Page 43 of The Secret Mistletoe Promise
‘Are you all right?’
Dexter opened his mouth to reply, and what came out was a loud ‘Baaaaaaaaaah.’
They looked down, and found Felix staring up at them, in his purple jumper with the red heart on the side.
‘How did you get out here?’ Dexter glanced behind him, as if to check he’d closed the doors. He had.
‘Your puppy friend is inside,’ Imogen told Felix. ‘You could go and play with her unless … do you think Harry and Sophie want him out here?’
‘Their prized, spoiled goat baby, shut outside at their wedding?’ Dexter laughed. ‘Not a chance.’
‘So what then?’
Felix baaed and skittered to the right.
‘You want to show us something?’ Imogen asked.
The goat trotted a few steps away from them, then came back.
Imogen and Dexter exchanged a look, and he shrugged. ‘It looks like we’re following Felix.’
Imogen went to follow the goat, and Dexter caught her hand again, lacing his fingers through hers. She looked at the side of his face, but he was determinedly facing forward. Something warmed inside her chest, and they walked across the gravel, their linked hands swinging between them.
Gravel turned to grass and the goat trotted on, looking back occasionally with a bleat that might have been a ‘hurry up’ or a ‘thank God you’re still following’, and Dexter and Imogen stayed behind him.
‘Your shoes,’ Dexter said, once they’d reached the treeline and were weaving between oaks and ashes, a couple of yews that must have been hundreds of years old.
‘I don’t mind.’ It wasn’t the first time they’d got muddy, after all.
‘Are they your wedding shoes?’ he asked quietly.
‘It was either these, some neon-pink flip-flops or my new walking boots.’
Dexter laughed. ‘I’m sad you didn’t go for the flip-flops. Where should you be wearing them? Mauritius, wasn’t it?’
‘Hey, I only gotslightlyconfused. Mauritius and Mistingham sound pretty similar.’
‘Mistingham has a lot more going for it, though. The searoughly at freezing point, some sand but also a lot of jagged stones, rain squalls when you least expect them. It’s been inThe Times’s top ten beaches list for years.’
Imogen laughed and nudged his shoulder. ‘I know you love Harry and Sophie, and that you’re happy for them, but I’m guessing today has been hard, too?’
Dexter tightened his grip on her hand. ‘Yes, it has, and it snuck up on me. I thought about it logically, from the moment Harry and Sophie announced their engagement, and decided I was OK with it; that Lucy was happy and these are two of my best friends and … a whole heap of things that meant I’d be fine. But when Winnie said they were married, and they kissed, I just—’
‘You thought of you and Rae,’ Imogen said quietly.
Dexter nodded. He pulled her around an ancient oak tree, and Imogen ran her palm along the rough bark as they passed.
‘What was your wedding like?’ she asked.
‘Small, chaotic, perfect. We got married on the village green, on a spring day that was dry but ridiculously windy. Rae wore her grandmother’s veil and it got blown off by the wind, and Ermin chased it all the way down Perpendicular Street. Our flower arch – our one extravagance because Rae loved spring flowers – nearly toppled over, but then shed its petals throughout the ceremony, so we had this constant stream of confetti.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ Imogen managed, her throat clogging up.
‘Then we went to the Blossom Bough and got drunk on champagne and cider. We were both twenty-two, still so young, and we talked about me taking over the bakery,which had been closed for three years by then – Rae had just started as a teacher at the primary school – and about the three kids we would have, and how we’d stay here for ever. And I still – Rae’s here, we scattered her ashes on the beach, but—’
‘Oh, Dexter, I’m so sorry.’ Imogen stopped and tugged his arm, forcing him to look at her. His expression was raw, his curls loosened by the wind. She reached up and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
‘I am OK, mostly. I wasn’t for a long time, and I wonder how much damage I did to Lucy, when—’
