A Midnight Kiss to Seal the Deal Read online

  It was the general, everyday Christmas knowledge that got to her. Like the quick-fire round at the end, all about silly Christmas traditions that everyone was clamouring to answer because they were so easy.

  She’d hardly known any of them. And the ones she did, she’d only learned from watching TV with Rachel.

  Her family had their own, unique traditions, she supposed. Just another way that they weren’t like everyone else. Her parents had always implied it made them superior, in some way. But right now, Celeste wasn’t so sure.

  The other contestants had all left by now—she’d heard them talking about going to a bar together afterwards, but she hadn’t been invited. Not that she’d have gone if she had. The crew were clearing up and the audience filing out—a lot fewer of them than there had been, Celeste admitted. The filming had gone on much longer than planned.

  She supposed that was probably her fault.

  No, not just her fault. Theo Montgomery’s fault, too. He was the one who had kept arguing back at her, who couldn’t accept that she was right. She knew history. It was the one thing she did know. So why wouldn’t he let her tell him he was wrong?

  Maybe he was just one of those men who had to be right all the time. Like her father.

  There was no sign of Damon and Rachel in the thinning audience so, figuring that the coast was probably clear by now, Celeste headed back to the green room to gather her things, changed out of the miserably sparkly light-up Christmas jumper and handed it back to the wardrobe people. Then, resigned to chalking the whole TV thing up to experience and never trying it again, she headed out to find her missing brother and best friend.

  The first half of that proved to be easier than she’d expected: Damon was waiting for her in the corridor outside the green room. Celeste tried not to show how relieved she felt to see a friendly face.

  She and Damon might be as different as siblings could be, but he knew her. Understood her, at least more than most people.

  Celeste didn’t have many people in her life who mattered to her, but Damon and Rachel were the heart of them.

  She showed her love by scowling at her brother and stomping towards him.

  ‘Where on earth did you go? And where’s Rachel?’

  Damon’s easy smile made her feel a little less stressed, at least. ‘We got dragged in to film this New Year party show. They didn’t have enough partygoers because of some issue on the Tube, and your filming had already gone on longer than it was supposed to anyway.’ Of course they had. Because wherever Damon went, he always found the coolest room to be in, the best party to attend. And it was never the same one that Celeste was in.

  Celeste rolled her eyes as she pushed past him to continue stomping down the corridor and decided to focus on the second part of his statement. Yes, the filming had run long. But it wasn’t her fault. ‘Only because that man kept getting things wrong.’

  She didn’t need to look back to know that Damon was laughing at her. Silently, but still laughing. ‘In fairness, Theo Montgomery was only reading out the answers on the cards.’

  ‘Because he’s not bright enough to actually know anything himself,’ Celeste shot back over her shoulder. Then she winced and felt the colour flooding to her cheeks as she saw the man emerging from the room behind Damon into the corridor.

  Theo Montgomery, of course. And from his raised eyebrows, he’d heard everything Celeste said.

  She hadn’t meant it, not really. She was just off kilter, and that made her defensive. Damon knew that, because he knew her. Theo didn’t.

  Damon stepped towards him, hand out for Theo to shake, which he did. Because he was a nice guy, like her brother, who knew how to be polite and charming in a way Celeste was never going to manage.

  ‘Mr Montgomery. I’m Damon Hunter, Celeste’s brother—we met earlier? I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologise for my sister.’

  Great. Rub it in. Yes, I’m rubbish with people and you’re not.

  Why did she like her brother, again?

  ‘No need,’ Theo said, just as jovially. ‘Trust me, I’ve heard worse. You stayed for the whole filming?’ He sounded amazed at the prospect. Celeste didn’t blame him.

  Damon shook his head. ‘No, I just follow my sister around to make the necessary apologies. And now that’s done, I’m heading home.’

  Wait. They couldn’t go home. Because they were still missing someone. Celeste might not have the interpersonal skills of her brother, but at least she kept track of her best friend. The people that mattered to her, Celeste understood and cared for.

  Everyone else...not so much.

  ‘Where’s Rachel?’ Celeste asked again, ignoring Theo. ‘I said we’d give her a lift home.’

  ‘She, uh...she left early,’ Damon said.

  Okay, that was a lie. If her brother knew her, she knew him too, and she knew when he was lying. Besides, he sounded guilty as hell.

  Celeste narrowed her eyes. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What makes you think I did anything?’ He turned to Theo. ‘Does it make you feel any better that she treats everyone this way?’ he asked, as if she weren’t there at all.

  ‘A little,’ Theo admitted. Celeste continued ignoring him.

  ‘You always do something,’ she said to Damon, instead. ‘Let me guess, you were flirting with some other woman at the bar and leaving her all on her own?’

  ‘I can promise you that absolutely was not the case. I was attentive, friendly, we even danced together.’

