by Amy Andrews
“Very distinguished,” Suzanne said with a laugh.
“Suzy!”
Suzanne startled as a deep, familiar voice cut through the chatter of the diner. Grady? Her pulse spiked.
“Suzy!”
She turned in the direction his voice seemed to be coming from, although she couldn’t see him through the bodies. But suddenly, as if by magic, the crowd parted, and he was striding toward her in jeans and that elf sweater he’d sworn he’d never wear in public. Not even for a blow job. His long legs ate up the space between them, his gaze intense, his face as implacable as ever. She had no idea if he was angry or not, but even in that ridiculous elf sweater, she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
He was carrying a large canvas in his hands. The portrait?
“Grady?”
Her pulse was hammering at her temples as her eyes darted all around at the spectators agog with the unfolding drama. For a guy who hated gossip and being the center of attention, he was attracting an awful lot. Was he going to yell at her in front of everyone? These people who already knew how much she loved him because it was in every single damn painting of him on Annie’s walls.
And why did he have the portrait?
He addressed Annie, who was standing on Suzanne’s right. “Annie. I’d like to make a donation to the gallery, please.”
And then he turned the canvas around to reveal his reclined naked form, as breathtakingly alive with her love today as it had been the day she’d painted it. Hot tears pricked at the backs of Suzanne’s eyes and needled her nose. A well of emotion in her throat threatened to choke off her air supply.
No one in the diner reacted at first. It took a beat or two for them to realize what they were seeing. Then everyone talked at once.
A guy at the back called out, “Hey, Grady, how much did you pay her to embellish that?” And someone else, a woman, said, “I’ll give you a hundred bucks.” Another woman said, “I’ll give you two.”
Suzanne stepped forward, ignoring the impromptu auction going on around them—this painting was not for sale. “What are you doing?” she hissed, keeping her voice low, not that there was much worry they’d be overheard with all the noise.
“I saw it,” he said, his hand slipping onto her arm and pulling her closer. “What you saw. In the portrait.”
A pulse tap-danced at Suzanne’s temple, her heart thudding the fandango. He had? “What did you see?”
“You love me.”
Suzanne’s legs went wobbly as a surge of relief washed through them, making her feel lighter than she had in weeks.
“I see it in all these other paintings, too,” he said as he looked around the walls.
“Yeah. Sorry about that,” she said, depressingly aware of how inconvenient it was for him. “I know that’s not what you want.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m absolutely terrified to admit that I’m in love with you, too.”
Suzanne’s pulse skipped a beat. He loved her? But he was still in love with Bethany. She looked around; the spectators had started to quiet and pretty soon would be hanging on their every word. “How about we go into the kitchen or something? For some privacy?”
“No.” He looked around at all the faces watching him and shook his head. “I want everyone to hear this.”
“You do?” Suzanne’s gaze darted to Burl, who shrugged but seemed pretty damn happy anyway. So did Cora.
“Yes.” He grabbed both her hands and held them clasped between their bodies. “I’ve been too caught up in my pride and my desire not to be pitied to realize that these people”—he gestured around him—“love me and would do anything for me. That they’ve been rooting for me to be healed and happy since I came to Credence seventeen years ago, and this declaration is as much for them as for you.” He took a breath. “If that’s okay?”
Suzanne nodded, also catching a breath as the crowd all seemed to lean in simultaneously.
“I screwed up. I told you to go, that there was no hope for me. I pushed you away, and I shouldn’t have. I screwed up. I love you, and I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it. I thought I was too damaged to love again when what I’ve actually been terrified of is living again. But not anymore. I want to live. I want to live and laugh and be happy again, and I want to do it with you.”
He took a breath, and Suzanne let out the one she’d been holding. He loved her? Her foolish heart leaped at those three little words from a man who wasn’t used to saying them. But she didn’t dare let it fly.
“I thought you were still in love with Bethany?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I will always love Bethany. She’s part of the story of my life, and she will always have a place in my heart. Just as my mom and dad will always have a place there, too. But I’m not in love with her, and I haven’t been for a very long time. It was just easier to hold on to what was to stop myself from reaching for what could be.”
