I didn’t hear from Xander again all week, but he said he’d be there on Thursday and Dot said he’d be there on Thursday so I had no reason to think he wouldn’t be. But I was still surprised when he arrived before anyone else with what appeared to be a wriggling lump under his coat.
“I’m a little early,” he said.
“No problem, come in.” It was absolutely freezing outside. “Um…” I looked at the lump under his coat again. “Your coat seems to be moving.”
“Ah yes,” he said, as a snuffly wet nose appeared out of the front of his coat, followed by two big brown eyes and two floppy ears. “This is Gus.” He placed a small sausage dog on the floor and took his coat off. When I’d wondered about what breed of dog Xander Stone walked along the River Thames I hadn’t thought it would be a sausage dog. Gus trotted off into the bookshop and disappeared into the cookery section, just as Philomena had done the week before.
“I’m not sure…” I began. We didn’t usually allow dogs in the bookshop unless they were service dogs. I started to walk towards the cookery section myself to see what Gus was up to. “We don’t usually let dogs into…” I paused again, looking over my shoulder at Xander. “He is house-trained, isn’t he?”
Xander laughed. “He is definitely house-trained,” he confirmed. “He’s just quite curious. Here, let me fetch him.” He strode past me into the cookery section and returned a few seconds later with Gus in his arms.
“He didn’t come with you last week, though,” I said.
“No, my brother was looking after him last week, but I don’t like to leave him with other people for too long.”
My discomfort about having a dog in the bookshop must have shown on my face because Xander offered to take him back to Dot’s.
“Dot said you wouldn’t mind but I can see she’s not mentioned it to you and that you’re not very comfortable. I’m sure he’ll be OK on his own for an hour or two.”
Xander was wearing a dark blue cashmere roll-neck sweater and dark jeans. He’d rolled the sleeves of his sweater up, exposing muscular forearms, and Gus had settled down into the crook of his elbow. As I looked at him, my stomach flipped over and I had to look away before he saw me blushing yet again.
“Of course he can stay,” I said as I walked over to the table I’d already prepared for the book club meeting and started to move the wine glasses around unnecessarily. “Just maybe if he didn’t wander around on his own?”
“He’ll probably fall asleep soon anyway. He’s had a very exciting day of travel and being spoiled by Dot and I’ve just given him a long walk.”
“Do sausage dogs need such long walks?” I asked. “They have such little legs.”
“And a lot of energy.”
My cheeks had cooled down enough to be able to turn around and look at Xander again. “You don’t really strike me as the sausage dog type,” I said.
“And what sort of type do you think I am?” he asked, smiling wolfishly at me.
I shrugged. “Something bigger,” I said.
“I see.” He smirked and raised an eyebrow. I felt my cheeks flame again.
“Like a wolfhound or a German shepherd,” I went on. They were the only big dogs I could think of off the top of my head.
“Wolfhounds and German shepherds are not the best dogs to keep in central London apartments.”
“No, I suppose not,” I replied, looking at Gus, who was staring back at me with big doleful eyes.
“That’s the look he gave me when he saw me at the shelter,” Xander said. “I’m embarrassed to admit that look was all it took for me to be smitten.”
Gus barked as if to confirm the story.
“What would your adoring public think if they knew that Xander Stone was such a softie?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He smiled at me again then and my stomach did that thing that it seemed to do whenever Xander was around. There was something about him standing there cuddling a small dog that was bringing up all sorts of feelings that I hadn’t felt in years.
“As you’re here early,” I said, breaking eye contact and trying to get those feelings back under control. “Can you help me move this bookcase? I need to make space for our dance lesson and I can’t do it on my own and I don’t want to disturb Mum while she’s writing.”
“Your mum’s a writer too?” Xander asked as he put Gus down on one of the chairs, where he promptly curled up and went to sleep.
“She writes historical romance serials for magazines,” I replied. “I can’t imagine why she didn’t tell you, what with you being such a fan of historical romance!”
“Yes, well…” he said as he picked up one end of the bookcase and the muscles in his forearms flexed in a way that almost made me drop my end on my toe.
“Megan,” he said softly as we pushed the bookcase against the wall. “I came here early to see if you were OK. I really appreciated what you shared with me on Saturday and I wanted to ask…” But as he spoke the bookshop door opened and two of the tallest, broadest men I’d ever seen in my life squeezed through, closely followed by Bella and Missy.
