The Wedding Date: A Christmas Novella

by Connelly, Cara

  He stared into the fire, dwelling on the irony. He’d finally found a woman who wasn’t impressed by his MD, and she didn’t want anything to do with him.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts. “Why’d you come to Boston?”

  He looked over at her. She was leaning on the broom, watching him with curious eyes. He must have looked pathetic, because she stood the broom in the corner, brought him a Coke from the fridge. “I’d give you a beer, but you’d keel over. Then I’d never get you out of here.”

  He tried for a smile as he accepted the Coke. She pushed his chest, a light shove that invited him to sit. He took her up on it.

  She sat on the coffee table facing him. “So. Why are you here?”

  He wet his throat with some Coke. “In six weeks, I’ll take over as head of Emergency Medicine. Right now I’m cycling myself through every shift in the ER, learning the place inside and out.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Couldn’t you do the same thing in Texas?” she asked, like she wished he’d get on the next plane back there.

  “Probably. But then I’d be in Texas. Boston’s as far away as I could get.”

  As soon as he said it, he bit his tongue. Now she’d ask why he wanted out of Texas.

  He wasn’t ready to talk about it, so he changed the subject. Pointed his chin at a photograph on the mantle: A good-looking guy with wire-rimmed glasses sitting in a coffee shop, Julie standing behind him with her arms looped around his neck. Both of them smiled happily at the camera.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, hoping it was her brother.

  She looked over her shoulder at the photo, sorrow sliding across her features like a cloud passing over the sun. “That’s David. My fiancé.”

  “You’re engaged?” What about the blind dates? The smokin’ hot lip-lock in the restaurant?

  Then she said, “Not anymore. He died.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.” He shifted uncomfortably because, to his shame, he was also relieved. To make up for it, he added, “Looks like a nice guy.”

  “His heart was as big as the world.” She brought her hands together in her lap, looked down at them. “He worked with at-risk kids. Kids whose parents were druggies, or dead, or in jail. Kids with the odds stacked against them. He did nothing but good in this world. It was a better place while he was in it.”

  She twisted her ring, and Cody realized it was a diamond. A puny one. David hadn’t had much money, but Julie didn’t care.

  He thought of the iceberg Bethany had picked out, big enough to sink the Titanic, and the old humiliation soured his stomach. He’d actually believed she loved him. What a sucker. No sooner had he foolishly proposed than she’d dragged him to Austin’s finest jeweler, where she rejected stone after stone, explaining that she absolutely had to have a bigger diamond than her sister, who’d married a mere stockbroker, and a much bigger diamond than her BFF, who’d settled for a paltry lawyer.

  She, Bethany Mills, was going to be a doctor’s wife. She’d landed the biggest fish, so she should have the biggest diamond.

  That night, just for the hell of it, he told her he’d always wanted to teach kindergarten and now that he had her love and support, he planned to quit medicine and follow his dream.

  By morning, he was single again.

  He was also hurt. So hurt that when Bethany hooked up with a colleague a few months later, the long-standing offer from Mass General started looking mighty good.

  And that was the ignominious story behind his move to Boston. He’d gotten his heart broken and run away like a girl.

  He wasn’t ready to share it with Julie. Which wasn’t a problem because she wasn’t paying attention to him anyway. In fact, she was a million miles away, and he had the awful feeling that if he didn’t do something to bring her back, she’d keep drifting and he’d lose her for good. He didn’t want that to happen.

  He set the empty can on the coffee table. “I’m sure he was proud of you too. It’s a nice little niche you carved for yourself, the whole dream-house angle.”

  Her brows scrunched. “It’s not an angle. I told you before, it’s what I do. I don’t care if you believe me or not, but I actually have a talent for it.”

  He nodded agreeably. “You must. ’Cause if you always farted around like you did this afternoon, you’d be out of business.”

  Her spine stiffened. Her gaze sharpened. And she was right back where he wanted her, focused on him like a laser.

