“Vivian! It’s me!”

She stopped and looked at the guy on her porch directly for the first time.

“It’s me. Malcolm.”

She dropped her purse to the ground.

It really was him. He had an overnight bag and a bouquet of flowers next to him. He looked rumpled and sleep-deprived and worried. And perfect.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I got your postcard,” he said.

She looked at him for a long moment.

“The one I sent three weeks ago? Was there some sort of nationwide mail shutdown in Britain I didn’t hear about?”

He shook his head.

“I deserved that. No, there wasn’t. It just took me . . . a while . . . to figure everything out.”

He stood up and took a step toward her. She didn’t move.

“What did you figure out, then?”

He folded his hands together, then dropped them by his sides.

“I know you hate surprises. I’m sorry, and I’ll leave right now if you want me to. But I had to talk to you, and I couldn’t wait for the mail, and I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”

If he’d come all this way for a bad surprise, she was going to create a motherfucking international incident over it.

“None of that explains why you’re standing on my front porch right now,” Vivian said.

He nodded.

“Right, yes, I know that. The thing is, I’m not good at this, as I think you are aware. I do this thing—I pull away, I brood about things, I shut down. You saw me do it in London . . . more than once, actually, but you brought me out of it. Well, there was no you around after your postcard arrived, so Miles had to be the one to make me realize what a fool I’d been.” He laughed. “See, there’s another thing you fixed for me: I would have ruined my relationship with Miles for years if it wasn’t for you getting me to pull my head out of my ass.”

The tears still hovered, but she wouldn’t let them come. Not yet.

“What did Miles make you realize?” she asked.

He took a step toward her.

“That I’ve fallen in love with you, too. And that I’m not too old, or too entrenched in my career, or too conservative to let myself fall for you. This part I figured out for myself: even though I have no real idea what we’re going to do about the continent and ocean that divide us, or if I’ll be able to stop being a fool and sort out my feelings, or if we have a future together, it doesn’t matter, because right here, right now, I love you. I won’t blame you if you’ve given up on me, but I couldn’t last one more day without seeing you and telling you all of this and the two of us trying to figure all of that out together.”

She saw the hopeful, scared smile on his face. She took a step toward him.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“So sure that I’m terrified. I’m not used to not knowing how to do things. But I love you so much that I want to try anyway.”

She smiled up at him, and the tears finally fell.

“I do, too,” she said.

She walked up her front steps, and he pulled her into his arms.

“This doesn’t feel like real life,” she said against his chest.

He kissed her hair.

“To me either. It feels too good to be real. Maybe we can try to believe in it together?”

She tilted her head back and smiled at him. He brushed the tears from her cheeks.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “I’ve missed your postcards, too, but . . . it’s wonderful to see you in real life. To hold you.” He pulled back and traced her lips with his thumb. “To kiss you.”

She pulled back before he could kiss her. He tried to pull her close again, but she held up a finger.

“Hold on a second.”

She went back and picked up her purse from where she’d dropped it so she could unlock her front door.

“Now you can kiss me,” she said when they were safely inside. “My neighbors don’t need the show!”

He laughed and pulled her into his arms.

Epilogue

Nine months later

Malcolm untangled yet another string of Vivian’s Christmas lights.

“So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that in America there’s NO Christmas cake? None at all?”

Vivian plugged in the string he was untangling, and she smiled when all of the lights came on.

“We have Christmas cake. All kinds. Chocolate and pumpkin and cranberry, even some bûche de Noëls. There was a great spice cake one of my sisters made a few years ago.”

He shook his head.

“No no no. None of that nonsense you just listed out to me is Christmas cake. Christmas cake starts months in advance; it’s a dense, heavy cake, none of your fluffy, layered American nonsense. And best of all, you feed it with whiskey every week for the months leading up to Christmas. It’s delicious and you get drunk while eating it; it’s one of my favorite things about Christmas.”

They’d spent the last nine months talking a lot, texting a lot, and sending hundreds of postcards. At least once a month, one or the other of them came for a visit—sometimes as short as a weekend, but even a few days made a difference. They’d committed early on to talking things through, even when it was hard, and to jumping in with each other, feet first.

It had all been impossibly hard, and incredibly wonderful.

Vivian grinned at him.

“If it takes months to make it, why did you tell me about this five days before Christmas? Now I want to try it.”

He grinned back at her.

“I’ll put it on the calendar for next year, then. We’ll make one in October, for next Christmas.”

Her smile got wider.

“Deal.”

They were going to have more time together in this New Year. He would stay here with Vivian until late January, and in February, he would start a new job at a consulting firm—one with offices in London and San Francisco. His last day at the palace had been two days ago; he’d been sad to leave, but ready. The Duchess had somehow gotten wind of everything and had sent him a gift addressed to Ms. Vivian Forest and Mr. Malcolm Hudson.

He climbed up on Vivian’s tiny ladder to put the star on top of her Christmas tree.

“How were you going to put this up here if I hadn’t been here with you? This tree is huge!”

Vivian rolled her eyes at him.

“That’s why I waited for you to decorate my tree, obviously.” She blushed and looked down. “Well, that’s one of the reasons.”

He didn’t think he could love her more, then she said things like that. And when he was stuck on this ladder, too. It was a good thing he’d tucked some mistletoe in his suitcase.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve been so busy in the last few weeks with all the last-minute stuff at work, and packing to come here, that we haven’t had time to talk about our January holiday.” He’d convinced her to take most of the month off, but they hadn’t planned any of it yet. “Where should we go?”

She smiled up at him, her face lit by hundreds of multicolored Christmas lights.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Surprise me.”