Holiday Husband
Erin McCarthy
Copyright © 2020 by Erin McCarthy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Sarah Kil.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Author
Also by Erin McCarthy
Chapter One
Normally, I’m a party girl. It’s dress-up for adults with champagne and food nibbles tossed in. Tonight? I was not feeling the party vibe. But I still had the outfit. Wearing kickass nude stiletto heels with a fire-engine dress that sported a slit nearly to the promised land, I was in the elevator on the way to a holiday party with my boyfriend. I was towering over the petite woman standing next to me, because at six feet tall, I’m a woman who turns heads. Or rather, heads tilt to look up at me. She was wearing an emerald green dress and craning her neck to smile up at me.
“I’m so excited for this event. It’s a surprise wedding,” she said. “Could you just die? Isn’t that so romantic?”
“A what?” I asked, totally confused. I thought I was meeting Dante for a work party, which I was reluctantly attending, since I had every intention of breaking up with him after the holidays. Now I had to sit through a wedding with him? Awkward. I’m over-the-top on a good day, and my filter is frequently broken. I couldn’t be expected to witness a wedding with Dante and not blurt out all my true feelings. “How can a wedding be a surprise? That’s super confusing to me.”
Did the bride pop out of a cake? Did the groom take over the mic at the holiday party and an arch of flowers drop from the ceiling? Was the officiant dressed as Santa? That would be kind of amazing, actually.
“Oh, it’s a trend now.” She smoothed the front of her dress. “The fiance or girlfriend thinks it’s something else, like a holiday party, and then the doors open and there he is, the groom, at the altar.” She sighed. “I would die of happiness if that happened to me.”
I thought I was more likely to want to hurt my boyfriend if he blindsided me like that, but maybe that had to do with the fact that I had realized Dante and I were not meant to be. He was controlling, inconsiderate, and looked at other women like a tasty snack, the trifecta of red flags. He’d even been hinting that getting married might help his reputation, which was more than slightly tarnished from some poor choices before he met me. I had no intention of being the eraser to his past of DUIs and sleeping with hookers and married women. Hell, married hookers. Plus he didn’t like sushi, so really, he had to go.
Being a decent human being, I didn’t want to dump him before Christmas though. He had talked endlessly about this being his first Christmas ever with a girlfriend. That he was trying to get his life back on track, which I one hundred percent appreciated. He might not always be awesome, but he was charming and funny and thought I was funny, so it had hurt my heart to think about ruining his holiday. I wished him the best, I just thought maybe I wasn’t the right woman for his transitional phase to a different lifestyle.
But I couldn’t leave him sad and lonely, so I had reluctantly decided to wait until after the many parties filled with free booze and good eats. A girl had to be practical. Living in New York was expensive. Besides, a small part of me didn’t want to break up with him and then see five minutes later he was taking a new girl to all those holiday events. Which he would be. I knew that. Which would sting, just a little. Okay, a lot. No one wants to be so easily replaced, plus I really do love parties. They’re kind of my thing. I love music and celebrations and glitter and plunging necklines on sequin dresses and endless glasses of champagne.
“Hmm,” I said, in a noncommittal response to the woman beside me. Under literally any other circumstances I would be all about this surprise wedding situation.
“No one is even supposed to know,” she said. “Not even the guests. Isn’t that so fun?”
“How do you know then?” I asked, curious in spite of myself. It was romantic. I could admit that. Especially if you were already engaged. I’m not someone who had spent my whole life mentally planning my wedding. It wouldn’t bother me if all the details had been taken care of and I just showed up to do the deed. Probably because I had no desire to get married. Ever. Or at least not until I was about seventy and needed a partner for swing dances in the senior center.
“I’m the event planner. I’m Hannah,” she said, holding her hand out. “Pleasure to meet you.”
I shook her hand. “I’m Dakota.”
Her jaw dropped. She released my hand like it was a rotten fish. “Dakota Tanner?”
Puzzled, I nodded. “Yes, how did you–
“I didn’t– I couldn’t imagine– I just thought you were supposed to be in white. That’s what Dante said. He would tell you to wear white.”
I glanced down at my red gown with that slit so high it might be illegal. “He told me to wear white but I thought it was a stupid idea. It’s December and white washes me out.” I had wanted to look sexy, not bridal.
Bridal.
Oh, shit.
I stared at her. She stared at me, blinking back tears, her brown eyes filled with horror.
“Am I the bride?” I gasped, clutching my stomach as the doors to the elevator slid open on the sixty-fifth floor of an incredibly expensive hotel.
Oh, the irony. The horrible, dizzying, panic-inducing irony.
“You’re early, I just never thought...” She instantly burst into tears. “Oh, my God, I ruined the surprise!”
I felt like crying myself, for a completely different reason. I surged off the elevator in a blind panic, practically running to the set of double doors. Two men in tuxes opened the heavy doors like I was Rose on the Titanic. Which was appropriate for my mood because I felt like I was drowning.
