Page 120 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
Kate paid for her shopping.
“Don’t leave on an argument,” said Evelyn. “I know, he’s proud and stupid, but don’t do that to him. Give him a chance.”
Kate smiled and nodded noncommittally. Shewasgiving him a chance. She was giving them both a chance to get on with their lives.
•••••
Kate pulled the toasted hazelnuts out of the oven, tipped them into a tea towel, and folded it up, rubbing the rough toweling furiously over the hot nuts. When she unwrapped the tea towel the hazelnuts were peeled and the towel was full of brown papery skins.
She chopped a third of the nuts roughly and ground the rest in the blender; these were flourless brownies—the best kind. She folded all the nuts into a thick mixture of melted dark chocolate, sugar, and eggs and poured the batter into a tin for baking.
She filled the slow cooker with the stew ingredients and left it to do its thing. She would make the dumplings later.
The house filled with the smell of hot chocolate praline. Laura would be at work today. Kate considered waiting until Laura was home, but then she thought she was less likely to throw her apology back in her face if Kate took her by surprise at work. Besides, she would quite like to see if she could bump into Drew.
Two hours later, armed with a batch of warm, very squidgy brownies and a bottle of Merlot, Kate set back out into the snow in search of salvation.
She heard Laura before she saw her. She was organizing the rehanging of a freshly polished chandelier in the ballroom. Two men stood atop a ladder each, with the chandelier held between them. Hundreds of crystal glass drops clinked merrily together as the men worked to reattach the light fitting to the ceiling rose.
“Steady now,” Laura called. “A little to your left, Peter. Michael, there’s a pendant hooked around your collar!”
Kate decided this was not the time to make a surprise entrance. She turned quietly and left the ballroom. She would find Laura later. She followed the signs instead for the Christmas tree decorating competition. Kate found herself in a corridor with blue fleur-de-lis carpet and framed pencil drawings of birds hung on the walls.
At the door to the room signpostedThe Twelve Dates of Christmas, Kate recognized the Lightning Strikes rep from her unfortunate dinner date in London. The rep looked up and smiled.
“Kate!” she said. “I didn’t know you were doing this date.”
“Oh, I’m not,” said Kate. And she explained to the rep that she thought she might find Drew here.
The rep pointed to a tree in the farthest corner, where Drew looked astonishingly sexy in jeans, brogues, and a tweed jacket. He was untangling a string of gingerbread-man fairy lights with his date, who looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck in being paired with Drew.
Kate thanked the rep.
“By the way,” she said. “How did you get with your expulsion-of-arseholes mission?”
“Very well,” said the rep. “After the infamous Jim, we managed to get rid of six more. We reckon they’d put about eighteen grand into the betting ring between them.”
“Well done!” said Kate. “You should join the fraud squad.”
•••••
Kate wandered passed the other couples and their trees. As usual there was a mix of couples, some taking the competition very seriously, some making light of it; all of them flirting wildly.
When Drew saw Kate he dropped his fairy lights and got her into a bear hug. His date looked on with pursed lips.
“I’m so happy to see you,” he said. “I had the most interesting chat with an intense man called Matt, in that coffee shop you kept on about.”
Kate tried to look casual. Even the mention of his name made her wince.
“You were right about the coffee,” he said. “Actually I was going to email you later about the twelfth date. Fancy it?”
There were two options for the twelfth date. The first was a “choose your own date” night; the idea was to pick your favorite date of the Twelve Dates experience and spend the final evening, the 23rd of December, with that person. The second option was the Lucky Dip Date, whereby your name would be put into a virtual hat and jiggled about and paired randomly with a wild card.
Kate had had enough surprises on this experience and had decided early on that she would not be partaking of the lucky dip.
She had considered asking Richard, but since it had been logged that he’d stood her up on their date, she’d thought it would look a bit odd. And actually, her date with Drew had been a fantastic night—before she got stranded in the car park... and even then...
“I’d love to,” said Kate. “You haven’t found Mr. Right either, then?”
