The Mistletoe Effect (2 page)

“She’s gone. Wendell, too. It’s over.” With a sniff, Carina’s mom dabbed at the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief, then walked to Carina’s father’s side with the stiff grace and perfect posture befitting a former Dallas County beauty queen.

The crowd exploded with loud discussion. Some people stood to leave, though most looked rooted to their chairs.

Carina whirled on Decker. “If you’d thrown Wendell a bachelor party with strippers, this never would have happened.”

Her face was instantly hot. What a ridiculous thing to say. It was amazing how easy it was to get sucked into her parents’ vortex and let her concern for the business overshadow her concern for Haylie’s well-being, but screwed-up priorities were her parents’ gig, not hers. Haylie was better off without marrying Wendell, even if it cost the Briscoes’ business hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and irreversibly changed the course of the resort’s growth.

Decker seemed unfazed. Crossing his arms over his chest, he rocked on his boot heels and arched a brow. “This must be one of those damned if I do, damned if I don’t arguments you women are so fond of.”

His deep Texas drawl flustered her almost as much as the way his arm muscles strained against the sleeves of his tuxedo jacket.

She snapped her gaze back to his face. “Absolutely not. I was trying to thank you.”

He smiled at that, as though he didn’t know she had it in her to jest. She didn’t blame him; she could hardly believe she’d said something remotely witty to the man she found intimidating and unapproachable in every way.

Her father stormed to the front of the chapel again, pointing a finger at the bridal party and chaplain. “In the back room, now!”

Speaking of intimidating
.

Before she could move, a knock sounded. She turned to see Granny June standing, rapping her cane on the back of her pew to get everyone’s attention. The chatter in the room ceased. Even Carina’s father froze.

Granny June might not be quite all there in the head anymore and she might let superstitions rule her life, but she was still one of the strongest, smartest women Carina knew. Along with Grandpa Tyson, who’d passed when Carina was a kid, Granny had the vision and guts to turn his run-down family ranch into a multimillion-dollar resort that had sustained three generations of Briscoes and, the family hoped, would sustain many more generations to come.

“The Mistletoe Effect started when my dear husband, Tyson, and I were married in this very chapel fifty years ago this month. In the years since, I have attended every December wedding held under this roof. Never once have I seen such an atrocity as has befallen here tonight. If a wedding doesn’t take place, then the Mistletoe Effect is jinxed.”

The buzz started up again in the crowd, but Granny wasn’t done. She aimed her cane at her son. “This is up to you to fix. The Christmas spirits demand nuptials, so nuptials are what you have to give them if you want the Mistletoe Effect to keep working. There ain’t no going back on a jinx like this.” She swung her cane toward Carina. “And you.”

Carina’s stomach did a flip-flop. She gripped the bridal bouquet tighter.
Don’t say it, Granny.

“The bouquet has spoken.”

The bouquet … speaking? Sure, Granny was off her rocker, but she had to be kidding.

Granny waggled her cane. “Carina, you’re the one getting married here tonight.”

Triple dog damn it.

∗∗∗

“I am not getting married tonight.”

Carina said it so softly, Decker wasn’t sure anyone else had heard it. Another thing he wasn’t sure of was why the hell he’d followed her into the tiny side room of the chapel along with her father, her mother, the chaplain, and the rest of the bridal party. Actually, Decker knew why, not that it made the situation any easier to swallow.

Carina needed backup. He’d been around her and the Briscoe family long enough to know she was absolutely spineless when it came to standing up for herself against her parents. It pissed him off because he knew she was smarter and stronger than she was making herself out to be and because normally he wasn’t in any sort of position to come to her rescue. Tonight, though, he was making an exception because, as far as he could tell, he was the only one who cared about anything other than the stupid mistletoe legend.

Ty Briscoe stomped across the room with the gusto of a bull with cactus needles in his ass. “Oh, yes, you are. This is your fault.”

“How?” Decker asked, because he was sure Carina wasn’t going to voice the obvious.

“You were the wedding planner,” Ty snapped at Carina, as though she’d been the one to ask. “You should have made sure Wendell wrote his vows.”

