Read Married by Christmas for Free Online Page A

Christmas shoppers.
    ‘Get here!’ Anna mouthed at her, gesturing at her watch, as Liv reluctantly joined her at her side, her hands in her pockets. ‘It’s five to two, they’ll be arriving at any moment. If we stand behind this column, we can get a good look at them, before they see us.’
    Obediently, Liv stood behind Anna as she peered out behind the column, scanning the mass of faces that crammed the street for the one face that belonged to her, or that at least she had thought belonged to her. Racked with an increasingly familiar anguish, she waited for that glimpse of Tom’s reddish-blond hair that always rose above a crowd like a beacon, that particular gait he had, one of total self-ease, the confident roll of the shoulders that had always made Anna feel so reassured. That she, Anna Carter, could be loved by someone so normal, so established and at ease in the world, made her feel much better about herself, and gave her hope that after ten or twenty years of marriage a little of Tom’s normal would rub off on her.
    ‘Maybe we should just go,’ Liv said, her chin resting on Anna’s shoulder, as the pair watched the thickening mass of people. ‘Maybe Tom’s changed his plans, his mind even, and anyway I’m pretty sue that you and me hiding round the corner in wait to catch him up isn’t going to help matters when …’
    ‘When what?’ Tom said, appearing behind them. Ever so slowly Anna and Liv turned around to meet his gaze. It had never occurred to either of them that he might approach from the other direction.
    ‘Tom!’ Anna said, whipping off her glasses. ‘What a lovely surprise! What you doing here?’
    ‘I think you mean what are
you
doing here?’ Tom said, frowning uncertainly. ‘What are you two doing lurking behind pillars outside the place where I am meeting …’ Tom trailed off as if he’d only just remembered that he was the one with the secret.
    ‘We’re checking up on you,’ Anna said unhappily, because there didn’t seem to be any point in lying any more. ‘We here to find out what you are up to, Tom, because we both know it’s something, something big, that’s giving you second thoughts about going through with the wedding.’ When Tom tried to speak Anna held up her gloved hand. ‘No, don’t deny it. I’ve tried asking you what’s wrong, but you won’t tell me. So I had no other choice but to try and find out myself.’
    ‘Wait a minute.’ Tom ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to take in what was going on. ‘How did you find out about this? Did you steal my diary? Anna, have you been spying on me?’
    ‘You left it lying around,’ Anna said, defensively. ‘I was updating your wedding section when I came across this meeting.’
    ‘I left it “lying around” in my backpack, behind my bike under the stairs!’ Tom exclaimed, but perhaps not as crossly as a man who had nothing to hide might have.
    ‘What choice do I have when you refuse to talk to me?’ Anna asked him. ‘Answer me that!’
    ‘To trust me?’ Tom exclaimed, looking hurt, and putting both Anna and Liv to shame in one easy move. ‘You are about to marry me, Anna, and yet you don’t trust me?’
    ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ Anna said, unhappily.
    ‘It’s just that something’s different, you are different and I need to know what’s happened, because … I still don’t quite believe that someone like you could really, really want someone like me. There, I’ve said it, and now you’ve made me sound all needy and insecure.’
    Before Tom could reply a tall bright-red-headed woman, about Anna’s age, dressed in a full-length faux-fur leopard-print coat, appeared out of the grey crowd of shoppers, glowing like a beacon in the dull city afternoon, and flung her arm around Tom’s neck, kissing him firmly on the cheek and leaving an orange outline of her full lips, utterly unaware that at that moment the strange women watching her were thinking exactly the same two