Bolton Gets Crafty: Part Two

[the one with the peppermint eggnog]

"So I was thinking…Troy? TROY!"

Troy looked up slightly dreamily from his plate of beef ragù and hand-rolled tagliarini. "Hmm, what was that?"

Gabriella raised an eyebrow and motioned to the files that had sat untouched on the corner of the table ever since the waiter had brought them the bread basket. "Want to go through your notes now?"

"The fact that you ever got round to doing work in this place is remarkable to me." He sat back and looked round the bustling restaurant, and then back at his plate somewhat disbelievingly. "I think this might be the best pasta I've ever eaten."

Gabby shrugged. "I told you Cris was good."

"No, you don't understand," Troy shook his head. "The last time I ate pasta anywhere near this good I was in Rome…"

"They have MacDonalds in Rome too you know, it doesn't mean that…"

"…at the Vatican."

Gabby put down her glass. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Well, the Museum, actually."

"You had dinner at the Vatican Museum?"

Troy looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if what he had said was suddenly occurring to him. "Er, yes. My parents are supporters of the arts."

Gabby looked hard at him for a moment. "Supporters."

"Uhuh."

"Troy, my brother Diego has been a supporter of the Red Sox since we went to stay with our grandparents in Boston one summer. Grandpa took us to one game, and by the end of it, D had the starting pitchers more or less memorised. That Christmas, Mom and Dad gave him a Red Sox jersey and he wore it until it went into holes at which point he bought a new one and wore that one out. He says that he went to Harvard Medical School because it's one of the best schools in the country, but the fact that he attended almost all of the home games at Fenway Park would seem to suggest that he had an ulterior motive. He met his girlfriend Milla at a Red Sox game, he proposed to her at a Red Sox game, and I feel sure that my new nieces would have been named after prominent ex-players had they both not had the extreme good fortune to be girls."

Troy took advantage of his dinner companion pausing for a sip of water, and interrupted, leaning his elbows on the table. "Not that I don't appreciate the potted history of your brother's love affair with baseball, Gabby, but…"

Gabby narrowed her eyes. "Get to the point? My point, Bolton, is that my brother is one of the biggest supporters of the Red Sox I have met, and yet he has never been invited to…"

"Dinner at the Vatican?" Troy put in. "OK, sure, they're maybe not so much supporters as…I guess you could call them patrons."

"Patrons. Of the Vatican Museum." Gabby shook her head with a bewildered smile. "And when was this now-surpassed pasta served to you?"

"I was fourteen."

"And the Pope? Was he there? Did you get to meet the Pope?"

She was teasing, but Troy had clearly decided that honesty was the best policy where this episode of his life was concerned. "No, the Pope wasn't there, but I did sit next to the Italian Minister of Health."

"And did he introduce himself to you? Or were you wearing name badges?"

Troy watched her laugh at her own joke with a mixture of amusement and pity. "I didn't need a name badge to know who he was; he's my godfather and we were staying at his palazzo."

Gabby stopped laughing. "Oh."

"Yeah," Troy reached for the water jug, "I was one of those kids."

Gabby watched him refill his glass and take a sip in silence before speaking again. "What do you mean 'one of those kids'?"

"The kind who spend their summers staying in palazzos with high-ranking Italian politicians?"

"Oh. Right. Thanks, you've cleared that one right up."

"I mean the kind who don't discover until they're fifteen that most people own one house, not four." Troy waved his fork for emphasis, elaborating on his point. "The kind you always secretly imagine got into a really good school because Daddy made a call. The kind whose first friend without a trust fund is their college room mate."

"Wow. Really?"

"Really."

Gabby raised her eyebrows but said nothing, a forkful of gnocchi and wild mushrooms uneaten in her hand. Her co-anchor was by no means the first person she had met from a privileged background, but generally they gave her more to go on when it came to knowing how to respond. Elliot had been unapologetically proud of his family's stature and power, while Jason, whose family owned half of his home town in Alabama, found the whole issue excruciatingly embarrassing and told people about it on a strictly need-to-know basis. Troy seemed neither proud nor embarrassed. It was almost, Gabby realised, as if he was so used to people reacting in a certain way to the news about his family and his upbringing that he had given up trying to shape their response.

