Page 105 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘Same.’ She returned his smile. Then Avery sighed, rubbed his cheek. ‘What is it?’

‘We had a bit of help, though.’

‘What do you mean?’ She looked up as three seagulls cawed overhead, drifting on the wind currents, heading out to sea.

‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’

‘The Secret Bookshop. You know something about it?’ She had told him the book had been the parcel he’d been so eager for her to open when they were in the hotel foyer, and who had signed the postcard.

Avery nodded. ‘You were given my favourite book. It seemed like a fairly big coincidence.’

‘I thought someone was threatening me with future hell hounds, not matchmaking.’

Avery laughed. ‘Well, when I went looking for some cufflinks for the ball – May said she’d bought a pair, a long-ago gift for someone she used to know, and she still had them – I found something else.’

‘What?’

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little cardboard tag, The Secret Bookshop written in a beautiful cursive script in silver pen. ‘I found a stack of these in a cupboard in May’s room. She doesn’t know I discovered them.’

‘Oh my God.’ Daisy took the tag. ‘May is behind The Secret Bookshop?’

‘At the very least she’s part of it.’

‘And Harry’s been binding books, so …’ Daisy shook her head. ‘But why wouldn’t he tell me? Does Sophie know? What was it all about?’

Avery shrugged. ‘May saw us together at the village meeting. She has always been a quiet interferer. I wonder if she thought it would be good to push us closer.’

‘It was a beautiful, if slightly sinister, gift. And if that is the case …’ Daisy shook her head. ‘I think we would have got there by ourselves. But May – why?’

Avery ran his thumb over her lower lip. ‘She loves books, and she wants her friends and family to be happy. She was always telling me how much happier I would be if I found someone to love. I didn’t believe her until you.’

‘But she hasn’t …’

‘No,’ Avery said gently. ‘I think she did, once. When she was in America. She won’t talk about it, but while she was living out there we had long phone calls, and I got the sense that she was with someone, that she was in love, even. But she changes the subject whenever I bring it up now.’

‘She’s like Jane Austen,’ Daisy said, as they turned back towards the gap in the cliffs, and she whistled to the dogs. ‘Plotting everyone else’s romances, but without a love story of her own.’

‘I hope she finds someone, if she wants to. Not everyone does, but with May …’ He sighed. ‘She could do with a bit of magic in her life, after focusing so much on other people.’

‘Agreed.’ Daisy slipped her hand into Avery’s, shuddering at the cold, bracing wind now they were on the more exposed part of the beach.

When they got back to the manor, pink cheeked and worn out after their walk, there was laughter from the living room, shouts that suggested a game was in mid-flow.

‘Charades or Monopoly?’ Avery said, helping Daisy out of her coat, then standing in front of her, edging her slowly back against the wall.

‘I can’t tell,’ she said, ‘but it’s very competitive, whatever it is.’ The huge tree twinkled behind him, the pulse of golden lights almost more Christmassy than anything else. She heard a familiar bleat, an excited shriek from Lucy, and said, ‘I hope it is charades, because Felix will absolutely destroy a game of Monopoly. He’ll eat all the money.’

‘Think we’d better go and get involved?’

‘I couldn’t bear not to,’ she admitted. ‘I need to win.’

‘I know.’ His face was solemn. ‘Especially coming off your loss with the festivities.’

‘What are you talking about? The ball was amazing. It was peak Christmas, and everyone loved it.’

‘My treasure hunt was incredible, though. If it had made it onto Tripadvisor, nothing but five-star reviews.’

‘You keep telling yourself that,’ she said, as he crowded closer, bending his head to hers.