Page 9 of Promise Yule Be Mine
“Come on, Kody. We only get married once. We need to do this right.”
“Do you really want to spend your savings on…this wedding?” I whispered the last part.
Jenna straightened and glared at me. “Yes, Kody. I meant what I said. Did you? Have you changed your mind? You can tell me if you have?—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I haven’t.”
And I hadn’t. But I didn’t need to make a show out of this arrangement. Doing that only drew attention to us and ourcharade. And I didn’t want anyone looking too closely. I just wanted us to get on with our lives and build our family our own unique way.
“Good. Then come meet Nova.” She tapped my cheek a couple of times and then spun around and dragged me into the back, into the snug and one of the occupied tables. “Here he is!” she sang as we approached.
A young Black man put the menu down, revealing his face, and stood opposite me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
He was gorgeous. He had full, pink lips that made his smile even brighter and more colorful and his eyes were big and beautiful. They made my chest feel warm and tingly.
“Hi, I’m Nova. Nova Myers. Nice to meet you.” He stretched his hand in front of me and all I could do was stare, frozen in time, in a moment that felt more like a dream than reality.
“Kody!” Jenna nudged my ribs and that seemed to wake me up and bring me back to Earth.
“H-hi,” I said and offered him my hand, which was a big mistake. As soon as we touched, the warmth in my chest grew hotter and hotter only to culminate in an explosion. A big bang.
A supernova.
“K-Kody. A pleasure.”
How I managed to utter those words I had no idea, but it seemed to please Nova and his smile deepened for a brief moment before he let go and took his seat back. Jenna copied him, leaving me alone to stand above them like an idiot.
“Kody? Are you feeling okay?” Jenna asked.
I forced myself to nod and took a deep breath, willing my body to cooperate with me, and took a seat next to my fiancée and the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on.
“So…Kody. Jenna. Let’s talk about your wedding!”
4
NOVA
“This is your captain speaking. We will soon be landing in Christmas Falls. The local time is 2:45pm and the temperature is a gentle fifty-five degrees with a clear sky and ten percent chance of rain.”
This captain must have lost his freaking mind if he thought fifty-five degrees was gentle, considering I was already cold but I guessed it wasn’t his fault I sucked at winter temperatures. Even gentle ones like fifty-five.
I readjusted in my seat and continued my book while everyone around me started messing around with the overhead bins and clicking in and out of their seatbelts.
E.S. Maxwell’s newest cozy mystery was a fantastic start to his new series. I was always hesitant of my favorite authors spinning off their series as sometimes they couldn’t pull it off or sometimes it felt like reading the same book with different characters, but I had to hand it to him. He’d done a great job with this one. I couldn’t imagine it being easy to write twenty-five books in one series, let alone writing something completely new but also just as comforting and amazing.
I only closed the book when the person next to me stood and pulled their bag from the overhead bin.
Damn it. Just as it was getting good.
But as usual, I had a job to do. So I followed suit, picked up my bag and made my way out of the plane onto the tarmac where thegentle fifty-fiveseeped into my bones like a harsh thirty-five.
It was a good thing I loved Jenna because if it weren’t for her, I’d be hightailing it out of here on the first available flight.
I’d much rather have New York’s gentle fifty-five than Illinois’s. For one thing it stung less.
I spotted Jenna on the way into the terminal, wearing a lanyard that identified her as airline staff and she jumped at me with both arms.
“You made it!”
