Married By Christmas

by Bailey, Scarlett

  Anna turned her face from him, desperate to contain her urge to cry before he noticed.

  ‘What I’m saying is that Tom obviously loves you, and he wants to protect you. And look …’ Miles waited but Anna did not look, so he went off anyway. ‘If you click on the link to the club, Charisma’s not on the bill any more. She’s obviously moved on. In fact …’ Anna waited, staring at an uncharacteristic chip in her nail polish until she willed the tears back into her head. ‘In fact, she hasn’t been on the bill for more than a year, and there isn’t any more recent image or reference to her than that. Tom wasn’t lying to you, Anna. She’s not here. Not in any useful way. He just wanted to keep you from seeing this, and I’m just sorry that I didn’t have the same consideration that he did.’

  Slowly, Anna turned her head just enough so that he could see the edge of her profile.

  ‘Do you really think that’s the only reason why?’ Anna asked him. ‘And not because he is still obsessed by her? I mean, she is really beautiful and she looks so … exciting. I would have no idea how to be like that.’

  Miles looked puzzled but did not respond.

  ‘I truly, honestly, do think he was trying to protect you,’ Miles said. ‘Look, you saw the photo. The woman’s hot, yes, but she’s not got anything that men really want when they fall in love. No mystery, that’s for damn sure, no vulnerability, no funny little hard-to-understand quirks, and in my experience women who feel the need to take their clothes off to get attention are usually pathologically insecure and a total nightmare to go out with.’

  Finally, Anna turned to face him, treating him to a small grateful smile. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No worries, see? I’m not always completely annoying, am I?’

  ‘Not completely,’ Anna admitted. ‘Although your tongue did literally hang out of your head when you were looking at that photo.’

  ‘In horror!’ Miles said, charmingly, making Anna chuckle. ‘Like yuck, eugh, bleugh, I think I might be sick, in that kind of way. Anyway, this is a lead. We can use this.’

  ‘We?’ Anna raised a brow.

  ‘Go on, Anna,’ Miles said, sweetly. ‘Let me help you and keep my mind off the audition. Please?’

  Anna twisted her mouth into a knot as she thought for a moment and then shrugged and nodded. ‘OK, Sherlock, so tell me, how is this a lead if she’s not been at the club for over a year?’

  ‘Well, someone she used to know, even maybe still knows, might work there and remember her. We go to the Scarlet Slipper and we case the joint. I will be your bodyguard, protect you from all those unsavoury types that hang out in strip clubs.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever hung out in strip clubs?’

  ‘Well, yes, I know what to expect,’ Miles said.

  ‘You’re quite enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Anna asked him, unable to resist a smile.

  ‘There are worse ways of avoiding the terror and fear about what will probably be my last shot at really making it than having a bash at being a knight in shining armour coming to the aid of a damsel in distress, I will concede.’ Miles nodded, smiling with one side of his mouth. ‘Plus, you know, burlesque at lunchtime in December in New York. It’s like all my Christmases have come at once.’

  The first thing Anna thought as she stepped out into the crisp December day on West 44th Street was she really should have paid the extra £3.99 to Scotchgard her new knee-length dove-grey suede boots. Back home, December had so far been a bland, mild, grey, rainy month without much glamour and decidedly absent of snow, a fact that Anna had been counting on God to rectify by the day of the wedding, certain that after all the crap he’d dished out in her life he had to owe her at least one beautifully snowy day when she required it. But just in case, she had a special effects unit from Shepperton Studios on speed-dial with their snow-making machine.

  Maybe this is it, Anna thought, looking upwards to where the skyscrapers disappeared into the sky that was gently wafting huge fat flakes of snow down onto them, as if they were trapped inside one of the snow globes that Anna had seen for sale at the airport.

  ‘Wow,’ Miles said, following her gaze upwards, and then looking around him with a delighted smile on his face, like a small boy unwrapping his long-dreamed-of Christmas present. ‘My God, look at where we are, Anna. And it’s snowing!’