"That must have been…lonely." She hadn't decided what she was going to say to him until the words were half out of her mouth, by which point it was really too late to take them back.

Troy paused, a mirror image of her with a loaded forkful poised somewhere near his mouth. He put it down again and looked over at her. "I'm sorry?" he said, quietly.

"Oh, um, I…" It occurred to Gabby just then that maybe she was wrong; maybe the childhood spent in the best schools and summering in Roman palazzos had been the happiest years of his life; maybe she had mistaken the sadness which had seemed for a second to flit across his face. "I only meant that if you were an only child, then going on holiday to Rome with your parents could be pretty lonely…" she trailed off awkwardly as he continued to stare at her.

"Look. Troy." She said finally, as the silence extended for what felt like another ten minutes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to presume anything about you or…"

"You're absolutely right."

"…your family and I…wait…what?"

Troy smiled. "You heard me."

It was unfortunate, Gabby decided, that the realisation that she got Troy Bolton came to her at the precise moment as the realisation that his smile, his real smile, made him one of the most attractive men she'd ever seen.

What felt to her like another fifteen minutes of awkward silence was finally broken by a small girl in a red hat with a matching coat trailing behind her, who came running across the restaurant and launched herself at Gabby.

Troy leapt to his feet as the empty bread basket went flying, along with a side plate, his folder of notes and a glass of water which was thankfully less than half full. By the time the girl's mother had made her way across from the bar, he had soaked up most of the excess with both his and Gabby's napkins and was back in his chair watching in amusement as Tia knelt up on her godmother's lap, playing with her necklace and chatting unintelligibly in a high-pitched little voice.

"Tia! Oh I am so sorry, really, let me…oh Gabs…thank goodness." Estella bent to kiss her friend, who was prevented from getting to her feet for obvious reasons. "I thought it might be one of our" she lowered her voice conspiratorially, "cranky regulars and then I'd have had to turn on the sparkling hostess routine and you know how I much I love that." She pulled up a chair from a nearby vacant table and peered around Gabby's shoulder at her daughter. "Tia, you monkey, you mustn't run off like that. Even if you do spot Aunty Gabby, you must wait for me; you nearly gave me a heart attack." She turned her attention to her friend. "I turned round to hang my coat up and next thing I heard was that crash. Did anything break?"

Gabby opened her mouth to answer, but Troy got there first. "No, I caught the plate before it fell and the glass only tipped over. There are a couple of wet napkins here, but no damage done."

Estella turned to him, apparently only now noticing that Gabby had been eating dinner with someone, and her expression went from politely interested to frankly disbelieving to determinedly cool about the situation in less than three seconds.

"Troy, isn't it?" She leant across the table to shake him by the hand. "Hi, I'm Stella and the kid who nearly overturned your table," Here she removed her daughter's hat and ruffled her hair, "is Tia."

"Stella of I'll just ring Stella and see if she's got a table for us fame?" Troy shook her hand with a smile.

She laughed. "That's me. Welcome to Flor. Have you eaten here before?"

Troy shook his head. "No, but this will be by no means the last time." he gestured to his now empty plate, "That pasta was amazing. Really, really good."

"And Troy should know, Stel," put in Gabby, "the last time he had pasta this good was…"

"…a long time ago." Troy interrupted, giving his co-anchor a look and continued. "I haven't had pasta that good for years. Please send my compliments to the chef."

"I can do better than that." Estella grinned over Troy's shoulder at her husband as he came through the door from the kitchen and made his way over to their table, wiping his recently washed hands on the towel tucked into his apron. "Honey, I have one satisfied customer here wishing to compliment you on your pasta…oh no sweetie, wait for Daddy…" She made an ineffectual grab as Tia scrambled off Gabby's lap and dashed between the tables, cannoning into her Father's legs.

