Twelve Dates of Christmas

Book : The Romantic Comedies

by Catherine Hapka

Genres: YA Contemporary

Synopsis

Lexi's feeling a little holidazed this winter....

Lexi's been going out with Cameron for way too long. Sure, he's a nice guy, but there's a spark missing between them. So she comes up with the perfect plan: get him to fall for another girl so she'll be free -- and guilt-free, too.

But when Lexi sees Cameron looking awfully cozy with Jaylene, her heart melts, especially when her budding psychologist best friend tells her that once a new couple has gone out a dozen times, their relationship is pretty much set. Cameron's twelfth date with Jaylene -- the Christmas Ball -- is coming up. Can Lexi find a way to rekindle her relationship with Cameron in the (saint) nick of time?

Release date: October 4, 2011

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Print pages: 272

Sample

THE FIRST DATE OF CHRISTMAS

•  •  •  •  •

Expectations and Deflations

 

Kate Turner stepped gingerly on the crisp ice-dusted leaves and tried not to slip and land on her backside. She couldn’t see where she trod because of the large plastic containers in her arms. The sky was so blue it looked like a scene from a children’s picture book, and her breath plumed out in white clouds and rose up toward the pale winter sun.

She leaned against the door of the Pear Tree Café and it yielded. A friendly tinkle of bells above her head heralded her arrival. The café was full and warm and noisy. The smell of fresh coffee was rich in the air. Condensation dribbled down the windows and clouded the view of the frosted world outside.

A few people raised their heads from their cappuccinos and waved. Matt turned from the steaming black and silver coffee machine and grinned at her.

“Thank God, he said, banging hot coffee grounds out of the portafilter and filling it back up with freshly ground coffee. “We ran out of caramel brownies this morning, I thought there was going to be a riot.”

Matt’s hair was permanently unkempt and right now was standing on end like one of those trendy hair styling adverts; he had a habit of running his hands through it when he was stressed, which only made it worse. Some might call his unruly mop ginger, but he insisted it was strawberry blond.

A voice from across the café called out:

“Did I hear someone say brownies?”

Matt cleared a space on the counter, and Kate put the boxes down with some relief. She could feel her cheeks burning red in the heat, and she unwound her scarf. Her newly straightened hair was already beginning to kink.

“Over here,” she called. “Hot off the press.”

There was a scraping of chairs as regulars clambered over sleeping dogs and Christmas shopping to claim chunks of Kate’s cakes.

“I’ve brought some more mince pies, orange and chocolate chunk shortbread, and rocky road as well,” said Kate.

“You’re a lifesaver,” said Matt. “Carla, can you come over here and take these cake orders, please.”

He picked up a check pad and handed it to the young waitress, who was instantly encircled by a small crowd of sugar-deprived customers. Matt took up his post back at the coffee machine, and Kate sidled around the counter to perch on a stool next to the coffee grinder.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

Matt poured two shots of espresso into a wide-brimmed cup and added steamed milk; a flick of his wrist as the liquid reached the top made a caramel leaf pattern in the latte. He placed the cup on the counter behind him for Carla to deliver and began the next order.

“Just a flat white, please,” Kate said as she slipped out of her coat and laid it across the back of a battered old sofa.

“Wow,” said Matt. “You look . . . lovely. Where are you off to?”

Kate brushed her hands self-consciously over the floral tea dress and pulled her cardigan closer around her.

“Is it too much?” she asked.

“Too much for what?”

“You know,” said Kate conspiratorially. She leaned forward and whispered, “For the first date.”

Recognition dawned on Matt’s face.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I’d forgotten about that. Yes, it is too much, go home and put on baggy jeans and a turtleneck jumper.”

Kate poked her tongue out at him.

“Well, well, well,” said Matt. “The twelve shags of Christmas, eh?” He grinned and looked at her expectantly.

“Will you stop saying that,” she hissed. “You know perfectly well it’s the Twelve Dates of Christmas.”

“That’s not what they’re saying on Facebook,” said Matt, shaking his head in mock disapproval.

“Well, then you’d better get some classier Facebook friends,” said Kate.

