by Alexa Land
“Ah, now I get it. Let me see if I can guess: southern accent, six-two, eight pack….”
He winked at me and said, “You do get it.”
I pulled him into a hug and said, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. It really scares me.”
“Don’t worry, babe. I’m fine. This is just some delusional fucktard that lives in his mother’s basement and watches way the hell too much porn, he’s probably really not a threat. And even if he is, I’m taking precautions, as you can see.”
“Was the note hand-delivered?”
“Yeah.”
“So then this guy’s local. Do the police know about the note?”
“They do, I handed it over to the officer assigned to my case. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the kind of cop you have. Mine’s about sixty-two and bald.” He looked so disappointed. “I didn’t want to insult the guy and ask if I could be assigned someone hotter. Though that really would have been a lovely silver lining to this whole situation.”
“What did the note say?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. If I can’t have you, no one can, blah blah blah.”
“Move into my spare bedroom, Hunter. That way, you’ll have a police officer in the next room.”
“That’s going to be your art studio, I can’t move in there.”
“Sure you can. I don’t need a home studio, I have the one on campus.”
He leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I love you. You know that? I’m fine, though. Between the I-hope-to-God hot Texas Ranger that will soon be guarding my body twenty-four seven and the shooting lessons, I’ve got this more than covered.”
“Shooting lessons?”
“Yup. I’ve been going to the range with Mrs. Dombruso. I think she’s ready to adopt me, she told me last week to call her Nana. Oh, and she’s right, by the way. A gun range is a really good place to meet men.” He grinned at me happily.
“Oh God. Now I’m worried about Nana accidentally shooting you at the range.”
“She’s a hell of a shot, actually. You’d be surprised. Well, as long as she has her glasses on. She’s blind as a bat, did you know that? But she refuses to wear her glasses all the time because she thinks they make her look old.” He grinned and added, “Gotta love her.”
“That you do.”
“Ok, I’d better run. Take care, Christopher, I’ll talk to you soon.”
I still had a cloud of dread around me when I went back upstairs and repeated the stalker story to Kieran. “It’ll be ok,” he told me. “In ninety-nine percent of these cases, the stalker doesn’t follow through on his threats. But if it makes you feel better, we can try again to get him to move in here temporarily so he’s not alone.” When I nodded, Kieran kissed the tip of my nose and said, “I’m going to get a shower and change. We should leave in about twenty minutes.”
“Do I need to dress up?”
“Nope. You’re perfect just the way you are, baby,” he said with a big grin before heading to the bathroom.
I smiled and rolled my eyes at that, then dropped onto my new couch. I glanced at the envelope on the chair and tried to gauge just how much of a wreck I was going to be if I looked at that now. After a while, I decided to ration it out in small doses, rather than just overwhelming myself with it all at once, and reached for the envelope.
I stuck my hand in and retrieved a single photo, then returned the envelope to the chair. I’d grabbed a little wallet-size print, which was currently face down. I took a deep breath, and flipped it over.
“Oh God,” I murmured.
It was a picture of my mom and me. I was just a little baby, all wispy blonde hair and enormous blue eyes. And Isobel…God, I really did look like her. She’d been in her late twenties when she had me, but in the picture she looked like she was barely out of her teens. Her hair was a cascade of soft blonde curls reaching her elbows, her blue eyes round and luminous. She was laughing in this photo, a soft blush warming her pale cheeks. I wondered if my dad had taken this picture, and if he might remember what had made her laugh.
I stared at that photo for a long time. My reaction to it was different than I expected. I’d thought I would feel that heart-breaking sense of loss all over again, that these pictures would devastate me. But instead, the picture felt good, almost reassuring.
“Oh God. Baby, are you ok?” Kieran had come into the room and dropped to his knees beside me, looking at the object in my hand.
“Yeah.” I smiled at him and said, “These are happy tears. Look at this.” Tears were streaming down my face, and I made no effort to brush them away. I was cradling the photo carefully in both hands, and turned it toward him.
“She’s beautiful,” he said softly.