  ‘I know,’ Anna said, unhappily. ‘I didn’t pack for snow, it’s going to ruin these boots.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Miles said, mildly. ‘Look around you, take in the moment. See how the snow’s made the city pristine and new, even now, after hours of New Yorkers trudging up and down the street. It’s adding another layer of pure white, just for us. And look at that.’ Miles pointed down the street, towards Times Square, which was jammed bumper to bumper with predominantly yellow taxis, the weather causing a sudden upswell in traffic. ‘Smell that exhaust, listen to those horns!’

  Anna took a deep breath of cold tinny air, immediately coughing it back out again. ‘I’m slightly asthmatic, you know.’

  ‘Look,’ Miles said, hooking his arm through hers, in what Anna thought was a particularly overfamiliar gesture. ‘Look, there are fairy lights in all the trees, Christmas decorations in every window. And the Scarlet Slipper is on East 46th and Park so it will take us across Fifth Avenue – we’ll get to see all the Christmas lights, maybe do some window shopping. It’s brilliant!’

  Anna slipped her arm out of Miles’s with some difficulty as he turned to her and smiled, happily. ‘Do you know what, I thought you were probably a total pain in the arse, but as it turns out I’m actually quite glad we’ve ended up here together – it’s a lot more fun to see and do this with someone, isn’t it?’

  Anna looked at him, as a fluffy snowflake settled starkly against his dark hair for a moment, before slowly melting away, his eyes seemingly all the brighter and, disconcertingly, even more blue in the white world they had stepped into.

  ‘Can’t we get a cab?’ she asked him, feeling suddenly excruciatingly guilty to be standing in this particular place, at that particular moment, looking into those particular eyes, instead of with Tom, who she felt sure was the only man she should be sharing a peak experience with. ‘My boots …’

  ‘Goddam it, woman!’ Miles said, taking her arm once again and dragging her in what Anna assumed was the correct direction. ‘Live life in the moment for once. We’re in New York, the world’s most exciting city, we’re on an adventure to save your wedding, not to mention your relationship, we’re going to a place where ladies dance on tables wearing not much more than a couple of sequins and glitter glue! I seriously think this might be the best day of my life.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Anna complied reluctantly. ‘But I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own without you frogmarching me around.’ Once again she removed her arm from his, causing Miles to shrug and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of the entirely inadequate battered-looking denim jacket he was wearing over a navy-blue hoody.

  ‘So you say we’re crossing Fifth Avenue,’ Anna asked him. ‘Not walking down it until we find Saks, going in and then basically buying everything we see?’

  ‘Ha.’ Miles smiled. ‘We can do that after, as a treat.’

  ‘As a treat for what?’ Anna asked, having to hop a little to keep up with him as he strode purposefully through the crowds that all seemed to be going in the opposite direction.

  ‘As a treat for pure, prim, innocent little Anna being brave enough to go to what is essentially a strip bar,’ Miles told her.

  ‘I’m not prim, I’m not innocent and I am certainly not pure! I’ve been to strip clubs before. I’ve been to hundreds,’ Anna shouted after him, as he forged ahead without her. She stamped her booted foot in the snow, and realised just a little too late that she’d made her declaration right next to a pair of nuns queuing at a hot dog stand.

  ‘Oh, um, sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I didn’t mean … well, what I mean was that I’m not at all like he thinks I am. I haven’t actually been to a strip club before, I w
as just …’ Miserably, she looked up the street where she could still just about see Miles’s head bobbing above the crowd.

  ‘The Lord does not judge you, my child, he loves you, whatever your sins, as long as you repent them,’ one of the nuns told her, with a twinkle in her eye which gave Anna the distinct impression that she was trying not to giggle. ‘Now, go after that young man and don’t let him go. He’s fine.’

  Anna tottered as best as she could through the crowds in her kitten heels, the snow turning to sludge under her smooth soles, which slipped treacherously, as she tried to keep her eyes on Miles’s head in the distance. She was suddenly aware that, apart from him, as really very annoying and smug as he was, she was thousands of miles away from anyone or anything she knew. And besides, Miles had the map and if she got lost she would be too scared to ask any of these frightening-looking people who were barging past her with single-minded purpose for directions, for fear they might mug her at gunpoint. Taking her eyes off him for a moment to avoid an especially fierce-looking lady in a full-length fur coat, Anna was horrified to see that she had lost Miles in the crowd.

