Page 6 of Mistletoe Missus
Please, don’t let him be a crazy stalker or let him turn me off. Please, Lord, let him have a six-pack with abs of steel. But don’t let him ask me something foolish.
“Will you marry me?”
My eyes flung open, and I couldn’t comprehend his question. “Excuse me?”
He took my hands in his and asked again, “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
I blinked once, twice, and possibly a third time. My mouth opened with a small wisp of breath escaping, and time appeared to stop. He asked me to marry him, not out to dinner, and he even skipped the first date. We didn’t even make it to second base, and he wanted my hand in marriage—a pact I had wanted with Beau, but that dream had gone down like a bitter pill I never wanted to swallow. His rejection stung, made me numb inside, but this man, this bizarre encounter, made me feel again. He brought me back to life.
“I will,” I agreed, lost in my fantasy. “I’ll marry you.”
Call me stupid, label me as crazy, but a rush of emotions overwhelmed me. I had always envisioned marriage before my twenty-eighth birthday and that celebration had flown by. I pictured having a family right after my career took off and the dream never came true. Devastation doesn’t even describe the feeling of wanting something I could never have. So, in an act of pure desperation and belief in the image I had made up of this man in my head, I wanted to marry him. I’d be with him for the rest of my life, and I’d grow to love him.
“Perfect,” he breathed as he kissed the back of my hand, and his smile grew bigger. “We’ll be husband and wife as soon as the sun sets.”
FOUR
Flurried Fury
Tinsley
What are you doing?
The question ran on repeat in my head as I followed this gorgeous, mysterious man out of the park and toward the busy streets of New York City. I should stop, turn around and run for the snowbanks. In my mind, this was careless behavior on my part and my best friend would tell me so, but in his eyes, there was a calm. An undisturbed tranquility I wanted to discover, and my skin tingled from his arm looped through mine. His smile of reassurance made this crazy scenario effortless, and I should listen to my head, but I kept walking.
The silence between us was heavy but expected. I should bring up a thousand questions for his one life-changing proposal, but I knew he’d second guess my answer. I didn’t want that because I didn’t want to explain my desperation for a chance at marriage and for the possibility of forever.
My response should’ve been a rejection, and he damn well knew it. We were strangers, two souls lost underneath the mistletoe, and we had no right to be together. But here we were, side by side, about to embark on the biggest journey for the rest of our lives.
I had been keeping my eyes on a limousine since before we left the park, and it started out as a miniature blur in the distance. The vehicle grew into the size of a dinky car wrapped up for an excited child underneath the Christmas tree with a tiny bow on top—packaged with care and gifted to a kid on the nice list. But while we walked through the light snowfall, the limousine became bigger, vast and outstretched. The engine ran, and the exhaust blew out the back, melting the snow on the ground and any snowflakes that touched it.
“Is that yours?” I asked curiously and pointed toward the driver, who stepped out.
“Yes,” he answered as we ambled closer, and he sensed my reluctance echoing in my head. “Are you sure about this?”
Suddenly, his words registered through the fog I had been caught up in, and I stopped right in the middle of the street. Car brakes screeched and horns honked, but we paid no attention to the disturbance. Only to each other. His colored hues swirled with recognition of my uncertainty as if he must’ve felt it, too. He had to consider our circumstances, and my answer wasn’t only for me, but for him, too.
This was my last chance, a way out of this madness I was trapped in. I had been in a constant flurry since the moment his lips touched mine, and he presented the opportunity of a dream I had always wanted. To become a bride. A wife to him and, in time, a love that would hopefully grow between us with the possibility of children and a family of our own.
A thought struck me.
“Do you want kids?” I blurted out.
“What?” he asked through the blare of car horns.
The black car to our right revved its engine, and the driver rolled down his window. “Get the fuck out of the way!”
“Children,” I spoke up, but the horn continued to explode through my eardrums. “Do you want—”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch, and get out of my way!”
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said after another loud honk and walked away from me.
“But I—” Lost for words after his fists banged down on the rude driver’s hood of his expensive car and the man got out of his vehicle.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing touching my car, man?” the driver questioned as his nostrils flared and he stalked over.
My soon-to-be husband grabbed him by the coat collar and threw him up onto the hood of his car. Startled, the man pushed back, but he couldn’t get out from underneath him. I heard a low groan of annoyance. The sound was close to being animalistic and gave me goosebumps. I knew it wasn’t from the man pinned on the hood of his shiny new Cadillac either. It came directly from the person who asked me for my hand in marriage. His chest puffed up and down, but his eyes stayed trained on the person who had interrupted our conversation.