Carina’s eyes were wide. A sheen of perspiration had broken out on her nose and forehead. “I know, but—”

Hold up a sec. She was taking responsibility for Wendell’s jackassery? Decker turned his back on Ty and leveled a stern gaze at Carina. “Don’t let him talk to you like that.”

“He means well. His heart’s in the right place.”

Decker begged to differ, but Ty wasn’t done with his tirade.

“I promised this resort’s guests and journalists at
Wedding World
that we were staging the wedding of the century to kick off our anniversary month and, so help me God, we’re giving the people a wedding. Ma let fly about a jinx and I’m not willing to take the chance of anyone believing her, even if she is batshit crazy.”

“There’s no such thing as jinxes, Ty,” the chaplain said.

“Of course there is,” Eloise Briscoe said. “If you believe in blessings, then you have to believe in curses. It’s God’s will to balance the world out like that.”

Chaplain Roberts rubbed his chin. “You do have a point.”

Decker gaped at them. What it would be like to have the universe and Mother Nature and all of humanity bend to your will? Guess that’s what money and a complete lack of self-awareness bought you.

“Whom should we find to marry Carina, dear?” Mrs. Briscoe asked her husband.

Decker stepped between Carina and her father, his temper rising. “She’s not getting married. There’s no wedding license, no groom, and no such thing as jinxes.”

“You, be quiet,” Ty said. “Don’t forget who your boss is and what that means for your future.”

With that threat, Decker did shut his mouth, even though it pissed him off, because Briscoe was even more on-target than he knew. For nine years and eleven months, Decker had poured his blood and sweat into working his way up from mucking stalls to managing the resort’s stable, but nine years was his limit. He’d made a promise to himself not to get to ten, so when an opportunity to apply for his dream job had fallen in his lap several months back he’d seized on it. He was all lined up to start in January, and though he had yet to give his notice at the resort, his prospective new boss had made it clear that the deal hinged on Ty Briscoe’s recommendation.

Decker felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Carina step out from his shadow. “Thank you, but it’s okay. I’ll do it. Decker’s right. There’s no marriage license, so it wouldn’t be a real wedding. And if Granny June thinks this is what it’ll take to make the guests happy, pacify the
Wedding World
journalists, and keep future couples believing in the Mistletoe Effect, then I don’t see the harm.”

A light twinkled in Ty’s eyes. “That’s my girl. Tough as nails.”

Carina Briscoe was many wonderful things that had held Decker’s interest for nine years, but tough as nails wasn’t one of them. “You don’t have to do this, Carina.”

She met his searching gaze and smiled resignedly at him. “It’s okay. Really. Better me than Haylie. I can’t believe you’re friends with that jerk Wendell.”

“
Friends
might be an overstatement.”

There was a time when Decker and Wendell had been the best of friends. They’d started working at Briscoe Ranch Resort around the same time, both in their early twenties, and had run around together, making hay and causing trouble, until Decker realized he wasn’t getting what he wanted out of life by womanizing and hard drinking.

He’d stumbled into a celebration of Wendell’s engagement at the hotel bar, which was where Wendell had announced that he needed to pick a best man before Ty Briscoe chose one for him. The couple beers in Decker had turned him sympathetic to Wendell’s plight of having Ty Briscoe as a father-in-law, and the next thing he knew, he was volunteering.

“I told you to stay out of this, Decker,” Ty said.

“Yes, sir.” And Decker would, because Carina had clearly made up her mind. If she agreed to let her family push her around, then Decker wasn’t going to risk his dream job to keep her from it. Not only that, but also he was smart enough to realize that the next step in putting on a fake wedding was finding Carina a groom. Time for Decker to get the hell out of there.

He was two steps gone when Ty grabbed his sleeve. “Wait a minute. Maybe this does concern you. You’re single, right?”

Behind Briscoe, Carina gasped. Decker couldn’t decide if he should be insulted or honored by her reaction.

“Daddy, please. Decker isn’t interested.”

“Don’t
Daddy, please
me. As much as this is your fault, Decker, here, shares the blame. He was Wendell’s best man. How come you didn’t help him with his vows?”