Cris staggered under the sudden weight of a three year old clinging like a spider monkey to his knees, but regained his balance and made it to the table without any further incident. Sitting down in the chair proffered by Gabby and gathering his wriggling daughter onto his lap, he smiled round the table and turned to his wife. "What was that, Stel? Someone here wants to praise my cook smarts? Well it can't be Tia here because she currently despises any food that's not white with the inexplicable exception of broccoli, and it can't be Montez because she got bored of complimenting my cooking around tenth grade…"

"Hey!" Gabby interrupted indignantly, "I compliment you plenty, Flores, you take that back."

Cris grinned at his friend and turned his attention to Troy. "So I guess that only leaves you. Unless my wife was talking about herself in the third person, that is. I'm Cris, by the way," he added as an afterthought, "but you probably knew that already."

"I guessed." Troy laughed and leant over to shake Cris' hand, introducing himself. "Troy. And you're right, it was me wanting to compliment the chef; I've eaten in some pretty fancy places in my time, and none of them made a pasta dish half as good as that beef ragù."

Cris sat back in his chair and looked round the table over the top of his daughter's head. "I like this guy," he said to no one in particular, and then, turning back to Troy "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. I collect happy customers so that I have something to dwell on when someone sends their risotto back because they don't like rice."

Troy laughed. "Far be it from me to deny you your mental ammunition against rice-haters. It's Troy. Troy Bolton."

"Well Troy, I would like to thank you on behalf of the Fl…wait a minute. Troy. Troy BOLTON?" Cris suddenly sat bolt upright as he finally made the connection and looked in disbelief from Gabby to Estella, from Estella to Troy and from Troy back to Gabby. "GMA Troy Bolton? Wait…are you…I mean you are…but I thought…I mean…" He trailed off, caught Gabby's eye and winced. "Oh man."

There was a tense silence during which no one quite seemed to know what to say, broken finally by Estella, who patted her stricken husband's hand. "Damn, Flores, that was smooth."

"Troy?" Tia, totally unaware of the awkwardness at the table, looked up from where she had been rearranging the cutlery and making ticking noises like the crocodile from Peter Pan under her breath. "Your name is T-T-T-Troy?"

Troy gave an almost audible sigh of relief at the distraction and turned his attention to the little girl. "It is. Do you know what letter 'Troy' starts with?"

She nodded, and resumed her impression of a clock. "T-T-T-T-T."

"That's right. You know, there's one other person at this table who has a name starting with a T. Do you know who it is?"

Tia thought for a minute, then beamed at him and pointed to herself. "T-T-T-Tia!" she said triumphantly.

Her mother smiled proudly. "She learnt to read her name the other day and since then, we've been spotting T's everywhere we go, haven't we, sweetie?"

Tia nodded importantly and smiled at Troy, who reacted in a way in that was sure to gladden the heart of any proud parent. "You can read your name?" he asked in tones of shocked awe.

The little girl looked delighted. "Yes. And I can draw a T too. Shall I show you?"

"Absolutely." Troy took a piece of paper from his folder, and was about to push it across the table to her when she slid off Cris' knee and went to stand next to him, looking up at him expectantly. "Oh," he said, somewhat taken aback, "would you, um, like to sit with me?"

She answered him by climbing onto his lap, taking the pen he produced from inside the folder and setting to work.

As the two of them began to chat companionably, Estella and Cris stared at Gabby in bemusement before exchanging looks. Quite apart from the fact that Troy seemed to be a pretty nice guy, he appeared charmed by Cris' cooking and their daughter in almost equal measures. Further comment about the fact that their friend had just had dinner with Mr Folksy Charm was clearly impossible, at least for now, but after tonight, it was clearly going to be hard to hate the guy on principle as they felt they should.

"So Gabs," said Estella, determinedly changing the subject, "I guess you guys must be in the middle of filming the Christmas Extravaganza?"

Gabby nodded, smiling at the waitress who came to take away their empty plates, leaving them with the dessert menu. "Yep. We covered Santa's arrival at the Zoo, and then went to the Botanic Gardens for the Christmas tree festival and market stalls, and we're waiting for our assistant director and his crew to catch us up before we get some footage here in the Old Town."