“Yeah, she was. That’s one of the main things I remember about her.”
After a moment, he whispered, “You sure you’re ok?”
I nodded and said, “Seeing her after so long somehow gave a little piece of her back to me. It’s an amazing gift.”
I stood up and crossed the room to some still-empty built-in bookshelves, and stood the little photo up in the center, leaning it against the back of the shelf.
Kieran asked, “Do you want to look at the rest?”
I finally dragged my sleeve over my face and said, “I’m going to make them last and just look at a few a day. It’ll give me something to look forward to.”
He smiled and got to his feet. “Still feel like going out, Christopher?”
“Absolutely.” I noticed then that he was wearing a big ski jacket, which was buttoned up to his chin. “Are we going somewhere cold?”
“Nope.”
I grinned at that and said, “Ok. Lead the way.”
He drove us to the Richmond and circled around looking for parking. We were in the neighborhood that housed Nolan’s, and I asked, “Are we going to your cousin’s bar? I know I’m twenty-one now, but technically, I still can’t drink. Not yet, anyway.” I smiled at him.
He grinned at me, but didn’t say anything. A few moments later, he executed a slick three-point turn and snagged a parking space, then came around and opened my door for me and took my hand. His hand was trembling ever-so-slightly, and I realized he was trying really hard not to appear nervous about something. I knit my brow at that and studied his handsome profile as we walked down the busy sidewalk.
We stopped right in front of Jamie’s bar. I was still watching him, and asked, “You ok, Kier?”
He looked at me and nodded, a little smile on his lips. He still didn’t say anything, which was odd. Instead, he inclined his head toward the bar. A sheet of paper was taped to the door, announcing that the place was closed for a private party. It seemed like the party was a no-show, however. The bar looked dark, from what I could see.
“Do you want me to go in?” I asked.
Again he nodded, then swallowed hard.
“Ok,” I said, taking his hand.
As I tugged the big door open, he put a hand over my eyes. I grinned at that and just went with it, and he guided us inside, the heavy door swinging shut behind us. “This is all very mysterious,” I said.
He pulled his hand away, and I tried to figure out what I was looking at. All around the dark room were little red lights, blinking on and off. There must have been close to a hundred of them. “That’s really pretty. And super odd,” I said.
“Now,” Kieran said softly, and all around the room, candles flared to life. Someone brought up the house lights too, just a little, and I realized the room was full of people, some of which I knew, many of which I didn’t. I spotted Charlie and Dante, Hunter, Mrs. Dombruso, Jamie and Dmitri, and several members of the Dombruso family. And every one of them, every single person in this room, was wearing a reindeer sweater identical to the one Kieran had been wearing the night I met him. The red lights had been a hundred flashing Rudolph noses.
Following some cue that I didn’t see, everyone in the room began softly singing Silent Night in unison, all of them holding big white cand
les. And as my eyes adjusted to the soft lighting, I realized that hundreds of bunches of mistletoe hung from the ceiling. “Oh wow,” I murmured.
I turned to Kieran, and realized he’s taken off his ski jacket. Underneath, he too was wearing a reindeer sweater. He was watching me closely, nervously.
The crowd stopped singing after the first two stanzas of Silent Night, and Kieran cleared his throat nervously.
And then he got down on one knee.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“This past Christmas eve, I met a man that would change my life forever,” he said.
“Louder!” Nana called, and laughter flowed through the crowd.
He smiled at her, then continued, more loudly, “My cousin Jamie was throwing a party, and I spotted this amazingly gorgeous guy across the bar. He had soft blonde curls and big blue eyes that you could just drown in, and from that moment on, I couldn’t think of anything but him. I wasn’t out at that point, and the thought of going up to him scared the hell out of me. So I did what any normal human being would do. I proceeded to get utterly smashed.”
