Excerpt from The Christmas Getaway
Chapter 3
Charlotte
“You’re not going to believe what I just did,” I say as I walk into the private room and take a seat, pulling the tray of pumpkin mac and cheese toward me. I’m a little embarrassed to admit what I’ve done, but I need my friends’ advice. Plus, small town. They’ll probably hear about it before the night is over.
“Please tell me you didn’t kiss him and beg him to come back to you,” Lainey says.
“Why would I do that?” I ask, filling my plate.
“You made it sound like you did something off the wall, and that meets the criteria,” Lainey explains.
My mouth is full so I nod my agreement that what I did bordered on off the wall. Off the wall but effective. At least for the moment. And that was the problem. In an attempt to put off sharing what I’d done, at least until I finish eating, I swallow and point my fork at the mac and cheese. “This is amazing.” I’m about to take another bite when Lainey grabs my hand. “Not until you tell us what you did.”
Rosie moves my plate out of reach.
So I tell them, then groan at their slack-jawed expressions. “I know. I know it was stupid and juvenile. Not to mention a lie. But what was I suppose to do?” I lower my voice. “He thinks I’m still in love with him. “
He also seems to think I’m stuck and that my life sucks. Something I don’t share because, while they’re my friends, they’re also Andrew’s. If it wasn’t for me, they’d be talking excitedly about meeting his fiancée and the upcoming parties.
We live in a small town, and any excuse to have a party is a good excuse. I don’t want to ruin this for them or to make them feel like they have to take sides.
“You don’t still have feelings for him, do you?” Rosie asks, sounding like her empathetic heart is breaking at the thought.
“No, of course not.” My romantic Christmas fantasy had nothing to do with Andrew. I’ve been reading too much holiday romance to cheer myself up over the library move, and he fits the profile of a romantic hero. At least on paper he does. It doesn’t help that all my friends are coupled. Maybe what I need isn’t a man but some single friends.
From the looks on my coupled friends’ faces, I’m not sure they believe me. “I may not have a significant other in my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy. I am. I love my life. Well, I did. Before moving the library became a thing.” And my dad fell in love with someone who wasn’t my mom and she moved in with him and sort of with me.
My dad is the best dad a girl could ask for, and while my stepmother isn’t my favorite person on the planet or my biggest fan, she makes him happy, and that’s all that matters. Lately, I’ve had to remind myself of that on a daily basis.
I look around the table. “Why are all of you on your phones? Please tell me news about my hot highlander hasn’t hit Insta or Bluesky or the town’s chat thread.” They don’t answer, and I retrieve my plate from Rosie, grumbling, “I need more books.”
“You better load up your Kindle and Nook then because the airlines charge a fortune for extra luggage,” Lainey says as she gets up from her chair and pulls me to my feet, laughing, “You’re going to Scotland for the holidays!”
“What? No, I’m not. I made it up, remember?” I look around the table at my grinning friends, who turn their phone screens to me. They’re looking at flights to Edinburgh. “I can’t go to Scotland. I don’t know anyone there,” I say, panic making my voice crack.
Lainey shrugs. “You’re friendly. You’ll meet loads of new people.”
“But I don’t want to. I want to stay here, with all of you,” I say, and my friends immediately deflate.
“Charlotte Webb, you’ve been holding out on us,” Bev says as she and the backup moms crowd into the private room.
The only time Bev calls me by my full name is when I’ve made one of my infamous bad decisions. This qualifies. Not if it were true, obviously. But clearly, they know that I’ve made it up.
Except . . . they’re grabbing my hands and jumping up and down, crying, “You’ve got a Scottish boyfriend!”
Now they’re cheering. Loudly.
I open my mouth to tell them the truth but I’m cut off by Lainey and Rosie clearing their throats, amazingly louder than the backup moms’ cheering. I glance their way, following the direction of their pointed stares. The backup moms have drawn a crowd, and guess who’s standing among them? Andrew.
I look at my friends and backup moms. They’re honest-to-God excited for me. They want me to do this. No, I realize as they talk about everything I’ll see and do and the fun that I’ll have, they don’t just want me to do this. They think that I have to, that I need to.
It hits me then that Andrew said what none of them had the heart to. They think I’m stuck in the past and feel sorry for me. I glance at the books on the table. The women in the holiday stories couldn’t be more different from one another but they have one thing in common. They aren’t sitting around waiting for life to happen. They have goals and hopes and dreams.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten what mine are. As much as I’m a homebody and don’t want to leave Winterbrook or my friends for the holidays, I’m beginning to think that I have to.
