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“Yes,” said Dylan immediately. “But I’m in charge of the amount of sweets we put on it. You’ll be stingy with them.”

“I’d make it look good!” Lucy protested. “But you can have full creative control with the sweets.”

“Excellent. Come on, let’s get you in the car, you look cold,” Dylan said. He moved the bags into one hand and placed the other arm around Lucy to warm her up as they walked. She willed her heart rate to slow and did everything she could not to focus on how good it felt.

Chapter 23

Carrie came into the coffee shop at lunchtime the next day. “Would you and Dylan like to join us for dinner tonight?” she asked Lucy. “Layla’s back from uni and she and Poppy are spending the night with my mum so I thought we could have a grown-up dinner party.”

“Are you sure we’re actually grown up enough for that?” Lucy asked.

“No, but it’ll be fun to pretend,” laughed Carrie. “You’ll be OK eating salmon?”

“Absolutely. My nausea’s almost completely gone now. It’s bliss.”

“Brilliant.”

Dylan came in from making some of the lunchtime deliveries.

He handed the cool box he’d taken with him to Lucy. “Hey Carrie. How’s everything?”

“Good, thanks. I just popped round to invite you both for dinner tonight.”

“A proper grown-up dinner,” Lucy added.

“And you’re sure you want to invite Lucy to this?” Dylan said.

Lucy threw a glare at Dylan. Carrie laughed and said, “Well, you two are pretty joined at the hip nowadays, so we figured we’d better invite you both.” Lucy pointedly ignored her friend.

“We’ll be there,” Dylan said. “What can we bring?”

“Nothing, just yourselves,” Carrie said. “You know what Michael’s like, he’ll get in at least twice as much as we need of everything.”

“He will,” Dylan agreed. “But we’ll bring some drinks anyway.”

“I know you will,” Carrie said with a little shake of the head. “See you around seven then!”

Carrie left and Lucy went to wipe down the tables customers had recently vacated. The bell jingled and Sam came in. “Hey, Lucy,” she said.

“Hi, Sam, just a sec.”

“Don’t worry, I can serve,” Dylan said.

Lucy nodded and returned to cleaning. She couldn’t help listening in as Sam and Dylan chatted.

“On your lunch hour?” she heard Dylan ask.

“Yep,” Sam replied. “I needed to get away from the school for a bit. The children are crazy at this time of year, so hyped up about Christmas.”

“Have you explained to them that Father Christmas won’t come unless they behave?”

A flour delivery chose that moment to arrive. Lucy signed for it and showed the delivery man where she wanted it put. By the time she was finished, Dylan and Sam were just saying their goodbyes with big smiles on their faces.

Sam waved to Lucy as she left.

“I guess it was lucky there weren’t any other customers waiting to be served,” Lucy whispered as she came behind the counter and passed Dylan.

“I wouldn’t have continued chatting if there were,” Dylan said, his brow furrowed.