The Mistletoe Pact: A totally perfect Christmas romantic comedy Read online

  The Mistletoe Pact

  A totally perfect Christmas romantic comedy

  Jo Lovett

  Books by Jo Lovett

  The Mistletoe Pact

  The House Swap

  The First Time We Met

  Available in Audio

  The First Time We Met (Available in the UK and in the US)

  Contents

  1. Now – Christmas Eve 2021

  2. Then – 23rd December 2013

  3. Then – Christmas Eve 2013

  4. Now – Christmas Eve 2021

  5. Now – Christmas Eve 2021

  6. Now – Christmas Day 2021

  7. Now – Christmas Day 2021

  8. Then – December 2014

  9. Then – December 2014

  10. Now – January 2022

  11. Now – February 2022

  12. Then – October 2016

  13. Then – October 2016

  14. Then – October 2016

  15. Now – March 2022

  16. Now – April 2022

  17. Now – May 2022

  18. Then – Christmas 2019

  19. Then – Christmas 2019

  20. Now – May 2022

  21. Now – July 2022

  22. Now – August 2022

  23. Now – August 2022

  24. Then – July 2021

  25. Then – July 2021

  26. Now – August 2022

  27. Now – August 2022

  28. Now – August 2022

  29. Now – August 2022

  30. Now – September 2022

  31. Then – 23rd December 2021

  32. Now – September 2022

  33. Now – September 2022

  34. Now – October 2022

  35. Now – October 2022

  36. Now – October 2022

  37. Now – November 2022

  38. Now – November 2022

  39. Now – December 2022

  40. Now – December 2022

  Epilogue

  The House Swap

  Hear More from Jo

  Books by Jo Lovett

  A Letter from Jo

  The First Time We Met

  Acknowledgements

  *

  To William

  One

  Now – Christmas Eve 2021

  Evie

  Evie opened her eyes and squinted upwards.

  Pink. She was in a very, very pink room, with a lot of hearts. The ceiling was pink. The wallpaper was pink with padded hearts on it. The cushion on the (pink) chair opposite was pink and heart-shaped.

  What room was this? Why was she here? She was definitely awake, not dreaming. This was definitely a real pink room.

  She shook her head slightly.

  Ow. It was like there was a band clamped across her forehead.

  Her neck hurt too. There were a lot of lumps in her pillow.

  She turned her head to the right.

  Oh no.

  Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  She was in bed with Dan. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

  Drink. Sex.

  A lot of drink and a lot of sex.

  No, no, no.

  Although also, yes, yes, yessss, because from what she remembered, the sex had been good, really good. Amazing.

  But mainly, no. Because Dan was Dan and they’d snogged once, a long time ago, and they flirted a bit, but they didn’t sleep together; they just didn’t do that. Maybe they should have done, though, because the more she remembered the more she knew that last night had been fantastic.

  The memories were flooding back now.

  They’d talked about their fallback pact.

  Oh God. A wedding chapel. A wedding service.

  Oh no.

  Nooooo.

  She and Dan had got married. Disaster. Married. Married.

  They’d got drunk-married in Vegas. Who actually did that?

  Bloody hell.

  And now, God, they were obviously going to have to get divorced. Divorced. They’d managed to change their marital status without ever really having been married. And how were they going to get divorced? Would it be expensive? Would it involve a lot of admin?

  God.

  She turned her head carefully and took another look at Dan. He was still asleep, facing her, his head nestled on his own lumpy, pink, heart-shaped pillow. Funny how someone’s face could look different when they were asleep. Awake, he laughed a lot. In repose, his features looked quite harsh. Still gorgeous, though.

  And still lovely, kind, funny Dan. She really hoped that last night wouldn’t have ruined their friendship.

  Unbelievable that, after all these years, they’d had actual sex. It had been so good. She wished she’d been sober enough to remember all the good bits properly.

  And what was wrong with her? It wasn’t the not-having-been-sober-enough-to-remember-all-the-sex she should be worrying about, it was the marriage.

  Dan’s eyes pinged open very suddenly and he did the lying down equivalent of leaping backwards. Yep, she might have had her face a bit too close to his. Her head and neck weren’t feeling very mobile though, so it was hard to move.

  ‘Evie,’ he barked. ‘Oh my God.’ He was simultaneously staring and frowning, like he’d just seen something truly horrifying. Her.

  ‘I know,’ Evie said, scrunching her face up. Her head was really hurting now. The lights were far too bright. Getting from here – lying in a random hotel bed next to Dan – to being back in her own hotel, showered and in clean clothes, ready to start her day – her birthday for God’s sake – was suddenly feeling like an insurmountable obstacle. And actually, why were they here and not in their own hotel? She frowned, trying to sift through last night’s memories. Something about them having bought a special honeymoon hotel package?

  ‘What are we…?’ It was amazing how, with bloodshot eyes that he couldn’t fully open and serious stubble, Dan still looked so good.