“Maybe later,” Xander said quietly.
“The Vikings are ready for their dancing lesson,” Missy called out as Bella giggled beside her. Then they saw us, standing close together.
“Oooh, are we interrupting something?” Bella cooed.
“No, nothing,” I snapped, stepping away from Xander. Why did I feel so embarrassed? As though we’d been caught doing something we shouldn’t have been doing. “I’m just going to pop upstairs to get Mum. As soon as Trixie gets here with the music we can start.”
*
Colin was the last to arrive. He slid into the bookshop at the last minute just as I’d given up on him coming at all.
He had been very reluctant when I’d asked him.
“You only want me to come to make up the numbers for the dancing,” he’d said.
“Last week I had to force you to stay away,” I’d replied.
“Last week I wanted to meet Xander Stone and you know it.”
“Xander will be here this week too,” I’d said, even though at that point I still hadn’t been sure if he would come or not.
Colin’s brow had furrowed in what looked like disgust and disbelief. “He’s doing this ridiculous dancing?” he’d asked.
“It’s not ridiculous.”
“Well I’ve met Xander now anyway,” Colin had said dismissively. I had a feeling that Colin had been disappointed by Xander.
“How do you know about the dancing anyway?” I’d asked.
“It’s all Bella and Missy have been talking about all week,” he’d replied. “You act as though I’m not there half the time but I can hear everything you say so…” He’d shrugged.
I knew that Missy didn’t think particularly highly of Colin and I was just as guilty as she was when it came to ignoring him. As for Bella, she didn’t even work here!
“I’m sorry,” I’d said. “You’re a valuable member of Taylor’s Bookshop too and I want you to be there for the Christmas Eve party and I’d love it if you learned to dance the quadrille with the rest of us.”
He’d folded his arms across his chest. “And partner your mother no doubt,” he’d said.
“You can have an extra day off over Christmas,” I’d replied, rather rashly as it would be me who’d be working instead.
It must have worked though, because here he was, and Xander must have noticed Colin looking uncomfortable because he raised a hand in greeting. Colin seemed to relax a little then.
“Can we all concentrate please,” Trixie shouted, banging a walking cane that she had acquired from somewhere on my beautiful wooden floors. She looked like a geriatric version of that dance teacher from The Kids From ‘Fame’.
We all listened again as she explained, with the use of diagrams, the dance steps involved.
The quadrille, Trixie told us, is danced in sets of two couples standing in a rectangle and is similar to American square dancing. None of us really knew what that was either so it wasn’t much help.
“No, Artemis, it’s nothing like line dancing,” Trixie scolded when Missy tried to show us all a grapevine with heel dig and pivot turn.
“I didn’t know you did line dancing,” I whispered.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Missy replied mysteriously.
“Stan and I will demonstrate,” Trixie said. Stan was a tall, well-dressed man in a dapper three-piece suit and I wondered if he was the owner of the walking cane. I hadn’t noticed when he’d arrived. He seemed to be around the same age as Trixie – which was unusual in itself as she had a preference for younger men. He was also less susceptible to being bossed around than her previous boyfriends. From what little I’d seen of him so far, he seemed lovely. “As the name suggests, and as I’ve set out here,” Trixie went on, pointing her cane at one of the diagrams, “the quadrille is danced in a group of four couples – so, Megan, you and Xander can dance with us.”
I tried to resist, pretending I had to get another bottle of wine out of the fridge and that Bella and her Viking Norm could do it instead but, surprisingly, Xander had already stepped into the space we had cleared earlier for the dancing. He seemed very keen and turned towards me holding out his hand, which unnerved me slightly. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to acknowledge how I felt about him. It was just that after all these years I didn’t really know what to do with those feelings.
I felt Missy give me a gentle shove in the lower back and I staggered into the middle of the room, reluctantly taking Xander’s hand. And there was that tingly feeling again.
“Right,” Trixie said as she arranged Bella and Norm and Missy and Norm’s friend, who nobody had been introduced to yet, so that each couple was standing on one of the four sides of a square looking into the centre. Everyone else looked on. “Let’s begin.”