Suzanne heard a couple of female sighs from the crowd and, if it had been happening to someone else, she might have even laughed at their melodrama. But it was happening to her.
“And that’s you,” he continued, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. “I’m in love with you. You crashed into my life and turned it upside down and inside out and my cabin, hell, my life is so damn quiet without you. Nothing’s the same, and I don’t want it to be, either.”
Suzanne drew in a shaky breath. Grady loved her. He loved her. It was there in his words and shining in those pale-green eyes she’d come to know so well. She smiled. “For a man who doesn’t say much, you sure know how to put words together.”
The crowd laughed, and Grady finally cracked a smile. “I practiced all the way over.”
There was more laughter, and Suzanne eased up on the tight reins holding her heart in check.
“Suzy.” Grady’s face went all serious again. “Will you come and live with me on the ranch? I know it’s a huge ask to take you away from the city and all your friends and your colleagues and it might not be an easy transition, but I promise—”
Suzanne threw herself into Grady’s arms, cutting him off abruptly. She’d heard enough. “Yes,” she said. “I love you, Joshua Grady. A thousand times yes.”
And she kissed him, twining her arms around his neck and going up on her tiptoes, much to the delight of the cheering crowd. Kissed him until someone called, “Get a room, you two,” and they reluctantly parted.
“How soon can you move in?” he murmured when they finally pulled apart. “Do you need some time to be sure?”
Suzanne looked at the clock above the entrance. Two and a half hours till midnight. “How about next year?” she said with a smile.
He laughed. “I think I can wait that long.”
Then, out of nowhere, people started to gasp and look up, and Suzanne and Grady looked up, too, as a blizzard of metallic confetti drifted down all around them. The kind of blizzard it was okay to be standing in and the perfect sparkly way to be starting the first day of the rest of their lives.
EPILOGUE
Four p.m., December 24th the following year…
Suzanne hooked a candy-cane earring into the hole in her ear as she made her way through the archway and into the living room. Grady was fiddling with the tree, and she totally checked out her husband’s ass in his Wranglers as she crossed to him.
Husband. It had been two months, and she still loved the way it sounded.
“What are you doing?” she asked as she drew even.
He grinned at her. “These came yesterday.” He held up a red bauble attached to a short plastic chain. Sitting on the bauble was a small vampy-looking doll dressed in a tiny white crop bra, panties, and brown boots straddling the chain.
Suzanne pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh, pretending to be scandalized. “Oh no…Joshua Grady, that’s awful.”
“I know, right?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “There are green ones as well.”
She laughed then, her heart full as she looked around the cabin that was, if possible, an even bigger Christmas train crash than last year because, this year, Grady was fully involved. They’d had so much fun trying to find the gaudiest Christmas ornaments, but wrecking ball baubles took the cake.
Grady had outdone himself, and Suzanne had never been happier. The fire was on, the tree lights were twinkling, and there were delicious smells coming from the oven.
It was perfect. Or was about to be anyway.
“When are Simone and Albie getting here?”
“They should be here in the next half an hour.”
This was her parents’ third visit to Credence, having come for the wedding two months ago. And they were staying for just over a week so her mother could judge the ice-sculpture contest again, which was scheduled for New Year’s Day.
“Burl and Cora should be here about then, too.”
All six of them were sitting down to a huge Christmas Eve dinner together.
Grady stood back to admire the tree, slinging an arm around Suzanne’s waist. “You should see the present I got you. It’s totally going to win Christmas.”
Suzanne smiled. She knew without a doubt that honor would be going to her, but she was happy to indulge him for a while. “Well, come on, then.” She dug him in the ribs. “Where is it?”
They said they’d exchange one gift before the night’s festivities began, and Suzanne was beside herself with excitement. Letting her go, Grady loped over to the table and grabbed the wrapped gift off the end, ferrying it back in several easy strides.
“Here you go.”
