Page 48 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

I snorted, deciding I might as well embrace Full Unsexy Mode, now.

‘Urgh, I am so bad at this!’ I said, trying but failing to absorb the beer from my dungarees.

‘Bad at what?’

‘Flirting!’

‘Nah, up until the hurling part you had me hooked.’

‘I didn’t “hurl”, Ethan! It just… fizzed out of my… neck.’ I gestured frantically to every region above my shoulders to make it clear the beer in question had never reached my stomach.

‘Do you mean your throat?’

‘That’s the one, yeah.’

‘Fine, so you had me hooked until the beer-throat-fizzing incident.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Yeah, right! But I, uh, had to be sure, that’s all. I’m not the best judge of these things. You’ve been pretty vague about some stuff and I didn’t feel like it was appropriate to pry, but I kept getting all these signals and, well, as you can tell by now – I’m pretty bad at this, too.’

‘I thought you said I wasn’t bad?’

‘Oh God, no, that’s not what I—’

‘Ethan, shh.’

Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d reached over the coffee table and tugged him towards me by the scruff of his band T-shirt. It was by far the most forward move I’d ever made in my life, but I needed his mouth on mine before either of us said anything that would disrupt the new sensations that were dancing inside me. His lips had barely brushed mine before he jumped away from me.

‘Okay! Umm, this… can’t happen. Not… here, anyway. We should pack up and head off!’

I slumped back in the chair and gaped at him, feeling confused and more than a little bit miffed. But then I noticed that one of his hands was gesturing wildly behind him, pointing vaguely upwards. I looked towards the ceiling and spotted a CCTV camera, its red dot blinking… eagerly, if that was even possible.

I jumped up immediately. ‘Yes! We should indeed get going, Mr Carmichael. That was a hugely useful business meeting, thank you so much for letting me use your… facilities.’

We both guffawed silently as we packed up our respective things and exited the office, which now had a few people dotted around, a couple of whom I swore smirked at us as we made a beeline for the exit. We rode the lift down in silence, both now fully conscious that the entire building was teeming with security cameras, and practically ran outside into the New York street, gasping for breath through our laughter.

‘I think that’s the naughtiest thing I’ve ever—’

Now it was his turn to interrupt me with his mouth, which he pressed against mine firmly – deliciously – reducing all the sounds of the city to zero.

It could have been ten seconds or ten minutes when we finally pulled apart – who knew? Who cared. I’d just experienced the best kiss of my whole life, no question. The fact that our glasses kept bashing together during this highly charged erotic moment was the only element of it that didn’t feel like it had been lifted straight from a Nora Ephron screenplay. Oh, and the fact that we were leaning against the window of Dunkin’ Donuts, much to the annoyance of a broom-wielding employee, who’d started banging on the glass as if we were a pair of nuisance-causing pigeons.

Ethan half-laughed and half-cleared his throat as he gently pulled me around the corner and away from the window of the fast-food outlet. ‘Just so you know, I’m pretty out of practice with all of this.’

‘Ha, me too.’

‘Really? It all feels so crazy – I’m not even drunk! But… your lips. I think I might be obsessed with the colour of them.’

His voice faded into a whisper as he cupped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and peered at my mouth from a variety of angles. I could taste the sweet beer on his breath as he did so.

‘I guess we all need at least one redeeming feature,’ I said quietly. Will had always liked my lips, too.

Ethan stopped examining my mouth and looked me in the eye. ‘You’ve got shit tons of them, Flora.’

‘Thanks. As do you.’

‘Yeah? Which ones?’