Cris fished in his pocket for his watch. "They must be setting up now I guess."

Gabby nodded. "I spoke with Dean when we were putting together the schedule for tonight, and he said they're aiming for nine o'clock."

"Dean Tenney?" Cris looked surprised. "Is he still working for the City Events Committee? I thought he and Jen moved to Chicago."

"They did. They also set up their own events planning business there, but apparently, the idea of heading the committee on which they used to be coffee-making, photocopying interns was just too exciting for them, so when the Governor of New Mexico asked them, they practically flew here without packing."

"The Governor of New Mexico?" Estella looked impressed. "They must be doing well in Chicago for him to make them that kind of offer."

"Yes, it seems that you can't get the contract for the Toronto Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony and not arouse some interest in the city where you used to organise Santa's arrival at the city zoo." Gabby grinned. "It's just a shame that they've been working so hard. I only found out they were even in town last week, and I haven't been able to find any evening that they're free for us all to catch up."

"These are friends from school, right?" Troy looked up, taking advantage of a lull in Tia's high-pitched monologue on the alphabet.

Estella nodded. "Dean was a friend of Gabby's brother Diego, and Jen was in the drama club with Shar and Ryan. Why?" she added, curiously.

Troy shrugged. "It just seems that your school has produced an extraordinary amount of high achievers. The school I went to was obsessed with churning out our country's future leaders, but I don't think their alumni list is half as impressive as your school's. Or, for that matter, as interesting." he added as an afterthought. "I think most of the guys I was friends with now work in finance."

Gabby sighed. "I can't tell you how much the PTA would love to hear that, but in the interests of accuracy and honesty, Troy, I feel that I should remind you that East High is also where the elves all go to school."

"The elves?" Cris looked between Gabby and Troy as the latter shuddered. "Santa's elves?"

"Yeah," Troy nodded, glancing down at Tia, who was putting the finishing touches to her sheet of T's, "and Santa'd do well to have a slightly more rigourous screening process next year but that's probably a story for another time."

"You know what? I can imagine." Estella grinned, as her daughter capped Troy's pen with a flourish. "Are you done, Tia? Can I see? Wow, look at all those T's! Do you want to take it home and stick it on the fridge?"

"Nope, I want Troy to take it home and stick it on his fridge."

Troy, who had been holding Tia's handiwork to Estella, did a double take and looked down at Tia in surprise. "Me? You want me to have it?"

Tia nodded. "Uhuh."

"Oh, well…thank you." A slow smile spread across his face. "No one's ever drawn a picture for me before."

Tia, whose pictures were regularly accepted by and displayed on the fridges of most of Flor's regular customers, looked nonplussed at Troy's reception of her artwork, so he hastened to explain. "Um, see, I don't actually know many kids, and certainly none as good at drawing as you, so this picture will be the first on my fridge."

"Oh." Tia shrugged. "I'll draw you some more then."

Troy grinned. "Really?"

"Yep. For Christmas. You can put them on your fridge too." She turned round on his lap so she could look him in the eye. "Right in the middle."

Cris laughed. "Ah yes, an unadorned fridge with no current artist in residence. Good work, Tia, you stake your claim. And on that note," he checked his watch again, "I'd better go back and make sure that Anton's not let everything go to rack and ruin in my absence."

Estella tapped him on the arm. "Ooh, honey, that reminds me, Tia and I are going shopping for presents for the staff tomorrow, and I currently have a question mark next to Anton's name. I was thinking a nice bottle of wine and some cheese. What do you think?"

"Sure, you could go down the obvious route, but I have a better idea. What do you think about a mug that says World's Greatest Sous-Chef?" suggested her husband cheerfully, getting to his feet, "Do you think they make those?" He picked up his daughter and gave her a kiss, "Night night mija, be a good girl for Mommy and I'll bring you some of Felicia's cookies for your snack tomorrow."

Estella stood up and reached for Tia's coat. "Yeah that's right Flores, bribe our kid with food."