So instead of standing there staring at them, I join the party, jumping up and down and squealing, “I’m going to Scotland for the holidays!”
Lainey and Rosie shriek, “She’s going to Scotland for the holidays!”
It’s time for me to become the heroine of my own story.
Chapter 4
Charlotte
Five days later, I’m in the back of Mac’s car at the departure drop-off at Newark Liberty International Airport, hanging onto the door handle as if my life depends on it. Which I honest-to-God believe that it does. I suppose the weed gummy I ate before we left Winterbrook four hours ago might have something to do with this.
Lainey sighs. “Let go of the door handle, Charlie. It takes forever to go through security. You’ll miss your flight.”
“I’m good with that.” In all the excitement, I’d forgotten the part where I’d have to fly. I’m terrified of flying. My fear of flying was one of Andrew’s pet peeves. He loves to travel.
The only reason I have a passport is because I’d gone to the IDEAL— Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Libraries and Archives—Conference in Toronto, Canada, last July. Lainey and Rosie came with me, and we made a road trip out of it.
Lainey powers down her window to say to her husband, who is trying to open my door, “Put some muscle in it, Mac. The security guard is giving us the side-eye.”
Mac ducks his head in the window. “She’s stronger than she looks,” he says to his wife and then to me, “If you don’t want to go, don’t.”
“Mac!” Lainey cries.
“What? She’s clearly terrified, and she doesn’t want to go. Besides, she shouldn’t be alone for Christmas. She should be with all of us.”
I sniff, and Lainey scowls at Mac and then at me. Rosie, who’s in the back seat beside me, dabs her eyes with a tissue and hands one to me.
“Who cares if Andrew thinks you’re still in love with him,” Mac says.
Wait, what? I open the door and get out of the car. “How can he think I’m still in love with him? I’m going to Scotland to spend the holidays with my boyfriend.”
Mac rubs the back of his head. “Pretty much everybody figured out that you made him up, Charlie.”
I don’t mind my friends or even the backup moms knowing I made up my hot Highlander, but everyone in town . . . “So what you’re telling me is that I’m the laughingstock of Winterbrook.” I take out my phone, thinking about my stepmother’s reaction if she learns my new boyfriend is fake.
My dad wasn’t thrilled about me going on my own to Scotland, but his wife was over the moon. At the news I had a Scottish boyfriend who was a member of the aristocracy, I’d risen significantly in her estimation.
Lainey and Rosie join Mac and me beside the car. “What are you doing?” Rosie asks.
“Looking up apartments for rent in Courtland. I won’t be able to show my face in town after this.”
“It’ll blow over in a week,” Mac assures me.
He’s trying to make me feel better. He knows as well as I do there’s not a chance this will blow over in a week, especially with Andrew and his wife moving to town. Mr. Green cheated on his wife fifty years ago, and people still talk about it to this day.
I glance at the glass terminal doors. A woman and two toddlers are walking into the building, followed by a man pushing a baggage cart and three older women, all of them clearly excited for their international adventures. Everyone except for me.
But I don’t have a choice. If I don’t want to end up fodder for Winterbrook’s gossip mill for the next five decades or plummet back to my lowly spot in my stepmother’s estimation, I have to get on that plane and find a hot Highlander of my own. Or more likely, a hot Highlander who is willing to pretend he’s mine. I love a good fake-dating trope, so surely, I can orchestrate my own. Now I just have to get on the plane.
I whimper as I wrap my fingers around the handle of my suitcase, half sobbing, half laughing when Lainey and Rosie break out in a cheer, exchanging my name for the star quarterback on Winterbrook’s varsity football team.
As a limousine pulls in front of Mac’s car, my friends stop cheering and hug me.
“You’ve got this, babe,” Lainey says, then removes an open bag of gummies from my backpack. “And you’ve got these. Just remember, the weed gummies are the purple ones,” she adds, loud enough that the man exiting the limousine glances our way.
The three of us rear back and gasp. “It’s Henry Cavill,” Rosie whispers.
Mac snorts. “It’s not Henry Cavill.” He nudges his head at the man trying to coax someone out of the back of the limo. If his tone of voice is any indication, he’s losing patience with them. “Limo Guy is Scottish, and Cavill is British.”
