They turned to look out the bubble window as the snow started to fall a little harder, swirling between them and the starting-to-shrink city below.

“Besides, it was to hell and back to get to Coney Island,” John said. “And the one that used to be up the turnpike closed a few years before I was born. Palisades Park. Like the song?”

“Song?”

“My dad sang it all the time when I was growing up, telling me he wished he could’ve taken me there. It was Freddy ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon’s only hit.”

He sang a few lines from a fast-paced rock and roll ditty about a guy meeting an awfully cute girl on the Shoot-the-Chute and the romantic evening that ensued in the amusement park.

Rachel thought his voice was pretty good. She gave John a playful shrug—just enough encouragement for him to carry on.

He reached over and took her hand as he slowed the song to a ballad’s pace, and she rocked gently in his arms along with the tiny glass cocoon as it made its way to the apex.

John continued to sing of hot dog stands, dancing to a rocking band, and a cruise through the Tunnel of Love. It all culminated with a ride to the top of a Ferris Wheel where there was no better place for a young man to steal a kiss.

And at the precise moment that John leaned in to do just that, Rachel smiled and finished the chorus.

John stopped inches away from her lips. “You do know the song.”

“My father made me listen to oldies from the day I was born. It made my mom completely crazy. Of course I know that song.”

“Then, why did you pretend . . .?”

She hushed him by bringing a finger to his lips. “Because I liked hearing you sing to me.”

She looked up at the clear roof. The snow was starting to blanket the glassed-in car. Rachel pointed down at the city that was beginning to vanish in what was going to be a white Christmas.

“So, here we are at the top,” she whispered. “Are you going to kiss me or not?”

Twenty minutes later, when the operator let them out on the bottom of the Eye, Rachel realized she didn’t have to go all the way down to Palisades Park to know that she was falling in love.

It was just past one when she got back to the Maida Vale house.

They had gone from the Eye to one of Rachel’s favorite places, the Wolseley in Piccadilly Circus. Housed in what was originally a 1921 prestigious car showroom with marble pillars and archways, it had been converted to a new branch of Barclays bank before its current iteration as a splendid café-restaurant.

They sat at the corner end of the bar and ordered up oysters, omelets, and a couple of hot toddies to cozy up in a world all their own.