THE lights of the city shone out in front of me, twinkling like a thousand tiny pixies wings, beautiful against the dark December sky and just tantalizingly out of reach.

It was peaceful here, as I sat under my favourite tree and contemplated life, the universe and everything; peaceful and people free. The only noise was the sound of a party up in the main reception rooms above me. From here the voices and laughter were just indiscriminate murmurs on the breeze punctuated by the occasional sound of a band playing Christmas tunes which came wafting through the warm summer air.

But from where I was under the weeping silver branches of my favourite tree - an old Silver Princess Eucalyptus caesia - Aurora "Rory" to me, it was all just background noise and it felt like a world away. Just like I liked it.

I'd always loved this tree with its silvery branches streaming downward rather than up like regular gums; decorated at this time of year with Christmas gumnuts or in winter with beautiful big pink gum flowers.

I came to this garden a lot as a child and this had always been my spot, my thinking place, and my happy place. This was where I sat when my mother and father divorced and my mother left, where I sat when I had a broken heart from some boy and more recently where I'd been after my father, head gardener here for twenty years, had died.

This tree had shaped my life - even more than my dad. My dad had made me want to study horticulture, this tree had made me want to specialise in natives and now I was the native's specialist here, this tree was my responsibility and she was dying.

The new head gardener Adam was painful - a stickler for saving money and impressing the politicians and bureaucrats, well he'd been head gardener for two years so I suppose he wasn't quite new anymore, but he was still a pain and still more about the bottom line than the plants. And at the moment the bottom-line he was most interested in was that of Sally, a garden architect brought in to revamp part of the park. And the part she really wanted was the part I was sitting in.

She believed terraces with beautiful roses and other introduced plants, plenty of seating maybe even a small stage area for intimate summer concerts was a better use of the space. Adam agreed - there was a much better silver gum specimen further into the park, bigger and more popular, particularly with children through the day and lovers at night (on nights like this when they could wander away from a function and spend some "alone" time together). I kind of bet Adam and Sally have been there - none of us are supposed to know what's going on between them but let's face it, it's hard to keep an office romance quiet even when most of you don't work in an office.

But being found out by us (or their spouses) is not their only problem - they have problem that is much more pressing (well in my world). You see the problem for Adam and Sally is that Silver Princess Eucalyptus caesia are endangered and while Rory wasn't the best example, she was still an endangered tree and they couldn't just dig her up or kill her. She had to die on her own and the way things are at the moment they might get their wish. She is to be assessed by the tree surgeon tomorrow - and I'm not looking forward to it. She had been stressed by the droughts - four in twenty years and a few weeks ago I found mistletoe.

In the Northern hemisphere people romanticise it but here we've kind of demonised it. I can guarantee there is no mistletoe up in that party above me, no one puckering up under its drooping leaves. In Australia in the 1980s scientists believed mistletoe was introduced and that it was going to wipe out our entire gumtree population by about, well about now. However research over the past few decades (including some by yours truly) has discovered that there are actually more than 90 types of mistletoe native to Australia and some of it is beautiful - with gorgeous berries and beautifully drooping leaves. It lives symbiotically with its host and in most cases it causes very little damage to the tree or plant it's living on.

In most cases.

Not for Rory though. Rory is stressed already, she needs regular care and she needs the mistletoe gone otherwise she's pretty much firewood.

The surgeon will take one look at the mistletoe and well............

And there's nothing I can do about it, not now anyway.

Our regular tree surgeon, my godfather and father's best friend Colin retired just a few months ago and there was a new guy - a Brit can you believe it.

He's young, very young - around my age I'd guess and not long out of university really, just a couple of years to be honest, still wet behind the ears. Nic his name - short for Nicholas no doubt.