  ‘Rachel danced?’ Well, that was a red flag if anything was. ‘I have never once, in ten full years, seen my best friend dance. There is something else going on here, and you are going to tell me all about it on the way home. Come on, let’s get to the car.’ Then, suddenly remembering his existence, she turned to Theo. ‘Thank you for having me on your show, Mr Montgomery. I’m very sorry that the question team screwed up so many of your answer cards.’ Okay, it probably wasn’t exactly what the etiquette guides would recommend, but she’d made an effort. That counted for something, right?

  ‘Once again, apologies for my sister’s attempt at an apology,’ she heard Damon saying as she walked away.

  She was out of earshot before Theo replied, which she decided was probably for the best.

  * * *

  ‘Did you skip the year at school where everyone else learned how to make friends?’ Damon asked as Celeste settled into the heated front seat of his overly fancy car.

  ‘Actually, yes.’ Her parents had insisted that she be put up a year, since her birthday was so early in the year anyway, and she’d already known everything they’d be teaching her in reception. Until recently, that had always been a point of pride for her.

  Suddenly, she wasn’t quite so sure it should be.

  Damon rolled his eyes and started the engine. ‘Right, of course you did. Well, maybe it’s time for some sort of catch-up lesson. Starting with, if you want to make friends you have to actually let people in, rather than automatically pushing them away.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, happy to be back in her own plain black V-neck sweater again. Sparkly festive-wear was really not her thing.

  ‘Did Theo Montgomery try to be nice to you?’ Damon asked patiently.

  ‘Maybe.’ She supposed that was what he’d been doing when he’d interrupted her in the green room. At the time, she’d only registered that he’d disturbed her work and heightened her nervousness, not why he’d been doing it.

  ‘Was he, in fact, friendly?’ Damon pushed. ‘Because he seemed like a friendly guy to me.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Celeste scowled out of the car window. ‘What does it matter now? I never have to see the guy again.’

  Damon sighed. ‘Call it a lesson for next time. When someone is pleasant to you, try being pleasant back. You might act
ually make a friend. Or something more.’

  ‘You’re assuming that I want more friends,’ Celeste pointed out, ignoring the pang inside her chest at the idea. Yes, maybe she sometimes wished she were better with people, as Damon was. And yes, it would be nice to meet someone. Someone special. But that wasn’t how her life went. She’d accepted that long before now. ‘I have too much research to do—and a whole book to write—to have time to spend with new friends. Besides, I have Rachel.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Damon said, his voice suddenly soft as he spoke about her best friend.

  Celeste turned to study his face in the glow of the streetlights they passed. Yep, there was definitely something going on there.

  ‘What really happened with Rachel tonight?’

  ‘I told you.’ Damon reached out and pressed the button to turn on the radio, and a Christmas number one from before she was born filled the car. ‘Nothing happened.’

  He was lying. But then, so was she.

  So Celeste let it go. For now.

  * * *

  Four days later, Theo woke up too early on Saturday morning to his phone buzzing. And buzzing. And buzzing, until it buzzed its way off the bedside table and crashed onto the floor.

  He lay back, buried in the pillow, listening to it vibrate against the hardwood floor of his London flat, and weighed up the merits of ignoring it against answering it.

  On the one hand, his phone lighting up the moment his do-not-disturb ended at—he squinted at the clock—six-thirty in the morning had never yet turned out to mean anything good. On the other, he wasn’t going to get any more sleep with this racket going on, and his downstairs neighbours would be banging on the ceiling soon if he didn’t stop it. His apartment building might be in one of the most expensive areas of London, and security was excellent, but someone had definitely skimped on the soundproofing.

  The phone stopped. Theo held his breath.

  Buzz.

  He sighed as the device began its journey across the floor again, powered only by its own vibrations. Then he swung his legs out of bed, swooped down and picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’ He suspected that there were a hundred notifications waiting for him, from the way it had been behaving, but right now the immediate call was his priority. Especially as the caller ID read Lord And Master, after the caller had nabbed his phone in the pub one night and changed it. He really should change that back some time.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Cerys, his long-term agent, snapped the moment he answered.

  ‘Sleeping. Like normal people. It’s the weekend, Cerys.’ He forced a loud yawn, just to prove the point.

  ‘Theo, you forget that I know you’re not actually the lazy, artless aristocrat you pretend to be. So quit acting with me and pay attention.’

  Damn. With anyone else he would have got away with that. People saw what they expected to see, in Theo’s experience. And when they looked at him they saw someone who had all the advantages of life, all the education, money, looks and privilege it was possible to have, and used it to entertain people on telly on a Saturday night. So they expected him to be equally frivolous with his brain, his time, his money, his life.

  In a lot of ways, they weren’t wrong.

  In others...well. Theo hoped he’d prove them at least premature in their judgement, eventually.

  But not Cerys. Cerys knew exactly who he was, what his ambitions were and how damn hard he worked to get there. Which meant there was no fooling Cerys.

  And since he was already in her bad books for the whole Tania mess, he’d better play nice.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, sitting up a little straighter, and reaching for the tablet on his bedside table. Despite being in silent mode, it was managing to convey a sense of dramatic urgency through constantly flashing notifications from every social media or news site he’d ever signed up to.