The Twelve Dates of Christmas was the brainchild of the Lightning Strikes dating website: twelve dates, in twelve different locations in the weeks leading up to Christmas. It wasn’t cheap, but the choice of date venues was varied, and the more Kate had read about them, the more she had to admit that it might actually be fun.

It wasn’t something she would normally have bothered with. Kate was not the kind of woman who needed a man, but equally she thought she might quite like one. Her last long-term relationship had fizzled out some time ago, and it was mostly down to laziness that she hadn’t dated much since.

She supposed she had the opportunity to meet people when she was in the city, but that would mean having to go out and socialize after work, and really she just wanted to come home and eat pie in front of the telly. And as for meeting someone new in Blexford, people generally moved here to start a family or retire. There was a distinct lack of eligible bachelors buying up property in the sleepy village.

It was Laura, Kate’s best friend, who had pushed the idea of signing up. Laura was head custodian of Blexford Manor, and the Lightning Strikes team had rented out function rooms at the manor for some of their dates. Laura had been relentless.

“It’s perfect!” she said. “You don’t need to lift a finger. You pick the activities you’d like to do and they’ll put you with someone who matches your profile.”

“It’s not really my thing,” Kate had protested. “And it’s a lot of money.”

“But once you’ve signed up, all your drinks and food are included,” said Laura. “Twelve dates! And you don’t even have to go out looking for them.”

Kate had to admit that her regime of pajamas, toast, and telly by seven thirty every night was not conducive to establishing a satisfying sex life. And as much as she wanted to meet someone, she was a bit too happy in her own company. Kate had become her own best date.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Laura. “You can’t whinge about wanting to meet someone and then look down your nose at dating websites. This is the modern way!”

“How would you know, Mrs. Married with Children?” said Kate.

“I read Cosmo,” said Laura. “Cosmo doesn’t lie.”

“Isn’t there a catalog groom service? Maybe I could just order one in,” said Kate. “Or is that another bastion of sexual inequality we

have yet to conquer?”

Laura pushed the laptop forcefully toward Kate.

“Would you do it?” asked Kate.

Laura threw her arms in the air in exasperation.

“Yes!” she said. “God forbid, if Ben died, this is exactly how I would find a new man.” She paused. “Although Ben has decreed that should he die before me, I’m to have him stuffed and placed in the bedroom, pointing at the bed,” she went on. “He says any man who can still perform under those circumstances will be truly worthy of me.”

Laura smiled dreamily. Kate shuddered.

“I’ll have a think and get back to you on it,” said Kate.

“The time is now,” said Laura. “I have real concerns that if you don’t change your ways, you’ll slip into a cheese-and-crackers coma and I’ll find you collapsed, with your face wedged in the pickle jar.”

And that was how Kate found herself signed up, paid up, and now dressed up for the first of her Twelve Dates of Christmas.

“So is it a blind date?” asked Matt.

“Not exactly,” said Kate, as she flicked through her phone. “They put us together with people whose profiles match our own and then they send us a photo so we know who we’re looking for.”

“So no need to wear a pink carnation in your lapel, then?” said Matt.

Kate screwed her face up at him.

“His name is Richard. He’s something to do with hedge funds, though I never know what that actually means,” said Kate. “He’s a divorced, devoted father of two.”

“How do you know he’s devoted?” asked Matt.

“Because he said so in his profile,” said Kate.

“Oh, well then it must be true,” said Matt. “Come on then, show us a photo of Wonderman.”

Kate flipped her phone around and showed Matt a picture of a smiling dark-haired man. He was clean-shaven and broad-shouldered and covered in mud as he stood in full rugby regalia, with a rugby ball under one arm.

Matt sniffed.

“He looks like a murderer,” he said.

Kate laughed.

“He does not.”

“I bet he’s got cauliflower ear,” he said, squinting at the picture.

“Well, I don’t care about that stuff,” said Kate. “I just want to meet someone nice. Who’s not a maniac. And who doesn’t turn out to be a money launderer and/or a drug dealer.”

“Your track record is terrible,” said Matt.

“I prefer to think of it as atypically galvanizing,” said Kate.