Trixie pressed ‘play’ on the portable CD player she’d brought with her and what I think was harpsichord music filled the shop. It did feel for a moment as though we were in a Jane Austen adaptation. This would be brilliant when we were all in costume. Suddenly my head was full of images of Xander in breeches and…
“Concentrate, Megan,” Trixie snapped at me. I was very aware of the heat in my cheeks again and Xander’s hand in mine. “What did I just say?”
“I… that… um…” I stammered.
“I said that you, me, Stan and Xander are the head couples.”
“Which means?”
“We dance first.”
“But how…?”
“Follow me,” Trixie said. I felt Xander squeeze my hand and then let go as he stepped into the centre to take Trixie’s arm. He must have been paying attention when I was daydreaming about him in breeches. I took Stan’s arm and he twirled me around and back to Xander. At least someone knew what they were doing.
After we’d practised the first part of the dance a few times it was our turn to be ‘side couples’ as Bella, Missy and the Vikings took a turn. Trixie did a lot of sighing and eye rolling as they danced but I thought they did very well considering this was their first time.
“You seem to have taken to this very easily,” I whispered to Xander as the others danced. “Have you done it before?”
“I don’t like to go into things blind,” he replied. “So I may have watched some YouTube videos over the last few days.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why are you so interested in this anyway?”
He looked down at me for a moment. “I’d have thought that was obvious,” he said and my breath caught in my throat.
Before he could say anything else Trixie was issuing instructions again.
“Artemis, can you please try to keep your head up and dance on the balls of your feet.” She sighed. I’ve no idea why she and Missy always managed to rub each other up the wrong way but they did. “You look like a baby elephant.”
That was it for Missy and she collapsed into giggles, which set Bella off too. Norm and his friend looked bewildered. I wondered how much Bella had told them about dancing quadrilles before they’d come tonight. I suspected not very much.
“Let’s swap you four out,” Trixie said and Bella, Missy and the Vikings were replaced by Mum, Colin, Dot and Stan’s friend John who had come along to be Dot’s dance partner. He was short and bald and wore round gold-rimmed glasses and seemed to be making Dot laugh a lot.
“Is he flirting with her?” Xander asked me.
“I do hope so.” I smiled. “Dot deserves some fun.” I’d only known Dot about a year but I’d never once known her to date or even to go to dinner with anyone who wasn’t a colleague at the university. She was a bone fide introvert and very happy in her own company, just like Mum. But it was nice to see someone making her laugh.
As one of the ‘head couples’ I was expected to dance the quadrille again with our new ‘side couples’ rather than go and talk to Norm and his friend, which is what I wanted to do. Over the course of the next hour Xander and I must have danced the first parts of the quadrille about three hundred times with the other couples being swapped out at Trixie’s whim. Meanwhile Gus, who had been sleeping under a chair for a while, woke up and became very excited at seeing his master dance. He somehow got up onto the table, despite his small legs, and started to bark in time with the music.
“Whose dog is this?” Trixie shouted in disgust over the noise.
Xander rushed over to try to calm Gus down. “This is Gus. I didn’t get a chance to introduce him to you all.” Nobody had had a chance to be introduced and everyone took this as a cue to wind things down and make a fuss of Gus, who was clearly in his element. Trixie, however, had other ideas.
“Enough,” I said firmly when Trixie wanted us to go through it again. “Can we please have a break? My feet are killing me.”
“Yeah come on, Trixie,” Missy said as she tickled Gus’s chin. “I think we’ve all got the hang of it now. We are only doing a fun demonstration at the party – it’s not like we’re entering a competition.”
“And this is meant to be a book club,” Dot interjected.
“OK, OK,” Trixie said reluctantly. “We can break for wine and snacks if you like.”
“Has anyone read anything fun this week?” Dot asked as I poured wine for everyone, knowing full well this wouldn’t be just a break and that nobody was going to be doing any more dancing tonight.
“I want to know what Xander thought of The Devil in Winter,” Bella said, raising her eyebrows in Xander’s direction. “And be polite please, it’s one of my absolute favourites.”
“Well…” Xander began carefully, sitting down next to me and placing Gus on his knee. “I didn’t hate it…” He repeated what he’d said to me at the Christmas Market. It was clearly his stock line in diplomacy.
“Ha!” Bella interrupted triumphantly. “Snobby, arrogant Xander Stone likes my favourite romance novel.”
