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This was it.

He was The One.

An Irish Romeo.

At long last. Fate had excelled herself, and I could forgive her for making me wait this long because this man was worth it.

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” I said, imagining what our Christmas tree would look like as we admired it in our matching holiday jumpers, hands clutching mulled wine while Bing Crosby sang about a white Christmas.

“I don’t get much sleep,” he said, turning for the first time to glance at me. “Paul snores, and it keeps me up most nights.”

He might as well have set fire to the tree, as Bing was replaced by Mud singing about being lonely this Christmas.

Paul.

There was a Paul. A live-in Paul by the sound of it.

Of course there was. The universe would never hand me a gorgeous Irishman who drank mysterious tea and looked like that without some tragic catch attached.

And just like that, I dropped the act. No need to pretend. No need to be someone I wasn’t. No need to try and be some sort of tea expert who’d been to China in her youth to research the history behind the leaf.

I could just be me. Plain old Alice Sutton.

“That sounds like the worst.” I smiled. “I’m Alice, by the way. Alice Sutton.”

“Owen Shea,” he said, and as he did, he turned and fully looked at me.

His eyes. Those goddamned blue eyes. And I imagined Paul getting to stare into those beautiful blue eyes.

“It’s nice to meet you, Alice Sutton.” And if the eyes and the accent weren’t enough, he smiled before picking his tea up and walking out of the staffroom.

The smile had been small and fleeting, but it was enough to make my insides flutter, a genuine rolling ripple where, for one second, it felt like confetti had been thrown about in my stomach, something I’ve only ever felt on rare occasions in my dating life.

Goddamn Paul, the lucky bastard.

And so I’ve worked with Owen for the past year, knowing he’s off limits. Completely off limits.

My phone pings, and a text from Lori flashes up.

Lori: How’d it go?

The thought of trying to summarise my meeting with Sydney in a text message to my friend makes my head churn, so I call her.

“Was it that bad that you had to call me?” she answers, and I smile, tucking the phone under my chin.

Lori and I met when we both worked at Jensen’s—a large, high-street menswear store—while we were studying English literature at university. I sought out a job there under the guise of thinking there’d be no better place to meet well-dressed men, whereas Lori took the job because she argued that men were easier to convince to buy clothes than women.

Either way, we both spent more time gossiping than selling clothes.

She was the first to leave Jensen’s when she found a job as a legal secretary, which should’ve been the wake-up call I needed to finally do the adulting thing. She was, and still is, one of my closest friends and is no stranger to some of the ridiculous situations I get myself entangled in.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I tell her, smiling at my reflection in the window.

“Anyone else would just reply ‘okay’ or send me a thumbs-up emoji. But not you. You did something, didn’t you? What the hell did you do?”

For a second, I’m tempted to profess my innocence, but number one, she knows me too well, and number two, she’s correct. So, I spill the beans.

“My God,” Lori drawls when I’ve finished. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, girl. Who goes to meet up with an old friend and comes away having to persuade an attached work colleague to be their pretend date at a wedding? You couldn’t write this shit.”