Three Nights Before Christmas: A Holiday Romance Collection

by Kati Wilde

  Even though she’s quick, my dick’s pretty much an icicle by the time I’m satisfied that she made it through Patrick’s front door all right. I head back to bed, but don’t think I’ll get much sleep. Not with the way my chest is aching. Not with the feeling of something wrong pressing down on me, making it so damn hard to breathe.

  Not just her being gone—and knowing she only left because I abandoned her every night—though that’s enough of a reason. After our wedding, though, that’ll be nothing. We’ll get that fresh start. New guidelines. Ones that’ll make it easy for her to fall in love with me. Just like I fell for her.

  Somehow, I need to give her as much as she’s given me. Because when it comes to giving, she sure as fuck didn’t take her cues from anything I’ve done. Shit, I’ve been holding back from day one.

  Holding back. While she gives and gives and gives. And never asks for anything in return.

  Oh fuck. The pain in my chest deepens as I realize the truth of that.

  I held back, refusing to fuck her or to sleep beside her through the night—holding out for the wedding to make sure she’d marry me, even though she never gave any indication of changing her mind. Not once. Not even after I said all that shit the first night. I was the only one who ever had any doubts.

  Yet Audrey never wavered. She didn’t only offer me what I asked for in the proposal, either. She opened her beautiful home and said everything there was mine now, too. Not just shared space, but the garage for my very own use, simply because I told her I restored cars on the side. She immediately tried to accomodate me as much as possible and didn’t hold anything back. She offered up her home, her body—Christ, even security clearance at her building. All of which involves a hell of a lot of risk for her.

  Within one day, she did that. Risking so much. Physically, emotionally, financially.

  Yet despite being with her all this time, I won’t even take the risk of moving an old car and a few tools. And she knew it, too. Right away, she picked up that I didn’t intend to move my shit to her garage. And how’s she supposed to read that as anything other than me not planning to stay? I want to, but how can she know that when I don’t say a damn thing about it?

  How the fuck is she supposed to fall in love with me? I’m a selfish asshole who’ll take everything she gives but won’t offer shit in return.

  I haven’t even given her my real reason for marrying her. A clean start? That’s a fucking joke. She’ll head into the church on Christmas Eve thinking I’m marrying her because of the will contest and a contract based on my proposal. But that’s only what brought me to her office that first day. I signed that fucking contract and let her go on thinking that the Wyndhams and the inheritance are why I’m with her. Even though she gave me the truth of her reasons for agreeing to my proposal and they didn’t have shit to do with the property; she simply liked me and was attracted to me. Yet I never offered any truth in return.

  Then she gave me her trust, the most precious gift I’ve ever known. Gave it when she revealed what her parents had done. Gave it to me right here in this bed.

  I couldn’t even give her my trust in return. I never trusted that she’d marry me if I didn’t hold back my cock—never trusted her word, though she can’t even lie. And I never trusted her with my heart. So I held that back, too.

  She’s given me so damn much. And I’ve given her…nothing. A few orgasms, maybe. Nothing she couldn’t have gotten from anyone she wanted to.

  But I can give her more. I need to, if I’m to have any hope of winning her heart. No more holding back. And no waiting until after the wedding to tell her the truth. I’m marrying her because I can’t imagine a life without her in it. Because she’s my whole fucking world.

  Because I love her.

  Heart thundering, I sit up and try to remember where I left my phone. A declaration of love isn’t the kind of thing that should be texted, but Audrey just left, so she’s probably only a few minutes away. I should ask her to come back, for the driver to turn around. Except she might think I’ll just try to persuade her to stay the night. So I’ll tell her that I’m coming out to her place.

  A knock at my front door interrupts my search through the pockets of my jeans. Fuck. It’s likely Patrick or someone else from the party who saw Audrey go and who’s wondering where the hell I am. But I take it as a sign that I’m supposed to get my ass in gear and to go after her.