A wedding? My wedding? It was insane. It was impossible. No one got married without even being asked if they wanted to get married. It wasn’t a surprise wedding, it was an accidental wedding. An ambush wedding. Designed to stun me into submission.
There was an aisle, outlined with candles, and at the end of it was Dante. Standing at an altar, which was bursting with flowers.
Eyes turned to look at me. The curious gazes of guests who had come to see Dante strong-arm me into marrying him, in a room full of strangers. I didn’t recognize a single face.
Without hesitation, I turned and ran back the way I had come, straight past a crying Hannah and to the elevator bank. As luck would have it, one was opening to the left and I dashed for it, well aware there were gasps of shock coming from the ballroom. I turned back to the guys manning the entrance to the ballroom and demanded, “Shut those doors!”
They actually did, probably because I sounded hysterical, which I wasn’t, but I was damn close.
“Wait!” Hannah said, rushing toward me. “Where are you going? Dakota!”
Anywhere but there. I ran through the open elevator doors and immediately collided with a tall broad-shouldered man wearing a tux. I’m a dancer with a strong core and I work out every single day. Plenty of men would have stumbled backward when I ran into them at full speed. This guy didn’t move an inch, which was impressive, but super unhelpful.
“Move, please!” I said, trying to shove at his chest to get him to step backward. The elevator door hit my hip and bounced back open. “I need to get out of here.”
“I’m trying to get off the elevator,” he said, touching my bare arms and attempting to shift me to the left.
“There’s no tim
e!” I glanced back. Hannah was biting her knuckles, which amazed me. I’d never seen anyone actually do that in real life.
But the bigger issue was that the double doors to the ballroom were open again and there was Dante, charging out like he was on the football field. He looked ready to take action the way he did every Sunday as a professional player. He would want answers. He would want me to go back in there and marry his ass just to make him look good.
Nope.
So I did the only thing I could. I hit the elevator button so the door would shut and I got completely in the stranger’s personal space. I walked right up to him, until my body was brushing against his. I boldly stared him in the eyes like a straight-up crazy person. It worked. He backed up instinctively. The doors slid shut and we were going down.
* * *
“Are you running from the cops?” I asked, taking a step back from the gorgeous blonde who was very much in my face. I was mildly annoyed by the interruption, mostly curious, and definitely in no hurry to get to the party. “Because I don’t think you’ll get very far.”
She had turned to watch the floor numbers descending on the elevator panel. “What? No, I’m not running from the cops.” She turned back to me. “But if I was, what makes you think I wouldn’t be a good criminal? I could be an awesome criminal.”
Amused, I eyed her. She definitely wasn’t a criminal. She was tall, with thick waves in her blond hair, bright blue eyes, and rich full lips that made my mouth water. Her dress was missing the sides, like someone had taken a giant hole punch to it, and I could see smooth, pale skin and a narrow waist. The slit up the front of the dress showed a lot of very toned leg.
“You won’t blend on the street,” I pointed out. “You’re wearing a skintight red dress and you don’t have a coat on. They’d spot you half a block away.”
“You’re right. That’s a problem. Switch clothes with me.”
I couldn’t tell if she was serious or joking. In either case, I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t want to escape this party that bad. “Uh, no. Absolutely fucking not. I don’t look good in red.”
She laughed. “It was worth a shot.” Then she ran her eyes over me. “Though you might be a little broad in the shoulders anyway.”
Damn straight I was. I’d been a pro football player for nine years and I still worked out every day. Especially now that I was on the downslide to forty. “So what are you running away from?”
Her phone was buzzing repeatedly in her purse and she wasn’t making any move to retrieve it and see who was contacting her.
“Let’s just say that I ended a relationship and he is not thrilled with me.”
Interesting. “Why tonight? What was the final straw?”
“He bamboozled me.”
We stopped on the thirty-second floor. The doors opened and an elderly couple stepped on the elevator. I greeted them and shifted closer to Red Dress to give them room, trying to figure out what the fuck getting bamboozled entailed. “What does that mean?” I murmured to her.
“You know, getting duped, hoodwinked. Set-up, blindsided.” She gestured for me to come closer, tipping her head toward the elderly couple.
I bent down to get closer to her mouth and she cupped her hand in front of her lips. “Trick fuckery,” she murmured. “Isn’t that just the worst?”
Straightening back up, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or hit a button to get off the next floor. “I don’t really know what that means, to be totally honest.”
She pulled her phone out of her purse and glanced at it. She groaned in despair. Then she showed me her phone. She had multiple texts from “Sexy BF” on her screen. Scanning them, I was shocked with how he was addressing her. Telling her to get back upstairs or she’d be sorry. Calling her a psycho. Asking her if she was mental or just a loser.
“Oh, hell, no,” I said, shaking my head, getting more and more outraged with each word I read. “There is nothing you could have done to justify these texts. A real man would not talk to a woman like this.”