The crowded laughed at that, and I reached out and stroked his soft light brown hair. He continued, “After a couple hours of me drinking and staring, my dream boy got up, obviously getting ready to leave. And I started to panic. It was now or never, the ten or so beers would have to suffice for liquid courage. He went into the back of the bar, and I followed him. I only sort of remember what I said, I’m sure it was all incredibly lame and pathetic. And just to make sure I seemed like a total lunatic, I was also wearing this sweater. You all look great in it, by the way,” he said, looking over his shoulder and smiling at the crowd. They responded with hoots and whistles.
“Thankfully,” he said, turning back to me, “my cousin Jamie had had the good sense to tack up a freakishly huge bunch of mistletoe back there, and in a moment of drunken desperation, I went in for a kiss, pretty sure that I was about to get kicked in the nuts.”
The crowd broke into laughter, and I did too. Kieran said, “Oh man, I should have waited until the end to get down on one knee. Hang on.” He shifted around, resting on his right knee now instead of his left, then asked, “Ok, so where was I?”
“About to get kicked in the nuts,” Hunter called, and everyone laughed again.
“Oh, that’s right. But you know what? It didn’t happen. It was a Christmas miracle, that’s the only explanation. I kissed this gorgeous, amazing boy, and he actually kissed me back.” The crowd cheered and applauded.
“And then I passed out drunk.” More applause and laughter.
“But despite that inauspicious beginning, my Christmas miracle has been going strong ever since. I am totally, completely, head-over-heels in love with you, Christopher,” he said. “I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you, and I want to make you so happy, now and forever. Christopher Robin Andrews, will you please do me the extraordinary honor of being my husband?”
“Yes. Oh my God, yes,” I stammered, my heart pounding in my chest, and the crowd erupted into a cacophony of cheers and hollers and applause.
I bent down and took his face between my hands and kissed him under the clouds of mistletoe, and when I finally let go of him, he exclaimed, “Oh, there’s a ring!” He pulled a beautiful silver band out of the pocket of his jeans and held it up triumphantly before slipping it on my finger. “And there’s a sweater.” From inside his ski jacket he produced a reindeer sweater just like his and held it out to me.
I burst out laughing as I took the sweater, then fell to me knees in front of him and grabbed him in a huge hug. “I love you so much,” I whispered in his ear.
“I love you too, baby. And you’ve just made me the happiest man alive.”
I kissed him again, deeply, passionately, before we both got to our feet, grinning embarrassedly at the huge round of applause the kissing had garnered. As the crowd closed in to offer their congratulations, I leaned over to Kieran and whispered, “Who are all these people?”
“Your family and my family. I know you haven’t met a lot of mine yet, so I decided to go with total Nolan immersion. They’re almost easier to swallow as a whole.”
The first person to push her way through the crowd, of course, was Nana. She most definitely was family. She kissed both of us on each cheek, then clapped her bony hands together delightedly. “Another wedding! I can hardly wait to get started. How about an Easter theme? Eggs, bunnies, daffodils….”
“Easter’s in only two weeks, Nana,” I said. “How about a summer wedding?”
Her expression got all dreamy, and she said, “The theme can be summer in the French Riviera. Or no, wait – nautical Cape Cod. No, no, Beach Blanket Bingo.”
“For Christ’s sake, Stana, the kids just got engaged. You wanna give ‘em a chance to catch their breath before you have ‘em pickin’ out placemats?” That came from a little old man that had appeared by her side, a dapper gent of about eighty-five with thick white hair, sharp brown eyes, and of course, a reindeer sweater.
“Who’s this gentleman, Nana?” I asked.
She replied, “Oh, that’s no gentleman. That’s my husband.”
“Husband?” I echoed, suddenly concerned about bigamy laws in the state of California.
“Yeah. This is Donatello Dombruso. My husband. Dante’s grandfather. You can call him Pop-Pop.”
“Or Don,” he interjected.
“Oh,” Kieran exclaimed. “I thought he was—”
“Shacked up with a slut in Florida?” Nana asked. “He used to be. But then, I sent him a little email with a link to my online dating profile, and told him about all the hot men I was meeting. He was on the next plane to San Francisco.” She grinned smugly.
“He suddenly realized what he’d been missing,” I said.
