“I think it’s a very good idea.”

“Yeah,” said Konstantin. “Making people feel important.”

Isla looked at him mistily. “You . . . make me feel important.”

“Well, because you are,” said Konstantin. “You’re the most important person I’ve met here. You’ve saved me loads of times.”

Suddenly she was very conscious of his hand on the table and found hers moving toward his, just a little. Once again she had that oddest sense she only had when she was with him, that nothing else in her life mattered in the slightest.

Konstantin looked toward her, smiling. She was just so very lovely.

“We could . . .” she said, amazed at how bold she was about to be. But she suddenly, and very fiercely, did not want to do some of the things she very strongly now wanted to do in the full glare of the Harbour’s Rest. “You know, we could maybe take that champagne up to the Rock,” she said, rather quietly.

“Are you kidding?” said Konstantin, smiling. “If you’d told me that, we could have just stolen some of theirs.”

But he saw from her face that she was very serious, and he stopped talking and gravely proffered her his arm. She emptied her glass for Dutch courage, then took it.

Just as they stood up, there was a commotion at the door.

CANDACE HAD BUMPED her expensive bag crossly back up the black-painted steps of the Harbour’s Rest. This was absurd. She needed to get back and she was trapped here. It was cruel and unusual, like a punishment for breaking a fantastic story. Ridiculous. And Christ, here she was, trapped in this hellhole.

She left her bag in reception in the mistaken belief that there would be someone else to take it up for her and stared at the empty reception (although she noted there were keys hanging up behind it, so hopefully she’d get a bed for the night—the possibility of that not happening was just too awful to contemplate).

She would head into the bar, she decided, order a large GnT, check if the story was up yet, and then and only then decide what to type to Dan. Oh God . It had taken ten months to even get him to this point, of inviting her to have Christmas with his mother. And now she was going to not make their Christmas, and if there was a way that could be interpreted as not an actual snub, she had absolutely no idea what it was.

On the other hand, she was nothing if not goal-oriented. She clopped over to the bar in her heels, her feet absolutely freezing from standing in that ridiculous barn they called an airport. She pushed open the doors of the bar, feeling the not-unwelcome whoosh of warm, slightly fuggy air hit her, and strode inside. Oh good, Isla and Konstantin were right there. She wandered up to join them, her face taking on a curl that might pass for a smile.