VICTORIA RĄBIEŃ

Chance Encounters
He went to Vegas for Christmas to forget all about love. Everything changed when a woman sat next to him at the poker table
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When Englishman Francis Chadwick decided to spend Christmas in Las Vegas, his goal was simply to escape everything.

It was 2014. Francis was 34 and in the middle of a divorce.

“I just wanted to get away,” Francis tells CNN Travel today. “Christmas being, obviously, quite a family orientated time of year I didn’t want to be around anything Christmassy. I was like, ‘Where’s the least Christmassy place I could go to?’ Vegas seemed like the place.”
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So while his family and friends were spending evenings enjoying festive drinks, decorating Christmas trees and watching “Love Actually,” Francis packed his bag, leaving his Christmas sweater behind, and headed to the United States.

“I was in Washington, D.C., for a couple of days. I went to Dallas for a few days, watched the Cowboys down there, and then on to Vegas over the Christmas period,” recalls Francis. “And my mindset at the time — I had no interest in women, relationships, anything at — I hadn’t even contemplated a relationship since the separation from my first wife.”

On Christmas Eve 2014, Francis was playing three-card poker at Vegas’ MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, a sweeping, vast gambling palace on the Vegas Strip.

He was pretty absorbed in the game when a woman sat down next to Francis, and he looked up.

The woman smiled widely, introducing herself as Tehzin from Toronto. Then, Tehzin introduced Francis to what seemed like her entire family, who all appeared to be in tow. Subsequently, Tehzin’s sister and brother-in-law sat down at the poker table next to her.

“So, how do we play?” Tehzin asked Francis, smiling again.

Francis didn’t know what to think. All he knew was he was drawn to Tehzin. Slowly, surprising himself, he smiled back. It felt like the first time he’d smiled properly in months.

Francis didn’t — at that point — know the significance of this moment.

“You’ve got me traveling to Vegas from the UK, Tehzin traveling there from Canada… What are the chances that we would actually cross paths at all, let alone everything else that happened next? It’s pretty crazy,” says Francis today.

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