Sealed with a Christmas Kiss Read Online Free PDF

of charades . . . I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but there’s bugger all else to do round here.’
Tom put his arm round Susan’s waist, scooping her up from the table. Her long legs unfolded gracefully and she looked up at him suggestively.
    ‘Unless anyone fancies a game of hide and seek in the dark?’
    Kate motioned a flat-handed
no
behind Maddy’s back. There had been quite a few evenings when they’d ended up messing around like teenagers, hiding in the outhouses around
the estate in the velvet darkness, hearts pounding with fear and excitement.
    ‘I think charades is a much better plan.’ Roderick held the kitchen door open, motioning for everyone to pass him. Breathing a sigh of relief, Kate ushered everyone through.
    Leo, surprisingly, threw himself into his part. Leaping across the sitting room in an attempt to mime
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
, he didn’t notice the
phone flying from his pocket. Nor did he realize Kate had picked it up and placed it on the coffee table to avoid it being stamped on during his display.
    Kate perched on the arm of the sofa beside Roddy, feeling tired and a bit fed up of everyone drunkenly yelling. Maddy stood up, swaying for a second on her high heels. She smiled down at
Kate.
    ‘I’m just popping to the loo – oh, Leo, isn’t this your phone? You’ll lose it if you leave it lying here.’
    Holding the phone, Maddy stepped towards Leo, who almost jumped towards her to grab the phone from her hand. As he did so, he hit the pocket of signal within the room. The phone buzzed, but at
the same time his pocket started beeping insistently.
    A moment of realization swept over Kate, the only person sober enough to grasp what was happening straight away.
    Maddy looked down at the still-buzzing phone, her brow furrowing. She looked across at Leo’s pocket. He’d placed a guarding hand there, instinctively, but the bleeping continued.
    ‘If
this
is your phone, what’s
that
in your pocket?’
    ‘I can explain.’
    Susan snorted loudly. ‘You’d better make it quick, Sonny Jim, you’ve got a wedding in three weeks.’
    Roderick shot her a warning glare.
    Maddy looked down at the phone, sliding the bar across, unlocking the screen. Her heart-shaped face was ice-white with fury.
    ‘“This bed’s no fun without you in it”?’ She read slowly, enunciating every word clearly.
    ‘Maddy, sweetheart, it’s not what it looks like . . . ’ Leo reached forward, trying to grab the phone from her hand.
    ‘I think I can see perfectly well what it looks like.’
    ‘I think we
all
can.’ Nobody shushed Susan this time. The room was deathly silent apart from the spitting of logs on the fire.
    Maddy looked down at the phone again, scrolling upwards through the messages. The pain of betrayal flashed across her face, followed by a moment where Kate was certain she was about to burst
into tears. Kate reached out, uncertain, putting a comforting hand on her arm. She felt Maddy stiffen, and take a breath.
    ‘I’m going to get a glass of water.’
    ‘Let me give you a hand.’ Roderick stood up, offering his arm to Maddy in an old-fashioned gesture. He didn’t even look in Leo’s direction as he stalked out of the
room.
    Kate knew that the alternative would be him punching Leo in the nose. Roddy’s feelings about affairs were well known to her – after his mother had left the family for her lover,
leaving his father crushed, he’d grown up well aware of the devastation infidelity could leave in its wake.
    ‘I think you’d better make yourself scarce, mate.’ Finn spoke up, breaking the silence within the room.
    ‘It wasn’t anything – just an office fling . . . ’ Leo tried a half-laugh to smooth things over, appealing to Finn and Tom’s blokey side.
    Tom shook his head slowly, his lips set in a tight line. ‘You’re talking to the wrong person.’
    Kate looked at Leo, stuck here on an island with a load of people who thought he was a cheating arsehole . .