The Mistletoe Effect (20 page)

His wife.
She stared at the paper in her lap. Yes, she really was his wife now.

Still agitated, he returned to his knees and gathered her hands in his once more, ignoring the crowd still standing around them. “Briscoe Ranch Resort is going to thrive whether or not you martyr yourself. Just because this has always been a family operation doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. You’ve already found the courage to stand up to your father. This is the next step.”

As hard as it was to imagine leaving her family’s business, it was even harder to imagine living that far from the man she was falling hard for. “Los Angeles is a long way away.”

“You’re looking at it wrong. The distance would be a blessing. You’d be far enough away from your family to think straight and live your own life without them butting in all the time.”

How could he say that when all she wanted was to throw her arms around him and hang on forever? An ache bloomed inside her chest, as if her ribs were too small for her heart. “Could you maybe be a little less enthusiastic about me moving fourteen thousand miles away from you?”

His face crumpled. He dropped his forehead to their joined hands. After a long, heavy silence he said, “This isn’t about me or what I want.” His voice was thick and scratchy, as though it took all his effort to push the words from his mouth. “When we started this marriage deal, my only goals were to spend a lot of time with you and help you spread your wings so you could fly. I know that sounds corny, but that was the vow I made myself. I’ve watched you change this month, standing up to your dad, taking time off, smiling more.”

Decker swallowed. “You’ve outgrown this place and the tiny box your family’s trying to keep you in. It’s time for you to fly, and here you are, with an amazing opportunity to do just that. I won’t be the man who held you back. I refuse to be. And the only way I could be prouder of you was if you seized this gift Janine’s trying to hand you and ran with it.”

She understood where he was coming from. His dad had never seen his dream through, and Decker wanted more for Carina. It was noble of him, but it left her feeling cold and sad and alone.
The distance would be a blessing
.

“What about this?” She lifted the license. “We’re married.”

Decker took a long, hard look at the paper, a storm in his eyes that she found impossible to interpret. Grabbing her hand, he pulled her up and marched with her in tow past the check-in counter, through the employees-only offices.

“Decker, no. Please. I’ll talk to him myself later.” There was a right way and wrong way to negotiate with her father and blazing into his office spitting mad wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

Decker threw open the door to her father’s office hard enough that it banged against the wall. Her father set his phone down and stood, a scowl on his face and a protest on his lips until Decker slammed the marriage license onto the desk.

“That’s a forgery. Since you paid someone off to create it, you can pay someone off to destroy it. Immediately.” Decker’s voice was low and menacing—angrier, even, than the night he and Carina stole the Christmas tree.

Her father braced his hands on the desk and stood, glaring at Decker.

“Daddy, sit back down. Decker, you, too. Both of you knock—”

“I have my reasons for doing what I did,” her father cut in, his attention solely on Decker. “And I suggest that you stand down, son, before you land yourself on the wrong side of my good graces.”

Decker’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you didn’t hear me right. Nothing and nobody are going to hold Carina back from living the life she deserves or being who she’s meant to be. Not me and not you.” He stabbed his finger in the air toward her father, who glared at it, unflinching. “And definitely not some meaningless piece of paper. You will make this right for her, or so help me, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

Meaningless piece of paper
. It might be forged, but it wasn’t meaningless to Carina. She felt married to Decker. The past month had been the best of her life.

She backed toward the door, her face averted to hide the tears that threatened once more. Maybe Decker had been right that the distance would be a blessing. Maybe if she were half the country away from Decker, she could learn how to live without him again.

“Are you threatening me, son?” her father growled.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.” Decker strode toward the door and took Carina’s hand again, though he seemed too wrapped up in his own male posturing to notice her distress. He tugged Carina out the door. “Come on, Carina. We’ve wasted enough time here. You have a phone call to return.”

Chapter Ten

Decker lay awake, Carina curled into him. He tucked a hand behind his head and stared at the skylight in the ceiling, listening to her even breathing. He watched snow accumulate in the edges of the skylight, then blow away only to start accumulating again. As the weatherman had predicted, it looked like it might be a rare white Christmas.

The last couple days had flown by. A distance had already settled between Decker and Carina. He had barely seen hide or hair of her during her waking hours. As far as he knew, they were supposed to attend the Mistletoe Ball together and renew their vows along with all the other couples in attendance. Their last Mistletoe Effect jinx prevention duty.

The mere thought of it brought him a pain like none he’d ever experienced.

The trouble was, Decker didn’t want to stop being married to Carina. He’d loved every day of being her husband, but he’d told her the truth when he’d said he refused to be the man who held her back from achieving her dreams.

What the hell was he going to do? Here it was a few minutes after midnight on Christmas Eve and he had no idea how to fix things. He’d had two goals that month: get to know Carina intimately and help her find the courage to pursue her dream. Looking back, he wouldn’t have done anything differently, but he couldn’t help but feel that God had a dark sense of humor to give him everything he’d wanted only to teach him the lesson that he should have been more careful what he wished for. Because in getting to know Carina he’d fallen in love with her, but helping her find her voice and achieve her dreams meant giving her up—and, though he hadn’t spoken to Ty Briscoe since he’d threatened him, most likely forfeiting his own dream in the process.

He just couldn’t see any solutions that worked, that would keep him and Carina together. If he followed her to California, what was he supposed to do there? He didn’t have any job skills other than ranching, and he sure wasn’t the kind of man to live off his woman’s wages.

He had no doubt that Carina would come with him to Fort Worth—that was,
if
he still had a job there to go to—but he couldn’t ask her to give up her dream. Dressmaking itself could happen anywhere, but finding clients, that was a different ball game. She had a chance to be part owner of an established bridal shop in a major city, which would be leaps and bounds over anything she could establish in Fort Worth. Not only that, but also the kind of house his ranch-foreman salary could afford would be a paltry consolation prize to a woman used to living in means. He had no idea how much of her family wealth she had access to, but he was too proud a man to find out.