I'd seen him a few times and been introduced but not really had a lot to do with him and now Rory's future was in his hands and right now I wished I was better with people than plants. Right now I wished I could be like Sally who was currently up at that party flirting not only with Adam but probably Nic too. And you couldn't blame her, Nic, Nicholas Hoult, was beautiful. Tall, with piercing blue eyes, close to 6'3 - handy for a tree surgeon and well built, funny, smart and self deprecating and of course, the social misfit that I am - I can't string two sentences together around him. He probably thinks I'm a raving loony and Sally probably has her tongue down his throat as we speak just a few metres away from where I'm hiding.

Yeah you see it isn't any Christmas party, that one up on the hill behind me - it's ours. The park's annual big blowout. They usually have it in the city, somewhere swanky and upmarket. And I usually manage to avoid it.

But the Government has just spent a motza on upgrading the conference and reception facilities here, trying to make us more self funding. We have the big carols in two days time and we've been booked up for weeks for Christmas Parties. I suppose that's why our party is a Thursday night.

To be perfectly honest I'd forgotten it was on, what with Rory and all of the work associated with pruning and getting the native plants in the garden looking good. My red and green Christmas display of kangaroo paws had kept me insanely busy.

Plus well, parties aren't really my scene anyway.

Neither are people.

So here I am hiding out with my best friend- you'll always find me in the garden at parties.

Safely away from the crowd - except I'm not because as I'm here sitting I hear a noise.

And I peer out to see a tall stranger, mobile in hand looking this way and looking like he is either lost (pretty hard in a botanical garden with well-marked paths) or insane, or a little of both.

He's talking to thin air and pointing his phone in front of him.

I try to pull my legs in under Rory's canopy but he must spy me out of the corner of his eye because he turns and looks right at me. I'm hard to see - still in my khaki ranger-gardeners gear like an extra from the Crocodile Hunter - but he smiles.

"Lizzie?" he asks and as I see him move closer I realise it's the man of the hour - Nic the potential tree executioner.

"H- Hi Nick," I stammer.

Cute guy one - power of speech nil.

"I didn't think I saw you in there," he smiles widely and I shake my head.

"Not really my scene," I say (the most words I've ever managed in front of this guy).

He sighs and gestures to the patch of ground next to me. I nod, though it's kind of the last thing I want - kind of and he plonks down heavily next to me, spreading those impossibly long legs out in front of him. Anyone walking past might get a shock to see four long disembodied legs

"Not mine either really," he says resting his phone on the thigh of his black jeans and running his hand through his hair.

"To be honest after the speeches and then Sally trying to get me to take a look at the plans in her office I was pretty bored," he sighs. "Are they always like that - the parties I mean?"

I shake my head "I wouldn't know - I don't think I've ever been!"

He smiled then, one of those big warm, heart flipping smiles "You're not missing much - that's why I was out here playing Pokemon Go."

Aah so it all makes sense now - he wasn't talking to himself, he's a nerd.

"Much luck?"

"I caught Pidgey near the bougainvilleas but that's about all - thought I had something good out here but no luck."

"I saw some kids playing down near the duck pond the other day screaming something about finding Kangaskhan - you might try there," I venture, still feeling a little shy, and I'm rewarded with a big wide-eyed smile, like a kid in a candy store.

"Wow really? I've been after him for a while! I was hoping to get him before I head back to England for Christmas," he says so excitedly that I think he might be about to jump up and go over there right now. Though the area is sealed off at night behind gates in case drunken guests decide to take a midnight dip (don't laugh it's happened).

"Where's home?" I ask finally starting to warm up a little.

"England!" he fires back and then looks embarrassed "I mean Surrey, my family live in Surrey," he says and then he does something I don't expect - he apologises to me for rambling and being nervous- he apologises to me, the person who only takes her foot out of her mouth around him to change feet.

"I'm sorry you're just so smart and so efficient and so beautiful and well you kind of intimidate me a little?" he admits quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking away and my eyes bug and I blush. Nic -the god of tree doctoring - likes me, no I've slipped into another dimension - how could he like me - I've said three words to him in the whole time he's been here, okay this isn't possible. It's a joke - like at school when the cool guy pretended to like nerdy me to make his mates laugh? I look back at him through my long fringe (the only part of my straight dark hair not captured in a pony tail." And suddenly he looks, shy, bashful and 16 not 26 and I'm shocked

"Thank you."