  “The farting around,” she clipped, “is on you. First you were hungry. Then wet. Then sleepy. You’re worse than a baby. At least with a baby, I could change his diaper, stick a bottle in his mouth, and let him nap in the stroller while I went about my business. But you, you killed the whole afternoon.”

  He faked offended. “I’ll take the hit for lunch, but I gotta remind you, we’re only here because you were wet too.” He spread his hands. “Now, if it was up to me, we’d have both stripped down and warmed up by the fire—”

  She held up a hand. “Why are you still here?”

  “You want me to leave?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, please.”

  “Got another blind date?”

  She stood up. “I have things to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as none of your beeswax.”

  He threw out some chum. “Me, I was thinking of taking in a movie.”

  “Good idea. Maybe the hotel has in-room porn.” She shooed him with her hands.

  He took his sweet time, ambling toward the door like it was his own idea. Like he wasn’t being thrown out on his ear.

  He pulled on his boots while she tapped her foot. Shrugged into his coat as she held the door. Smiled an innocent smile and said, “So what time should I come by?”

  Her jaw dropped. “You’re not serious. You don’t really want to come to dinner.”

  “I told your sister I’d be there, so I’ll be there.” He cocked his head. “That make you nervous?”

  She sputtered. “Oh please. Irritable, yes. Nervous, no.”

  “So what time should I come by?”

  He could hear her teeth grind. He bit back another smile.

  “She’s right around the corner,” she got out at last. “Just come whenever.”

  “Okay then, I’ll see you at noon.”

  “What? No! One o’clock is early enough.” She put a hand on his back, gave him a shove through the door. “You can get a cab on Beacon.” And she closed it behind him.

  As he stepped out into the snow, he made himself look ahead instead of back. He didn’t want to see the warm lights he was leaving behind, and if she wasn’t watching him walk away, he didn’t want to know it.

  What he did want was to get inside her defenses. She was prickly as a hedgehog, but whenever he snuck past her quills, he found something interesting. Like the psychic dream-house thing. That was just weird enough to be true.

  And her smidgen of a diamond. That really got to him. That, and her sorrow. They put his own hurt feelings to shame. Made him see what he should’ve seen months ago, that Bethany had wounded his pride, not broken his heart. Hell, he’d hardly thought of her since he hit Boston a week ago. Only once or twice since meeting Julie, and then Bethany suffered by comparison.

  He shoved his cold hands deeper into his pockets as he turned downhill toward the Common. Along the sidewalk, old-fashioned streetlamps glowed. Brick row houses marched along both sides of the street, each one decorated for Christmas with wreaths and candles and swags of white lights.

  Julie had none of those things. No tree shining from her window. No holiday spirit at all. It was bound up inside her, like everything else. Like her passion and laughter and heart.

  Julie Marone, he decided, was a package that needed unwrapping.

  Well, it was Christmas, right?

  Julie sank down on her sofa. Rolled her head to the side and took one long, delicious sniff of pure male pheromones.

  Why was she torturing her
self? Cody was a doctor, for God’s sake. She shouldn’t be so attracted to him.

  But she was, damn it. She was.

  She scraped her fingers over her scalp, tugged her hair back till it stretched her whole face. Dinner would be an ordeal. He’d charm the socks off her family. Amelia practically drooled when she saw him asleep on the sofa. Her mother would go down just as hard, and when she got a load of his drawl, forget about it.

  They’d shove him down her throat with both hands. And she was terrified that she’d give in and swallow.

  Her gaze strayed to David’s photo. His gentle eyes. His peaceful smile. Even during his illness he’d been a calm, steadying presence. A counterpoint to her fly-off-the-handle temper, her raging impatience and burning resentment at a world where death chose its victims without rhyme or reason, where goodness was irrelevant and suffering came to those who deserved it least.

  Yes, David fought his battle with dignity and grace, while she beat her fists bloody against the injustice of it all.