Cris shrugged, grinning, and kissed her. "It's always worked with you, Stel, I see no reason why it shouldn't work with our offspring." He turned to Gabby and Troy. "Montez, always a pleasure, and Troy, it's great to finally meet you. We'll see you again, I hope."

Troy shook his hand. "Carry on making that beef ragù, man, and I'm your friend for life."

Cris smiled. "Glad to hear it." He waved and started making his way towards the kitchen. "'Night, guys, see you soon."

"Are you off too?" Gabby asked as Estella started helping Tia into her coat.

Estella nodded. "Yep, I think I'll quit while we're ahead and get this little monkey home and into bed before she fully comes down from her Grandma-induced sugar high. It's way past her bedtime as it is." She looked between Gabby and Troy. "Thanks for letting us crash your dinner, guys, we'll leave you to your dessert. Troy, it was lovely to meet you and Gabs," she gave her friend a look that conveyed very neatly all that she couldn't say out loud, "I'll ring you tomorrow."

"So," Dessert finished, Troy sat back as their waitress took away their coffee cups and went to get the bill, "Did you want to look through the notes for tonight?"

Gabby laughed and glanced at her watch. "An hour and a half later, and he surfaces from his food-trance." She shook her head. "I think we're all set, honestly. This event requires the least amount of you and me on screen; The Old Town's the star of this one. Tom and the guys will probably be out there getting footage already, and there are some interviews lined up, but you're prepped for those, right?"

"Yeah, it's just the details of the event itself I seem to be hazy on."

Gabby smiled. "Trust me, Troy, you're going to love it." She looked up as their waitress came back to the table. "Is there something wrong with the bill, Kirsten?"

Kirsten shook her head, smiling. "No, but Estella left a note at the bar for you." She took one of Flor's business cards out of the pocket of her apron on the back of which was written in Estella's curly handwriting 'Dinner's on us, guys, have an awesome night! With love, E,C and T xx'

Gabby smiled and handed the card to Troy, who raised his eyebrows and whistled. "Good people, those Floreses,"

"The best." Gabby got to her feet. "Shall we go see if Tom and the guys are ready?"

A minute later, still buttoning their coats, they left the warmth and bustle of Flor and stepped out into the middle of the final event in their schedule. Gabby was leading the way, but found when she reached the archway leading to the main street through the Old Town that her co-anchor had stopped dead in the middle of the courtyard, and was looking about him as if he had just stepped off a spaceship onto a strange planet.

"Troy?" She looked back over her shoulder. "Are you OK?"

Troy cleared his throat. "What? Oh, yeah. I just…I think I was expecting something…"

"Something more like the other two events?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess so."

Gabby nodded. "It is different to the others. I mean," she turned on the spot, her arms outstretched, "This is really all the last event is. There's no grotto for Santa, no elves, no market stalls, and no live music. Some shops that normally close at five open late, but basically, this is it."

Troy nodded again and the two of them stood in silence for a moment, looking about them. It was quiet in the courtyard, and would have been dark had it not been for the hundreds of little paper shades holding lit candles that stood in rows on every window sill and wall. After a minute, Gabby glanced at her co-anchor, who appeared distracted, and nudged him with her elbow.

"Hey."

Troy gave a start. "Oh, right. Yeah, let's go find Tom."

Together, they walked out into the street, where the same little paper lanterns lined every walkway, and stood in every niche and along every available wall.

"We made these at the workshop this morning, right?" Troy paused to examine one more closely.

Gabby nodded. "Yeah, they're called luminarias. The organisers like to hold back until the last possible moment before putting them out, and then they light them all at once."

"That must take a lot of man-power."

"Yes, but the committee are hardly short of volunteers when it comes to Christmas. Plus, your face when we walked out into the middle of it tells me it was worth it." Gabby smiled. "It makes a bigger statement." she added, looking about her appreciatively.

"It certainly does."

Something in his tone made her look up at him, but he was still looking thoughtfully at the luminaria.

"Troy?"

He turned to her. "Sorry. Miles away again. Busy day catching up with me. Do you want me to ring Tom and find out where he is?"

