Royal Holiday (The Wedding Date, #4)(34)

He laughed and looked in her eyes as their glasses clinked.

As Vivian drank her champagne, she couldn’t help but see Maddie’s smug smile from across the table. The next time Malcolm looked away, Vivian glared at her, but Maddie just gave her an innocent smile back.

She wasn’t actually that mad at Maddie for forcing her hand about staying in England. Now that that decision was irrevocably made, she was at peace with it. Maybe even a little excited about it. No, that part she was okay with; it was the constant smirks from Maddie’s side of the table that made Vivian want to send her to her room like she could when Maddie was little. This attitude must be revenge for when Vivian had known—long before Maddie had told her—about Maddie’s relationship with Theo. Could she help it if she knew her daughter that well?

“Time for crackers!” Malcolm interrupted her silent fuming at her daughter and handed her the gold-wrapped cylinder from in front of her plate.

She took it from him and looked down at it. How, exactly, was she supposed to do this? Was this a thing she should unwrap? Or was there some other trick to it?

Crack!

Vivian jumped at the noise to her right. She turned, and the chauffeur and his girlfriend were giggling over their open crackers. But she still hadn’t seen how they did it.

“We do it like this,” Malcolm said. He picked up both of their crackers, and held them out to her. “Now, hold on.” She took the other end of each cracker, and he smiled at her. “Now, I’ll count to three, then we both pull. One, two, THREE.”

They pulled on cue, and the crackers let off enormous bangs. Vivian gasped and then laughed. She looked over at Malcolm, who had a very satisfied expression on his face, and they both laughed even harder.

“Wait, that’s not it,” he said. “We have to wear our crowns.” He picked up the flimsy colored-paper crowns that had fallen from inside the crackers onto the table and unfolded them. “Hmm, I think . . . the purple one for you, the pink one for me.” He set the paper crown on top of her head and adjusted it carefully. “There. Beautiful.”

She watched him as he put on his own ridiculous paper crown.

“This is very silly,” she said. “I like it a lot.”

He smiled at her.

“I like it a lot, too.”

By the time they were done with the first course—pheasant cooked under a brick, which was surprisingly delicious—the entire table had on paper crowns. Julia kept bringing out more incredible food, and their compliments to her got more and more elaborate, as she poured them more and more wine. There was a mountain of tiny roast potatoes in their skins, crisp and tender Yorkshire puddings, beef Wellington, and oh, thank goodness, mince pies . . . though they didn’t look like any kind of pie she’d ever seen. For one, they were miniature—at home, people would probably call these cookies. They were delicious, though.

Finally, after an enormous and showstopping b?che de No?l, the whole party headed back into the sitting room for port.

Just as Vivian was about to walk out of the dining room, Malcolm stopped her.

“Wait, you dropped an earring,” he said.

She automatically reached up to her earlobes, and sure enough, one of her long, sparkly earrings was missing.

“Oh no!” She’d definitely had them both on earlier. They must be somewhere in either the dining room or the sitting room. She turned to go back to the table to look under her chair when Malcolm stopped her.

“Is this it?” He opened his hand, and her earring was in his palm.

“Yes! That’s it, thank you.” She reached for it, but instead he held it up to her ear and gently slipped the post in. His fingers stroked the outside of her ear, and she shivered.

“Oh. Thank you,” she said again. He cupped the side of her face and turned it toward his. “Don’t you think we should . . . ?” She looked into his eyes and suddenly couldn’t remember what she thought they should be doing other than exactly this.

He pointed up above their heads.

“Mistletoe. It’s a tradition. I don’t know if you do this in America, but in Britain, we have no choice but to kiss now.”

She smiled and moved closer to him.

“Well, I am in Britain, and I did say I wanted to learn about all of your Christmas traditions. Teach me this one.”

He bent down to her.

“With pleasure.”

He kissed her softly once, twice, then put his arm around her waist and pulled her even closer, and kissed her a third time. The third kiss started out softly, too, but when she wrapped her arms around his neck and licked his bottom lip, it quickly turned passionate. They kissed and kissed, their hands touching each other’s faces, their lips and tongues dancing, their bodies snug against each other’s, until they heard a discreet cough and broke apart.

Julia stood next to them, a platter of chocolates in her hands, not quite holding back a big grin.

“I see you found the mistletoe,” she said. “Truffle?”

Vivian supposed she should be embarrassed, but instead she just felt proud. Getting caught making out under mistletoe, at her age! She grinned at Julia.

“Thank you, I’d love one.” She reached out and picked one up with her fingers. “Malcolm?”

He, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to make eye contact with Julia. She didn’t know why. The whole mistletoe thing had been his idea in the first place!