  And when it was over and David’s ashes had washed out with the tide, still the furnace of her fury roared. Grief stoked it; so did loneliness and impotence and guilt. Unable to accept her loss, she turned her silent wrath on the doctors who’d failed to save him. On all doctors everywhere who went home to their expensive houses and their pampered spouses while David, her David, drifted out to sea.

  For three years that fire had burned in her breast, unquenched by time, impervious to reason. Now Cody threatened the very underpinning, her absolute belief that doctors cared about nothing but money. Because he simply didn’t fit the frame.

  She wanted him to. Oh, how she wanted him to. But she knew the money was in specialties, like surgery and oncology to name a dastardly few. It wasn’t in emergency medicine. And pumping out a junkie’s stomach or patching up a battered wife didn’t make for glamorous cocktail conversation.

  Thanks to Cody, she had to consider that maybe, just maybe, some doctors actually cared about helping people. Which meant that if she’d looked harder, maybe she could have found one. Someone who could have saved David.

  But wouldn’t that put his death on her?

  Oh God. She couldn’t go there.

  She wouldn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  THE DOORBELL CHIMED at one o’clock sharp. Julie’s stomach fluttered in spite of herself. Stomping on the butterflies, she took her time pulling on a parka and mittens, then descended the stairs at a measured pace.

  She opened the door, her lips schooled into a frown. And there he stood, all six-foot-sexy of him filling out his ass-hugging jeans and battered leather jacket, looking for all the world like he’d galloped in off the range to ride roughshod over the bluebloods of Boston.

  Those stupid spurs jangled in her head again. Her palms popped a sweat in her mittens. She fought his hotness with all her might.

  Then he dimpled up. His whiskey eyes crinkled. And the butterflies squirted out from under her boot and did a happy dance in her stomach. Before she could stop it, she broke out in a smile, stepped toward him as if she expected him to kiss her.

  Which he did. Oh yes, he dropped his chin and laid his warm lips on hers, kept them there, and it wasn’t a hey-it’s-nice-to-see-you kiss. No, this was a let’s-go-inside-and-get-naked kiss. It seared her lips, spreading out from there like flame consuming paper, eating away the resistance she’d drummed into her brain, lighting up every cell, every sinew.

  Her mittens slid over his shoulders. His arms closed around her. Out of her head flew all her inhibitions. Her parka rode up; she felt his heat on her belly, soaking through her sweater. His cock, hard and heavy, defied their layers, scorching her skin through denim and wool. She parted her lips, taking his tongue, giving him hers, letting them dance the dance that their bodies demanded.

  He cupped her ass in one bare hand, slid the other up her back, inside her shirt, under her bra. His thumb brushed the curve of her breast and both of them moaned. He shoved her bra up, took her weight in his palm. Her breast seemed to swell, overflowing his hand. He thumbed her nipple. Her legs tried to buckle.

  He dragged his lips across her cheek. Scraped his teeth down her jaw. “Inside,” he murmured, breath hot on her throat, “take me inside.”

  Inside.

  Inside her house. Inside her body.

  Inside her defenses. Inside her heart.

  Fear trumped passion. “I can’t,” she said, and took a step back. He opened his arms and released her.

  Embarrassed for reasons she couldn’t even identify, she turned away from him, yanking off her mittens, adjusting her bra with sweaty fingers. In the glass pane of the door, she saw his reflection. The hunger in his eyes, the disappointment on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said past the lump in her throat.

  He caught her gaze in the glass, gave a rueful half smile. “Should’ve kept my mouth shut. We could’ve done it right here in the snow. I wouldn’t have minded.”

  She tried to smile back at him, the kind of smile that would gently tell him she took responsibility for letting things go too far, and at the same time push him away, back into the role she’d assigned him.

  But the smile wouldn’t come. She was practically paralyzed, confounded by emotions that just wouldn’t jibe. She hated that he was a doctor, but loved how funny and kind and incredibly generous he was. He scared her down to her DNA, made her doubt rock-solid beliefs, but she wanted to strip off her clothes and rub against him like a pussycat.

