This would be her very last Christmas as a single woman and Lucy had gone all-out to impress. So here she was in her fancy Dining Room putting out proper, carefully annotated place cards for all her guests if you don’t mind, before she’d serve them Christmas dinner later on that night.

      ‘Like something out of Downton Abbey,’ she smiled to herself, praying that it would all go off smoothly. It would be the very last time before she got married that both her family and Andrew’s would all be under the same roof. First thing tomorrow, she and Andrew were due to fly to the Caribbean for their luxury New Year’s Eve wedding on a beach in Cancun, Mexico. Lucy couldn’t wait and practically had the hours counted down at this stage.

      The problem was tonight, because the potential for trouble was undeniable. Lucy’s family was loud and boisterous; she had two older sisters and a brother, all married and all bringing their partners and kids along too. Which was great; a happy family Christmas with kids running around underfoot was exactly what Lucy craved. But then there was Andrew’s family to consider too.

      He’d been married before you see, and his two grown up children from his first marriage were coming along. Alannah and Josh. Oh God, where to start about Alannah and Josh? They were twins and at twenty-eight, just two years younger than their stepmother-to-be and not exactly happy about their Dad moving on so quickly after his divorce.

      But wait till you see, Lucy thought hopefully as she laid out the last of the place settings and fussed over the linen napkins. This Christmas dinner will bring us all together as one big, happy, blended family. She’d gone to so much trouble to impress them all; how could it not?

      The dining table looked breathtaking too; groaning under silver candelabra and the horrifyingly expensive holly and mistletoe flower arrangements Lucy had splurged out on. Well, she figured, her family had been through enough Christmases where there was barely enough food on the table to feed all fourteen of them – nieces and nephews included – so now that she was on the verge of marrying a man who loved to see her splash the cash, why not indulge a bit?

      Just then, Andrew came into the Dining room and slipped his arms warmly around her waist.

      ‘It looks stunning darling,’ he said as she snuggled deep into him, as ever loving the feel of his strong arms wrapped tight around her. ‘But not as stunning as my bride-to-be!’ he added, kissing the top of her head lightly.

      She looked up at him, as ever marveling at how sexy he looked for a man in his late-fifties. Her Silver Fox as she called him, her dream come true.

      ‘This, my darling,’ she whispered, leaning up so she could kiss him, ‘is about to be our happiest Christmas ever.’

      Exactly three hours later, Lucy sat back from the dining table and dug her fork into the palm of her hand to physically stop herself from screeching out loud. This, she thought, has to be the worst Christmas ever on record and that was really saying something.

      For starters, there was mayhem at the table, as her eight- and ten-year-old nephews insisted on having a game of soccer around the dining table totally ignoring exasperated calls of their parents to ‘sit down and eat your dinner!’ Meanwhile two of her nieces were all but torturing poor Andrew, clambering all over him, knocking over his dinner and managing to spill both red wine and cranberry sauce all over his good Italian suit and her crisp, snow-white table cloth.

      That much Lucy could stomach, and Andrew himself was coping with the kids with his usual endless patience. What was making Lucy wince was the way her twelve year old niece kept pointedly saying, ‘but are you really getting married to my Aunt Lucy? You’re like … totally ancient compared to her! She’s only young and you’re an old man!’

      The hot flush on Andrew’s face spoke volumes.

      Then there were her two brothers-in-law, who all but spat out Andrew’s expensive Bordeaux wine, claiming it tasted like cat wee and asking if he’s any tins of cider floating around the place. But all this was just the warm-up act to Alannah and Josh, who literally hadn’t stopped needling Lucy from the very moment they’d first crossed her threshold. Everything was wrong for them, from the turkey that Lucy had spend hours sweating over, to the fondant whipped potatoes that took her two full hours to perfect.

      Josh had chosen the dinner table to announce that he was newly coeliac/vegetarian and pointedly shoved his dinner away from him, whereas right after the main course, Alannah muttered ‘amazing the prepared dinners you can get from Marks and Spencer’s these days, isn’t it?’ The comment had been directed at Josh, but Lucy overheard her loud and clear, just as she was meant to, no doubt.