“I’m feeling a bit outclassed,” Olivia murmured, and Simon shot her a quick smile.

“You shouldn’t. I think you’re doing just fine.” He squeezed her hand and she tried to keep her heart—and hopes—from soaring at this little exchange. As much as she liked Simon, as much as she wanted this to work, she still felt instinctively cautious.

They managed three loops of the pond before Simon suggested they take a break. The other skaters had left, and they had the pond to themselves, the air still and crystalline, the sun high in the sky.

They sat on the fallen log and Simon produced a flask of hot chocolate from his bag. “Sustenance,” he declared, and rummaged again to brandish two plastic mugs.

“This is wonderful, Simon, thank you.” Olivia took her cup of hot chocolate, savouring its sweetness.

“It was a challenge to come up with a second date activity,” Simon told her with a grin. “If we’d gone to the cinema we couldn’t have talked, and I’m not really good with parties, so that was out...”

“You’re not good with parties?” Olivia said in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be the life of the party.”

“Nope, I’m not really good with crowds.” He glanced down at his mug, and Olivia felt that now-familiar frisson of wary curiosity as she wondered what he wasn’t saying.

“So will you have Christmas with your sister and her family?” she asked, and Simon gave a little grimace.

“She’s invited me, but they’re all going to my brother-in-law’s parents’ and I’d feel like a fifth wheel. I barely know them.”

“So what will you do then?”

Simon shrugged. “I’m getting the key to Willoughby Close just before Christmas Eve, so I might just spend the holiday moving in.”

“That’s no way to spend Christmas.” Olivia hesitated, wondering if it would be far too soon to ask him to spend Christmas with her. She decided it would, and so instead she invited him to the mulled wine and mince pie evening she had planned at the shop. “It’s on Wednesday, and I’m hoping to get a crowd. There will be a bit of a carol singalong, and then a Christmas quiz. Do you think you’d like to come?”

“I’d love to,” Simon said, with such sincere enthusiasm that Olivia couldn’t keep from breaking out in a grin of pure happiness.

“Good.” Maybe this felt too good to be true...but maybe it was just good. She wanted to believe that. She chose to.

By the time they finished their hot chocolate and made another couple of circuits of the pond, dusk was starting to fall, creating pools of violet shadow among the trees.

“I suppose we should get back,” Olivia said, even though she was reluctant to end their date. They had been holding hands as they skated along and even though her toes were numb and her cheeks felt raw she didn’t want to leave.

“Yes, I can’t feel most of my feet. But you didn’t fall once, unlike me.”