The Mistletoe Effect

by Melissa Cutler

  He held his glass up as though in a toast. “You’re welcome.”

  She brought her wineglass up and clinked it with his. “I’ll drink to that.”

  After a sip of wine, she added, “So I’ve had to get sneaky to find time to work on the dress lately. I’ve been putting in a couple hours of work on it after you leave in the mornings. I told my friend Janine, the boutique owner in L.A., that I’d ship this one out by the end of the month. There’s a waiting list for my dresses, so I—”

  “Pardon the interruption, but hold up. There’s a waiting list of women wanting to buy the dresses that you, Carina Briscoe, design and create?”

  The pride in his voice filled her with warmth. “Yes. Isn’t that something? There’s been an ongoing list for a couple years now.”

  He gave a low whistle. “One of these days, I’m going to convince you to design dresses full-time. You should see how your face lit up when I brought the topic around to your sewing. And the fact that brides are clamoring for what you produce? You’d be starting your business with a built-in clientele.”

  “My situation is complicated. You know that.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “I do know that, and I’m sorry. I just want you to be happy.”

  “This month, I’ve been very, very happy. But I have to ask, what happened to me being a Decker? You called me Carina Briscoe.”

  “You’re right. You’re still a Decker for six more days.”

  One of those days, very soon, they were going to have to face reality and figure out what they were going to tell the staff about Decker leaving and the dissolution of their marriage. Thinking about it made her stomach ache as much as the thought of him leaving, so she planned to put off that particular conversation until later—much later. “Speaking of the name Decker, this wine’s making me brave enough to ask you something again, something I’ve been wondering about but hesitated to bring up because you didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

  He rolled his glass on its bottom edge, a smile playing on his lips. “My sordid past as a ne’er-do-well?”

  “Not quite. I’m pretty clear on that. Would you tell me why you go by Decker and not James? I hate not knowing something that fundamental about you.”

  A deep sigh was wrested from his chest, just like the first time she’d asked that question on the night of their wedding. “My dad died when I was seventeen. Well, two days before I turned seventeen, anyway. He had pancreatic cancer. It was fast and brutal. He was gone before we could blink an eye.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  Nodding in acknowledgement of her words, Decker took a long sip of whiskey. Carina held her tongue and waited for him to continue.

  “My mom was stricken. In the months following his death, the creditors started showing up. Come to find out cancer is an expensive disease and our ranch was already hurting because of a brutal drought. She panicked as soon as it became clear that we were going to lose the ranch, and got remarried to the first willing man with a roof over his head she could find. We moved from the country into an apartment in Dallas.

  “Mom changed her last name when she married. Then, my sister, who’s older than me, was looking to escape the situation and got married right after that, so then she wasn’t a Decker, either. It was just me and that …” He pressed his lips together and shook his head, as though fighting an intense emotion. “That was hard to take. I started going by Decker as a tribute to my dad, and after a while it stuck. I can’t imagine going back to James now.”

  Carina had no idea what the proper response to such a story was; all she knew was that she needed to have her arms around Decker. Her heart was so heavy with sorrow for him and what his family had gone through that it felt ready to burst. She stood and circled the table, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his cheek. After a long, quiet embrace, she said, “Me being a Decker is an even bigger honor now. Thank you for sharing the name with me this month.”

  He pulled her into his lap and nuzzled noses with her. “The pleasure is all mine. You’re a very worthy Decker.” He tightened his embrace and gave her a smile edged in sorrow. “It’s crazy how it still hurts after all this time, but it does. He never got to see his dream of breeding horses and running a riding school realized. My whole life growing up, he dreamed about it, but he never could manage to make it happen. It took me a long time to shake off the feeling that we kids and our mom had held him back. Like, he couldn’t afford to take the chance on a dream with so many hungry mouths to feed.”

  “You weren’t to blame. You were just a kid.”

  “I know that now, but somewhere along the line his dream became my dream and I have to make it happen. That’s why I’m doing what I am, moving to Fort Worth and taking the job at Granite Hill Ranch. For my own sake, and for the sake of his memory.”

  It all made sense now, why Decker pushed her so hard about dress designing, why he was so motivated to leave the resort for a bigger, better job. It didn’t make it any easier on her to let him go, but at least now she understood what was driving him. He was such a good man—such a fine human being and son. A fine husband. “When you take that job at Granite Hill, your dad will be so proud, looking down on you from on high.”

  “He will, definitely. It’s a great feeling, knowing that. My birthday’s in two days, so tomorrow will be the anniversary of his death. Actually”—he checked his watch—“that’s today.”

  “We’ll have to celebrate.” She shook her head. “Geez, I meant your birthday. We’ll have to find a way to honor your dad, but also find a way to get happy again for your birthday.”

  He cuddled her close. “It’s okay. I know what you meant. Let me tell you what I do every year to honor his memory. He loved Christmas. We were dirt-poor ranchers and our Christmases didn’t look much like those at Briscoe Ranch Resort, but they were about family togetherness and reaffirming their faith in God and in the goodness of the world. When my dad died, I never thought I’d enjoy this season without him. Time fixed that for me. Time and being here at the resort.

