Jules never made her bed back home. What was the point? She was just going to mess it up again that night. But she’d seen Chloe make her bed in a five-star hotel. The thought tugged at Jules’s heart a little. Gosh, she adored that funny little Aussie.

She hadn’t realised how far they’d progressed in the line until Ash declared that they were done. “Let’s get the flock outta here,” Ash declared, elbowing her way to the exit. Another weird Australian saying, Jules thought as she followed obediently.

The outside of the market was almost as chaotic as the inside, but the sun was shining. Jules retrieved her sunglasses from the neck of her tank top and put them on. It’s summer. It’s hot. This is heaven.

Not for the first time, she wondered at the odd luck that had made her a Colorado native. She much preferred this warmer weather and she knew the winters were mild here. Maybe I was an Australian in a previous life, she thought, unlocking Chloe’s bike from the bike rack. I wonder what it would be like to actually live here, she mused.

Chapter 11

Lucy

Lucy woke abruptly and for a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was. Then the scent of Crabtree and Evelyn’s Noel brought her back to Colorado and she stretched luxuriously under the fluffy duvet. The only source of light was the glowing blue of the clock on the bedside table, the numbers reading 5:14am. Could she fall back asleep?

A quick calculation and she realised it was unlikely. It was after noon in London and her body was wide awake. Still, she’d managed seven hours of sleep, which was enough. Time to get up. She flicked on the bedside lamp and, bracing herself for the cold, flung back the duvet. Only, it wasn’t cold—it was toasty warm. She smiled.

Even in her London flat, she and her flatmate, Val, wouldn’t turn on the heat until they got up. And back home in Penham, her parents tended to treat heat as a luxury—the front room always stiflingly hot and everywhere else in the house, icy. She’d grown up thinking that chilblains were normal.

She wondered if having a shower would wake anyone, especially with Will sleeping right next door. Will. What in the world was she doing fantasising about Will? The last time she’d seen him, he was a little boy. “Definitely not a little boy anymore,” she whispered to herself, stifling a giggle.

Regardless, she didn’t want to wake him, especially as he’d had to do that long drive yesterday. She would shower later. She slid her feet into her Uggs and pulled on her fluffy dressing gown.

As she tugged the tie tight around her waist, she decided it would be extremely bad manners to have it off with the young man of the house, especially at Christmas. She’d just have to ignore how much she fancied him. But what if he flirted with her?