“That’s just a fancy way of saying freakish and terror-inducing,” Matt pointed out.

“It’s been more interesting than yours.”

“You didn’t meet my wife,” said Matt.

Kate laughed. Barely anyone than other than Evelyn had met Matt’s ex-wife. His short-lived marriage was the stuff of Blexford legend: whispered stories abounded about his mysterious bride, everything from cult member to jewel thief to—somewhat unkindly—buried beneath the patio.

Kate was in the happy position of having two best friends: Laura had been a stalwart, a constant in Kate’s life that neither distance nor brimful calendars could hamper. Her friendship with Matt had evolved rather differently; he had been her childhood best friend, her bête noire, and then her best friend again. There was a time when Kate had vowed she’d never step foot in the café, let alone be baking for it.

“I’ve got to go,” said Kate. “I’m meeting Richard on the bench on the green and we’re walking up to the manor together.”

Kate hopped down off the stool and slipped her coat back on, wrapping her scarf twice around her neck. She called her good-byes to the Pear Tree regulars, who waved back, their mouths full of cake.

“Have fun!” called Matt above the noise. He began to sing loudly: “On the first date of Shagmas . . .” Kate turned back and poked her tongue out at him.

“Hey!” he shouted, as she pulled the door open and let in a waft of spiky cold air.

Kate looked back, her eyes narrowed as she waited for another sarcastic comment.

“Catch,” he called, and threw over one of the tartan blankets they kept for weather-hardened customers who liked to sit outside. “That bench will be freezing.”

“Thanks,” said Kate; she caught the blanket and stepped out into the cold.

“I don’t want you getting piles!” Matt shouted after her. Kate shook her head, smiling, and walked across the white-tipped grass to the bench.

---

•  •  •  •  •

The green was a small patch of land in the middle of Blexford Village, around which sat the café, the Duke’s Head pub, and a small but princely stocked corner shop run by the ever-busy Evelyn, all surrounded by trees and cottages.

Kate stretched the blanket out. She laid one half on the bench and the other

across her lap and waited. A large fir tree liberally strewn with fairy lights stood proudly in the center of the green, and several smaller sets of lights hung from brackets above shop windows. Even the trees that were mere skeletons of their summer selves were dripping in lights.

A bright red Santa hat had been placed atop the wooden sign that pointed in the direction of Blexford Manor, and it was in that direction that a steady stream of cars and cabs now headed. Kate guessed they were going to the first of the Twelve Dates; Blexford didn’t usually get much through traffic. A couple of Range Rovers struggled with the narrow road, and more than one car pulled over near the corner shop to check their satnavs.

Kate felt glad she’d come back here to live. At first she’d missed city life, but now she felt she had the best of both worlds. She worked on her fabric designs at her kitchen table, looking out onto the long garden and the vegetable patch beyond. And when they were ready for printing she took the train up to her London office and soaked in the bustle of the city.

It hadn’t been an easy decision to pull up stakes and move back to Blexford, but when her mother ran off to Spain with Gerry, the estate agent who was supposed to be helping her parents downsize for their retirement, her father, Mac, was distraught.

It was a shock to everyone; one minute they were looking at cozy cottages and the next her mum had dropped everything and disappeared off to Spain.

For some reason Kate had assumed her mum would calm down as she got older, learn to appreciate the gem she had in Mac. But age hampered neither her mother’s ambition nor her libido.

It was Matt who’d called Kate to alert her to Mac’s deteriorating mental health. He’d popped round to the house and found Mac slumped across the table, drunk, an empty bottle of whiskey next to him.

That phone call was the first time she and Matt had spoken in nearly ten years. They’d had a monumental bust-up at university and severed all contact thereafter. Her father’s illness forced a tenuous contact, whereby they communicated over text and occasional phone calls to discuss her dad’s progress. But these were cold, overly polite exchanges.

During those first few months Matt kept an eye on Mac during the week and Kate came down on the weekends. It was easy enough to avoid each other. But it soon became clear that Mac’s pain ran deeper than melancholy. Eventually Kate felt she needed to be with him more than just Friday night

to Sunday. That was four years ago.

