All I Want For Christmas: A festive short story

All I Want For Christmas: A festive short story Claudia Carroll Dreams come true on Christmas day … don’t they?It’s three days until Lucy and Andrew’s perfect winter wedding. Over Christmas dinner the two families will meet for the first time.What could possibly go wrong?!Jo has planned her first Christmas as a married woman with military precision. But it seems her new husband Dave has gone missing …Strict vegans Dawn and Kirk slave away over a unique Christmas feast, but Dawn’s mum doesn’t like mung beans. And she certainly doesn’t like Kirk …Will these couples survive the Christmas madness and get the day they dreamed of?Treat yourself with this GORGEOUS FESTIVE SHORT STORY by the BRILLIANTLY FUNNY Sunday Times top ten BESTSELLING author Claudia Carroll! ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS … A festive short story by Claudia Carroll Copyright (#udf9a89ed-c827-5a38-bd31-ab19bc34481f) Published by Avon an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Copyright © Claudia Carroll 2014 Cover illustrations: Shutterstock Design: www.emma-rogers.com (http://www.emma-rogers.com) Claudia Carroll asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © November 2014 ISBN: 9780008126865 Version: 2014-11-13 Contents Cover (#u3ad09a69-85e5-5ac1-b823-8ebc3c924365) Title Page (#u9e46ebf5-8b26-5f68-a280-b6f07813e1ff) Copyright All I want for Christmas … (#u38e3f8d3-c4d7-5696-b41c-be6332c52615) About the Author Also by Claudia Carroll About the Publisher This would be her very last Christmas as a single woman and Lucy had gone all-out to impress. So here she was in her fancy Dining Room putting out proper, carefully annotated place cards for all her guests if you don’t mind, before she’d serve them Christmas dinner later on that night. ‘Like something out of Downton Abbey,’ she smiled to herself, praying that it would all go off smoothly. It would be the very last time before she got married that both her family and Andrew’s would all be under the same roof. First thing tomorrow, she and Andrew were due to fly to the Caribbean for their luxury New Year’s Eve wedding on a beach in Cancun, Mexico. Lucy couldn’t wait and practically had the hours counted down at this stage. The problem was tonight, because the potential for trouble was undeniable. Lucy’s family was loud and boisterous; she had two older sisters and a brother, all married and all bringing their partners and kids along too. Which was great; a happy family Christmas with kids running around underfoot was exactly what Lucy craved. But then there was Andrew’s family to consider too. He’d been married before you see, and his two grown up children from his first marriage were coming along. Alannah and Josh. Oh God, where to start about Alannah and Josh? They were twins and at twenty-eight, just two years younger than their stepmother-to-be and not exactly happy about their Dad moving on so quickly after his divorce. But wait till you see, Lucy thought hopefully as she laid out the last of the place settings and fussed over the linen napkins. This Christmas dinner will bring us all together as one big, happy, blended family. She’d gone to so much trouble to impress them all; how could it not? The dining table looked breathtaking too; groaning under silver candelabra and the horrifyingly expensive holly and mistletoe flower arrangements Lucy had splurged out on. Well, she figured, her family had been through enough Christmases where there was barely enough food on the table to feed all fourteen of them – nieces and nephews included – so now that she was on the verge of marrying a man who loved to see her splash the cash, why not indulge a bit? Just then, Andrew came into the Dining room and slipped his arms warmly around her waist. ‘It looks stunning darling,’ he said as she snuggled deep into him, as ever loving the feel of his strong arms wrapped tight around her. ‘But not as stunning as my bride-to-be!’ he added, kissing the top of her head lightly. She looked up at him, as ever marveling at how sexy he looked for a man in his late-fifties. Her Silver Fox as she called him, her dream come true. ‘This, my darling,’ she whispered, leaning up so she could kiss him, ‘is about to be our happiest Christmas ever.’ Exactly three hours later, Lucy sat back from the dining table and dug her fork into the palm of her hand to physically stop herself from screeching out loud. This, she thought, has to be the worst Christmas ever on record and that was really saying something. For starters, there was mayhem at the table, as her eight- and ten-year-old nephews insisted on having a game of soccer around the dining table totally ignoring exasperated calls of their parents to ‘sit down and eat your dinner!’ Meanwhile two of her nieces were all but torturing poor Andrew, clambering all over him, knocking over his dinner and managing to spill both red wine and cranberry sauce all over his good Italian suit and her crisp, snow-white table cloth. That much Lucy could stomach, and Andrew himself was coping with the kids with his usual endless patience. What was making Lucy wince was the way her twelve year old niece kept pointedly saying, ‘but are you really getting married to my Aunt Lucy? You’re like … totally ancient compared to her! She’s only young and you’re an old man!’ The hot flush on Andrew’s face spoke volumes. Then there were her two brothers-in-law, who all but spat out Andrew’s expensive Bordeaux wine, claiming it tasted like cat wee and asking if he’s any tins of cider floating around the place. But all this was just the warm-up act to Alannah and Josh, who literally hadn’t stopped needling Lucy from the very moment they’d first crossed her threshold. Everything was wrong for them, from the turkey that Lucy had spend hours sweating over, to the fondant whipped potatoes that took her two full hours to perfect. Josh had chosen the dinner table to announce that he was newly coeliac/vegetarian and pointedly shoved his dinner away from him, whereas right after the main course, Alannah muttered ‘amazing the prepared dinners you can get from Marks and Spencer’s these days, isn’t it?’ The comment had been directed at Josh, but Lucy overheard her loud and clear, just as she was meant to, no doubt. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/claudia-carroll/all-i-want-for-christmas-a-festive-short-story/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.