  The jeans on my floor are the ones I wore while carrying Audrey up the stairs from the garage. The stiff denim looks as if it’s stained with ten gallons of jizz and all my other pants are in the washing machine, so I drag the sheet off the bed and wrap it around my waist. Holding the material bunched at my left hip, I unlock the door, ready to tell whoever’s on the other side to fuck off for the night.

  Except it’s Audrey. Looking almost frail in her long cream coat, her eyes shining with tears, her face pale and drawn.

  “Audrey?” Shit. Worry clutching my heart, I cup her cold cheek in my hand, my gaze desperately searching her from head to toe. “What’s the matter?”

  “I have to tell you… I need to—” She abruptly stops. Her throat works. Her expression is shadowed, just like it was in bed earlier. When she wouldn’t talk about what was bothering her. “Can I come in for a minute?”

  “You don’t even need to ask.” But I need to get out of the damn way. I back up, giving her room to walk through the doorway. “Are you okay?”

  She doesn’t answer that, which means she’s not. Instead she presses her back against the wall just beside the door, her hands balled in her coat pockets and her shoulders hunched. “It’s about the clean start. I have to confess something first. So it can really be clean.”

  “All right,” I say, then add, “Let me get you a glass of water first, baby.”

  Because every word she just said doesn’t worry me as much as how they sounded. Raw and hoarse, like she’s got broken glass ripping up her throat. I’m across the room when her next words bring me to an abrupt halt.

  “I lied to you.”

  I swing around to face her again. “When? About what?”

  “Tonight.” It’s barely a whisper. “And about why I didn’t tell you the will contest was being dismissed.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that,” I tell her, because she really is the worst liar in the world. She was so damn shifty, I knew there was something. Except I still can’t see what she was lying about. “What part of that wasn’t true?”

  “It was all true. It just wasn’t my reason for not telling you.”

  “Then what was your reason?”

  Her beautiful face is a picture of misery as she hunches deeper into her coat. “So you would still think that you needed to marry me to defeat the Wyndhams. I didn’t want you to find out that you’d basically already won before the wedding, because I was afraid you might cancel it. So I lied. But I should have given you the choice instead of trying to deceive you. That’s not how we should start a marriage—and you didn’t lie to me earlier because you said it would make you an asshole. So I’m an asshole for lying. And I understand if you’re angry with me,” she adds in a tiny, wavering voice. “Or if you don’t want to marry me anymore.”

  “I’m not angry, baby.” Far from angry. So much relief balloons inside my chest that I’m lightheaded with it.

  Relief…and hope. She lied so that I’d marry her? That’s the best goddamn thing I’ve ever heard. Because it sounds a hell of a lot like what I was doing—so desperate for her to marry me, I concealed the truth behind my reasons.

  But I’m not holding back anymore. So in a rough voice, I admit, “Though I have my own confession before we make a clean start. And I think we should tear up that marriage contract.”

  She seems to stop breathing. “You do?”

  “I do.” Now it’s my throat that feels real fucking raw. “Because I don’t want to get married for the reasons I gave you in that proposal. I want something that means more. Not just spite and money—or even se
x.”

  Though we’ll still have plenty of that.

  “Something more?” Anguished yearning fills her expression as her shadowed gaze searches my face. “You mean…love?”

  “Yes, Audrey.” My heart feels as if it’s about to explode, because all that yearning I see in her—that’s exactly what I feel. And for the first time, I wonder if she’s a lot closer to falling for me than I believed. I wonder if she already has. My voice is ragged with all the threadbare hope I’ve pieced together when I tell her, “I want to marry for love.”

  Her eyes become shimmering pools, and she pulls in a quick, shuddering breath. “Okay. But even without a contract, I’ll still pay for the lawyers if you need me to.”

  “All right,” I agree and start back across the room, intent on kissing her and holding her—because if she’s still talking about lawyers, maybe she doesn’t feel safe enough yet to admit her love. So I’ll keep telling her about mine.

  I’ll tell her over and over again.

  But on my first step closer, a choking noise erupts from her throat. Blindly she reaches for the door handle, and on a high-pitched and thready, “I’ll tell Jessica to cancel the wedding,” she flings open the door and is gone.

