Read The Christmas Party for Free Online

quite obviously, Debbie the other.
    When he spoke of Louise, she imagined her young and beautiful. Louise wouldn’t have lines round her eyes or grooves that ran from her nose to her mouth. ‘Puppet lines’, they called them, and sometimes that was exactly what she felt like. Tyler’s puppet. Whatever Tyler wanted her to do, she did.
    She was still in her prime. Forty was the new thirty, wasn’t it? And yet, some days she felt older than time itself. How old was this Louise? she wondered. Well, she guessed she’d find out soon enough. She’d be there tonight and they’d come face to face for the first time. She’d chosen her favourite dress for the occasion, a white Armani number. It was halter-neck with a plunging neckline and a low back. The material clung to her curves and showed off her toned body. She looked as good as she possibly could. Let’s see how this Louise competed with that. At least the hours spent in the gym proved useful sometimes.
    This could be her moment to reassert her claim to Tyler. It was time to fight for her man. If only they could both throw off the weight that had insidiously settled on their shoulders and find the people they once used to be, maybe there was hope for them. Perhaps, if she could be the woman he used to love, then he wouldn’t look elsewhere. If he could be the man she thought she’d married, then perhaps she could look at him with love in her eyes once more.
    Tonight, she was going to try her best to love her husband again and to make him love her back. It was the best reason she could think of for enduring the Christmas party.

Chapter Four
    Melissa reached up to fasten the silk bow tie that hung limply and expectantly on Lance’s dinner shirt. Her nimble fingers deftly twisted and twiddled it into the desired shape. It was a deed she’d performed for more years than she cared to remember now, and she stood back to admire it. Years of practice had, in this case, made perfect. She patted it into place affectionately.
    Lance Harvey checked his reflection in the stridently lit mirror in the hall. Her husband was older than her by eleven years, sixty-six to her fifty-five. Which hadn’t seemed so very much at one time, but now she thought the age difference was starting to show.
    ‘What would I do without you, angel?’ Lance said as he sucked in his stomach and lifted his chin.
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d manage.’ She kissed his cheek.
    ‘Never. You’re the light of my life.’ Her husband glanced at his watch. ‘Do we have time for a small bourbon before we leave?’
    She shook her head. ‘Martin will be here any moment. You can have one in the car.’
    He looked content with that idea.
    There’d come a time, perhaps soon, when he’d stop working and it would be just the two of them together all day. How would she cope then?
    ‘Has Bud made any more noises about you retiring?’
    Lance shook his head. ‘No. That’s definitely on the back burner for now.’
    Bud Harman, who headed everything up in the USA, liked his executives to hang up their corporate hats early, but Lance wasn’t buying into that. So far, he’d soundly ignored all hints to that effect. Fossil Oil was his life. It always had been. He’d stick it out until the bitter end, until someone forced him to go.
    ‘Besides, you know me, honey. What would I do if I retired?’
    That was the burning question. How
would
Lance fill his days? He knew nothing but work, had no friends, no real interest in anything other than the oil business. He lived and breathed Fossil Oil. But surely there must come a time when he simply couldn’t carry on?
    ‘If you do, would you like to stay in England?’
    ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ her husband admitted.
    ‘It would be nice to have a home that I could truly call our own. Perhaps we could get a little cottage somewhere and settle down?’
    Due to Lance’s work, Melissa rarely went out of London. He didn’t like to have her too far away from him as he