Luckily her colleagues at Liberty were very understanding; she could Skype for meetings and email photographs of mood boards and new designs straight to the office.

Laura had been delighted to have Kate back in Blexford, especially since she had just discovered she was pregnant with Mina.

It had always been Laura’s intention to move back to Blexford after university. Laura had been in love with Blexford Manor since she was a child. She was a history nut. She’d gotten a part-time job there as soon as she was old enough, and the lord and lady of the manor had all but promised her a job after university.

Neither Kate nor Matt, on the other hand, had ever intended to move back to the sleepy village of their childhood. But life has a way of tipping the seemingly unimaginable on its head.

---

•  •  •  •  •

A robin flew down and perched on the armrest of the bench. It looked at her expectantly with onyx eyes, its head moving jerkily as though powered by clockwork.

“I don’t have anything for you, I’m afraid,” said Kate.

The robin jerked its head from side to side.

“My date is late,” she told the tiny bird.

The robin took off suddenly, splatting droppings on the concrete slab around the bench. Kate looked at it and nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “My sentiments exactly.”

The bird landed on the holly tree near the entrance to Potters Copse. Its red breast glowed against the dark spiky leaves. Kate slipped her phone out of her pocket and took a photo of it. Her brain whirred into action: stiff cotton, the voluptuous curve of a feather-down chest, the bottle-green leaves arching outward, taut and shiny, needle sharp. Kate’s fingers twitched for the feeling of her paintbrush between them.

At eighteen, Kate had been so desperate to escape the quiet village that she’d forgotten how beautiful the changing seasons of the countryside were. When she moved back—travel savvy and city hardened—she found fresh inspiration in everything around her, and her fabric designs reflected a new style and confidence that delighted her managers and earned her a promotion.

Slowly her father recovered, and when he was well enough he rented a smaller cottage by the green. He wanted a fresh start and Kate needed a place to live, so she took over the mortgage on the old family home and they both rubbed along quite happily.

The line of cars wending their way through the village had dwindled. Most people would have taken the faster A-roads to the manor, rather than the bumpy Blexford road, with grass growing along its middle like a Mohawk haircut.

Kate checked her watch. It was ten to four. She’d been waiting for twenty minutes. They’d have to get a stride on if they were going to make it to the manor for four p.m. afternoon tea. Her stomach growled. Lightning Strikes didn’t display their clients’ phone numbers on their profiles, so Kate couldn’t even call Richard to see if he was lost. She thought about the roaring fires in the gigantic stone fireplaces at the manor and shivered, tucking her hands under the blanket.

Blexford Manor was built in the seventeenth century, and Blexford Village had grown up around it. The estate had been passed down through the Blexford family and once upon a time was the chief employer in the area.

As with most stately homes of that ilk, social and economic changes brought about by the world wars led to a scaling down of both staff and finances. The big high-society parties dwindled, and the balls that had once been the talk of the county became a mere memory.

By the mid-1970s the manor could no longer survive on revenue brought in solely from its farmland, and it was decided that Blexford Manor would be opened to the public. These days Lord and Lady Blexford lived mostly in the east wing of the manor and shared their home with tourists and wedding parties, and, for the next month, groups of hopeful singles on a quest to find love.

The light was already beginning to fade. The sky toned down as though on a dimmer switch, from brilliant blue to washed-out denim to cold gray. Windows festooned with Christmas lights flickered into life as the sky darkened and parents and children returned home from the school run. The branches of the old fir creaked as the wind began to pick up. Kate pulled the blanket tighter around her and wished she’d worn an extra pair of socks inside her boots.

A hand rested gently on her shoulder and she jumped, turning expectantly. It was only Matt. He held out a lidded paper cup.

“Hot chocolate,” he said. “You must be freezing.”

“Thanks,” said Kate. “I am. I think I’ve been stood up.”

“Maybe he got lost? Or had a medical emergency?”

“Or maybe he just didn’t like the look of me,” Kate said flatly.

“Well, then he must be blind,” said Matt. “Or an idiot. Or both.”

Kate smiled sadly. She clasped her hands around the cup to warm them. 

