Page 63 of A Manny for Christmas

I’m speechless. Radiating fury. She has no fucking idea what my life is like, holding down the job I do and bringing up two kids on my own and barely making it through the day before crawling into bed at nine, every bone in my body exhausted. I stare at her, my ears ringing so loudly with a righteous fury that I barely register the heavy clatter of manly footsteps on the stairs.

Max bursts into the kitchen, and oh. My. God.

He’s shirtless, in just his worn-out, orgasmic jeans. Jeans that angels must have fitted to his bum and thighs. One hand rakes through his wet hair, and the other holds his sopping wet t-shirt. It’s dripping on the kitchen flagstones, but I couldn’t give a shit, because I’ve never seen anything hotter in my life.

He’s grinning. His spectacular torso glitters with drops of water, the moisture showing off every sculpted curve of his pecs and biceps and abs.

Holy fucking shit.

His torso is not the only thing that’s moist.

The man is a walking Diet Coke ad. Or a walking erotic dream, to be more accurate.

Cassandra’s jaw hits the floor at the same time mine does. We both eye-fuck him so hard I’m surprised we don’t spontaneously combust into orgasm right there by the AGA.

He holds up his dripping t-shirt and approaches. ‘Daisy fucking soaked me. Little minx. Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.’

I recover first. Cassandra looks like she’s ready to drop to her knees right in front of him. This time, I’m not judging her. Her husband is ‘older’ (I’m being charitable here), and I suspect it was not his looks that attracted his beautiful wife to him, if you get what I’m saying.

‘Cassandra.’ I swallow. ‘This is—um. Max. He’s my—’

Max cuts me off. ‘Mol and I areveryold friends. Right, baby?’ He follows this up with a luscious kiss to my mouth and a resounding slap to my arse, before pulling back and winking at me.

‘Right,’ I echo dumbly.

‘How do you do, Cassandra?’ he asks her, crinkling those hazel eyes at her while he extends his hand. There’s nothing flirtatious in his expression, I note with a dizzying amount of relief. I don’t think I could bear it if Max flirted with her.

‘I… Hi.’ She returns his shake. Thank God she’s as dumbstruck as me. My lips are still smarting from the brief, hot pressure of Max’s mouth on mine.

‘Excuse me. I need to change.’ He stops at the bottom of the kitchen stairs and turns to me. ‘She’s out of the bath, don’t worry. I’ll mop up the carnage in a sec.’ He takes the stairs two at a time.

Cassandra’s conversational skills are still blissfully, miraculously unforthcoming when Max clatters back down again a second later, tugging a soft grey t-shirt over his obnoxious abs.

I want to tug it back up.

I want to run my tongue down that central dip. Relearn how it feels. How he tastes.

We both turn to appreciate the broad heft of his shoulders and back as he disappears into the hallway. The fine, fine way his body tapers down to a narrow waist, andthatarse.

Once he’s gone upstairs, she jerks a thumb towards the door.

‘Are you and he…?’

I hate myself a little as I feign nonchalance and tell heryeah.

* * *

The self-hatred growsover the course of the evening. I’m grateful to Max, and to my lie, for getting Cassandra out the door more quickly than I hope. I suspect she came down with a nasty case of sour grapes. Unless, of course, she suddenly had an urgent date with her vibrator.

I could definitely sympathise with that.

But I’m pissed off, and I’m not exactly sure why, or with whom. I’m pissed off at Cassandra for being such a raving bitch, and a bit with Max for being so impossibly sexy and unavailable, even if he did have the world’s best timing when he faked our relationship status for Cassandra earlier.

And I’m even more pissed off with myself. Not for the lie itself. After all, it was an amazing feeling to throw that in her face. To know that, as she drove home in her gleaming Tesla, she’d do it believing Max and I were a couple instead of spending the journey congratulating herself on her superior lifestyle and marital status.

I think what’s making me angry is that I felt the remotest need to lie to her. What the hell does it say about me that, aged thirty-seven, I still feel the need to lie to grown-up mean girls like Cassandra Davison in order to feel good about myself?

Why couldn’t I just have told her where to go?

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