“I agree. He says it’s because he’s Greek but I feel like that’s just insulting to a whole country.”
“It’s not because he’s Greek. It’s because he’s an asshole.” I glanced at the elderly couple. “My apologies for the language.”
The doors to the elevator opened. I put my hand in front of it for the couple to exit and even though she was clearly in a hurry the blonde waited until they were safely off before she picked up the hem of her dress and started fast-walking toward the front of the lobby. I followed stride to stride with her, wondering what the hell her plan was. I didn’t trust Sexy BF as far as I could throw the limp-dick prick.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. He’s seriously never talked to me like this before. Like, it’s unnerving. He’s never even raised his voice. He’s clearly pissed off and I don’t think I should go home because I feel like he’s going to show up there. Maybe I’ll go to a friend’s apartment.”
“That’s a great idea. Let me get you a cab.” I held open the front door to the hotel and cold air washed over us. I handed the doorman fifty bucks. “We need a cab right now.”
“Yes, sir.” He blew his taxi whistle and raised his hand.
Given that it was December in Manhattan he had a heavy long overcoat on and his doorman cap. The woman beside me was shivering in her revealing dress. I peeled my tux jacket off and put it over her shoulders.
She smiled at me. “Thanks. I’m freezing my tits off.”
I had not expected her to say that. Like a magnet, my eyes automatically dropped to her chest. Tits still intact. Very high, very full, very suckable tits, still there. “We certainly don’t want that.” I was suddenly very aware of how long it had been since I’d touched a naked woman. Way too long. Being a single dad put a serious damper on casual sex.
The woman glanced back at the door. “This is taking too long. I’m going to get caught. I need to just start walking and try to find a cab.” With those words, she did just that, my jacket still over her shoulders as she started moving away from the congestion of cars moving in and out of the lane in front of the hotel.
Shit. Now what? Did I follow her or just leave her to her own devices?
“Sir?” the doorman called out to me. “Don’t you need a cab?”
Easy decision. I followed her. I wanted to make sure she got in a cab safely and was away from her ex who clearly didn’t handle rejection well. I waved to the doorman. “Keep the tip, thanks for trying. We’re going to walk.”
“There are no cabs!” she lamented as she walked faster than I would have ever thought possible in those very high heels. “We don’t have time to wait for a car service. What is it with this town? Nine million cabs when you don’t need one, zero when you do.”
I scanned the street and she was right, there was a serious dearth of taxis.
She grabbed my forearm and squeezed. “Oh, no, I think I see him coming out the front door. Walk faster!”
Her voice sounded so urgent that I came up with the only solution I could think of. “Come on.” I took her hand in mine and tugged her across the street at the intersection, taking long strides. I’d spotted a horse and carriage at the ready waiting for someone to want to take a ride. “Hop in,” I told her.
For some reason I expected her to suggest I was insane or to hem and haw and debate it endlessly. Not this woman. She gave me a grin, took the hand I offered her, and climbed into the carriage.
Now this was much more interesting than a stuffy corporate party.
Chapter Two
“You’re a problem solver,” she said, as she sat down on the carriage bench. “Thinking outside the box. I love it.”
I paid the driver and told him, “I’ll give you a nice tip if you get us out of here in the next thirty seconds.” Then I vaulted myself up onto the seat beside her. “For every problem, there is a solution,” I told her.
“I don’t really think that’s true a
t all,” she said. “I still haven’t found a good strapless bra.” The carriage started rolling forward. “But I appreciate the quick thinking.”
And now my thoughts were on her breasts again. “You’re welcome,” I said shortly. I glanced behind me but I didn’t see any small-prick loser charging down the street after us. I felt confident I’d spared her that.
“So you’re my knight in shining armor?” She looked me up and down. “Or my knight in shining Armani?”
That label both amused me and made me uncomfortable. My daughters would say I was mostly grumpy, frequently no fun, and really embarrassing. “No woman should have to endure threats because some dude with a fragile ego can’t handle being broken up with. And I hate parties. I was only going because I had to, so you saved my ass too.”
“You hate parties?” She gaped at me like I’d suggested letting the air out of all the balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. “Who hates parties?”
“Me.” The ass-kissing that came my way as head coach of a pro football team, the juggling a tiny plate in my big hands, the fucking up and forgetting someone’s name. Not my thing.
“Do you hate puppies too? And rainbows? And ice cream sundaes? Walks on the beach and dinners with Grandma?”
I eyed her, amused, and more intrigued than I had any right to be given she was fresh off a breakup. “No. Just parties.”
She feigned a sigh of relief, pulling my jacket tighter across her chest as the carriage clip clopped down Fifth Avenue. “Phew. Not totally evil. What other things do you not hate?”
“I don’t hate carriage rides with beautiful women.” At least not tonight. The blonde was entertaining.
She clapped her hands in applause. “Good one. Well done. Hey, what’s your name, besides Hater?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Hater? I don’t think I deserve that. But my name is Brandon. And you are?”
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