The First Time We Met: An utterly heart-warming and unforgettable love story

by Jo Lovett

  She smiled at Sam. ‘We’ll work it out together,’ she said.

  His slow smile started. Then his eyes moved to Izzy’s lips, further down, back to her lips, back to her eyes.

  Izzy’s heart was going like the clappers now.

  Sam let go of her hands and wrists and walked round the table. He knelt on the floor in front of her and picked up her hands again.

  ‘Izzy Castle, will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?’ He was looking right into her eyes, immobile other than a small muscle movement near his jaw.

  ‘Sam McCready, I would love to.’ Izzy could barely get the words out she was so excited, happy, over the moon, just ecstatic.

  Sam’s face creased into a very wide smile. He took a ring box out of his pocket and opened it for her.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ Izzy breathed. ‘I love emeralds.’

  Sam took it out and slid it onto her finger.

  ‘How did you manage to get the right size?’ How was that possible?

  ‘Emma. The woman’s a genius. Scary. But hugely gifted.’ Sam stood up and drew Izzy to her feet. ‘Could we have a dance before we eat dessert? Which, by the way, is a lemon drizzle pudding.’

  ‘Yum and, yes, I’d love to.’

  ‘Hold on a second. Forgot to put my elf hat on.’ He took the hat out of his pocket and stuck it on his head. ‘In memory of the first time we met. I didn’t get one for you because I didn’t think you’d like to wear one again.’ He pressed a button on his phone and Slade’s Christmas song started.

  ‘This was playing when I turned my back on The One and walked out of the café that day.’ He put his left arm round her waist and took her right hand and moved in close for a waltz position. ‘It’s always reminded me of you.’ They started moving together, slowly, to the music. Who knew that ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was the sexiest song ever written? ‘Fourteen years, and finally our stars are in alignment. Meant to be.’

  When the song ended, they kissed for a very long time before they ate their lemon pudding, in a very schmaltzy and spoon-sharing, but absolutely perfect way.

  Epilogue

  One year later

  ‘This is all so gorgeous,’ Emma told Izzy, gesturing round the room. ‘Such a nice hotel. And the decorations are amazing. I mean, the perfect Christmas wedding. We’ve done such a good job.’

  ‘I know.’ Izzy beamed at her. ‘I couldn’t feel more smug if I tried.’ Coming back to London to hold the wedding had worked out so well. Even the weather had been on their side; there’d been a shimmery-white dusting of snow on the ground this morning, followed by dry, frosty brightness all day.

  ‘Got your milkshake.’ Rohan, back from the bar, handed the glass carefully to Emma.

  ‘Thank you. Slow bar service.’ Emma was already downing it. She’d been obsessed with full fat chocolate milkshakes throughout her entire pregnancy. She and Izzy had sent a lot of messages and emails backwards and forwards between London and New York since Izzy had moved, and for the last few months pretty much every one of Emma’s had mentioned milkshakes.

  Being Emma, she’d developed excellently large boobs and a textbook beautiful bump while seeming to have put on no weight anywhere else at all. Today, at seven months pregnant, she was looking absolutely stunning in a jade-green silk ballgown, taking her matron-of-honour duties very seriously.

  ‘Not your usual wedding reception drink,’ Rohan said and kissed Emma’s forehead. It was lovely the way he was so adoring.

  ‘Hey. Haven’t seen you for a few minutes. I missed you.’ Sam put his arm round Izzy’s waist and moved her hair out of the way to kiss her neck. Izzy shivered, deliciously. It had been a year and you’d have thought she’d have got used to the sheer sex-godness of him, but still, every time he touched her, it was good.

  ‘Dude. Get a room.’ Luke slapped Sam on the back.

  ‘It’s my wedding day. If I want to kiss my bride in public, I’ll kiss her.’ Sam grinned at his best man, his arm still tight round Izzy’s waist. Izzy didn’t think she could get any happier. Her heart wouldn’t take it. It had already expanded to a ridiculous point.

  ‘We have some extra speeches before the dancing gets going,’ Luke said. Sam narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Really? I’d like to think you’ve already done your worst.’

  Luke was ignoring him, striding towards the stage where the band were sitting.

  ‘Want me to get up there and stop him?’ While pregnant, Emma had been extremely assertive. Izzy had been guiltily pleased to have the Atlantic between the two of them during the wedding planning, although she’d loved the very rude email that Emma had sent to Izzy’s father when he’d said that he was too busy to come to his oldest daughter’s wedding. Her mother and Veronique had, surprisingly, made it, accompanied by what Izzy’s mother had stage-whispered to her was a naughty present. Izzy didn’t ever want to open it.

  ‘Grateful but no thanks,’ she told Emma.

  While Luke was sound-checking the mic, Dominic came over, holding his Italian girlfriend Gabriella’s hand. ‘Congratulations, Izzy.’ He kissed her cheek.

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him. ‘And thank you for having Ruby.’ Ruby was going to be staying with Dominic and Gabriella in Milan, and the twins with their English grandparents, while Izzy and Sam had a few days’ honeymoon in Paris before a family skiing holiday. ‘So nice to have you here.’ She meant it.

