Fiona McArthur - Christmas with Her Ex

When she poked her head out of her cabin door other occupants had crammed into the corridor and were watching through the windows opposite as the world shifted, and she could imagine the wheels on the tracks below them begin to turn and pick up speed. They slipped past two bushy islands on their little spit of railway tracks on the way to the mainland of Italy.

With a sense of urgency to take just one last look at Venice, she squeezed past an older couple in the tiny corridor and walked to the far end of the carriage, where she was able to pull down the sash window on the door she’d entered the train by.

When she leaned out the cold wind blasted her face and she could see Santa Lucia station disappearing into the distance.

She looked the other way and a dark-haired man had his head out the window half a dozen carriages up. A very familiar face turned her way and Connor Black surveyed her coolly.

Only one thing to do. Kelsie waved.

CONNOR PULLED HIS head in and ran his hand through his hair. He’d stuck his head out to blow thoughts of Kelsie Summers away. Fine chance of that now!

At least she wasn’t in their car—she was in the last one—and he hadn’t wanted to know that. He just hoped they’d chosen the right lunch sitting to avoid her.

Funny how much importance avoiding Kelsie had assumed. He hadn’t spent that much brain activity on a woman for years and far too much on her today.

When he returned to their connected double cabins the steward was there.

He waved away the offered champagne. ‘No, thank you.’

His grandmother gasped and leant forward to take the glass.

‘For goodness’ sake, Connor. If you won’t drink it, I will.’ She waved at the man and the obliging fellow bowed and put the second glass next to the other one.

Great, Connor thought. Now Gran was going to get tipsy and she’d be uncontrollable. This trip was assuming nightmare proportions. ‘I’ll drink it.’

‘Good.’ His grandmother sat back smugly and he realised he’d been conned and she’d never intended to have two glasses. He sighed and had to smile. She winked.

‘Much better. You don’t lighten up enough, my boy.’

He narrowed his eyes at her but he couldn’t stay cross. She was a minx. ‘It’s my training. Normally, I’m responsible for people’s lives.’

‘You’ve thought you were responsible for people’s lives since you were a child. Makes you bossy.’ His grandmother shrugged that away. ‘You’ve been too responsible for too long. You’re becoming downright boring.’

Connor froze in the act of sipping and frowned at her. Did she mean that? Nobody else had complained—but, then, who else was there to complain?

There was a distance between him and most people that he’d acquired early, since the loss of his mother and advent of his stepmother, to be precise, and had never lost. His patients wanted him to optimise the course of their pregnancies. Fertility assistance required set boundaries of safety and precautions. Still, her comments seemed a bit harsh. ‘You don’t know the real me, Gran.’

‘Hmph.’ She snorted and he looked at her quizzically. So older ladies really did that?

She snorted again just to prove it. ‘Hmph. Nobody knows you. Except maybe that girl at the end of the train.’

So this was what it was all about. And how the heck did she know where Kelsie was sitting? He’d bet Winsome had bribed the porters already, though goodness knows when as he’d only been gone a few minutes. The she-menace had probably rung the bell as soon as he’d left.

She knew them all by name because she’d been on this train every year for the last twenty years with his grandfather. Her yearly birthday trip in February she’d missed this year because of his grandfather’s death.

That had really knocked her badly and Connor, alarmed his grandmother might just fade away with grief, had hired a nurse to look after her for a few weeks to ensure she ate enough to survive. She’d begun looking much like her old self since he’d agreed to share a last journey on her favourite train.

But he was very aware this was her first Christmas without her husband and they’d decided this was as good a way as any to get over the lead up to festivities on her own.

So this was effectively a ten-month delay on her birthday train trip.

He didn’t understand how she didn’t get bored.

He was halfway there already, and it would be worse if it wasn’t for the unexpected arrival of Kelsie Summers, and they were only a few minutes out of the station.

He sighed. So she was all over the fact that Kelsie was here! He should have known.

He enunciated carefully, as if to a child, ‘You’ve blown it all out of proportion. She was a kid at my school and I was like the big brother she never had.’

His grandmother nodded and he could tell she wasn’t listening.

She proved it. ‘When you came to me you told me you’d been going to marry her.’

‘Childhood nonsense. An impulse.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl is nothing to me now.’

She nodded, all sweetness and light, and his head went up. ‘I’m pleased. I wouldn’t like to see you upset.’

For some reason he didn’t like the sound of that, or the way she’d said it. She glanced out the window and then back again and a horrible premonition hit him just before her next words.

‘So it should be fine with you that while you were admiring the view I sent her an invitation to join us for lunch.’

Kelsie’s golden envelope arrived, along with her glass of champagne, its embossed VSOE paper and the spidery writing giving a clue to its origin. She’d bet it came from Winsome.

Wolfgang hovered as she opened it and glanced at the bottom. Sure enough, the flamboyant W rolled into an exuberant salute. ‘Please. Come!’

An invitation to join them for lunch at the first sitting. Fun. Not! How the heck did she answer this?

‘Perhaps I should return for your answer in a few minutes?’ Wolfgang wasn’t slow on the uptake.

She guessed he’d been exposed to many such missives and their impact.