  “I know you’re not much into Christmas anymore, which was why I hadn’t pushed the issue or decorated the house, but I’d love for us to get in the holiday spirit together. Would you do that for me? Help me pick out a Christmas tree and decorating the house and all that? That was the question I was going to ask you tonight after I got you all full and happy with chicken Parmesan and wine.”

  He was right about how little she enjoyed the Christmas season, but this was different. This was her best December yet, being with Decker, and now that she knew what the holiday meant to him the idea of Christmas took on a fresh, new life in her mind. She tipped her head toward the boxes of decorations. “We could start getting your house in the holiday spirit right now.”

  He rubbed her back, considering. “It’s after midnight.”

  “What other time do we have together except the nights and early mornings? Let’s decorate now as much as we can, though you might have to get a tree on your own, because I don’t know how we’d both find the same window of time to sneak to a tree lot in town, unless you know of any ones that are open twenty-four …” She let her voice fade off because the perfect idea hit her like the sudden, unexpected flash of Granny June’s smartphone camera.

  “We’ve got to be able to carve out a few hours one day to play hooky,” Decker started to say.

  She put her finger over Decker’s lips, silencing him. “Forget about that. Let’s go get a tree right now. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Now? Where are we going to get a tree at this time of night?”

  “The winter wonderland garden. You have a saw around here, right?”

  He stood, helping her find her footing as they rose. “Let me get this straight. You want to ride across the resort in the dead of night, saw down one of the Christmas trees in the resort’s winter wonderland garden, and bring it back here to use as our tree?”

  “Exactly.” A thrill z
inged through her—the giddy, wicked kind usually reserved for when she watched Haylie stand up to their parents or when she spotted Decker from across a crowded room. “And, bonus, it’ll already be decorated.”

  She was the consummate good girl, sacrificing everything for her family’s business and legacy, so if she wanted to take one little bitty tree so she could help her husband celebrate his birthday and his father’s memory then she wasn’t going to let anybody stand in her way.

  “We can’t do that,” he said.

  “Why not? If my father has a problem with it, then what was he going to do—fire us? He’d never do that, and even if he did, you’re leaving soon anyway, so what do you care?”

  Wandering toward the front of the house, he squinted out the window, his mouth screwed up like he was weighing the pros and cons of her idea. She stole behind him and untied the apron, then worked her hands around his ribs to his chest and pressed her cheek to his back.

  “You can’t deny me this,” she said. “I’m standing up for what I want, which is what you’ve been trying to get me to do. With six days left for us here together, who needs sleep? It’s the anniversary of your dad’s death, your birthday’s in two days, and I can’t see any good reason why we shouldn’t go have a little fun and make a memory we can hold on to after you move.”

  He covered her hands with his. After a few minutes more of silent contemplation, he said, “I guess I only have one question for you, then.” He angled his face to look sideways at her, the pensiveness of before gone. “Truck or golf cart?”

  Chapter Nine

  Carina and Decker looked ridiculous with headlamps strapped to their heads, if Decker did say so himself, but lighting was a must for a covert operation like this one. After raiding the headlamps from the stable’s supply room, they snuck on foot to the golf cart parking at the rear of the resort’s main building, chuckling and holding hands the whole time, with him hauling a handsaw wrapped in cardboard. They borrowed a maintenance cart with a flatbed in back instead of a second row of seats and started off across the grounds, Decker at the wheel.

  Being with Carina made him feeling more alive than he had in a long time, and not just because of this one secret act of lawlessness. She’d been right. Who needed sleep—or her father’s approval—when the alternative was more time with her? Decker’s plans for the future would be shot to hell if Ty got a whiff of what they were doing and decided Decker was still that punk kid he’d been when he’d first come to work at the resort and therefore too irresponsible to recommend for the Fort Worth job. However, Decker couldn’t deny that a part of him was exhilarated by the prospect that losing out on his new job would keep him close to Carina.

  The winter wonderland garden sat on the northeast end of the resort, near the wedding chapel, nestled at the foot of a hill that rose in rocky splendor to a craggy peak upon which was a pole topped by a Star of Bethlehem. Year-round, the star remained lit day and night, seven days a week, but the garden’s lighting system was on a timer that turned it off around midnight.

  Dozens upon dozens of fully decorated Christmas trees sat in the darkness amid a lush, expertly landscaped collection of red, white, and green flowers, topiaries trimmed to look like reindeer, and all kinds of other Christmasy garden pieces that Decker had never bothered to look too closely at. True, he’d led many groups of trail riders around the periphery of the garden, but he was usually busy making sure the riders didn’t pluck any ornaments from the trees as souvenirs and the horses didn’t leave any surprise gifts in the area to care much about the actual garden itself.

  Decker parked the golf cart at the gazebo in the center of the garden; then he and Carina strolled among the trees, sizing up their options.

  “Any of these catching your eye?” she asked.

  “They all look good to me.”