"No, don't worry, he said they'd set up near the bandstand in the Plaza." Gabby glanced up at her co-anchor again as they started walking, and frowned. He had covered it quickly, but for a moment, when his mind was obviously elsewhere, the sadness that had crossed his face earlier at dinner had returned. At least, that was what it had looked like to her, she told herself firmly; it was ridiculous to imagine that within a few short weeks, she could presume to know what was going on in someone's head. Particularly Troy Bolton's.

An hour and a half later, as she helped the camera men pack their cables into the production van, Gabby concluded that must have been seeing things. Fuelled by what he enthusiastically pronounced to be the best meal he had ever had, the singularly refreshing company of Ms Tia Flores and, she suspected, a total lack of gratuitous Christmas cheer and perky elves, Troy had thrown himself into the final event of the evening with what could only be described as gusto leaving Gabby to either join him in his enthusiasm or get left behind. Segments that, on paper, should have taken three minutes had stretched out to eight or nine; local shopkeepers who had, in the past, been reluctant to take part in GMA's feature found themselves being interviewed on camera and telling Troy about their strong family ties to the city and how Christmas events like these fostered a wonderful community spirit. What was clear from evening, Gabby decided, was that she and Troy had hit their stride. They may have had a bumpy start professionally, but there was no doubt that they were shaping up to be a very good team. Elliot was right, she thought as she slid the last crate of cables into the van and slammed the door, who knew?

"So how're you getting home?" Troy leant against the side of the van, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "You don't have your car with you, do you?"

"No, Jon picked me up this morning on the way to the workshop."

"So how are you planning on getting home?"

Gabby waved her hand vaguely in the direction of her house. "Walking. I live about ten minutes away. That's why I didn't bother bringing my car with me; I knew I'd be ending the evening here."

"Cool." Troy straightened up and zipped his jack a little higher. "I'll walk you."

Gabby blinked. "What? No, you don't have to do that, I'll be fine."

Troy shrugged. "I'm sure you would be."

"So you don't need to walk me."

"And yet I'm going to."

Gabby sighed. He was beginning to undo all the good, team-building work they'd done that evening. "Troy…"

"Gabby."

"Yes?"

"My car is totally blocked in."

"Oh." Gabby dismissed the rest of her speech. "Really?"

"It's practically wedged in there. There's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to get out of there until one or both of them move, and they could technically stay there all night until the parking restrictions come in at six thirty."

Gabby shook her head. "If they parked after you, chances are they've been at the event in the Old Town. They may have already moved."

Troy leading the way, they walked the short distance to where his car was parked, and stood looking at it in silence.

"Huh."

"Yeah."

"Wedged."

"I know."

Gabby checked her watch as surreptitiously as she could, but Troy noticed.

"Yeah, it's getting pretty late. We should get going." He made as if to start walking, and stopped when he saw Gabby hesitate. "Look. I'll walk you home, which will hopefully give one or both of these goobers the opportunity to leave, and if they still haven't then I'll get a cab home and come back for the car in the morning."

Gabby sighed. "OK."

"Think of it this way." said Troy with a grin as they started walking, "I'm not walking you home, I'm walking home with you."

In what way does that help me at all, Troy? You look like some kind of rugged explorer in those boots and the cold has brought a colour to your cheeks that I haven't seen before and I still really like your suede jacket. How will that make me find you less attractive right now? Gabby grimaced slightly at the inner monologue which she had almost shared with her co-anchor and formulated a briefer, less controversial response. "And that makes a difference how, precisely?"

"I'm just saying," Troy spread his hands in defence, "Historically, you've not responded well to my attempts at chivalry, so I thought maybe if you considered it a favour to me, you'd be more comfortable."

"What, congratulate myself on saving you from the famously harsh Albuquerque winter, you mean?"

Troy looked a little wounded. "It is quite cold."

Gabby grinned. "Yeah, Moscow's got nothing on us."