  Evie just raised her eyebrows and did some more face scrunching. It would probably be better for him to remember things for himself gradually.

  Dan did a manic patting motion under the sheets and the cerise, nylonny velour bedspread covering them nearly fell onto the floor.

  ‘Oh my God. Naked,’ he said. Maybe he didn’t remember all the sex. Maybe he wasn’t going to remember that they were married. Again, God, married.

  If he didn’t remember, she was going to have to tell him. Not immediately, though. It would be hard to find the right words. Hopefully he’d remember for himself eventually, if she waited.

  ‘I know.’ Evie nodded. Ouch.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ It sounded like he was starting to remember.

  He turned away from her and looked over the side of the bed and did more patting around.

  ‘I can’t see my clothes,’ he said. He suddenly froze. ‘Oh my God.’ There it was; that had to be him remembering everything.

  Evie just lay there. She couldn’t think of any words that would do justice to the magnitude of the situation.

  Dan unfroze after a few seconds and slid off the bed, taking the bedspread with him and wrapping it round his waist in one impressively athletic motion.

  Evie’s shoulders were cold. Because they were bare. She dragged the bedclothes up so that they were tucked round her neck.

  ‘Um, married,’ Dan said. Croaked, really.

  Evie nodded and screwed her face up further.

  ‘Do you think we can get divorced today?’ Dan adjusted the bedspread so that it covered more of him. At any other time, Evie woul
d have been disappointed, because he had a great chest and it didn’t seem that likely that she was ever going to see it again at close quarters.

  ‘Probably. I mean, a lot of people probably get married in Vegas and regret it.’ She’d said that in a really normal voice, which was surprising, because married in Vegas; it was really hard not to freak about the fact that they were married.

  ‘Yeah. We can google it.’ Dan was shuffling himself and the bedspread around the room now, gathering up clothing.

  ‘Yep. Good plan.’ Evie stayed put, holding the sheets up to her chin. It was a good plan. Definitely. Google had an answer for everything. Hopefully.

  Eventually, Dan sat down on the other side of the bed and, with his left hand holding the bedspread in place, began to sort through their clothes with his right.

  He placed her lovely new red dress – which she couldn’t really imagine wearing again now because of the memories – on the bed next to her, followed by her tights, her bra (quite a nice black one) and her pants (beige, huge and stomach-flattening because she had not been expecting to pull last night). Dan folded the pants in four as he put them down and Evie winced. And then winced more at the memory of when he’d tried to pull them off and she’d had to help him and it had taken ages and they’d both got quite out of breath because the pants were seriously tight.

  ‘Would you like to use the bathroom first?’ Dan asked.

  Nope. It might not be soundproof and she didn’t fancy weeing with him sitting just outside. Plus, would she realistically be able to get herself out of bed with the sheets still wrapped round her without flashing any more flesh? She’d be a lot better off waiting until he’d gone.

  ‘You go first,’ she said.

  ‘Sure? Okay, thanks.’

  Evie watched Dan shuffle himself and the bedspread into the bathroom, and then resumed staring at the pink ceiling, trying very hard not to let any tears squeeze out.

  Happy birthday, me, she thought. Thirty years old today. She had a lot to be thankful for, like how she’d definitely ticked a lot of the boxes you wanted to tick by your thirtieth. A wonderful family, yes. Great friends, yes. A career that she loved, yes.

  No hint of a proper love life and about to be divorced, not so much. Friendship with Dan possibly ruined, also not so much.

  In a parallel life, if she was honest, she’d have loved this marriage to have been planned and to have involved all their family and friends and been meant to last forever. Like her occasional fantasies over the years when she thought about their fallback pact.

  But this wasn’t a parallel life, it was her actual life, and clearly the pact was never going to have played out like that.

  Two

  Then – 23rd December 2013

  Evie

  Evie’s mother pouted at herself in the hall mirror, applied another coat of glossy red Chanel lipstick, pouted again, and scrunched her fingers into her long blonde hair for a bit more volumising.

  ‘You look gorgeous, Mum.’ Evie smiled at her. ‘Very glamorous.’ Her mother was a lot more glamorous than all Evie’s friends’ mums, and not just because she was a good ten years younger than most of them. Evie was pretty sure that she was the kind of woman who’d still be glamorous when she was in her seventies and eighties.

  Her mum turned round and smiled back at her. ‘You’re gorgeous. I am so proud of myself having given birth to you. Look at your beautiful eyebrows. Honestly, who doesn’t ever need to pluck? Only my perfect daughter. And your amazing hair. And your beautiful brown eyes. I can’t actually believe you’re twenty-two tomorrow. It’s only five minutes since you were a baby.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Evie. I do like that top, and it looks great with your jeans, and you have the perfect figure for what you’re wearing, but I’m thinking if you just undid another button, or maybe even two more, you’d look a lot more available.’

