Page 83 of A Winter Wish

He should have told Lexie that, Theo thought, with a rush of frustration. He should have told her that, and so much more.

He wasn’t sure what Richard would think about Theo falling for his daughter. And he had fallen for her, hadn’t he? He hadn’t meant to, but somewhere along the line it had become impossible not to. He’d expected more of a fight, before she walked out. Given how much she’d protested about being kept out of the loop earlier in the year, he’d expected her to push back. But no. Instead she’d cut herself off completely.

Maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was better that she’d left before he could make an even bigger mess of things. Before he let her down, sooner or later, like he’d let his parents down. And she’d been let down enough already.

There was a cursory knock before Ange came in, Harry following behind, Christmas tie swinging. Ange gestured for Harry to sit down around the coffee table, waited for Theo to join them, then leveled a look at Theo. “I’m going to jump right to it,” she said. “Mike called me earlier this morning to say he’s not going to go to Vienna.”

Theo was in the middle of taking a sip of tea and choked. Harry jumped up, went to sit next to Theo so that he could thump him on the back.

“What?” Theo demanded.

Mike had made a huge bloody drama about the whole thing—insisting he go to Vienna, saying that Theo had cut him out of Madrid, that he wasn’t letting the same thing happen again. It had been right after Theo had made it clear he had no interest in trying to find a legal argument to get Lexie out of the shares and Mike in—and he’d felt sure Mike was putting up a fight just to spite him. But Lexie had just left, and he hadn’t had it in him to argue. Mike was supposed to be going out for the first couple of days, get everyone settled, organize the Secret Santa, and meet the local woman on the ground in Vienna that they’d hired to see people through the traditions and Christmas Day itself. Theo had been out to meet her a few weeks ago, and felt confident she would be brilliant, but it was their first time doing this trip, so they needed someone there for appearances’ sake and to check that things went off without a hitch. Mike knew that. Which again, lent credence to the idea that this was all out of spite.

Harry put his hand up, bouncing on the edge of his seat. “I could go.”

“No, you can’t,” Theo and Ange said together.

“Besides, you’re going to Belgium with Theo, aren’t you?” Ange said, with an encouraging smile.

Theo shook his head at Ange. “You need me to go to Vienna.” He frowned. “We need me to go, I mean.” He sighed. “Sorry, Harry, but I reckon we can deal with Belgium by using the people we have on the ground there instead, and—”

“There’s no need for that,” Ange said briskly.

She sat back against the armchair as Theo looked at her.

“I think we ought to ask Lexie to go along.”

Theo swallowed his tea too quickly, and just about managed to stop choking again.

“She’s already in Austria,” Ange continued, with that way she had sometimes, no-nonsense, no room for argument, “and she’d only need to go for a couple of days—you said yourself our woman there is brilliant. And Lexie is still, technically, a partner in this company, isn’t she?”

Theo hesitated before saying, “Yeah. I guess.”

They’d had no conversation about it. He hadn’t tried, in all honestly. He knew he was avoiding bringing it up, in case it came to a conclusion he didn’t want.

Ange was looking at him expectantly.

“I don’t know…” he said slowly. And when she continued to look at him, he sighed. “OK. Fine. She’ll probably say no, but fine, we can ask.”

And it would give him an excuse, wouldn’t it, to get in touch?

She beamed. “Brilliant. Harry and I will wait.”

“You want me to do it now?”

“Of course now. When else?”

Sometimes, Theo thought, it was easier not to argue with Ange. So he got up, took out his phone, and headed for the kitchen, trying to get space from Ange and Harry. He tried not to think too hard about it as he dialed her number. Better this way. He couldn’t obsess about what to say. He listened while the phone rang. And rang.

When he hung up, he couldn’t resist swearing under his breath, before turning and looking at Ange over the countertop. “No answer,” he grunted.

Ange sighed. “You made a bit of a mess of things there, didn’t you?” And without waiting for Theo to comment on that, she got out her own phone. “Never mind, I’ll talk to her.”

And when Lexie answered this time, Theo had to fight hard to control his scowl. What had she thought he was ringing her about, for Christ’s sake? What conversation was she so desperate to avoid?

He could only hear Ange’s side of the conversation and felt a stab of jealousy, because Ange got to hear the sound of Lexie’s voice, and he didn’t. Stupid, he told himself. He needed to get a bloody grip—she clearly wanted nothing to do with him if she was actively avoiding his calls, didn’t she? It made him glad he hadn’t tried texting her again.

Harry caught Theo’s eye and gave him a sympathetic smile—and Theo realized that Harry had probably cottoned on to a bit more than he’d given him credit for.