They walked in silence for a few minutes, before Troy spoke again. "So how's your Christmas countdown going?" he asked, and when she looked blank, said "You know, your list of traditions that the guys were teasing you about when we had dinner at Zeke and Sharpay's. Sugar cookies and wreaths and Muppets and something about carolling…"

She waved a hand impatiently. "Ah, you shouldn't pay too much attention to them. Mock Gabby is one of their favourite games."

Troy looked sceptical. "You mean they were lying?"

Gabby's honesty got the better of her desire not to appear a total freak. "They weren't exactly lying." She sighed. "Actually, on a normal year, most of it is true. I do watch Muppet movies and I do make wreaths and I do buy a new Christmas album every year..."

"A normal year?" Troy interrupted, looking like he already had a fair idea of what she meant.

Gabby chose her words carefully. "A normal year would be one where I wasn't in bed for almost a week right before Christmas."

"I guess it might also be a year when much of your time has been taken up engaging in a war of words with someone who described you to your face as 'Folksy'." Troy glanced at her as they walked, as if trying to read her expression. "You know, I'll admit that it wasn't the best choice of words, but I didn't mean it in the way you think I did."

A week ago, Gabby would have seen that as grounds for another lengthy debate. Now, catching his eye as they walked under a street lamp, she found that she believed him.

"So which of the activities on your Christmas countdown list remain un-ticked?" he asked again, taking advantage of the silence where the yelling and expostulating would have been.

Gabby considered. "Well, I have my tree, and am in the process of decorating it. Sasha and Joe, the kids next door, made me a wreath while I was sick, which I put up yesterday. I have my presents pretty much covered, thanks to wonder that is internet shopping and home delivery, and I have a Muppet movie date with Shar, Taylor and Kels tomorrow night, during which we're hoping to get some cookies baked and any presents that aren't for each other wrapped. So actually the only main thing I haven't managed to do is to find a new recipe."

"A new recipe? A recipe for what?"

Gabby thought for a moment. "I think it was a tradition my Grandma from Boston started. Or maybe it was her mother. Anyway, she likes to find a new recipe and debut it at some point on Christmas Day. Some get made that one time and are then relegated to her big cookery book, but other things, like cinnamon and cardamom buns, or brie and red wine nut roast, or chocolate meringues have become family favourites."

"And you've not found anything worthy of a Montez Family Christmas?"

"Not really, no."

"What are the criteria?"

"The criteria is two-fold," said Gabby, counting them off on her fingers. "It has to have the potential either to be a long-running favourite, or to totally gross out one or more family member."

Troy laughed. "Such as?"

"Um, I don't know, if I just say the words 'peppermint eggnog'…" she laughed at his exaggerated shudder. "Yeah, I know. It was like drinking hot melted mint ice cream."

"You must think I'm totally weird."

"Weird how?" His words took Gabby by surprise, and she looked up at him curiously.

As she spoke, they entered the courtyard on which she lived, where it appeared that Christmas had come early. Strings of fairy lights were twisted round railings and front doors, most of which displayed wreaths of various shapes and sizes. Glass baubles and paper snowflakes hung in some windows, while another had been almost entirely obscured by an enthusiastic application of spray-on snow. Troy paused to look around him before answering. "Weird for not observing all these Christmas traditions. Weird for not having a great love of your favourite holiday."

Gabby smiled. "Troy, if anyone's weird here, it's the girl whose family make peppermint eggnog and hold annual snow animal building contests. I'll admit that I was a bit surprised at first, but the fact that you didn't have exactly the same upbringing as me doesn't make it weird, it's just…different. Besides," she walked up the steps to her front door and started looking in her bag for her keys, "it's not like you've never heard of Christmas before. There must be some traditions you're aware of, even if you don't observe them."

"I guess so." He answered thoughtfully.

Gabby rooted through her bag for a moment more, found her keys and turned to say goodnight to Troy who was standing at the bottom of the steps.

Except he wasn't standing at the bottom of the steps.

He wasn't standing on the steps at all.

It was ironic, Gabby thought in the second before he kissed her and she dropped her keys, that the man who seemed most baffled by all things festive should smell so much like Christmas.

Thanks SO much for your lovely reviews; please keep them coming!