Royal Holiday - Jasmine Guillory Page 0,35

couldn’t get enough of her. Wow.

“Okay, Mom. Here’s the second dress.”

Vivian tried to dim her smile and spun around. The Duchess was now in a sequined emerald-green gown, with a high neck and a high—but not too high—slit up the side. She spun in a circle, and glints of green light sparkled around the room. Vivian laughed.

“You absolutely have to wear that dress. I love the other dress so much—wear it to something else—but please wear this dress tomorrow night.”

Maddie looked at her mom with a big smile on her face. She’d clearly picked Maddie’s favorite.

The Duchess beamed at her.

“I love it, too, but are you sure about the color?”

Vivian nodded.

“Positive.”

The Duchess looked at herself in the mirror and smiled.

“You’re right. Yes, this one.” She clasped Vivian’s hands again. “Thank you so much. I think I just needed you to give me that push.”

Maddie smiled and started pinning the bottom of the dress.

“I hope you’ve been having a good time while you’ve been here,” the Duchess said. Vivian tried to think about how to respond to that without referring to Malcolm, but luckily, the Duchess kept talking. “Maddie said this is your first time in England; it’s too bad you’re leaving so soon after Christmas, but I’ve already given her a list of things you two should do in London.”

Vivian smiled to herself.

“Yes, too bad we’re leaving so soon,” she said. Malcolm’s idea sounded better and better the more she thought about it.

Chapter Seven

Vivian went to bed that night with a smile on her face. She woke up the next morning—Christmas Eve—in a panic. There was no way she could stay on in England with Malcolm. What had she been thinking?

First of all, she had responsibilities back at home! Sure, she was on vacation until January 3, but she needed to get her house in order, unpack, switch out her calendars, and water her plants—all the stuff she usually did after Christmas but wouldn’t be able to do if she stayed in England.

Secondly, what would Maddie say? Vivian had spent decades keeping her dating life separate from her life with Maddie, and this would destroy all of that! Yes, fine, she’d invited Malcolm to Christmas Eve dinner, but she would pretend to Maddie that was Julia’s idea. There was no way she could pin an extra few days with him in London on Julia!

But most importantly, she barely knew this man! Why the hell had she even considered being alone in a foreign country with a stranger? He’d mentioned staying with him—stay with a stranger, in his home? What if he was some sort of ax murderer or something? Maybe no one would ever see her again!

No, she couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t stay.

Yes, that was it. When he came for dinner tonight, she’d tell him she was sorry, but there was no way she could stay; she’d had a lovely time with him, but that was it, and Merry Christmas.

Or Happy Christmas, whatever it was they said here.

Okay. Good. That was the plan.

Granted . . . she did have so much fun with him. And so what if it was just that vacation kind of fun, where they didn’t really know each other or need to fit into each other’s lives and nothing was at stake—it was only a few more days! They’d keep having vacation kind of fun—maybe even the better kind of fun—and then she’d go home and everything would go back to normal. Shouldn’t she be in favor of having more fun in her life? Especially since she wouldn’t have the opportunity to do something spontaneous like this again once she took the new job?

And he probably wasn’t an ax murderer. Wouldn’t she have read something about an epidemic of women in England being murdered via ax if that was the case? He did work for the Queen, after all—not that people who worked for royalty were automatically model citizens; historically, it seemed like it was very much the opposite. But she didn’t really think people with those jobs got carte blanche to go around committing crimes.

She got out of bed, plucked a notebook out of her purse, and got back in bed. She needed a pro/con list, that’s what she needed.

She spent ten minutes scrawling down everything she could think of on both sides of the list.

PROS

CONS

I have so much fun with him

So much to do at home

New job will mean a lot more work; last chance to do something like this for a while!

Maddie