Free A Merry Mistletoe Wedding by Judy Astley Page A

wait for the weekend.’
    Rich came through the side gate and was in the garden as if he had every right to waltz in as he pleased, a year after he’d moved out.
    â€˜Love you too, madly, deeply and always,’ she said to Sean, slightly more loudly than she normally would. Whatever Rich wanted from her, he definitely wasn’t going to be left with the impression that she hadn’t moved on.
    â€˜Hello, Thea.’ Having breezed in through the gate as if he still lived there, Rich now waited by the kitchen door.
    â€˜Did I miss hearing the doorbell?’ she asked him. ‘I was watering the plants.’
    â€˜Er … no, actually. I didn’t ring. It just seemed natural to come in this way, like I always used to.’
    Thea didn’t say anything, neither did she smile, nor did she move towards him.
    â€˜Sorry. Another time I’ll remember to ring the bell,’ he said, getting the gist of her body language.
    â€˜And I must remember to keep the gate locked,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here? I don’t think you left anything behind when you moved out.’
    â€˜No … er, I was in the area and just wondered how you are?’ He looked awkward and Thea had to admit she was rather enjoying the situation. This was, after all, the man who broke her heart but could no longer get to her. The man who had said that her miscarriage had been ‘just as well’, because he didn’t want children. What a difference a year made – and whatever had she seen in him?
    â€˜You wondered how I
am
? I’ve still got the same phone number, Rich, same email address. You could have phoned, emailed. Why turn up out of the blue?’ Benji was running around the garden, scrabbling at any bare patches of earth he could find, just as he always used to when he lived here. If he dug around a bit he’d probably find old toys of his that he’d buried, and possibly even her pink espadrille that he’d stolen from under the bed.
    â€˜We were together a long time,’ he said. ‘I’m allowed to remember we had some good times, aren’t I? I always hoped we could end up as friends.’ He smiled and added, ‘Your hair is pretty drastic, isn’t it? What made you cut it?’
    Thea put a hand up to it, feeling as if it needed protecting from him.
    â€˜I like it short. It’s more fun.’
    â€˜It suits you. I like it too. It’s just so … different. I don’t suppose you fancy a swift one? For the old times?’
    â€˜
What?
Are you
mad
?’ Thea backed away.
    â€˜I meant a drink. At the pub. Early-evening glass of vino, like we used to,’ he said, pushing his fingers through his hair, smoothing it back. She’d never noticed before what a girly gesture that was. Or maybe it was a typically male one – checking for a receding hairline, possibly.
    â€˜Oh, I see. Right.’
    He laughed. ‘You surely didn’t think I meant—’
    â€˜No, I didn’t; don’t be ridiculous.’ Of course she
had
thought he meant sex but only for a millisecond. She also knew he’d been deliberately ambiguous, which would be his idea of being funny, perhaps testing her. But even Rich, whose instinct for tact and diplomacy was pretty much absent, wouldn’t seriously suggest a bout of sex after so long without even a conversation. He looked hot and bothered. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a shiny silver tie and an air of someone who’d spent the day doing things that involved tedious meetings and getting overheated in the London dust. She thought of Sean, who existed pretty much entirely in T-shirts and flip-flops, his longish curly hair windblown and sun-bleached at the ends. She was pretty sure he didn’t own a tie apart from a black one for emergency funeral use.
    Thea was about to tell Rich it was an absolute ‘no’ but Benji came running up and nuzzled her