The Mistletoe Effect (17 page)

But she didn’t stop. With his face raised to the heavens and his mouth contorted in a silent cry of pleasure, he held her head in place and surged into her until he was empty and thoroughly sated.

He turned off the cock ring’s vibrator and refastened his pants, watching in awe as she stood and licked her lips, then straightened her cocktail dress. She was a marvel to behold—and he wasn’t talking about how she gave good head. Outwardly, she was this meek, mousy woman—the maid of honor dressed like Santa Claus and bowing to her parents’ and grandmother’s every demand. But, just like her silk Halloween panties, underneath all that straitlaced exterior she was hiding one of the naughtiest, sexiest women he’d ever been with.

“You know what, Carina? You are wicked through and through.”

She smoothed a hand over his chest. “What does that say about you? You’re the one who brings it out in me.”

He’d heard it said that marriage changes a person. Maybe being married to him had turned her kinky. He liked the idea that he was the one who brought out the best, and the naughtiest, in her. One thing was for sure: If what they shared as a fake married couple was the anomaly it seemed to be—the mind-blowing sex, the stolen kisses and looks during the day, the anticipation of sleeping with her in his arms every night, the way she lingered in his mind his every waking moment—then she was ruining him for other women. How could real marriage live up to what he shared with Carina?

Chapter Eight

Carina walked through the front door at 11:30 p.m., dead on her feet but reenergized by the scent of marinara sauce and baking cheese that had greeted her in the mudroom.

Of the two of them, Decker was the better cook. He worked almost as many hours as she did, so his meals were nothing fancy, but he often left notes to her on the kitchen counter about leftover spaghetti or Mexican chicken and rice or the like in the fridge—a gesture worth more than any fancy meal could ever match.

Decker emerged from the kitchen wearing nothing but an apron and holding a bowl of salad. “Hi. Long day?”

All the stress of work went whooshing out of her. She lowered her bag, armload of binders, and purse on the floor. “It was. But I’m glad to be home, especially since it smells like you cooked. To what do I owe that honor? You’re usually asleep by now.”

He scratched the back of his neck, looking self-conscious. “It occurred to me today that we hadn’t yet eaten a proper meal together and we only have six days left to be married. So I decided to fix that.”

Her heart dropped; the stress returned in spades. Every time she’d been tempted to tally up how many days they had left together, she’d forced herself to stop, refusing to let the reality of their ticking-clock situation put a damper on her happiness. The truth was, she didn’t want to stop being married to Decker. She loved having someone to come home to and share a bed with and loved that that person was him. She loved that they’d found their relationship groove right away, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be a couple.

The past weeks with him had been some of the best of her life—sexually, emotionally. With his encouragement, she was on her way to becoming her best self. Maybe, someday, she’d even be brave enough to pursue her dream job like he was. It was as though in pretending marriage to Decker her spirit had been freed. For the first time ever, she wanted December to go on indefinitely.

Her eyes traveled to the dining room. The wedding dress had been moved to the far end of the table along with her sewing supplies. With her new routine to wake with Decker in the morning and work on the dress for a couple hours before heading to her office, she was making great progress and the dress was turning out beautifully. The best she’d ever created.

On the near side of the dining table, two places had been set. Between them, a snowman candle had burned almost all the way through the top snowball. Decker set the salad bowl on the table and nodded to the boxes of Christmas decorations piled up in the corner of the living room. “It was the only candle I could find for our candlelit dinner.”

The hint of nerves in his voice was a sweet contrast to his brazen choice of outfit. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Nice apron, too.”

“Yeah? You should probably know I’m not naked under this thing.”

Bummer.
But before she could voice her disappointment, he spun, showing off his butt in the pair of Halloween-themed cotton boxers she’d sewn for him. The sight made her laugh, it was such a nice surprise. She’d ordered the skull, bat, and spider-patterned fabric the day after the wedding but had only squeezed in the time to sew the boxers a couple days earlier. She’d gift-wrapped them and left them on the bed for him to find, but she’d never expected him to actually wear them.