“Why don’t you come inside?” Matt suggested. “There’s this woman that supplies me with great caramel brownies. You can have one. On the house.”

“I’ll just give him ten more minutes,” said Kate.

“You’re not going to go all Miss Haversham on me, are you?” Matt wrapped his arms around himself against the cold. He’d come out without a coat, and his flannel plaid shirt wasn’t doing much to keep the chill out. The blond hairs on his freckly arms stood to attention.

Kate laughed. “Not just yet,” she said. “But if all twelve stand me up, I might start to get a complex.”

Carla called across the green. “Matt! Phone for you, something about duck eggs!”

“Coming!” shouted Matt. “I’d better go. Don’t be out here too long. I don’t want to have to chip you off the bench in the morning.”

Kate promised. “Thanks for the hot chocolate!” she called after him. He waved but didn’t turn back.

Matt had inherited the Pear Tree from his mother. For twenty years she ran it as a bakery and tea rooms until she was killed one night, along with Matt’s older sister, Corinna, in a car accident on their way back from the wholesalers. Matt was just seventeen.

Mac had helped with a lot of the practicalities when Matt’s mum and Corinna were killed. He ferried Matt back and forth to the funeral directors, and he and Evelyn, who’d been Matt’s mum’s best friend, took on the lion’s share of dealing with solicitors and banks. Kate recalled her mum being annoyed at the amount of time Mac and Evelyn were spending together.

Their deaths changed Matt. How could they not? There was overwhelming grief and behind that, an anger that seemed to bubble beneath his skin. And behind that, silently festering, a kind of insolence, a sense that he was owed happiness, that life owed him. At least that was how it had felt to Kate at the time. It was to be a death knell to their friendship; there is only a hairsbreadth between adoration and animosity and when the gap closes, it is rarely pretty.

Evelyn took Matt under her wing and into her home. She guarded his interests—business, pastoral, and educational—like a lioness. Evelyn ensured that his family home was taken care of, until such time as he was ready to live there again. And she rented the bakery to an older couple, the Harrisons, who ran it until they retired.

By that time Matt was working in Manchester for a large accountancy firm with even larger prospects—he took the financial reins back from Evelyn and rented the shop out to another family. Unfortunately, they ran the business into the ground and left one

night, having stripped the shop of anything of worth and leaving a string of debts behind them.

Matt didn’t come back to Blexford to rescue the business—he was too busy with his whirlwind bride and high-flying career—nor did he try to rent it out again. Instead, he paid the debtors, closed the place up, and left it. A shell, or a shrine. The Pear Tree Bakery was a forgotten story, like an old book that would never be read again but equally couldn’t be parted with.

Kate’s mother—who even then, it seemed, had a keen interest in real estate—had tried to get Evelyn to encourage Matt to sell the building and recoup some of his losses. Evelyn, however, felt quite certain, despite all indications to the contrary, that Matt would find his way back to Blexford one day.

The Pear Tree lay empty for a few years. The windows were boarded up, the garden became a wilderness, and what little remained inside the shop was left to fall into ruin.

Kate would sneak over the back wall sometimes when she came to Blexford to visit her parents. She’d wade through the long grass and peep in through gaps in the shuttered windows.

Kate had wanted to capture some spark of the happiness she’d felt in that place, her childhood playground. As if memories were tangible things that could be plucked like dandelion clocks to turn back time. But she could never quite reach them.

After his divorce, Matt returned to Blexford and his family home—just as Evelyn had predicted: it turned out he wasn’t the city slicker he’d imagined himself to be—and spent the next year completely renovating the Pear Tree and finally reopening it as the Pear Tree Café.

He’d asked Mac to help him with the renovations, and Mac was only too pleased to help. Despite Kate and Matt’s falling-out, her dad had always had a soft spot for Matt. And Kate was far enough away for it not to bother her too much; she was busy forging her career in London and her relationship with Dan, and she rarely came back to Blexford.

When Kate came back to nurse her father, the Pear Tree Café was a thriving business, firmly rooted in the hearts of Blexford’s residents.

Matt rented out the newly refurbished kitchen to Carla and her mother to use in the evenings for their ready-meal business and offered

discounts on drinks to book clubs and committee meetings. In such a small, close-knit community, the café had become a hub around which the village revolved.