  Completely stunned, I stare after her. Because I just…? And she seemed to…? But now she’s racing down the stairs. Running away from me. And cancelling the wedding.

  Over my dead fucking body.

  “Audrey!” I roar her name and head after her. “We are not cancelling any goddamn thing! Do you hear me?”

  She had to. Everyone just heard that. I charge out the front door to a chorus of cheers and shouts of encouragement from the patio. And she’s not anywhere in sight. Fuck.

  “Did Audrey come that way?” I call down to them.

  “No, man!” is the response, along with a “The toga party was last year!”

  She’s not there. Panic begins to claw at my gut. Icy concrete burns my feet as I head down the stairs. I head past the garage, my gaze sweeping the yard and the sidewalk—and landing on the black car parked a little ways down the street. Audrey’s driver.

  Quickly I cross the lawn, every step crunching through three inches of snow. The woman in the front seat is playing with her phone. She sees me and quickly gets out to open the door, but when I glance into the back seat, Audrey’s not there.

  I look to the driver. “Did she go into the house?”

  “I didn’t see her come down.” She grimaces and gestures to her phone as if explain why she wasn’t looking in that direction, then eyes my sheet. “Do you want me to go in and—”

  “No. Just wait here. But if she shows up without me, don’t leave. At least not until I’ve had a chance to talk to her.”

  She arches a narrowed look at me. “Mr. Moore. You’re a very nice man, but if she tells me to go, I’m going.”

  “Please.” My voice hoarsens. “Just wait for me. I told her I love her, and she ran away, and I don’t know why.”

  Her lips purse. After a long second, she gives a tight nod.

  “You’re an angel. Do you know if her assistants are still here?”

  She shakes her head. “I took them both home an hour ago.”

  But maybe Audrey doesn’t know that. Maybe she went into the house looking for them so that Jessica can cancel the wedding.

  Or maybe she was emotionally overwhelmed and raced for the nearest dark room.

  I start for the house before the obvious answer hits me. The garage. Because she disappeared so damn fast. But the door is at the bottom of the stairs. And I didn’t lock it when I carried her out of there earlier.

  Hiking up the sheet, I head back across the snow, panic easing its grip on my gut. This is simply the same thing she did after the tree lighting ceremony. She got overwhelmed and looked for a quiet place to settle down. There’s no fireworks this time, just all that guilt she’s been suffering over her lie—on top of whatever worry she’s been feeling since this morning after Bradford’s call, and the fear that she might be hurt tonight when I took her virginity. Plus this crowded party, then having sex for the first time, and barely any sleep yet. That sounds like a hell of a day.

  And maybe it was. But I’m completely fucking wrong.

  I open the garage door, expecting to find her in the darkest corner with her back against the wall, eyes closed. The dim light over the workbench is still on, but I don’t see her.

  Instead I hear her. Hear her loud, wrenching sobs. My throat locks up and my chest clenches tight. Audrey told me what this is. It’s the reason I opened her up tonight instead of our wedding night. Because being overwhelmed isn’t the only reason she might run away and hide.

  She’s hurting. And I can’t fool myself into thinking that it’s a splinter or that she twisted her ankle on the way down the stairs. She ran away from me.

  Something I said or did is making her cry like that.

  “Audrey?” Getting her name out through the sudden lump in my throat is like pushing a boulder through a keyhole. It just doesn’t fucking go.

  The anguished sounds she’s making claw up the inside of my chest as if my heart is a trapped, feral animal desperate to get free and go to her. I find her on the opposite side of the Corvette. She’s sitting with her back against the wheel and her knees drawn up, her face buried in the wadded ball of my ugly sweater. The heavy knit barely muffles the uncontrollable sobs heaving from her chest, or the agony that fills each one.

  “Audrey? Oh god, baby. Please.” Seeing her like this wrecks me. Eyes burning, I crouch beside her, reaching out to touch her knee and gently let her know I’m here. “Whatever it is—”

  Her body stiffens and she jerks her leg away, then curls tighter in on herself, still sobbing into the sweater. As if protecting herself from me.