  She pointed to a tall, wide tree strung with multicolored lights and gold garland and covered top to bottom in ornaments fashioned out of vintage children’s toys. “Growing up, that one was my favorite. All the other trees have changed themes over the years, but I have a deal with our designers that this one stays the same.”

  “I can see how any kid would like that one.”

  “One year, Haylie and I snuck here and took off all the ornaments, then handed them out to every child staying at the resort. I can still see the look on our mother’s face when she caught us.”

  “It was bad?”

  “No. It was priceless. Haylie and I laugh about it to this day.”

  “Then, that’s the tree I want,” Decker said. For all her bad Christmas memories, if he could keep reminding her of her good ones then he’d consider that a victory.

  “Do you think your dad would approve of this one?”

  His dad would love everything about tonight—the middle-of-the-night mischief, the evocation of childhood memories. And he definitely would have approved of Carina. Of that, Decker was certain. A pang of grief hit him hard, and he couldn’t wait to lose himself in the labor of sawing the tree down.

  He cleared the lump out of his throat. “My dad’s probably laughing his ass off in heaven, watching us break all these rules for the sake of Christmas. Come hold the tree trunk steady while I saw the base.”

  It took some configuring to find a comfortable position on the cold, hard ground that also allowed him enough range of movement to get the saw back and forth. But in no time he was in business while Carina stood near his head, both her hands gripping the trunk about midway up and her legs braced wide.

  They lapsed into easy silence save for the rhythmic friction of the saw against the tree trunk. The base of the trunk was thick, but Decker was up for the task. He let his mind wander, marveling at the strange, wonderful month he’d had being fake-married to Carina. It’d been the most fun—and definitely the most memorable—of his adult life. And it was going to be over way too soon. Another wave of heavy emotion hit him, one that felt not so different from the grief he experienced when he thought about his dad.

  “So this marriage license thing that Granny brought up at the cocktail party,” he said. “How does that work? She said she’d seen ours, but nobody could have applied for a license on our behalf without us knowing about it, right?”

  “No way. The bride-to-be and groom-to-be both have to go to the county clerk’s office at the same time and bring their IDs, birth certificates, and money to pay the marriage license fee.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s it.”

  He craned his neck to look up at her but was blinded by her headlamp when she looked down at him. “That’s all there is to it?” he asked, ducking back under tree boughs.

  “Yep.”

  Blinking away the spots in his vision from her headlamp’s glare, he resumed sawing, pleased that he’d already cut more than halfway through the trunk in far less time than he would have predicted. “That sounds really simple. Almost too simple.”

  “I hear that all the time from couples who come in for wedding consultations. What I tell them when they’re surprised by the simplicity of the process is that after getting through the hard part, a couple deserves an easy part.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the hard part?”

  “Finding someone to love and spend the rest of your life with and who loves you back and wants to spend every day for the rest of their life with you. Finding that one somebody is the toughest, rarest thing a person can do in their lifetime, I’m convinced of it. And a lot of people are never that lucky.”

  He stopped sawing again and looked up at her, his headlamp illuminating the rosy flush to her cheeks, the dorkiness of her own headlamp, and the romance in her eyes as she looked up at the stars and talked about finding the one.

  A tightness started in his chest. What if the person he was meant to spend the rest of his life with had been right under his nose for almost a decade? What if this crazy farce of a deal he and Carina had made was really just the universe’s way of giving him a nudge toward the one he�
��s supposed to be with? What if there really was something to the Mistletoe Effect after all?

  “You stopped sawing. Is everything okay? You didn’t slice your finger off, did you?”

  He started sawing again. “I’m fine. Digits all still attached to my hand. Easy peasy.” The only trouble he had was figuring out what to do with the revelation that he could easily, happily, spend the rest of his life married to Carina.

  He felt her hand on his hair, picking something from it. Then the tree swayed precariously. Scrambling upright again, she clutched at it before it tipped too far. “Oops.”

  His heart threatened to burst with affection. “Woman, you’re supposed to be holding the tree, not playing with my hair.”

  The glare of her headlamp blinded him again when she looked down, but he squinted at her anyway, smiling and probably blinding her right back with his own light.

  “You had pine needles in it,” she said.

  “Sure I did. You just love any excuse to get your hands on me.”

  “You know me.”

  Yes, he did. And he would forever be grateful that he’d gotten the opportunity to.

  “Hands in the air or I’ll shoot,” a man’s voice boomed through the garden.

  Carina nudged Decker with her shoe, then scrambled back. “Gun.”

  The tree wobbled, then started to fall as soon as she let go of it. Decker let it go. He hung on to the saw and jumped up, lunging in front of Carina to stand as a shield between her and the man shining a flashlight into their eyes. He heard the tree fall and saw dirt and debris cloud the air, but nothing mattered except diffusing the situation and keeping Carina safe.

  “Drop the saw and get your hands in the air,” the man shouted.

  Decker had no intention of dropping the saw until he knew what he was dealing with. Looking at the dark boots of the man holding the flashlight, he said, “I don’t know who you are, but you’d best be aiming that gun somewhere other than at my woman or else there’s going to be hell to pay. And that’s a promise you can take to the bank.”