  Luke banged the mic. ‘And now we have a surprise for the bride and groom,’ he told the room. And Ruby, Liv and Barney stepped up onto the stage, Barney handsome and very cool in his linen suit and trainers, and Liv and Ruby a gorgeous picture in their matching Christmassy dark green and red bridesmaid dresses.

  Liv took the mic from Luke and said, ‘Good evening, everyone. We just wanted to say how happy we are that our parents have got married. Let’s go, Ruby.’ She smiled at Ruby and turned and nodded at the band. ‘Our parents have a thing for some movie from the nineties,’ she said, like she was talking about the Middle Ages, ‘You’ve Got Mail, so we’re going to sing the song from the last scene of that film.’

  And Ruby and Liv sang ‘Over the Rainbow’, and Izzy realised that she’d been wrong when she thought she couldn’t get any happier.

  Then Liv gave an excellent speech. Poised, polished, perfect. And funny. She actually alluded to her own evil thirteen-year-old self from the year before, with some jokes. She was right. She’d grown up a lot since then. Izzy’s heart expanded even more.

  And then, Liv handed the mic to Barney.

  He took it. He focused on Izzy and Sam. He gave them a big smile. And he started speaking, nice and slowly, and very clearly.

  ‘I’d like to say a big congratulations to my father and to my new stepmother. Liv, Ruby and I are so happy that you two have got married. Izzy, you’ll be pleased to hear that I just did a big fake smile to myself in the bathroom.’ He had a big smile, just for her. And a barely discernible stammer. And when he did stammer, he picked himself up and carried on. Okay, this was it, Izzy’s heart was now going to break. There was no happiness bigger than this.

  Sam held her the whole the way through Barney’s speech.

  While everyone was clapping and whistling at the end, Sam led Izzy over to the stage and took the mic from Barney.

  ‘Our first dance is Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody”,’ he told everyone. ‘It’s our song. And I think my wife would like to say something.’ He handed the mic to Izzy while all their guests cheered.

  ‘Thank you, husband.’ Izzy beamed at Sam while everyone cheered again. ‘After “Merry Xmas Everybody” we’d love you all to join us on the dance floor.’

  ‘Fifteen years since we first met,’ Sam said as they danced very slowly to Noddy Holder. ‘That’s some journey.’

  ‘Worth every single step,’ said Izzy.

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  Books by Jo Lovett

  The First Time We Met

  A Letter from Jo

  Thank you so much for reading The First Time We Met. I really hope that you enjoyed it!

  If you did enjoy it, and would like to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  Sign up here!

  I had a lot of fun writing Izzy and Sam’s story. I love the big ‘What if you meet the right one at the wrong time’ question. I hope that the story made you smile or laugh.

  Izzy’s a speech therapist. I wanted to mention here that I’m particularly grateful to the speech therapists I’ve met. My youngest son has been having speech therapy recently for a stammer (or ‘stutter’ for US readers) and one of his brothers had speech and language therapy a few years ago because he had difficulty in forming consonants. Their therapy made a huge difference to their ability to communicate and their confidence. And the understanding that there’s nothing at all wrong in stammering (or stuttering) – it’s just a slightly different way of talking, not better, not worse – is also huge.

  I hope that you loved Izzy, Sam and their children as much as I did!

  If you enjoyed the story, I would be so pleased if you could leave a short review. I’d love to hear what you think.

  Thank you for reading.

  Love, Jo xx

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you so much to everyone at Bookouture – so many truly lovely people. Many of the authors describe it as a family, and I think that’s the perfect description. I’m particularly grateful to my editor, the wonderful Lucy Dauman, for seeing something in my writing and for working with me on this story in such a positive and supportive way. All her suggestions seem so right as soon as she makes them, and she sends lovely emails!

  Thank you also to Claire Torrance, a friend who is a speech and language therapist and very generous with the passing on of her knowledge. Any mistakes in the book in relation to speech therapy are mine! And thank you very much to Sarah Buckingham, a solicitor friend who provided very helpful advice about lawyerly working practices. Again, any mistakes are mine.

  Thank you to Good Housekeeping magazine and Orion. I entered their First Novel Competition in 2018 (with a different story) and was runner-up (and won a laptop – exciting!). And thank you to the Comedy Women in Print Award, set up by Helen Lederer in 2019. I entered that year (also with a different story) and was shortlisted. Those competitions really do give aspiring authors a huge boost.

  Finally, I have to thank my family. Thank you to my sister Liz for always being so supportive and basically an amazing best friend (and remarkably brave in adversity). And thank you to my husband and children. A lot of the book was written during lockdown. There were many occasions when I should have been engaging a lot more fully with home schooling than I did. My youngest son summed things up nicely when his Year One teacher asked him if he’d been doing any English and he said, ‘We’ve been too busy.’ So thank you all for being so understanding about my manic writing over the past few months and for putting up with eating so much pasta (no time for actual cooking).

  We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.

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  Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.

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  We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.

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  Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.

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  Thank you.

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  *As reported by the National Literacy Trust

  Published by Bookouture in 2020

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  An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

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  www.bookouture.com

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  Copyright © Jo Lovett, 2020

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  Jo Lovett has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-964-7

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.