  She couldn’t process it. She didn’t want to try. She wanted to go back inside, pour a glass of wine, and watch CSI reruns until she went numb.

  Mostly, she wanted him to go away and leave her in peace. As usual, he wasn’t cooperating.

  As if to make the point, he said, “You don’t mind helping me pick out the wine, do you?” He wiggled the fingers that had almost undone her. “No gloves yet, so I didn’t want to carry it all the way from Back Bay.”

  Damn his drawl. She unzipped her parka. Flapped it a few times, then zipped it halfway. “There’s a wine store on the way,” she said, sticking her sweaty hands back into her mittens and setting off down the driveway with her usual rapid stride. “You can’t go wrong with a mid-range cab or Chianti. We’re all about red in my family.”

  Then she realized she was talking to thin air. She should’ve remembered that evolution moved faster than Cody.

  She pulled up and waited while he crawled up to join her, then set off again, trying to moderate her pace. But no matter how slow she walked, he fell behind.

  He ambled. He sauntered. A snail could have outrun him.

  She simply could not walk that slow.

  Half a block down, she threw up her hands. “Are you sure you work in the ER?” She pictured a trauma patient bleeding out while he strolled to the gurney.

  “The hectic pace suits me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m greased lightning in the ER.”

  “You’re frozen molasses now.”

  He smiled. She turned her back on his dimple, strode ahead. “The store’s right around the corner. We should be there by nightfall.”

  His laugh rumbled behind her. He had a great laugh, deep and sudden, like she’d surprised it out of him. She had to get away from it. It was too warm, too tempting. She hit the gas and left him to follow at his own glacial pace.

  When he came through the door, she pushed two bottles into his hands. “These’ll do.”

  He scanned the labels. “Uh-uh.” He moved past her down the aisle.

  She trailed after him. “What do you mean, uh-uh? What’s wrong with them?”

  “Not a thing.” He propped them back on the shelf, reached for their pricier classico cousins.

  She puffed up. “They’re perfectly acceptable mid-range wines.”

  He headed for the register. She trailed after him. He paid. She simmered.

  Out on the sidewalk, she went at him again. “I can’t
believe you spent a hundred bucks on two bottles of chianti to drink with my sister’s lasagna. Who’re you trying to impress? Just because you’re a doctor with money coming out of your ears—”

  He whirled at a speed that had her blinking, stuck his face down in hers, and gave her both barrels. “That’s right, I’m a doctor! And you’re the only woman in America who thinks that’s a bad thing!” He pulled back, insult all over his face. “As for money, I guaran-damn-tee you make more than I do. And without the loans to pay off, either.”

  Then he gave her his back, took off at double his normal pace. After a few beats, she found her voice.

  “Hey. Cody. You’re going the wrong way.”

  CODY MADE A show of stomping back to her. “I’m surprised you didn’t let me wander away.” He said it tartly, letting her know she’d rubbed his fur the wrong way.

  “Amelia would’ve sent out a search party.” There was an apology in her smile. And an olive branch.

  Fat chance. It’s not that easy, sister.

  “I don’t doubt you could’ve talked her out of it,” he said. “Convinced her I’m an asshole. I’m sure you could sell it.”

  “You’re many things, Cody, but you’re not an asshole.” She sounded almost regretful.

  She set off down Mount Vernon Street. He didn’t try to keep up. She stopped at the corner, visibly swallowed her impatience. At least she felt bad enough not to nag him into a sprint.

  He cut her some slack, gave her a smile that turned her cheeks pinker than the cold. She was mule-headed, mercurial, downright impossible to please, and he was tired of getting squeezed into that tiny box she’d built for him. But the truth was, if she fucked like she kissed, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Besides, when she let down her guard, he wanted to eat her up.

  “Those condos you lined up for me,” he said when he reached her, “they around here?”

  “Within a few blocks.”

  “So we’ll be neighbors.”

  She shrugged, but with discomfort, not indifference. “I guess. Not that people see much of each other here. Lots of professionals.”