“Bella!” I said and Gus barked at her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Before you get too triumphant about it,” Xander said, holding up his hand, “I haven’t finished. It was a lot of fun but I’m inclined to agree with Megan and Martha that the hero leaves a lot to be desired.”
“You read a romance novel?” Colin asked quietly from the corner he was sulking in. He had most definitely not enjoyed dancing the quadrille and probably should have watched a few YouTube videos before joining us. Perhaps we all should have done though, to be fair.
Xander nodded. “Megan quite rightly pulled me up for being a snob about genre fiction.”
“Well he clearly only read it because Megan asked him to and he wants to…” Mercifully Colin stopped there when Mum tapped him on the shoulder but I could feel my cheeks burning again. Why did everyone seem to think that Xander and I were a done deal? We hadn’t even been on a proper date yet and I didn’t know if we would do. I was surprised that he kept turning up to book club, to be honest. Was that really just to spend time with me? Was that what he meant earlier, before Trixie interrupted us?
“I’ve also read One Day in December, Love Story and half of Northanger Abbey,” Xander went on and Colin’s eyebrows shot right up into his fringe. I felt a bit sorry for him, as though his hero was being torn to pieces in front of his very eyes.
“You read One Day in December.” Dot beamed at him. “What did you think?”
“I loved it, Dot, you were right. I need to read with more of an open mind.”
“I’ll get you to read Ruby Bell yet.” Dot laughed.
I watched a strange look pass over Xander’s face as though he was slightly repulsed at the thought of reading Ruby Bell. I’d have thought he’d think more highly than that of one of Dot’s favourite writers. We had a long way to go to turn Xander into a romance reader.
“Love Story isn’t a romance though,” Missy said. “Just to be clear.”
“Why not?” Xander asked. “It’s ridiculously romantic.” He looked at me for a moment as he said it and my breath caught in my throat.
“I’ll admit it’s romantic,” Missy said. “But it’s not a romance because they don’t get their HEA.”
“HEA?” Norm asked.
“Happy Ever After!” we all chorused at him.
Everybody started talking at once, mostly trying to recommend books for Xander to read next, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for Bella to introduce me to Norm, who shook my hand in bone-crushing way.
“He’s got a PhD in chemistry from Bristol,” Bella said proudly.
“Is that a qualification needed to dress up as a Viking at a novelty museum in York?” I laughed.
Norm’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. “Yeah I know,” he said. “My mum said the same thing, but I’ve always loved doing Viking re-enactments and when I heard about the job I thought it would be a good way to spend some time while I apply for the funding for my post-doctorate.” He paused, pulling Bella towards him. “And then I met this one,” he said.
“How long have you been together now?” I asked.
“Three months,” Bella said in a small voice.
“Best three months I’ve had in a long time.” Norm grinned.
I smiled back at them but inside I felt terrible. They’d been dating for three months and Bella hadn’t felt able to tell me. I really had been wrapped up in myself for far too long and I absolutely had to start living my life – if only so my friends could start living theirs without worrying about me.
Norm introduced me to his friend, Bryn.
“Do you dress up as a Viking too?” I asked. He looked very like Norm except that he was dark rather than blonde.
“I do actually,” he said. “But just for fun. Unlike Norm here, I have a proper job teaching science at a school in Fulford.”
As we were talking, which mostly consisted of us all teasing Bryn as he tried a myriad of ways to get Missy to go on a date with him and she refused all of them, I felt a touch on my arm and that familiar tingle.
“I should go,” Xander said. “I need to take Gus out before he gets too excited and pees on your floor.”
“You did promise me he wouldn’t do that.” I smiled.
“I was wondering…” he began.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to have lunch with me this weekend?”
I didn’t reply for a moment. My immediate reaction was to say ‘no’, to find some excuse as to why I would be busy all weekend. And then I remembered that Bella hadn’t told me about Norm for three months and that Missy was right about me needing to get out more.
“Are you staying in York for a while?” I asked, buying myself some time.
“I need a break from London…” He paused as he crouched down to clip Gus’s lead on to his harness and I wondered why he needed a break and whether he was still staying with Dot.
“Sunday would be better for me,” I heard myself saying. Was I ready to have lunch with Xander? Walking side by side through the Christmas Market was one thing, but lunch?
“I know this great place,” he said. “I’ll call you.”
And before I could protest or change my mind, he and Gus had gone.