Page 82 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
This could be the last straw, that he flies to London, and she doesn’t.
“How did you even get a ticket, Jamie? It’s taken me weeks.”
“I… um, called a friend,” he says, looking shifty.
“You and your friends!” She barks a laugh, because it’s astounding how quickly he has made himself a useful network, but then the laugh stops in her mouth. “Hang on, if you had a friend, then why didn’t you call them for me?”
His shiftiness turns to shame.
“At first, I didn’t think of it. Honestly. I swear. Izabela’s more a friend of a friend. And then when I did, I sort of… didn’t want to.”
Will she be banned from the airport if she lumps him one right now? It wouldn’t be unfitting in this mad chain of events if she lands in a police cell, too. Little would surprise her now.
“So, all this time, you were deliberately not helping me?”
“I think that depends on your point of view.” He’s sounding quite defensive.
“Really?”
“Absolutely. I think by delaying you I was helping you fall back in love with Copenhagen.”
“I don’t think you succeeded there.” As she says it, it doesn’t sound quite right in her mouth.
“You might not realise it yet, but wait until you get back to London and see how your apartment is decorated with Danish things, how you go to Danish events, how you miss it.”
“Deluded,” she mutters under her breath, knowing he’s bang on.
“And can you really blame me for wanting to spend more time with you? I didn’t keep you from your work. You had no dependants who needed you.”
“It’s like I was kidnapped and didn’t know,” she says to no one in particular.
“Hardly,” he scoffs. “You had a door key and went toJulefrokost.”
“You kept me here under false pretences.”
“List them.”
“That there were no flights!”
“I don’t think even I have the connections to get all the airlines to follow a ruse like that.”
“But you could have got me a ticket!”
“We don’t know that. I only called just now after you left. It might have been the first return ticket available. Maybe I’m just very lucky. My marzipan piggy suggests this to be the case.”
“Can I suggest somewhere you can shove your lucky piggy?”
He turns to her now, his grin dropping to a far more serious face. “Anna. I know I’m lucky, because I rent the door you knocked on. And since I opened the door to you, bedraggled, wet, crying and snotty, I haven’t wanted you to leave. But can you honestly say I have at any point stopped or hindered you?”
“No,” she mumbles crossly.
“Did you feel at any point that I was keeping you there against your will?”
“No.”
“Have we had fun in the meantime?”
“A bit,” she concedes sourly.