The best solution he could come up with was taking the Granite Hill job if by some miracle Murray Outweller could overlook the fact that Decker had threatened one of his oldest buddies, and, from there, start researching ranch jobs in the Los Angeles area. There had to be some, and eventually one of them was going to need a new foreman or stable manager, something that paid a livable wage. If not in L.A., then somewhere close enough that Decker and Carina could make a relationship work. When he came to her, it would only be when he could do so as an equal partner, with more than just himself and his love to offer.

She rustled in her sleep, readjusting, so he pulled her into his arms. She rested her head in the crook of his arm, her cheek on his chest and her arm draped over his ribs. Then her hand twitched in a deliberate way that told him she waking. She looked up at him.

“Hi,” he said.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked in a groggy voice.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind. I didn’t mean to wake you up, too.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

He stroked her hair. “I’m just so proud of you, is all. You’re going to make a great business owner and you’re going to make a lot of brides very happy.”

She drew a heart on his chest with her finger. “You’re going to make a great foreman.”

“Mmm,” was all he could bring himself to say. His lifelong dream had suddenly lost all its luster in the shadow of everything he stood to lose.

He rolled, caging her beneath him, and kissed her. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and kissed him back. There was desperation in the kiss. Desperation to make the most of the night because their time together was almost over. She planned to leave for L.A. in a few days’ time.

“Are you looking forward to the Mistletoe Ball tonight?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said with a halfhearted smile. Then a shadow fell over her face. “We’re going to have to pretend to renew our vows. Are you okay with that?”

It won’t be pretending for me,
he almost said. But he was so afraid to spook her into forfeiting her opportunity in L.A. that he couldn’t find the courage to speak up. So instead, he kissed a trail from her neck to her chest. She took his head in her hands and arched up, directing him to her breast.

He rewarded her boldness by drawing her stiff nipple into his mouth. He loved that she’d starting doing that, fearlessly letting him know loud and clear what she wanted and when. It filled him with pride that she trusted him that much to be honest.

After lavishing attention on both her breasts until her hips squirmed, he kissed her deeply again, trying to tell her—without messing it up with words that might inadvertently persuade her to give up her dreams—that she meant everything to him and that he loved her enough not to hold her back.

She wrapped her legs around his hips. Every fiber of his being wanted to take her hard and fast, to claim her the only way he could. Breathing hard and fighting for restraint, he levered up on his elbows and reached between her thighs. She was hot to the touch and he could tell by the way she shivered and moaned that she was turned-on, but she wasn’t wet enough yet.

Rising up to his knees, he opened his nightstand drawer and grabbed for a condom and lube. In the glow of moonlight filtering down from the skylight, Carina’s flesh glowed a violet-blue, though her eyes were fathomless orbs of shadow and darkness as she watched him rip the condom open.

Without a word, she took the bottle of lube from the sheet next to her hip and poured some into her hand. She knew what his plan for her was and she was getting herself ready. He wished the lighting were better so he could’ve watched her touch herself in high definition, but the absence of light reminded him of their first time together, their consummation, so making love in the dark would always hold a place of privilege in his heart.

When he’d finished rolling on the condom, her hand was on his shaft, pumping with a tight, confident grip, lubing him up, too.

He rose over her and took her hands, pinning them over her head. She lifted her head and kissed him. It was such a different kiss from that first night. Now, they knew each other with an understanding that ran deep and knew no boundaries. Their tongues twined, not exploring like they had in the beginning of their relationship, but joining, becoming one.

He flexed forward, surging into her. She mewed into his mouth and took him all the way in. They moved together, fluid and graceful—just heat and bodies and friction, and their two souls reaching for each other and for a shared moment of rapture. Carina usually needed more than intercourse to get her there, though, so as soon as he felt the first stirring of his building orgasm he rolled onto his back, bringing her up to sit astride him.

She braced her hands on his chest, finding the same slow, steady rhythm they’d established in missionary, while he set his thumb to work against her clit. He knew the motion she liked best, what got her there fastest. Closing his eyes, he gave himself over to the dance with her. Thrusting up with his hips, rotating his thumb just so, making every movement count until her moans and whimpers turned into the quiet, unsteady breaths that told him she was almost there.

He rolled again, wanting to end this one on top of her, thrusting with long, deep strokes, all the way in, then all the way out. He lowered his mouth to her neck, biting just a little on that one pressure point that always made her shiver.

“So close,” she breathed.

He rose to his hands and pistoned into her harder, faster. She tilted her hips, digging for release. He felt his end coming on, too, and clamped his jaws together, holding it back, waiting … waiting—

As though shocked by an electric volt, her back arched and she cried out. Her pussy squeezed him in a pulse that proved his undoing. He let it go, let her have all of him, until his arms couldn’t hold him up any longer and, thoroughly sated, he collapsed over her, cheek-to-cheek, burying his face in her hair.

“You’re going to live here with me until you leave for L.A. I’ve grown accustomed to having you in my bed.” He winced. He hadn’t known he was going to say that right then, much less command it. “Please.”

She traced a path with her fingertip along his collarbone, then up his neck and into his hair. He felt moisture on his cheek, as though she was shedding silent tears. “I’ve grown accustomed to you, too.”

She splayed her hand over his heart. “Maybe I shouldn’t take that offer. Maybe I should stay here.” In her voice, he heard a hint of raggedness that told him he might’ve been right about her crying.

He’d also been right about how fragile her commitment to herself was. How willing she was to give up her dreams for the people around her. He rolled to his back and held her tight, then wiped her tears away. “No, Carina. My God, no. That’s no way for a dragon slayer to talk. You deserve to be happy.”