Decker wasn’t sure how to answer that without getting himself fired. He was still formulating a comeback and refusal when he took another look at Carina.

She looked worn to the bone. Her hair was in disarray and her dress was scuffed from the dive she’d taken to catch Haylie’s flowers. His thoughts slid on their own free will to the sight of Carina’s panties as she lay at Granny June’s feet. Maybe it wasn’t all that polite of him to have noticed, but she looked damn fine in them, even if they were covered in a Halloween print and edged in neon orange lace.

His body stirred to life at the memory, even as his heart grew warm and a smile threatened his lips at the incongruity of her wearing Halloween lingerie to a Christmas wedding. He couldn’t wait to tease her about it when they were alone.

The thrill of thinking he’d be alone with her if he agreed to the sham solidified the choice in his mind. “I’ll do this, but on one condition. We go ahead with the reception—”

Mr. Briscoe stuck out his hand, ready to seal the deal. “I paid for the food and the band already, so I don’t see a problem with that.”

“I wasn’t done, and I was talking to Carina, not you,” Decker said, holding her wide-eyed gaze. “If I do this, then we go ahead with the reception—and you agree to move into my house as my wife until Christmas, just to be on the safe side to make sure the Mistletoe Effect isn’t jinxed.”

The way he reasoned it out, this was his sole opportunity to spend time alone with the one woman who was off-limits to him without worrying if he’d have a job to go to in the morning.

Carina’s skin turned a becoming shade of pink.

He was afraid Mr. or Mrs. Briscoe would protest or at least feign discomfort at Decker’s request, but instead, Briscoe clapped him on the shoulder. “Good thinking, son. We can’t be too careful about something so important.”

Decker nearly lost his cool, knowing that Briscoe was referring to the mistletoe jinx and not his daughter, as should have been his most important concern, but kept his attention on Carina. For a split second, Decker thought she might refuse his proposition, and his gut twisted. That was when he fully realized how badly he wanted her to say yes.

After a minute of chewing on her lower lip, she nodded.

“I want to hear you say it out loud that you’re all right with those conditions.”

“Okay,” she croaked. “Husband and wife until Christmas. In your house.”

An unexpected thrill coursed through him at the words
husband and wife,
said in that breathy, quiet way of hers that got him wondering if she was even more okay with the arrangement, and with him, than she was willing to let on in front of her family.

Mr. Briscoe grabbed Decker’s hand and shook it. “Then it’s settled. You two are getting married in five minutes. We’ll skip all the walking down the aisle baloney. Chaplain Roberts, get ready. Let’s get this event back on track.”

Any other chaplain might object to performing a pretend marriage ceremony, but Chaplain Roberts’s parish didn’t boast a building named the Ty and Eloise Briscoe Fellowship Hall merely because Briscoe and Roberts were old friends and golfing buddies. Besides generous contributions to the church, the word was that Briscoe made his money work even harder for him by greasing all the right palms in the greater central Texas area, and Decker didn’t doubt that was the case with the good chaplain.

“Yes, sir.”

After the bridal party and Carina’s parents had filed out of the room, Decker and Carina stood in tense silence. That’s when he decided there was no time like the present to break the ice and ask the question that had been on his mind.

“I have one concern before we do this.”

“What?” she breathed, her shoulders tensing.

He slid an arm around her waist and leaned close, getting his lips right by her ear. There was no real need to, seeing as they were the only ones there, but if he was going to be sealing their vows with a kiss, then they might as well get used to the feel of each other. “Jack-o’-lantern underwear?”

She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t pull away. He’d nearly written off his hope that she’d answer him, or at least find his teasing charming, when she turned her chin up and answered, looking adorably indignant, “What can I say? I like Halloween.”

“Better than Christmas?”

Her indignation turned genuinely weary. “Christmas is complicated.”

“Complicated how?” Suddenly it was very important that he learn more about her during their time together, not just her underwear preferences but also what made her tick and why she let her family push her around so much.

He needed to know what she had against Christmas, the time of year that was near and dear to his heart. The urgency of the feeling reminded him that up until this point all he’d really felt for her was lust and the challenge of her being unobtainable. It was obvious now that there was so much more to her than he’d allowed himself to see.