“Halloween looks good on you,” she said.

“Thanks to a talented seamstress.”

He returned to the kitchen. She followed, planning to help him get the rest of dinner on the table and keep his butt in view. “I told you, it’s my favorite holiday. You get to be someone you’re not, you get to eat a lot of candy, and you get to frighten children on purpose and it’s totally legit.”

In front of the oven, he cupped her cheek and stroked his thumb across her lips. “You’re right. What’s not to love?”

“Exactly.” Turning her face into his palm, she closed her eyes and shoved aside the pang of longing at the idea of not spending next Halloween with him. It was more than ten months in the future, but she had no doubt that the two of them would have a blast together. “Maybe you could sneak down this way and join me for Halloween.”

His hand stiffened against her cheek. She kept her eyes closed as her heart gave a painful squeeze. Maybe that had been too forward of her to ask. Maybe he wanted a clean break when he started over in Fort Worth. She wouldn’t blame him if he did; Briscoe Ranch Resort had a way of pulling people in and not letting go. She could see how a clean break might be best for him.

“The resort is only a four-hour drive from Fort Worth, but my new job is going to be demanding, as demanding as yours, I imagine. I’m sure I’ll be able to get away sometimes, but until I’m there, I don’t really know what to expect as far as time off.” There was an edge of frustration in his voice, one that echoed her own frustrations.

Four hours away wasn’t an impossible distance for a long-distance relationship, but Decker had brought up one very important, very depressing fact. There was a reason she didn’t date much, and it wasn’t because she didn’t want to. Her career simply didn’t allow her the time to devote to relationships. Every time she’d tried to get serious with a guy, her demanding work schedule eventually proved too much—and that was with relationships with men who lived within an hour radius of the resort, not the hundreds of miles away that Decker would be. She considered herself a realist and not a pessimist, but the odds of them being able to maintain a healthy relationship given those circumstances were dismal, at best.

“If anyone would understand the kind of stress and pressure you’ll be under, it’s me,” she said, opening her eyes. She pulled away from his touch. “Granite Hill Ranch is one of the largest operations in Texas. I’ve seen the size of the stables, the number of horses. This is the dream job you’ve been waiting your whole life for. You have to go all-in, just like I do for my job. There’s a reason we’re both successful at what we do and it isn’t because we’re busy cultivating our social lives. Neither of us is going to have much personal time next year.”

He pinned her with a troubled look of longing and frustration, his nostrils flared and his eyes dark. She held his gaze, though her eyes stung with the unexpected threat of tears.

His mouth opened, then closed again. He wrenched his gaze to the floor, shaking his head.

She cleared her throat, then swallowed, attempting to dislodge the lump in it so she could salvage the romantic mood of the dinner he’d planned. “How about we eat before midnight rolls around and our late-night dinner turns into an early-morning breakfast?”

He took her hand as she turned toward the dining room. “Carina …”

She willed a smile to her lips. “What did you cook? Smells like Italian.”

He gave her a hard, searching look. She schooled her features and tried a smile on.

After a weighted exhalation, he nodded as though acquiescing to her desire to drop the painful topic. “Emily hooked me up with the ingredients for chicken Parmesan. She said you like her recipe for that.”

From the oven, he pulled a casserole dish filled with bubbling, cheesy goodness.

This time, Carina smiled for real. She and Emily had crossed paths at least a dozen times that day, and Emily hadn’t said a peep about this. It made Carina happy to think of her best friend conspiring with Decker to put on a surprise dinner. “I do. That looks delicious.”

A few minutes later, they were seated at the table, digging into the meal. He really was a good cook, far better than she.

He gestured with his glass of whiskey on ice toward the wedding dress. “Your dress is looking good. It’s almost like little elves are coming in on the sly, making progress on it when we’re not around, because I don’t see you working on it that much.”

“Thank you. Yeah, it’s turning out great. Before I moved in with you, I used to sew to unwind after work, but, uh, you’ve been helping me with that in other ways—”

He held his glass up as though in a toast. “You’re welcome.”

