Is your family expecting you?”
He shrugged.
“The timing all depends on work, but I’ll spend Christmas at my sister’s.”
She had to just ask it. She was dying to know.
“Just you? Are you married?”
He looked taken aback for a moment but smiled at her.
“No, not anymore. I’ve been divorced for . . . almost six years now.” His eyes crinkled at her. “And you?”
She forgot that he might wonder that.
“Oh goodness, no. I’ve been divorced for almost thirty years now!”
They both laughed.
“What does your family usually do for Christmas?” he asked. “I assume you would be with your family if you weren’t here?”
She nodded.
“I would be—we all go over to my aunt’s house. My aunt and cousins do a lot of the cooking, but everyone is in charge of something. I’m sure I’ll be homesick on Christmas Day, but I’m actually pretty excited not to have the same food and watch the same sports as I have all of my life. It’ll be fun to experience something different.”
She was actually looking forward to trying all of the English Christmas foods she’d only read about in books. She really hoped Julia made mince pie—she had no idea what mince pie was even made of, but she wanted to try it.
“What will you and your daughter do for Christmas here?” he asked.
“For Christmas Eve, I think Julia is going to make a big meal for all of the staff at Sycamore Cottage, and though the Duke and Duchess have treated me and Maddie like guests, that includes us. I’m looking forward to that. I’m sure her cooking will be delicious. The Duke and Duchess will both be at Sandringham House that night, and again on Christmas morning and for lunch. So I think on Christmas Day, Maddie and I will just have a relaxing and low-key day, which is very different from our Christmases with our family at home, so that will be a nice change. We leave for London the next morning to spend a few days there before flying back to California.”
They walked up to Sycamore Cottage, and he released her arm right before they got to the front door.
“Thank you for this afternoon,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“Oh no, thank you! I had a wonderful time.”
He took a step back as James opened the front door.
“As did I. Have a good evening.”
When Vivian walked inside, it was to find her daughter looking at her with a huge grin on her face.
“Okay, Mom. I need more details about what’s going on between you and that very attractive man.”
Vivian smiled and shook her head.
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
Maddie laughed out loud.
“Oh really? I saw you two walking up here, arm in arm. Come on. Don’t worry, the Duke is out somewhere, and the Duchess is upstairs. You won’t have an audience.”
Okay, fine, she had to tell her daughter something.
“I’ll admit that he is a very attractive man. But I promise, nothing is going on there. I have a feeling he doesn’t see that many black people during the course of his job, which is probably why he gave me the tour of Sandringham yesterday. When we were there, we saw the stables out of a window, and I said something about them, so today we went to the stables. But that’s all—I probably won’t even see him again before we leave.”
Though . . . she needed to find a way to ensure that part wasn’t true.
She grinned at Maddie.
“But that’s not important—listen to what happened when we were at the stables: I met the Queen!”
Maddie almost dropped her wineglass.
“WHAT? The Queen? The ACTUAL Queen? Tell me everything.”
“Not only did I meet her, she gave me a compliment! She saw me riding—”
“Wait, WHAT?” Maddie stared at her. Vivian steered her daughter into the sitting room so she could put that glass of wine down before she really dropped it. “You rode a horse? What is going on?”
Vivian laughed.
“Get me some of that wine, and I’ll tell you the whole story. Just wait until I tell Aunt Jo. She’s going to lose it.”
Vivian walked up the stairs an hour later. She wondered if she’d see Malcolm again. She hadn’t wanted to be direct about wanting to see him again when they said good-bye, so she’d said nothing.
Wait. Why hadn’t she wanted to be direct? What possible benefit was there for her in not being direct? Here she was, on vacation in England, and there was this attractive man—why shouldn’t she tell him what she