"You're sweet, deluded but sweet!" I say and I punch his arm.

He gives me an "aw-shucks" kind of look and then he says seriously "I mean it - I've never met anyone more knowledgeable about plants, their Latin names, everything about them."

"I don't have a life!"

He smiles "you do - it's just wrapped up here - you're so passionate about this park - it's amazing."

I blush again and his eyes twinkle.

God he's cute.

"You seem pretty knowledgeable yourself," I say and I mean it - Adam was talking about rose varieties the other day and Nic corrected him during our weekly staff meetings. Adam looked at him daggers; people don't often stand up to him only me and now Nic.

"Adam will have you on the hit list now after the other day with the David Austen Heritage Rose varieties."

I shift my body to look at him properly for the first time. His phone is still lit on his thigh and is illuminating his face, making his high cheekbones look even sharper and his eyes bluer. He is a very handsome man but it's more than that, his eyes are bright with a mixture of intelligence and mischief and I can't help smiling when he winks at me and says "he's going to hate me more tomorrow" he says cryptically.

And I cock my eyebrow at him questioningly.

He smiles enigmatically and jumps up suddenly almost scaring the crap out of me.

"Wait here I'll be right back," and with that he disappears into the night only to return breathlessly a minute or so later carrying a fairly large red sack.

"I didn't know how to wrap it," he confesses flopping back down next to me and handing me said cotton back. "So I shoved it the Santa sack Derek the chef was using as Santa before.

"I drew you in the Secret Santa but I didn't know what you'd like - well I did but well um it's not, well it's not something you could bring out in there," he says pointing up to where the Christmas party was still in full swing.

I opened the sack carefully.

And there inside was mistletoe and not just any mistletoe. It had been too dark to tell when I sat down here and to be honest I wasn't really looking but..............

"Oh my god - you didn't?" I said my eyes widening and simultaneously filling with tears as I pulled the large branch out of its new home.

"When?" I ask shaking my head in disbelief.

He runs his hands through his hair and looks a little sheepish. "While you were down in the Kangaroo Paw garden and the others were preparing for the party- Derek held the ladder for me!"

I'm still shaking my head and the tears fall.

"I'm sorry," he says "I thought you'd like it - when we do the inspection tomorrow there will be no sign of mistletoe, the tree itself is pretty sound so there should be no reason for it to be condemned."

The tears come harder now and poor Nic looks totally bewildered so I stop and try to pull myself together wanting, needing to explain.

"It's," I hiccup, "It's the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me, thank you."

I hug him then - it's awkward at first and then, then it just feels nice and I pull away reluctantly.

Nic smiles then as I pull out the mistletoe properly and examine it.

"Adam and Sally are going to be so pissed," I giggle.

"Have you seen the tables and plants they wanted to put here - they'll just have to put the ugly crap somewhere else now," Nic laughs too taking the mistletoe from me and looking at it.

"Up their arses for all I care," I say meaning it. I'm over them and their bullying tactics. This garden is beautiful and most of its beauty comes from the native flora. What they want to do is not only unsustainable in our climate, it's just plain folly, I tell Nic and he moves closer to me still examining the foliage closely. He's so close I can smell his Nic-ness a blend of gum and earth soil. He smells divine and perfect.

"That's what I really like about you Lizzie - your passion," he says his voice lowering as he pulls off a smaller piece of the Mistletoe and holds it up between us.

"You like me?" I ask quietly and he nods, a cheeky grin spreading across his handsome face as he holds the Mistletoe above our heads now.

"Very much," he says quietly and then he leans in and there under my favourite tree Nic kisses me for the first time and the sounds of Slade's So Merry Christmas drift on the breeze.