Page 141 of The Christmas Wife

41

"Yesterday I wanted cookies. Today I am eating cookies. Yay! Follow your dreams."

-From Amelie's diary

Amelie

"I am such a loser," I cry into the phone as I pace my apartment.

"Wait, hold on, back up," Isla calms me. "Start from the beginning."

I balance the phone, with Isla peering out at me from the screen, on the kitchen table, "Kirsten called me a car—okay a limo. It was a freakin’ limo service that she ordered to get me from Durham to London. Can you believe it? That’s how these rich folks live, and clearly, I am not one of them."

"Who’s Kirsten?" Isla asks.

"The alphahole’s sister."

"So, we are back to calling him alphahole, huh?"

"Weston fucking a-hole Kincaid," I growl into the phone. "I never want to hear his name again.

"Urm," Isla clears her throat.

"Don’t say it—" I warn her.

"I was only going to say that you just mentioned this name."

"That’s what I was afraid of." I wrap the strands of my hair around my palm, "I mean, not that I am complaining about the limo, or anything."

"Of course, not."

"Not after I found the liquor bar in the back of the car."

"I assume you did it justice?" she snickers,

"Yeah," I hiccough. "Oops, sorry." I walk to the kitchen, fill a mug with water—because hell, I always drink water from coffee mugs. That’s my little rebellious streak, right there. I sip from the mug, and walk over to the window of my studio apartment. The view is nothing like that from the cabin, or from Weston’s mother's home. How funny I’d never been to his place. Where does he even live in London? It’s official, I am in love with a man whose neuroses I know better than the basic stuff, you know, like his address, his favorite color. That’s me, I do everything upside down, like my life. Fuck me now. I hiccough again. "Sorry again," I mumble.

"The bar in the limo?" Isla reminds me. "I assume you drank of all the whiskey?"

"Nope," I say, all smug. "No whiskey for me. Never touching that stuff, from now on."

"O-k-a-y."

"I sucked down all the champagne because I am celebrating."

"You are?"

"Yeap." I walk back to the shelves in the corner of what passes for my kitchen space, and open the door. Scrounge around. There. I retrieve the boxed wine I’d been gifted with, God knows when. Now is the time to open it. I unscrew it, peelback the plastic seal thingy, then look around for a glass, and fuck it! I tilt it to my mouth, draw from it. The cold liquid hits my gullet and I almost gag. Ugh! Is that vinegar or what? "Argh," I gasp.

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing." I place the boxed vinegar-that-had-once-been-wine back on the shelf and eye it. Do I dare drink more of it, or not? Shit, I can’t even decide on the small things in life anymore. My mind is well and truly broken, thanks to that, that… "Idiot." I swear down the phone. "Fucking wanker that he is. A tool. A reprobate. A prick of the first order."

"That, he is," Isla agrees. "So what are you doing back in your apartment?"

"Haven’t you heard anything I just told you?" I cry.

"I have, doll, and I think you love that about him."

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