Suzanne took it and ripped the paper off eagerly to reveal a truly tacky Christmas sweater. She laughed as she unfolded it to reveal a red V-necked sweater, trimmed with faux fur, two green hands spread over where her breasts would sit, and the slogan feel the joy printed beneath.
“Am I right, or am I right? Winning Christmas or what?”
“Very classy.” Suzanne laughed. “I love it. But you haven’t seen mine yet.”
He wiggled his fingers at her. “Hand it over, then, woman.”
Suzanne grinned and grabbed the box off the side table next to the couch. She’d packaged it in a shirt box so it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to Grady.
Like her, he, too, ripped open the wrapping, then whipped the lid off the box to find another Christmas sweater folded carefully in tissue paper. It was green with a white stylized dinosaur on the front, its triangular body making a Christmas tree, the star on its head and the lights wrapped around its tail. The slogan said Tree Rex.
It was funny and cute rather than tacky. But it was still winning Christmas.
Grady grabbed it out of the tissue paper to hold it up. He frowned when there seemed to be a significant amount of it missing. “You wash this first, honey? I think it shrunk.” He laughed as he held it up to his chest. “Don’t think I could get this over my head.”
Suzanne looped her hand through his arm. “That’s because it’s not meant to go over your head, Joshua.”
He glanced down at her, and she smiled at him. He smiled back before returning his attention to the sweater. Watching realization dawn like a sunrise over his face would be something Suzanne would never, ever forget.
His gaze flicked to hers. “Is this… Does this mean…?”
Grinning like a loon, Suzanne nodded. “Merry Christmas, Joshua. You’re going to be a daddy.”
“I’m going to be a daddy?” he asked, his face running the gamut of emotions from incredulous to disbelieving to pure and utter joy.
“Yup,” she said.
Grady whooped, dropping the sweater to pick her up and spin her around and around and around. Suzanne laughed and hung on until he set her back on her feet again.
“You definitely win Christmas,” he said.
Suzanne sighed. As long as he was by her side, she’d always win Christmas.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unlike the hero of this book, I love Christmas! The tinsel, the carols, the tree, the lights. So it was super fun to give my surly rancher a big, fat, OTT Christmas with every wonderfully kitschy thing I could find on the internet thrown into the pot! I hope you enjoyed the sweaters, dominatrix Barbie and the cat baubles as much as I did putting them down on the page.
My thanks as always go to the team at Entangled Publishing who do all their magic behind the scenes to get a book from a Word document into a state where people can buy it in whatever form. Thanks to Curtis Svehlak who collates everything I need and gives it to me in one succinct place exactly when I need it. To Riki Cleveland and Holly Bryant-Simpson who hold my hand through the publicity stuff, which I suck at—really, I do. And thanks to Melanie Smith who pays me—you totally rock!
Special thanks to Stacy Abrams for the copy editing—sorry about the commas, the which’s, and the choking thing. And extra special thanks to my editor, Liz Pelletier, who is my biggest cheerleader, who believes in me and seems to know the exact moment my ego needs stroking. I totally forgive her for sending gratuitous drinking pictures of her and my best friend Leah who, through freakish coincidence, ended up on the same Alaskan cruise together, while I was slaving over a hot keyboard, in Australia, finishing this book.
I forgive Leah, too.
Two last thank-yous. Firstly, to Naima Simone who told me all about melting butter on top of pecan pie to make it a whole other level of yummy. One day you and I, Naima, will have to eat pie together. And secondly to Janeen Wagner Phillips who provided the name Zoom for Grady’s turtle. Turtle lovers unite!
About the Author
Amy Andrews is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling, double RITA®–nominated Aussie author who has written seventy-plus contemporary romances in both the traditional and digital markets. She’s been translated into more than a dozen different languages as well as manga. Her books bring all the feels from sass, quirk, and laughter to emotional grit to panty-melting heat. She loves frequent travel, good books, and great booze—although she’ll take mediocre booze if there’s nothing else. For many, many years she was a registered nurse. Which means she knows things. Anatomical things. And she’s not afraid to use them! She lives in a sleepy seaside town with her husband of twenty-nine years. Visit her online at http://amyandrews.com.au/.
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