Her Convenient Christmas Date. Barbara Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ he’d been the recipient of a Christmas Wish square in the face.

      “Word of advice,” he said to the bartender, his words coated in a Yorkshire accent. “Before you agree to be in a wedding, make sure you haven’t hooked up with anyone on the guest list.”

      “Ran into a bitter ex-girlfriend, did you?”

      “Two. And they compared notes.” He grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and began wiping the liquid from his face.

      “Must have been some notes,” she muttered.

      He looked in her direction for the first time. “You’re not going to lob your drink at me too, are you?”

      “Why would I do that?”

      “I dunno. Female solidarity or something. You’re here for Hank and Maria’s wedding, right? For all I know, they’re your friends too.”

      “That would require me to have friends.” Had she said that out loud?

      He arched his brow in a mixture of half surprise, half curiosity. Oh, well, too late to take the comment back now. Besides, it was the truth. She didn’t have friends. She had family, she had colleagues and she had acquaintances, but friends? That would involve allowing people closer than arm’s length, an impossible task when you were a square peg. It was hard enough trying to pretend your edges didn’t matter.

      “Sounds like I’m not the only one who got burned tonight. Weddings aren’t the fun people make them out to be, are they? Unless you’re the bride and groom, that is, and even then… Thanks, mate.”

      The bartender had returned with the soda water along with a white cloth napkin. “No problem. I don’t suppose I can get an autograph when you finish? I’m a huge fan. That stop you made against Germany a few years ago? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

      “Thanks. Definitely a finer moment than this one.”

      Ah. Susan recognized him now. This was the infamous Lewis Matolo. Maria mentioned her fiancé knew the former footballer. She’d been in a downright tizzy over his attendance at the wedding. Matolo, or “Champagne Lewis” as the tabloids called him, came with a reputation. Then again, if your nickname involved alcohol, that was probably a given. He’d gotten the moniker after they snapped his picture leaving a London nightclub, shirtless, with a woman under each arm and an open bottle of Cristal in each hand. From what Susan had read, it wasn’t an unusual occurrence.

      She watched as he dipped a corner into the glass and began dabbing at a red spot on the front of his shirt. Sadly, he didn’t succeed in doing anything more than turning the spot into a damp pink stain.

      “You’re going to need detergent,” Susan told him. “Otherwise, all you’re doing is making it worse.”

      He looked up through his long lashes. “Are you sure?”

      “I own a soap company. Trust me.” Scented soaps and moisturizers hardly made her an expert. More like she tended to dribble food down her front. But being a soap mogul sounded better.

      “You own a… Oh, you’re Maria’s boss. Hank mentioned you.”

      Oh, good. That made two of them whose reputations preceded them. “Susan Collier, at your service,” she said, saluting him with her glass.

      He nodded, apparently assuming it wasn’t necessary to offer a name in return. “So what’s got you holed up avoiding the good times in the ballroom, Susan Collier? Shouldn’t you be upstairs dancing with your date?”

      “I didn’t come with a date.”

      “Sorry.”

      Not him too. Why was everyone suddenly sorry for her dating status all of a sudden? “For your information, I could get a date if I wanted one. I chose not to. A woman is not defined by her dating record.”

      She tried to punctuate her statement with a wave of her arm only to come dangerously close to needing her own damp cloth. To make amends for her clumsiness, she took a healthy sip. These drinks were delicious.

      “Again, okay. I only meant sorry for presuming. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve.” Hands up in appeasement, he backed a few inches away.

      From his place a few feet down the bar, the bartender chuckled. “Maybe you should quit while you’re ahead, mate.”

      “No kidding. Tonight’s definitely not my night,” he said as he strained to look down at his shirt. “You’re right. Made it worse, didn’t I?”

      “Told you,” Susan replied. “It’s the grenadine. Stuff’s impossible to get out. Tastes good though.”

      “I’ll take your word for it. Damn. Now I’m going to smell like a fruit bowl for the rest of the night.”

      “I hate to ask, but what did you do to earn a cocktail to the face in the first place?”

      A better question would have been what didn’t he do? Lewis tossed the napkin on the bar. He’d been drowning in the karma from a decade of bad decisions for the past nine months. “Nothing,” he lied. “One minute we were talking, the next I had a maraschino cherry in my hair.”

      “Just like that?”

      “Yeah, just like that.”

      She knew he was lying. It was evident from the look she shot him over the rim of her glass.

      “You’re leaving something out,” she said. “I can tell by the way you’re not saying anything.”

      “What?”

      “You heard me.” She was swaying on her bar stool, the way someone did when the room was starting to spin. Hopefully the bartender was paying attention. “People don’t toss perfectly good drinks for no reason,” she said. “Especially good drinks. So what did you do?”

      It was none of her business, Lewis wanted to say, except the glint in her eye made him bite his tongue. Even drunk, she had an astuteness about her.

      What the heck. She’d hear anyway. “I might have asked them for their names.”

      “You forgot who they were? Both of them? After you slept with them?”

      He didn’t say he was proud of it. In fact, he was horrified. “They were from my playing days,” he replied.

      “Oh, why didn’t you say so? They were from his playing days,” she announced to the bartender. “That totally makes it all right.”

      “I didn’t say it was right. Just that’s why I forgot them.” He was lucky he remembered his playing days at all.

      “I completely understand. It must have been hard keeping all those groupies straight.”

      Yes, it was, because there had been a lot of groupies and a lot of alcohol and they were all a giant blur of bad behavior. Lewis kept his mouth shut, however, because it was no excuse. Besides, the СКАЧАТЬ