  As if she can’t bear my touch.

  Reeling from the pain, I fall back while the whole world darkens and shatters apart within my chest. Just a few minutes ago, I thought I had everything. But I have nothing. Nothing at all, except an endless well of desolation within the wasteland that just opened up inside me.

  Yet my pain doesn’t matter. Only she does.

  With every movement aching in my joints like I’m a dying old man, I settle in beside her, my back against the passenger door—and careful to keep a few inches between us.

  “I’ll be here with you, baby,” I tell her in a voice crushed by the devastation of not being able to touch her. “You aren’t alone. I’ll stay until you stop hurting.”

  She must be able to hear me, because that only makes her cry harder. Each great gasping sob has to be ripping up her throat and lungs, but I know she can’t stop them. And I don’t know how to help her.

  My vision blurring, I tip back my head and stare blindly out at nothing—trying to remember what I said. What might have done this.

  What did I say? That I had a confession to make. That I wanted to tear up the marriage contract.

  Ah fuck. The contract that—to Audrey—represented the beginning of our marriage. Not the ceremony, but when she signed our marital agreement. To her, me saying we should tear it up must have been the same as asking for a divorce. And I said it right after she worried that I’d be angry with her for lying…and she was afraid I wouldn’t want to marry her anymore. But I should have been clearer.

  “We don’t need to tear up the marriage contract, Audrey. I only meant that I didn’t want the Wyndhams’ lawsuit to be the reason for our marriage. But we can keep it if you want to.” Because the contract doesn’t stipulate that we have to get divorced after I receive my inheritance. One of us would have to initiate the proceedings. And I sure as hell won’t. If Audrey loves me…she wouldn’t have reason to, either. “We’ll do whatever you want, baby. The contract, the wedding—anything you need, I’ll give it. Because I can’t fucking bear to see you like this.”

  My reassurance appears to ease her pain. She doesn’t stop crying, but her sobs don’t seem so violent now. Or maybe she’s so physically exhaust
ed that they’re dying out.

  Or…she’s trying to stop for my sake. Because I said I can’t bear it.

  Shit. I need to be more careful about what I say. About how I say it. And I’m not going to assume anything about her reactions unless she actually tells me how she’s feeling.

  I’ll just wait for her. I would wait forever, but only another ten minutes pass before her sobs ease into hiccuping gasps.

  She lifts her face from the sweater but doesn’t look at me. Only straight ahead, her eyes swollen and her face ravaged by her tears. They’re still spilling down her cheeks when she shakily whispers, “I swore that I’d never ask for more than you want to give.”

  Because she doesn’t want to be like her mother. But she never could be. She would never need to be. There’s no limit to what I’d give her. Not now. I’m done holding back.

  “Anything you want, Audrey, just ask. I’ll give it.”

  “Oh, Caleb. You’re always so sweet to me.” Her eyes close, more tears sliding from beneath her lashes. “It’s not right for me to ask this. But…can I have a week?”

  “A week?” To reconsider the marriage? Something else? I won’t make any assumptions here, either. “Just tell me what for, baby.”

  “You want to marry for love. So I understand why you don’t want to marry me now that the will contest is done with. But if I can just have one more week with you—”

  She glances over as I begin shaking my head—not saying no, but in sheer disbelief at what I’m hearing. She thought I didn’t want to marry her for love? This isn’t about the contract, but because she still thinks I don’t love her? I can barely take it in.

  But in that gesture of stunned incredulity, she sees rejection. Her wavering voice shatters.

  “A day, then? Just one last…one last—” Anguish crumples her soft mouth. Curling forward, she covers her face with the sweater, and the rest emerges on jagged shards of breath. “Just one…more day…with you. Please.”

  That final plea is a keening cry, her body wracked by agonized sobs that seem to rip her apart inside. Each one shreds my heart. In a million fucking years, it never would have occurred to me that she would hear me say that I want to marry for love and not understand that I’d fallen for her.