Kate used to avoid the café like a turd sandwich. She’d drive down into Great Blexley when she needed a coffee fix and cross roads or dive into bushes if she saw Matt coming her way. Kate spent a lot of time hiding in bushes those first few months. A small fortune spent on a swanky coffee machine for her house fixed the caffeine cravings; finding ways to avoid Matt in such a small village was not such an easy problem to solve.

---

•  •  •  •  •

Kate shivered. Another ten minutes had passed and the daylight had all but gone. Ice crystals glistened on car roofs and the stars were already diamond points in the sky. There were no clouds. It was going to get very cold.

Her phone blipped:

Where are you?

It was a text from Laura.

With numb fingers, Kate texted back:

Been stood up! Am sitting on the bench on the green, freezing my tits off. Think my bum has frozen to the wood. May need to be surgically removed.

Laura replied immediately:

What a dick! He doesn’t know what he’s missing. Would you like me to hire a hit man?

Kate chuckled to herself and sighed.

Richard wasn’t coming. Brilliant, she thought. I can’t even get a date when I pay for one. Kate was disappointed but not, she decided, as disappointed as she was to have missed out on the tiny patisserie cakes that would have been served at the afternoon tea; she texted Laura to ask for a doggy bag.

Come up here and get it! Laura texted. You never know, you might cop off with someone else’s date, hee hee

Can’t, Kate texted back. Too cold. Frostbite setting in. Need care package containing many many small cakes to aid recovery.

Roger that! xxx, texted

 Laura.

Kate stood up mechanically, her feet and hands stiff with cold; she couldn’t feel her toes at all. She folded the blanket and laid it on top of the wood basket outside the café door, where Matt would find it. She wasn’t really in the mood to be gloated at, even if it was meant lightheartedly. She kept hold of the cup to recycle back at home and started walking.

Someone in the Duke’s Head was playing the old beat-up piano. The tinkling melody wafted around the square and mixed with the wind chimes outside Evelyn’s shop; it reminded Kate of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” The grass was turning silver under the glimmer of the streetlamps. Blackbirds chattered as they settled down to roost in the holly bushes that ran along the farthest end of the village square by Potters Copse.

The heat would be on and Kate determined to get the wood burner going in the kitchen and light the fire in the lounge as well. She warmed herself with these thoughts as she hurried home.

She had one of Carla’s lasagnas in the fridge, half a bottle of good red wine by the stove, and a healthy stash of chocolate in a tin above the coffee machine. She smiled to herself, her cold breath clouding out before her; she didn’t get the guy but she had a veritable feast and the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice waiting for her at home. And it didn’t get much better than that.

---

•  •  •  •  •

Kate shivered as the warm air washed over her. She pushed her front door closed behind her and shut out the frozen evening. The answering machine on the hall table blinked a red number 3 at her. Kate pressed play and went to get the fire going in the lounge. A loud disembodied voice boomed out from the machine.

“Hello? Hello? Katy-Boo, are you there?”

It was Kate’s mum. The message clicked off and another began.

“Katy-Boo, it’s Mum. I picked up the parcels at the weekend. Nothing for Gerry, I noticed. I do wish you’d try to make an effort, darling.”

Kate frowned as she scrunched newspaper up and tucked it underneath the kindling. Make an effort! She snorted to herself, striking a match and dropping it into the paper nest. He’s lucky I wrote his name in the card.

Gerry wasn’t so bad, Kate supposed. He always made an effort when they visited—which wasn’t very often. They had a studio flat in Chiswick, where they would hold court when in England—and Kate was always perfectly amiable toward him. But she wasn’t quite ready to buy him Christmas gifts yet. She’d sent a Christmas package to her mother three weeks ago to make sure it reached her in time. In it she had wrapped the latest release by her mum’s favorite author, some perfumed body lotion from Elizabeth Arden that her mum had been dropping hints about since October, and a pair of slouchy knitted bed socks and matching scarf—she’d commissioned Petula to knit them for her—in purple and mint-green stripes. Even Spain got chilly in December, ...