confession of Love time, isn’t it?” he asked, smiling in earnest now, and her heart thumped heavily in her chest.

“I mean,” she said, would-be casual, “Ava wisely pointed out to me this morning that I do seem to be living in a holiday romance at the moment.” She glanced out the windows. “If you notice it start to snow, please let me know so that we can run and kiss under a gentle flurry.”

“It’s England. It’s probably just drizzling, and you’d get your hair wet.”

“Oh well. It was a nice dream.” She sighed, mock-regretful. “My point is, it appears that I, Charlotte Lane, noted hater of Christmas romances, have come to the realization that I do not, in fact, hate a Christmas romance when it’s my own.”

“Shocking,” he murmured, taking a step closer to her. “I think I love Christmas romances, actually.”

“Do you?” She tipped her head up at him.

“Lane.” His voice was quiet, his dark eyes steady on hers. “I love you .”

She reached up and, in one quick motion, tugged his mask over his head. “Say it again. I want to see your face.”

“I love you.” He reached out with deft fingers and untied her own mask, the air of the room suddenly cool on her cheeks.

“I love you, too,” she said, so softly he had to tip his head down to hear her. “And I have no idea how we’re going to do this—with you here, and me in New York, and I’m terrible at relationships, and long-distance seems hard, and—”

“We’ll work it out,” he said quietly. Calmly.

And she nodded, because she knew they would. And on the days when it was hard—or she had a bad day—or she felt sad—or felt any sort of way that was any bit messy… it would be okay.

Because she would have him.

He reached down to cup her chin, his mouth already lowering, and she blurted out, just before his lips touched hers, “Just for the record, I’m going to need you to repeat that confession of love with your glasses on.”

“I didn’t realize you were so deeply perverted about glasses,” he said, his smile widening, and he was still smiling when he kissed her. “I like it.”

His mouth was warm and he tasted of mulled wine and his tongue was in her mouth and her hips were pressed to his, and she really didn’t care at all that they were in a public space, until, dimly, she became aware of the fact that someone was tapping her on the shoulder.

“I would suggest you get a room,” came Ava’s voice, from far away, “but who am I to interrupt the dramatic conclusion to a holiday romance?” Charlotte pulled back enough to register her sister’s presence; she was standing with Kit, watching Charlotte and Graham with an expression that could only honestly be described as “smug.” “Unfortunately, Graham, your mom is looking for you—something about the eight-o’clock toast?”

Graham muttered a curse. “It’s tradition,” he said, looking at Charlotte sheepishly. “We do a toast, and then we turn over the first of four hourglasses, to run down the time until midnight. When the last one runs out, everyone removes their masks.”

“This seems unnecessarily dramatic and showy,” Charlotte said, tucking back a strand of hair that had been pulled loose when he’d plunged a hand into her hair. His eyes went darker as he looked at her.

“I think they can handle it without me this year,” he muttered.

But she didn’t want them to; dramatic and showy wasn’t her vibe, but occasionally, for him, she’d make an exception.

“Oh, no,” she said now, very serious, shaking her head. “Grand Gesture time is over. Confessions of Love time is over, too, and so is Dramatic Kiss by—oh, shit, we were supposed to do this by the Christmas tree. Never mind,” she added hastily, waving a dismissive hand as his eyebrows inched toward his hairline. “My point is, it is now, um, Heartwarming Romantic Conclusion with Supporting Characters Present time, good sir, and we need to play our roles.”

“I can’t decide if your newfound enthusiasm for Christmas films is disturbing or attractive,” he said, rubbing his jaw; his mouth was smudged with her lipstick, and she reached up to attempt to wipe it off.

“In the immortal words of Christmas, Truly , ‘The only thing worse than the total agony of being in love is the total agony of not being in love at Christmas.’?”

She straightened his collar, smoothed his hair, and added, as an afterthought, “Just so we’re clear, I’m never quoting that fucking movie ever again.”

“Lane,” he said, pressing a quick, final kiss to her forehead and grinning down at her in a way that made her heart jump in her chest, “I would call a medical professional if you did.”

“You know what the best thing about today is?” she asked as he slipped his hand into hers and began to pull her along with him toward the front of the room, where his mom and sisters awaited.

“The emotional reconciliation with your beloved?” he asked, offering her that satisfied smile that made her want to do extremely inappropriate things with him.

“The knowledge that it won’t be Christmas for another fifty-one weeks,” she said cheerfully, and then reached up to stop his laugh with a kiss.