“He got jealous,” Nana corrected.
“It’s true,” he agreed.
I asked, “So…all is forgiven?”
“I was stupid, I got tempted by big boobs and a short skirt,” he said. “But fortunately, my Stana chose to forgive me. She’s a saint, and one hell of a gal. I’m never straying again.”
“Because he knows if he does, I’m gonna shoot him in the nuts,” Nana said. Kieran and I exchanged worried looks, but then she grinned at Don, kissed him on the cheek, and slapped his ass playfully.
“Oh!” Don exclaimed with a huge smile. “Like I said, a hell of a gal.”
Just then my friends made it through the crowd, and first Hunter and then Charlie and Dante grabbed Kieran and me in huge hugs. “Congratulations to both of you,” Charlie said. He was absolutely beaming. “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
Someone put their arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek, and I turned my head to look at Jamie. “Welcome to the family,” he said, his smile genuine.
“Thanks, Jamie. And thanks for hosting this beautiful proposal.”
Kieran grinned at that and slipped his arms around my waist. “You thought it was beautiful?”
“Absolutely. Thank you for doing all of this. I don’t know how you pulled it off. I mean, where did you even find so many of these sweaters? That was adorable, by the way,” I said, snuggling against him.
“Actually, Dante helped me,” Kieran said. “It was kind of miraculous that he tracked them down.”
“He’s a man of many talents,” Charlie said with a grin. He kissed his husband’s cheek, which earned him a smile and two big arms around his shoulders.
“Congratulations, both of you,” Hunter said with a smile. “I came by earlier to get a different sweater, by the way,” he said. “My nose was broken.” He tapped the red plastic ball on his current sweater, which was blinking on and off.
“Hold on to your hat, here come the Nolans,” Kieran whispered. A woman with a cute short haircut led the way, pulling me right out of Kieran’s arms as she grabbed me in a huge hug.
“Christopher,” she exclaimed, crushing me to her. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Kieran’s
cousin Erin, Jamie’s sister. We met at Charlie’s wedding. I’m the one that bought Kier the reindeer sweater!” she announced gleefully. “Who knew it would lead to this!”
“Quit hogging him,” a young woman with long strawberry-blonde curls exclaimed. When Erin let go, I was crushed in another huge hug. “I’m Maureen, Kieran’s cousin, also Jamie’s sister. You can call me Mo, everyone does. Welcome to the family! We haven’t met, I was on my honeymoon while all of this was going on!” she said, gesturing at the mistletoe with her big, white candle. I tried to duck out of the way of the flame, but she shook the candle upside-down and exclaimed, “Don’t worry, it’s electric. You know Kier always thinks of everything, he kept it all safe.”
I grinned at that. “Of course he did.”
She had a big purse draped over her arm, and a little black and brown head suddenly poked out of it. “Oh, and this is Tippy!”
“We’ve met.” I ruffled the dog’s fur, and was rewarded with a slobbery lick to the palm.
The moment she let me go, I was enveloped in a cloud of perfume and another bone-crushing hug. “I’m Carol,” the pretty brunette said, “also Jamie’s sister and Kier’s cousin. You two are just adorable together, and I just know you’re gonna make my cousin so happy.”
“Thanks. I’m sure going to try.”
As the next deluge of relatives cued up, I turned to Kieran and whispered, “How many cousins do you have?”
He shot me an apologetic smile. “Twenty-seven. But good news. Only twenty-four of them live locally and could make it here today.”
That night when we were back home, wrapped all around one another in our new (and still standing after some vigorous stress-testing) bed, I whispered in wonder, “You’re going to marry me.”
“I am. Because my dream boy said yes.” He smiled happily.
“I love you more than anything, Kier. I hope you know that.”
“I love you too, baby.” Kieran’s head was on my chest, and he looked up at me and said, “Did I totally freak you out with the whole proposal surprise party thing? It seemed like a fun idea when I first thought of it, but I’m kind of used to my family. I was afraid they were going to break you in half with all that hugging.”