I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,27

her from a rescue centre when they were newly married. She’d been achingly thin and distrustful then, aggressive, frightened, vulnerable. She’d reminded Luke of Bridge, which is why he was drawn to her, a cause to rescue. She’d been with them through it all, the highs, the lows, the even lowers. When Bridge found her dead in her bed, she’d howled like a wolf, wished Luke had been there to hold her because however much she hated him, she knew his heart would have broken like hers had and Sabrina was theirs; the last link holding them together, gone. It hurt still, months later. Hurt like hell.

‘So, what’s he like?’ asked Luke, butting into her brief reverie.

‘Who?’

‘Your fiancé, durrr?’ He nodded towards the ring on her finger. A stunning, sparkly solitaire square diamond. Ben wasn’t without a few bob himself, Luke figured.

‘The best way to describe him is…’ Bridge mused, rummaging around in her head until she found the words that fitted. ‘He’s… the exact opposite to you, Luke.’ Then she turned her back on him and went to join Charlie and Jack by the fire.

* * *

‘All I can find are these in the sausage and bacon department,’ announced Robin after a thorough search in the fridge, holding up a monster-sized polystyrene-wrapped tray of pigs in blankets and a packet of ‘Hollybury Farm’ plump vegetarian sausages.

‘I’m sure they’ll both go down a treat,’ said Mary, who was whisking eggs.

‘I wonder if we’ll still be here tomorrow,’ said Robin, reaching for two frying pans. ‘What were your plans for Christmas Day, love?’

‘Bit of a funny one this year, actually,’ Mary answered him. ‘We usually all spend it together at Mum’s but her friend has taken her away to the Canaries this year. One of my brothers is on holiday in Australia with his pals, the other one’s spending Christmas Day with his girlfriend and her parents and my sister’s got a full house as her husband’s family are over from Ireland. They’re a lovely lot but I didn’t want a big, loud Christmas, so I was just going to have a quiet one by myself.’ She answered Robin’s look of sympathy. ‘No really, it would have been nice, that’s what I wanted. I’d bought lots of lovely things to eat and was going to hole up with Christmas films and have a proper rest. I’m kind of okay with my own company. My brothers and sister were all grown up by the time I was born, so I’m sort of an only child… but with siblings. Mum and Dad had me late, you see. I was a menopausal surprise. Mum said her ovaries had one last-ditch attempt to appear useful and I’m the result. My brother Sean calls me “the mistake”.’

‘How very cruel of him,’ tutted Robin.

Mary chuckled. ‘He’s joking. There are four of us and we’re super close. We take the mick out of each other a lot, but it’s all good-humoured and great fun. They’re a bunch of comics, my lot.’

‘No sweetheart for you?’ Robin cocked his head at her. She truly was a beautiful girl; pretty heart-shaped face, a flawless cream complexion with a mere hint of pink on her cheekbones, and beautiful sea-greeny-blue eyes. And the most alluring thing about her was that she obviously didn’t realise how attractive she was.

‘No,’ said Mary, with an unconscious sigh.

‘Men must be blind,’ said Robin.

Mary shrugged that conclusion off. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had her chances. Someone in marketing had made it abundantly clear that he would be in like Flynn if given the opening and another in finance was very flirty, but neither of them nudged her heart rate up one single notch and she had a whole family who would have been furious had she settled for anything less than she was worth. Sean was always giving her lectures about her potential love life; he’d taken over paternal duties from their father. He even looked like him, with his bright blue eyes and ‘the Padgett nose’, which Mary had managed to avoid inheriting. Plus her heart was already engaged because she had been stuck on Jack Butterly since she came to work for him. Sean called him ‘the Boy from Ipanema’ because he was tall and tanned (well, olive-skinned) and long and lovely, and he was totally oblivious to the fact that Mary was sitting on her beach towel and sighing over him walking past her. She deserved a real man who sighed over her,