“I don’t care what he is, he’s gorgeous,” Lainey says, earning a seriously? look from her husband. She rolls her eyes. “Not for me, for Charlie.”
Is the man gorgeous? Absolutely, and he bears more than a passing resemblance to our movie star crush. He’s also tall and broad-shouldered, and I do have a thing for a man with a deep, sexy brogue. But I feel a connection to the person in the back of the limo who clearly has no interest in stepping foot on a plane. So the clipped impatience in tall, dark, and handsome’s voice is a turnoff. Even more so when I realize he’s speaking to a young girl.
In response to whatever she’s yelling at him through the closed door, he says, “I don’t care if she said you can live with her, Matilda. I’m your father, and I live in Scotland, and that’s where you belong.” He must sense Lainey, Rosie, and me staring at him because he glances our way and raises an eyebrow.
I don’t know if I’m more shocked by the way he’s speaking to his little girl or by the fact he’s not the least bit embarrassed that we’ve obviously overheard him and find his parenting skills abysmal.
“All right, you three. Mind your own business. You have no idea what’s going on,” Mac says, stepping in front of us to block our view.
“If you don’t get out of the car this instant, Matilda. I’ll fire George.”
The three of us gasp. We have no idea who this George person is, but it’s obvious that Matilda’s father is using emotional blackmail on a vulnerable child. Apparently, the emotional blackmail got to Mac too because he turns to Limo Dad with his arms crossed over his chest.
Matilda’s father glances our way, opening his mouth as if about to try and excuse his behavior when the limo’s door opens and a teenager with green hair, multiple piercings, ripped jeans, and combat boots steps out.
“Blow it out your arse, Ewan,” she says, swinging a backpack over her shoulder and heading for the terminal.
The limo’s driver side door opens, and a bald fiftysomething man gets out, walking around to the back of the car. He opens the trunk, and he and Henry Cavill’s look-alike haul out a pair of suitcases each “We’ll ship the rest of Matilda’s things out tomorrow.”
“I appreciate it, George,” Limo Dad says, then makes a face. “About what I said—” “No offense taken. I knew what you were doing.” He pats Matilda’s father’s shoulder. “Give her time, Ewan. It’s only been three months since she lost her mom.”
“Oh no, the poor thing,” I whisper, pressing a hand on my stomach and accidently turning on my Christmas sweater. It was a going-away present from my honorary nieces and nephews this morning. I’m lit up like a Christmas tree.
“I didn’t know it had music,” I say at the sound of “Jingle Bells” coming from my chest.
“Listen closely, it’s the kid’s voices,” Rosie the crafting queen says. She made the sweater for me. At the time, she hadn’t known it would be a going-away-for-Christmas present.
“Did you have to tell me that now!” I cry, cringing at how far my voice carries. Matilda’s father turns to look at me.
Unlike most people, he doesn’t smile at my blinking/singing Christmas sweater or offer a sympathetic smile at my obvious emotional distress. He rolls his eyes.
“Okay, he’s out of the running for your hot Highlander boyfriend,” Lainey says, thankfully in a much lower voice than mine. “But at least we know there are hot men in Scotland.”
“I’m beginning to get a complex,” Mac says dryly, then he gives me a hug. “You have your list of contacts in your phone?” When I nod, he goes over his safety dos and don’ts for the fifteenth time.
“She’s going to miss her flight,” Lainey says, pulling me in for another hug with her and Rosie. “You’re going to have so much fun,” they assure me through their tears and then wave me off with “We love you!”
I walk backward, pulling my suitcase on wheels, waving and yelling, “I love you!” as the car pulls away from the curb. Lainey and Rosie are hanging out the open windows waving and blowing kisses at me.
I hit a human wall, and I know it’s human because it says, “Bloody hell.”
I turn. I’ve backed into Matilda’s father, and he’s overturned his luggage cart. “Sorry about that,” I say, leaving my suitcase to help him reload his luggage onto the cart.
“You. I should have known,” he mutters, then holds up his hand. “Thanks, but I’ve got this.”
“It’s the least I can do,” I say, fitting one of the suitcases onto the bottom of the cart. As I go to straighten, the back of my head hits something hard, and I see stars. “Oh my God, what did I hit?” I ask with a hand pressed to what feels like my broken skull.
From behind me, a ticked-off Scottish voice mutters, “Me.”