  ‘Did you watch the show when it aired last night?’ Cerys asked, sounding calmer, at least.

  ‘The Christmas Cracker Cranium Quiz?’ Theo enunciated carefully; that name was a total tongue-twister, one he almost suspected the producers of coming up with as punishment for him for something, as he’d had to say it repeatedly through the show. Maybe one of them was friends with Tania. That would explain a lot.

  ‘I don’t know, Theo, did you spend twenty minutes mansplaining festive history to an actual historian on any other show this week?’ Cerys snapped.

  ‘What?’ That wasn’t what had happened. Was it? Theo ran through the filming again in his head. Celeste had argued with all of the history questions, of course, but that was just a small segment of the show. And he’d just explained what he’d had written on the answer cards...

  Or mansplained. Apparently.

  ‘I didn’t—’ he started, searching for a defence, but Cerys cut him off before he had time to find one anyway.

  ‘I’ve seen the show, genius. Whatever you think happened isn’t what the great British public watched last night, and that’s all that really matters. As you already know!’

  Theo winced. ‘I need to watch it.’

  ‘Yes. And while you’re watching it, you need to read what everyone else who watched it is saying about it. About you.’

  ‘I’m not going to like that part at all, am I?’

  ‘Not even a little bit.’ Cerys was a great agent, but she didn’t believe in all that ‘babying the client along’ nonsense. They’d known each other too long anyway, Theo reasoned. If she suddenly started being nice to him, he’d know his career was over. ‘You thought the Tania stuff was bad? This is worse. That was just you being an arsehole over a personal break-up—’

  ‘I told you, it was amicable!’ he interrupted.

  Cerys ignored him. ‘This is you being a patronising, superior arse on prime-time television.’

  He hadn’t been. Had he?

  Theo shook his head. Cerys was right: it didn’t matter what had actually happened. It mattered what the viewers thought had happened. He’d definitely learned that since the split with Tania.

  Since Cerys was still being blunt and shouting at him, there must be a way out of this mess.

  Travel back in time and not suggest Celeste Hunter as a guest on the quiz? Or just erase all knowledge of Celeste Hunter from my brain?

  Hopefully a more practical way than anything he could come up with right now.

  ‘Okay. I’ll watch the show. I’ll read the comments. And then what do I do?’ he asked plaintively.

  Cerys paused. Oh, that wasn’t a good sign. Not at all.

  ‘Cerys?’

  ‘Shh. I’m thinking.’

  Theo sat in anxious silence, willing his own brain to give him the answers. But then, he’d never been employed for his brain, had he? And even if he had, this kind of problem required the sort of strategic thinking that he’d never been good at.

  That was why he’d hired Cerys.

  As the silence stretched on Theo allowed himself to glance at the notifications on his tablet, taking in just the first lines of the many, many comments about him as they filled the screen.

  Nation’s sweetheart or nation’s misogynist?

  God, typical man. Has to be right about everything.

  Privilege on show.

  Well, of course he went to Eton, didn’t he? So he thinks he knows everything.

  It wasn’t worth pointing out that he’d actually gone to Winchester, Theo knew. He put the tablet aside, although he was itching to read more—and to watch the actual show. Because as far as he remembered, he hadn’t pretended to know better than Celeste. Because he didn’t. Obviously. At least, not when it came to history.

  He’d just had to give her the actual answer that was written on the card, as the director had been telling him to through his earpiece.

  Had something happened in the editing room to make him
appear a total arse? Or had he been more arsey in the first place than he’d ever realised? He wouldn’t know until he watched it back.

  God, he hated watching himself on television.

  ‘Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,’ Cerys said suddenly, and he tuned back into the phone call. ‘We need to fix this—and quickly. Your reputation was battered enough before now; this really won’t have helped. I don’t think the Powers That Be will be planning on making any panicked changes before New Year, but we don’t want to take that chance.’

  ‘You mean, before I present the New Year’s Eve Spectacular.’ Live, in Central London, the biggest event of his career so far. The last thing he needed was protestors showing up to shout insults up at him or throw tomatoes or whatever. Or even just fewer people tuning in than normal to watch it in the first place, because he was presenting.

  Or the Powers That Be deciding not to take the risk and instructing him to come down with a strategic case of laryngitis before December the thirty-first, so someone else could take his place.

  Television was a precarious career, he’d always known that. But until now, he’d never realised quite how easy it was to slip and tumble down the slope from the top.

  Cerys had always assumed it would be a sex scandal that would bring him down. So far, he was in trouble for not wanting to have sex with Tania any more, and for arguing about history. She must be so disappointed.

  ‘Exactly,’ was all she said. ‘We need to fix this before anyone starts talking about making any changes. So right now, I’m going to make some phone calls, and get a number for you. While I’m doing that, you watch the show.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I’m going to call you back, give you that phone number, and you are going to follow my instructions to the letter. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Theo answered. Because although he already knew he wasn’t going to like whatever Cerys’s plan was, he liked the idea of losing his career even less.