  ‘Honestly.’ Evie took a step backwards and batted her mum’s hands away from the buttons on her blouse. ‘Available is a grim word.’

  ‘You are available, though. And I’m not sure the boys realise that.’

  ‘Mum. Honestly.’ Evie couldn’t say that it didn’t matter if no-one realised straight off that she was available, because what she wanted was a serious relationship, with someone very sensible, who she could eventually get married to and have children with and stay with forever. That might hurt her mum’s feelings, given that it was the exact opposite of all her relationships.

  ‘I just worry about you, that’s all. You’re turning twenty-two, not sixty-two. You should be having fun.’

  It was lovely that her mother cared so much about her, but Evie could really do without the constant questioning – in person, and by text when she was away in Birmingham at uni – about whether she was sure she was happy and whether she thought she might have more fun if she ‘let her hair down’ a bit more, specifically with regard to boys and big nights out. It wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy a little drink; she just didn’t like spending the morning after with her head over a toilet bowl. And it wasn’t like she didn’t like boys, just not too many of them and not ones who’d make her cry after they’d slept together once. ‘Maybe you’ll meet someone nice this evening.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Evie said again, trying really hard not to sigh loudly and roll her eyes.

  ‘Maybe just one button?’ Her mum was looking at her top again. ‘You have such gorgeous skin and such a fab cleavage. You should be showing that off. Especially in the winter when everyone else is so pale.’ Oh, God. Cleavage. Any minute the conversation would be veering in the direction of actual sex chat. Evie adored her mother and she loved spending time with her, but, if she was honest, she could do without all the openness. She was pretty sure that there were zero sex discussions between her best friend Sasha and her mother, for example. ‘You know your boobs probably won’t be this amazing forever. They lose a bit of bounce over time,’ her mum added.

  ‘Fine. One button.’ Anything to stop the conversation. She could do it up again in a minute.

  Her mum reached forward and tugged Evie’s blouse down away from her shoulder and adjusted her camisole top. ‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘Now, while we’re on the subject…’ No, no, no. This was where her mum was going to start on some advice about sex.

  ‘We should go,’ Evie said, taking her coat off the hook next to the front door and putting it on. ‘We’re going to be late.’

  ‘Better to make an entrance than to be boringly on time,’ her mum said as they stepped out of the front door of their cottage.

  They walked arm in arm down the little lane from their house to the green in the middle of their village, Melting Bishop, and then round the edge of the green – Evie’s mum didn’t want to ruin her heels on the grass – and up to Sasha’s parents’ wide Cotswold stone house in the middle of the opposite side, arriving at the same time as another family from Melting and a couple who Evie thought she recognised as friends of Sasha’s older sister Lucie.

  Sasha’s mother, Fiona – wearing a knee-length, velvet dress, nude court shoes and pale-pink lipstick, and holding a full champagne glass – opened the door. ‘Welcome, everyone. Happy Christmas.’

  Two hours later, Evie’s dancing companion gave her one last twirl, let go of her, boogied himself a couple of steps backwards, and started some impressive arm-popping, his eyes locked on hers the whole time. Evie pushed her tinsel headband out of her eyes, smiled at him and decided to stick with some bog-standard swaying and hand clapping. There was a time and a place for pulling serious moves on the dance floor, and that was not here, at her best friend’s parents’ annual Christmas party, with her mother only a few feet away.

  Because whatever moves Evie produced, there was every chance her mother would join in and go one better, like she had last year. She’d dropped into the splits, pulled a hamstring, fallen forwards in agony, landed hard on her arm and broken her wrist, and Evie had had to cart her off to A&E in Cheltenham.

  The arm popper was very good-look
ing. Light-brown skin, similar to Evie’s, a lot of dark curly hair, and nice eyes. He was still smiling at her. Evie clapped herself round in a little circle, firstly to give her face a break from smiling back at him, and secondly to check whether her mum had noticed that it looked like she was on the brink of pulling.

  If Evie publicly snogged a good-looking stranger this evening, she’d hopefully get her mum off her back for at least the next month or two. Evie would have to make sure there were witnesses, so that her mum heard about it on the village grapevine if she didn’t see it with her own eyes. She could kiss him just outside as they were leaving. She should probably start chatting to him now.

  It would be nice to know his name. She wasn’t big on snogging anonymous strangers.

  Her mum was right: Evie wasn’t always very good at spontaneity when it came to men.

  She clapped herself a little closer to him, widened her smile and said, ‘I’m Evie.’

  ‘Well, hello, Evie. I’m Jack.’ Jack looked her up and down, very deliberately, from head to toe, which, if she was honest, made her a bit uncomfortable, and then, with a slow smile, started to bend his head towards hers. Oh, okay, the kiss was going to happen right here. Under bright lights. In front of lots of people. In Sasha’s parents’ house. Well, at least her mother would definitely see, and it was definitely spontaneous. And she did know his name. It was definitely the right thing to do.