Sophie Pembroke - The Kiss Before Midnight - A Christmas Romance

“You think?” Was that hope in her voice? God, she really was pathetic. How clear did the guy need to make it that he wasn’t interested before she moved on?

And no, kissing Stefan at karaoke really didn’t count as moving on. Not least because it hadn’t caused even one per cent of the tingles her hurried encounter with Jake had.

“So, he’s going to be there all Christmas, right?” Jenna asked.

Molly nodded. “Normally he just arrives on Christmas Eve and leaves on Boxing Day – he doesn’t live that far away, and his office is in the city. But with Tim moving away to Switzerland for his new job in January, I think mum said she’d talked Jake into staying with us until New Year’s Day.”

“Perfect! That gives you nine and a bit days to win him over.” Jenna smiled in a way that Molly had already come to mistrust. “In fact, I’m going to set you a holiday challenge. Your mission, and you have no choice but to accept it, is to seduce that man! And then come back and tell me all about it, obvs.”

“What, are you going to double dog dare me?” Molly asked, forcing a laugh. She wasn’t serious, right?

“If I have to!” Jenna leant closer, as if about to impart some vital, probably inebriated, wisdom. “Look. You’ve been a single girl in London for more than six months now, yeah? And you’ve barely shown a hint of interest in anyone - apart from that blip with Stefan at the karaoke. Which means that being hung up on this Jake guy is affecting your chances of meeting a great guy and having some incredible sex. Right?”

Molly blinked. “You think that if I sleep with Jake over Christmas it will enable me to have more sex with other men down here in London next year?”

“Exactly!” Jenna patted her on the head like a proud teacher.

“There’s a flaw in this plan somewhere.” Except, she was a grown up now, right? Twenty-three, single, living it up in London. She had a proper job in a real office – not just working the same reception desk at the same hotel she’d been a chambermaid at when she was sixteen. She could totally do one-night stands and meaningless flings, right? Especially since she no longer lived with her parents.

So why hadn’t she? Could it be because of one stupid kiss with Jake? Maybe she did need to get him out of her system.

“Don’t be pessimistic!” Stealing Molly’s cup of Prosecco, Jenna hopped off the desk. “Come on, you’re going to miss your train. Go forth and seduce that man!”

Laughing, Molly stood, pushed her chair under her desk, double checked her out of office autoreply was on and shut down her computer.

“And I want a full debrief the moment you get back,” Jenna added, pulling up the handle of Molly’s case and handing it to her. “So don’t get too attached – you’ve got a life here now, remember?”

“If there’s anything to report, I promise you’ll hear it.” It was a fairly safe promise, Molly decided. After all, the chances of her managing to get Jake alone long enough in her parents’ four-bed terrace in the suburbs, with Dory and Lucas and Tim all home too, were phenomenally slim.

“Merry Christmas everyone!” Molly called out, as she headed for the front door. “See you in the New Year.”

When, no doubt, everything would be exactly the same as it was now. Unless she did something to change that.

Molly couldn’t forget Jenna’s dare as she lugged her suitcase down the escalator towards the Northern Line, shaking the snow from her hair as she went. Even amongst the crowd of Christmas Eve Eve travellers, with the scarf that had been essential outside in the winter chill now making her overheated neck itch, she couldn’t help but remember that kiss, one more time.

Come to think of it, the memory probably wasn’t helping the overheating any more than the overcrowded tube was. She had to put Jake Sommers completely out of her head, and focus on her journey home.

She stood all the way to Euston, crammed up against the door and clutching the handle of her suitcase for dear life, then struggled up the escalator into the overground station. Dragging her case behind her, she wove through the holiday season crush, past at least ten people in Santa hats and avoiding a group of guys in suits warbling Silent Night, all the way to platform five.

The queue to get onto the train stretched right back to the main concourse, and Molly mentally thanked her mother for insisting she book ahead to make sure she got a seat. Sure, she thought as she handed her ticket to the inspector, there would probably be someone sitting in it by the time she got there, but hopefully the festive spirit would prevail and they’d give it up once she waved her ticket in their face.

The only problem was, once she was settled into her window seat, with the businessman beside her tapping away on his laptop, there wasn’t much to do but watch the snowflakes drifting down outside and think about Jake.

Not just Jake, though. That line in her diary, the one she always started keeping daily on the first of January and slipped to monthly updates around mid February. The last line under the heading Goals For The Year.

The first two goals she’d actually knocked off by the summer. New job? Check. Move to London? Check.

But goal number three, which should have been the easiest of them all if that December 31st kiss had been anything to go by, had remained elusive.

Sleep with Jake Sommers.

A little hard to achieve when she hadn’t actually been in the same room as him all year, and not even in the same city most of the time.

Why had she even added that to the list anyway? Without it, she was two for two on the real, important things she wanted to achieve that year. Getting away from Liverpool and starting her own, grown up life in London had been a goal for so long that she’d started to doubt she’d ever make it. But she had. On her own terms, without any help from anyone.

Sure, maybe her tiny shared flat wasn’t a New York penthouse with weekends on a charmingly rustic farm with a fabulously gorgeous rich American, like Dory had somehow landed, but it was hers and she’d made it there herself. And that counted for a hell of a lot, especially to Molly.

But still, the last goal at the front of her journal nagged at her. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t set it; that wasn’t how things worked. Every New Year’s Eve when they were kids, Molly, Dory and Tim had huddled together in the girls’ room to make their resolutions. Sometimes they were joke ones – like the year Tim resolved to convince their mum to believe in aliens. Sometimes they were things that mattered, like exams and friendships. And sometimes they’d forced them on each other, like the year she and Dory ganged up to make Tim give up smoking when he was fifteen.

They’d stopped some years ago, and Molly wasn’t even really sure why. Probably it had something to do with them all being in different places for New Year – different friends, different jobs, different parties, even different cities. But Molly always set her goals for the year – even though her track record for meeting them wasn’t great. This year was the first year she stood a chance at a clean sweep. But not with the memory of Jake Sommers’s kiss and the unfulfilled resolution hanging over her head.

Outside the window, the snow that had been light and magical in London was growing heavier and more threatening. Beside her, Mr Businessman stopped clicking keys long enough to look up and say, “Well, it looks like getting a taxi will be fun tonight.”

Molly wasn’t worried about taxis. Her dad drove one of those, for heaven’s sake. But if he was out on a job and the trains stopped running then she might be in trouble. Well, not trouble, exactly. Dad would drive into the city to pick her up from Lime Street station if the local line shut down, but it wouldn’t be fun for either of them. Liverpool city centre two days before Christmas was not a place anyone wanted to drive around if they didn’t have to. Especially since she knew her dad had taken Christmas week off to spend with the family.