Page 14 of One Last Gift

“You always wanted to do something smaller, didn’t you?” Tom prodded. “Set up on your own or whatever?”

Cassie sighed. “It’s not quite that easy, Tom.” Which he knew—they’d had the discussion often enough. It took a lot of money to fund your own place—as well as the guts to take the risk, when it may very well go wrong, especially in the current climate. “And a lot of people would kill for my job.” It was true—something which Robert liked to remind her of at least once a day. Tom said nothing, but he gave her a knowing look.

It was a new waitress who brought over Cassie’s glass of wine, the outside of the glass already beaded with condensation. This girl was all smiles and rosy cheeks and she set the glass down on the table with a flourish, her brunette ponytail, tied up with tinsel, swinging with the movement. “There we go! Can I get you anything else?”

Tom shook his head and smiled, and the waitress beamed back, her eyes turning a little soft as she took him in.

“Thanks, gorgeous,” Sam said, grinning at her. She glanced at him, then flushed, while Cassie resisted the temptation to roll her eyes.

The waitress walked away, and Cassie saw her glance back over her shoulder, brow slightly furrowed. Cassie imagined she was wondering what she was doing here with two of the objectively most attractive men in the place, when she was plain and still scraggly from the rain.

She noticed that she wasn’t the only one watching the waitress walk away, and glared at Sam. “Don’t you have a fiancée?” she said sharply. Something which she still struggled to believe. Sam seemed to have made a point of sleeping around throughout the majority of his twenties, and yet he’d met this girl last year, and they were engaged about six months later.

He sipped his red wine. “Doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be polite, Cass.”

“Oh really?” Cassie asked, raising her eyebrows. “Was that why you started sleeping with the boss’s daughter? To be polite? It’s super original, I’ll give you that.” And there was an ugly, scathing part of her that thought that maybe that was the only reason he was marrying her—she didn’t doubt that he’d go that far, to move on up in his career. An opinion she was going to have to force aside, given Tom was the best man, and they were having the wedding at the hotel where she worked—Tom had apparently let slip to Sam’s fiancée that Cassie was the events manager there, and one thing had led to another and now she was organizing the whole bloody thing, much to her dismay.

“Well, she’s marrying me, isn’t she? Clearly she doesn’t mind me being polite to other women. What’s got your back up?” He smirked. “Jealous?”

She narrowed her eyes, even as something hot shot to her stomach. She wasn’t jealous, not anymore, but it was a low blow. “Sympathetic, I’d say, for any woman brave enough to marry you.”

Tom sighed. “Guys, can we not?” He took his arm away from Cassie’s shoulder as he picked up his beer. “This is supposed to be a fun evening, the last time we’ll see each other before Christmas.” He nudged Cassie at that, then flung his arms out overly dramatically, catching each of them around the neck and bringing them into the most awkward group hug in the middle of the booth. “My best friend and my best sister. One big, happy family.”

Cassie shoved him away from her, but she couldn’t help a little snort of laughter. Tom’s expression softened at the sound and Cassie felt her heart give a familiar tug of love. He was used to it by now—playing middleman between Sam and Cassie. Tom might not know why, exactly, he had to stop them swiping at each other so much these days—at least, she was pretty sure he didn’t know why. He’d asked her about it once—why she and Sam were always at odds—and she’d shrugged, told him that she didn’t much like the person he’d grown up to be. Which was true. She’d seen him let Tom down a multitude of times since they’d been in London, prioritizing his posh new friends, worried about how he looked or what money he was earning more than the things that actually mattered. She’d seen him hook up with girl after girl, never bothering to care about their feelings. And bit by bit, she’d watched as he’d changed from the boy she’d once known into someone she didn’t like, someone she had no interest in being friends with. So she’d stayed well behind the barrier she’d flung up during that damned skiing holiday, and for whatever reason, Sam had done the same. Tom had told her, in that same conversation, that Sam acted differently around her. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, and she hadn’t asked. It was dangerous, she’d learned, to get too invested in Sam Malone.

She sighed, rested her head on Tom’s shoulder. “Maybe I’m just angry because I’m going to miss you,” she said. “You’ll have to WhatsApp me obsessively with photos.”

“If there’s signal,” Sam piped up. She chose to ignore him.

“It’s only ten days,” Tom said with a smile. “I’ve been gone longer before.”

“I know.” She took a sip of her wine. “So, is Amy coming round for Christmas too? I’m ordering the food tomorrow.” They were planning to have Christmas together at Cassie’s flat. Hazel was going home to Highclere for Christmas, like she did every year. She’d tried to get Cassie to come home too, but Claire had expressed no interest in spending Christmas with Tom and Cassie since they’d both left for university, and Linda had taken to opening the pub for Christmas Day lunch over the last few years, saying it was a big moneymaker, so she’d be tied up.

To her surprise, Tom looked a little awkward at Cassie’s question, not meeting her gaze and looking at his beer instead. She saw Sam shoot him a furtive look, and frowned. Was Tom about to tell her that Sam would be spending Christmas with them too? She’d assumed he’d be spending Christmas with his fiancée, though hadn’t wanted to ask, worried that he would take it as an invitation.

“What is it?” she demanded.

Tom cleared his throat and Sam deliberately looked away. “Well, ah,” Tom began, “Amy and I…We actually broke up.”

Her frown deepened. “What? Why?” She couldn’t imagine it. Tom and Amy had been together pretty much since he’d moved to London and had seemed solid—they lived on the outskirts, toward Kent, and went on various adventures together while still giving each other the freedom to go off and do things on their own. Cassie liked Amy—she was warm and kind, and always had interesting stories about the books she worked on at her publishing job. Cassie had assumed that Tom would be following in Sam’s footsteps soon and getting married.

“It just didn’t work out.” But the base of Tom’s neck was turning a little red, a sure sign that he wasn’t quite telling the truth.

“But what—?”

“Drop it, Cass,” Sam said quietly. Her gaze shot to him and she felt her back go up, ready to snap something back at him, but he gave her a very small, subtle shake of the head. She hesitated. His tone hadn’t been condescending or arrogant, for once, and he was giving her such a sincere look. The kind of look they’d used to exchange, when they’d been able to communicate without speaking, back before everything had changed. So she didn’t push, and tried to ignore the little spark of hurt, that Sam knew something about Tom’s life that she didn’t.

“What about you?” Tom asked in a clear effort to change the subject. “Seeing anyone at the moment?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No.”

“Why not?” Tom asked—as if it were that easy, as if she could just pick the right guy from a catalogue or something.

“Because I’m happy being single.” It was true—sort of. She and Hazel had both decided they were better off being single than with the wrong guy. And while, OK, she did have moments where she wished she could find someone, she’d never met anyone that made her feel…like she was supposed to be with them. And maybe that was stupid, and romantic, and she should just try harder—but she’d seen Tom have it, with Amy. Or, at least, she thought that’s what she’d seen. And her parents—Linda had told her over and over again how much they loved one another. So what if she was holding out for that? At least she tried harder than Hazel—she tried to give guys a chance, whereas Hazel rarely made it past the first date—or half a date, those two times.

Tom sighed overdramatically. “You and Hazel are the worst,” he said, like he’d read her mind.

She rolled her eyes, deliberately not looking at Sam, who was staring at his glass of Malbec a little too intently for Cassie to believe he wasn’t listening. And that was fine. Let him listen—what was it to her? “What, because you haven’t managed to marry us off? Channeling your inner Mrs. Bennet, are you?”