Free I Heart Christmas by Lindsey Kelk Page B

taking the week off so you’ll be around to make sure I don’t fuck up.’
    ‘And we have plans for that week,’ I said. ‘It was supposed to be relaxing.’
    ‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow and looked away. ‘Fighting my way around an ice rink in Central Park isn’t really my idea of relaxing.’
    ‘Well, it was supposed to be fun,’ I clarified. I turned to take a wistful look at the roll-top bath. Roll-top baths made everything better. ‘And I just wanted us to spend some time together.’
    ‘It’ll all be fine,’ he said with false certainty. ‘You can still go off and do all your holiday stuff while I organise the move.’
    I stared up at him, trying not to look disappointed. Disappointment had a terrible tendency to be misread as ungratefulness and that wasn’t what I was feeling. The whole point of taking this week off, the whole reason I was more excited about this Christmas, even more so than any other, was because I was finally going to be able to spend some time with him. And while it was true, moving house did mean spending time together, I had a funny feeling it wouldn’t be quite so romantic as holding hands beneath the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
    ‘We’ll figure it out, I suppose,’ I said with sagging shoulders. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
    ‘Whatever it is, can you say it outside?’ Alex rubbed the back of his neck and pulled the keys out of his pocket. ‘I just remembered we left Karen out there and she’s probably frozen to death by now.’
    On the doorstep, Karen was talking on her phone, shivering against the winter wind that had sprung up while we were inside. Well, at least the frozen face thing made sense now – Karen was an estate agent, she could afford Botox and she faked smiles for a living. I stared back over my shoulder as Alex locked the door. A new house was definitely better than cooking lessons. Or a three-way.
    After saying our goodbyes, Alex wrapped a leather-clad arm around my shoulder and began chattering away about home improvements as we hunted for a place to get brunch in our new neighbourhood. As we walked, I tried to ignore the overwhelming feeling of panic that was growing in my stomach. My poor, tiny brain was too confused to process what was going on and so the rest of my body was having to pick up the emotional slack. I knew everything that was happening was incredible. Alex had bought us an actual, honest to Santa, real family home, I had been handed an amazing opportunity at work and I was about ten minutes away from eating several thousand pancakes, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of being completely swallowed up. Somewhere along the line I’d gone from having nothing better to do than take a week off to watch chestnuts roasting on an open fire to taking over the magazine and moving house in a week. Had everyone forgotten who they were dealing with or had I?

CHAPTER FIVE
    I didn’t know anyone who jumped up and down and cheered for Monday mornings but since I’d started at Gloss I’d taken Monday dread to a whole new level. Before, it meant replying to all the emails I’d ignored on Friday, a bit of a telly hangover from Mad Men , Game of Thrones or True Blood , depending on the time of year. Now Monday meant press day, which meant checking, rechecking and re-rechecking every word on every page of the magazine. Gloss might only have been a teeny, tiny weekly but there were still a good deal of stern looks, raised voices and little cries in the toilets. Mostly Mary took care of the stern looks and raised voices while I, admittedly, was the one having a little cry but now, since she was off on the Love Boat, I had the pleasure of being in charge of the whole shebang. There had been a time when I thought working on a proper magazine at a proper publishing company would be all glamorous like The Devil Wears Prada but in reality it was turning out to be very stressful and a lot of hard work. Like in The Devil Wears Prada . And