  ‘Damn, damn, damn,’ she muttered under her breath, increasing her pace, without looking at her feet, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him, but he was nowhere to be seen. And then the inevitable happened. Anna was caught in the perfect storm of snow, busy people hurrying past, and her slippery, smooth soles. All it took was one good old-fashioned shoulder barge from a woman with improbably high hair on her left, an unintentional trip from a man wearing a coat with shoulder pads bigger than his head on her right, and before she knew what was happening Anna was being propelled forwards in what was certainly destined to be a high-speed face plant right in the middle of a pile of suspiciously yellow-looking snow. At least it would have been if a strong arm hadn’t appeared out of nowhere and hooked her out of her fated trajectory, hauling her both to the side of the sidewalk and against a denim-clad chest.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Anna said to her rescuer accusingly. ‘Why the bloody hell did you rush off like that, I could have been murdered!’

  ‘I thought you were next to me.’ Miles shrugged. ‘And “murdered” is a little bit strong. This is New York not Beirut. Plus I just rescued you from a painful and not to mention humiliating fall.’

  ‘Yes, well …’ Anna stopped talking as she realised that Miles still had her body firmly clasped against his with the same strong rescuing arm that had pulled her out of her fall, and although her camel coat was reasonably thick, it was in no way thick enough for her not to notice that her soft curves were crushed against his lean hard body, the one with the muscles and those thighs and that bottom that she absolutely hadn’t looked at this morning as he’d lain sprawled, oblivious on the sofa. A slow tingling heat had begun to spread upwards throughout her body, radiating from, well, from a place that a lady didn’t like to talk about in public.

  Suddenly furious, Anna pushed him away, taking a moment to steady herself, until the curious and novel sensation of being physically close to Miles seeped away. No way could she let Miles see how her body had reacted to the proximity of his, absolutely not. This strange rebellion by her normally placid and verging on indifferent body had to be a temporary glitch, something to do with jet lag most likely. Not even Tom and his finely muscled kick-boxer’s body had ever had quite that impact on her, which was ridiculous, because everybody agreed that Tom was exceptionally handsome and about as sexy as any man could be. Never entirely sure what sexy was exactly, Anna had always simply taken it as read that Tom was it. Now though, she wasn’t so sure and it was an uncertainty she was keen to be in denial about as soon as possible.

  ‘Thank you for stopping me from falling,’ Anna said finally, deciding it would be best not to look directly at Miles until he’d successfully managed to annoy her again, and the unfamiliar feelings being near him stirred up in the pit of her tummy had gone again.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Miles said, taking her arm in his for the third time. ‘Now, let me escort you properly. I’m starving and I’m thinking burger, possibly with a side of boobs for lunch.’

  And there it was, normal service was resumed once again.

  The Scarlet Slipper was not how Anna imagined it would be. She’d been expecting a dingy basement, at the bottom of a flight of seedy-looking stairs, behind a rickety railing, which you had to go down as if descending into the depths of hell. Instead it had its own smart entrance right on the street, a smart neon-lit sign hanging above it, featuring a single red high-heeled shoe flashing on and off, and tasteful posters of ladies in boas both live and feather, and not to mention balloons, posing coquettishly behind spotlight glass either side of the revolving door. Anna felt sick as she followed Miles into the lobby, which was swathed in a red carpet that seemed to smother not only the floor, but the walls and the ceiling too, knowing that although she was unlikely to find Charisma here, she was about to face women exactly like her, the kind of women that Anna imagined were ballsy, confident and that thing that she had so little first-hand experience of – sexy. All the things that Tom’s first wife was and that she had never intentionally been, at least not with any notable success.

  ‘Table for two?’ A pretty young girl, dressed like a French maid, greeted them from behind the reception desk, making Anna blink and look studiously at the carpeted ceiling so that she wouldn’t have to confront the girl’s stocking tops, which peeped from beneath her lace-trimmed skirt. ‘There’s a show due to start in fifteen minutes, so it’s best to order before then, as the waitresses don’t take orders during a performance.’ She smiled at Miles, ignoring Anna, as she showed them down some runway-lit stairs, and into the tiny intimate theatre and to a table right by the stage. ‘You’re in luck, we’re not so busy today,’ the girl told Miles, winking at him. ‘Best seats in the house.’

  ‘Actually,’ Miles said, before the girl could leave, ‘my friend here is looking for someone.’