She brought her wineglass up and clinked it with his. “I’ll drink to that.”

After a sip of wine, she added, “So I’ve had to get sneaky to find time to work on the dress lately. I’ve been putting in a couple hours of work on it after you leave in the mornings. I told my friend Janine, the boutique owner in L.A., that I’d ship this one out by the end of the month. There’s a waiting list for my dresses, so I—”

“Pardon the interruption, but hold up. There’s a waiting list of women wanting to buy the dresses that you, Carina Briscoe, design and create?”

The pride in his voice filled her with warmth. “Yes. Isn’t that something? There’s been an ongoing list for a couple years now.”

He gave a low whistle. “One of these days, I’m going to convince you to design dresses full-time. You should see how your face lit up when I brought the topic around to your sewing. And the fact that brides are clamoring for what you produce? You’d be starting your business with a built-in clientele.”

“My situation is complicated. You know that.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I do know that, and I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy.”

“This month, I’ve been very, very happy. But I have to ask, what happened to me being a Decker? You called me Carina Briscoe.”

“You’re right. You’re still a Decker for six more days.”

One of those days, very soon, they were going to have to face reality and figure out what they were going to tell the staff about Decker leaving and the dissolution of their marriage. Thinking about it made her stomach ache as much as the thought of him leaving, so she planned to put off that particular conversation until later—much later. “Speaking of the name Decker, this wine’s making me brave enough to ask you something again, something I’ve been wondering about but hesitated to bring up because you didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

He rolled his glass on its bottom edge, a smile playing on his lips. “My sordid past as a ne’er-do-well?”

“Not quite. I’m pretty clear on that. Would you tell me why you go by Decker and not James? I hate not knowing something that fundamental about you.”

A deep sigh was wrested from his chest, just like the first time she’d asked that question on the night of their wedding. “My dad died when I was seventeen. Well, two days before I turned seventeen, anyway. He had pancreatic cancer. It was fast and brutal. He was gone before we could blink an eye.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

Nodding in acknowledgement of her words, Decker took a long sip of whiskey. Carina held her tongue and waited for him to continue.

“My mom was stricken. In the months following his death, the creditors started showing up. Come to find out cancer is an expensive disease and our ranch was already hurting because of a brutal drought. She panicked as soon as it became clear that we were going to lose the ranch, and got remarried to the first willing man with a roof over his head she could find. We moved from the country into an apartment in Dallas.

“Mom changed her last name when she married. Then, my sister, who’s older than me, was looking to escape the situation and got married right after that, so then she wasn’t a Decker, either. It was just me and that …” He pressed his lips together and shook his head, as though fighting an intense emotion. “That was hard to take. I started going by Decker as a tribute to my dad, and after a while it stuck. I can’t imagine going back to James now.”

Carina had no idea what the proper response to such a story was; all she knew was that she needed to have her arms around Decker. Her heart was so heavy with sorrow for him and what his family had gone through that it felt ready to burst. She stood and circled the table, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his cheek. After a long, quiet embrace, she said, “Me being a Decker is an even bigger honor now. Thank you for sharing the name with me this month.”

He pulled her into his lap and nuzzled noses with her. “The pleasure is all mine. You’re a very worthy Decker.” He tightened his embrace and gave her a smile edged in sorrow. “It’s crazy how it still hurts after all this time, but it does. He never got to see his dream of breeding horses and running a riding school realized. My whole life growing up, he dreamed about it, but he never could manage to make it happen. It took me a long time to shake off the feeling that we kids and our mom had held him back. Like, he couldn’t afford to take the chance on a dream with so many hungry mouths to feed.”

“You weren’t to blame. You were just a kid.”

“I know that now, but somewhere along the line his dream became my dream and I have to make it happen. That’s why I’m doing what I am, moving to Fort Worth and taking the job at Granite Hill Ranch. For my own sake, and for the sake of his memory.”