Page 10 of Forever His This Christmas

“She wouldn’t care about the money if you didn’t have it if you treated me well, but she’d be thrilled you have it. You could take care of me the way she thinks women need to be taken care of and be pushing for a wedding date. She’s a throwback to the nineteen hundreds where women stayed home and raised the kids. That is not me,” she laughed as her mother continued to talk.

“So, then we don’t tell her about that part of me,” he suggested seeing she wasn’t about to let herself be pushed into a wedding. From the look on her face, that would send her running as far and as fast away from him as she could get, and that was the last thing he wanted. “What would they think if you showed up with Corey the bartender?”

“They’d flip which granted would be hilarious, but you don’t know my family, Corey. They are completely crazy.”

“Whose family isn’t crazy in their own way?” he questioned lifting her up from the chair before sitting down with her on his lap. “Don’t worry, the building’s cleared out,” he added when she shot him a questioning look.

“I don’t think it’d be a good idea for another reason as well,” Lisa said her eyes showing she was still against the idea of it but not quite as much. “What if someone found out we both took the same time off? We agreed to keep this quiet around here remember?”

“I do and one of us can take an extra day off. You have plenty of time not to mention all of the overtime you’ve put in helping me go through the company’s finances. If we fly out onthe twenty-first or twenty-second that’d give us Christmas Eve, Christmas Day…”

“They’d want us to stay through New Year’s,” she warned.

“Then we’ll stay through New Year’s. I’ll make sure your boss lets you off if you have any issues,” he added kissing her gently as her mother began growing more impatient on the muted line.

“This is crazy.”

“Not really,” he said as an idea came to mind as he tried to clinch her agreement. “If we go then your mother won’t be calling all night to argue with you about it, every evening until Christmas, then through New Year’s when she’s angry you didn’t come home. Those calls will simply disrupt us.”

“You do have a point there,” she said with a grin. “Alright, this is insane, but why not? Get the whole lot of them off my back.”

“Good, now tell your mom so we can get out of here and go home.”

She pulled back slightly at his wording and lifted an eyebrow his way.

“To my home and bed,” he corrected feeling her tense slightly. He wanted to go to Colorado with her to figure out why she was so adamant about never marrying.

“Okay,” Lisa said giving him a kiss before unmuting the call positive she would regret this at some point. Without telling Corey what she intended to do over Christmas, she wasn’t getting out of here alone though, so she’d figure it out later. If she did go home then it’d hopefully be a while before she got another demand. Especially if she could cause enough issues, get up to enough trouble with Corey while there. “Mom…”

“Lisa Gracelyn Branson…would you stop muting this phone?”

“We were discussing some things,” she stated trying to hold onto her annoyance at the use of her full name. “We’ll see if we can get off work but I’m not making any guarantees.”

“Oh sweetie, that makes me so happy! I’ll make sure to fix up the guest room downstairs for your friend.”

“No need for that, we don’t mind sharing the double in my room,” she replied knowing it’d irritate her mother even more.

“Lisa…”

“Mother, if you want me home for Christmas then you’ll simply have to be a bit uncomfortable, because I don’t plan on spending that many nights alone when I could be at his place every single one of them if I stayed.”

“We’ll see,” her mother stated, and she knew it was the closest she’d get to yes from her.

“I’ll let you know when we have more answers,” she said even as Corey pulled up the information to book them flights. “I still have to make sure I can get off.”

“We’ll see you next week then,” her mom replied before she hung up resting her head back against Corey’s chest.

“This isn’t going to end well you know that, don’t you?” she told him.

“Christmas at your parents’ place or us?” he asked, kissing the side of her neck as he entered his credit card info, and she laughed to herself when he told her computer to save it.

“Christmas with my family; there is no us. You know you shouldn’t save your information to someone else’s computer, never know what a girl could order with it,” she warned.

“Order whatever you want, beautiful, I’ve got no problems with it. You know why? Because that’s what a man in a relationship does, buys his girl things, even if he doesn’t know he’s buying them until he gets the bill.”

Lisa let out a sigh, doing her best to ignore the pinging of her heart at his words. “We’re not in a relationship, just like there is no us.”

“No? So, what would you call what we’ve been doing?”

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