  ‘Really?’ the girl replied, wrinkling her nose up at Anna. ‘We’re not that sort of establishment.’

  ‘No I mean, a friend of hers … a friend who used to work here? About a year ago. Her name was Charisma Jones.’

  The girl looked blank. ‘And why would you be looking for this Charisma?’ she asked Anna.

  ‘She’s a friend – an old friend from my dancing days back in … Vegas,’ Anna said. ‘I’m in New York for a few days, I was hoping to track her down.’

  ‘You danced in Vegas, it’s true what they say, anyone can get work in that city,’ the girl said, giving her a scathing appraisal. ‘Look, I never heard of anyone called Charisma, but I’ve only been working here a few weeks. There’s a pretty high turnover of dancers here, but you could try talking to Mimi – she’s getting ready for the next show, backstage. She’s been here the longest, as far as I know. She might know something about your friend.’

  ‘Really?’ Anna said, grateful for the opportunity to leave as the lights went down and a spotlight appeared on the stage. ‘Come on, Miles.’

  ‘Oh no, they won’t let him back there,’ the girl said, smiling at Miles. ‘Too many weirdos and stalkers for us to let any guys backstage, but if you tell Tony, the security guy, that Liza said you could go talk to Mimi, then he’ll let you go. Don’t worry. I’ll personally make sure your friend has a great time.’

  ‘See you, babe,’ Miles said, leaning back in his chair, and ordering a quarter pounder.

  Anna wasn’t exactly sure why she was so furious with Miles, as she hurried in the general direction of what she assumed had to be the backstage, only that she was. Which was better than finding him inexplicably alluring, she supposed. She was confronted with the person who had to be Tony, a very large gentleman whose considerable bulk spilled over the edges of the spindly-looking stool he was perched on, as he guarded the stage door whilst reading what looked like a well-thumbed copy of American Psycho.

  ‘Hello there!’ Anna squeaked brightly, sounding about as posh and as English as she had ever
done. ‘You must be Tony? Liza said I could go backstage and talk to … um … Mimi, is it? She thought she might know where I could find my friend, Charisma, Charisma Jones?’

  Tony stopped reading a little after Anna had stopped speaking and, licking one fat finger, carefully turned down the corner of his page before finally focusing his yellowing eyes on her.

  ‘You here for a job?’ he asked her, gazing pointedly at her chest, which, as well covered as it was, still seemed to be his main point of focus.

  ‘Most certainly not,’ Anna said, pulling her bag protectively across her body, and reaching new heights of Englishness at the same time. ‘As I previously stated I am here to see Mimi, and to ascertain whether or not she knows the whereabouts of one Charisma Jones. Please will you let me pass at once, my good man.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Tony said, dropping his gaze as if he’d just been caught letching at the Queen. ‘Go straight through, ma’am. Mimi’s dressing room is the last on the right, the one with the star on the door. Ma’am.’

  ‘And about time too,’ Anna said primly, stepping smartly through what felt like a Looking Glass into a world that a great many people, Miles included, would certainly think of as the definition of Wonderland.

  The first thing to hit Anna as the door closed behind her was the assault of a variety of perfumes that brought tears to her eyes, and then the very surprising silence. She’d been expecting a corridor bustling with dancers, in all manner of feathers and fans, covered in balloons about to be popped, strolling along clutching outsize champagne glasses, or preparing to writhe around in bubbles in time to the music. But in actual fact, apart from the pungent scent that told her that many a young lady had passed through this way quite recently wearing a good deal of cheap perfume, the dressing-room area was remarkably sedate. What doors were open revealed empty rooms, scattered with costumes, dressing tables laden with make-up and abandoned false lashes, waiting for the chance to flutter once again. Anna could not guess what lay behind the doors that were shut, but as she heard the sound of muted laughter and voices, she guessed it was acts preparing for that afternoon’s appearance. As she reached the end of the corridor, she found what she assumed must be Mimi’s dressing room, exactly as Tony told her she would, star pinned haphazardly to the closed door, with a definite look of the home-made about it, above a name plaque that declared miss mimi me! complete with an exclamation mark. Taking a breath and trying to remember exactly why she was here, Anna knocked quietly on the door and, after a few seconds of silence, knocked again.