by Linde, K. A.
Each person got one gift to open. We oohed and aahed over the presents. Aly somehow managed to open four from various people, including an art set, Barbies, hair scrunchies, and some kind of goo that I didn’t understand. Isaac went over to investigate.
Then, Aly rushed over to me with a light-brown box in her hand, tied off with a red ribbon. “Peyton, it’s your turn!”
“Oh, Aly, what did you get me?”
“It’s a surprise!”
I took the box from her and pulled on the ribbon. It easily came away. I used it to tie a bow and place it on Aly’s head. She giggled and wore it like a headband.
Then, I opened the box, finding a sea of white tissue paper within it. I removed it like a magician pulling an endless amount of fabric out of his sleeve. I laughed as the cascade fell to the ground, but my laughter stopped when I reached the bottom.
Nestled in a poof of tissue paper was a small black box. I gasped as I retrieved it from its spot and let the brown box fall away.
My eyes lifted in shock, and there was Isaac with a wide smile on his face, pleased that his surprise had worked. And everything else slipped away in oblivion. I couldn’t see our families. I didn’t hear Aly’s excitement. I just saw the man of my dreams, standing before me, offering me the world.
Isaac took the box out of my hand and then sank to one knee. A sob escaped my lips, and my hands flew to my mouth.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
He popped open the box, revealing the circular, haloed diamond within.
“Peyton, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” he asked.
“Yes!” I gasped.
Tears clouded my eyes as he slipped the ring on my finger. I stared at it in amazement and then flung my arms around his shoulders. Our families cheered.
“It worked!” I heard Piper cry out.
They must have all been in on it. God, this man.
“I love you,” he said against my hair.
“I love you, too.”
“My turn!” Aly cried, elbowing her way in.
Isaac picked her up, and we crushed her between us.
“How do you feel about Peyton becoming part of the family?”
“Yes!” Aly said. “I want that. Peyton can be my mommy.”
Isaac coughed and nodded, speechless.
“Do you think you could be my flower girl, Aly?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ve watched the flowers a lot. I can definitely be a flower.”
Oh, The Nutcracker! How it seeped into every part of our lives. I didn’t even have the heart to correct her. It was too precious.
Our families came forward and congratulated us. There was another toast and hugs and kisses. And then Aly was yawning, and everyone else was heading home.
By the time Isaac and I had the house to ourselves, we were pulling out secret presents we had stashed in the top of the hall closet from Santa. I artfully arranged them under the tree. And then, when it was finished and all was quiet, he pressed a firm kiss to my lips.
“You’re going to be my wife.”
“Finally,” I whispered, staring down at the beautiful diamond on my finger.
We’d come so far from those awkward teenagers to this moment. It hadn’t been the normal route to take, but we were here, and we were together. That was what mattered.
Isaac laughed and kissed me again. “Agreed. Finally.”
* * *
Thank you so much for reading A WRIGHT CHRISTMAS! I hope you loved Isaac and Peyton’s sweet Christmas story. Up next is Jordan Wright and Annie coming May 11th, Wright with Benefits!
Preorder WRIGHT WITH BENEFITS now!
Julian Wright’s story is up next after that in, Serves Me Wright, coming August 10th!
If you want to start the Wrights from the beginning, read Jensen and Emery’s story, The Wright Brother, available for FREE! USA Today Bestselling author Jillian Dodd said it was “hotter than a Texas summer.” I’d dated his brother. He didn’t remember and I wished I could forget…
Try Katherine & Camdens’s sexy arranged marriage stand alone romance, THE BREAKING SEASON.
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Wright with Benefits
Chapter 1 — Annie
A brisk wind whipped around my bare legs, swirling the skirt of my black dress, and flipping it upward Marilyn Monroe style. I shrieked, batting at the material in a desperate attempt to bring it back down to an acceptable length. The wind didn’t seem to hear my string of curses, because it just bit into my harder, making me regret forgoing tights.
“Oh my God,” I snapped as I clutched the dark material in my hands.
The wind just whistled in response. A cackle if I’d ever heard it.
I glared up at the stupid Lubbock wind. It wasn’t enough that the temperatures were in the low thirties already at five-thirty on this Friday afternoon right before my last semester of medical school started; the wind just had to rub it in.
“Annie, what are you doing standing out here?” Cézanne asked. She wore a black jumpsuit that highlighted her dark brown skin with her box braids pulled up into a high ponytail. She somehow looked professional and like an imperious, avenging angel. “It’s below freezing.”
I prayed to the Lord for patience and grinned at my closest friend in my cohort. “The wind attacked me.”
She eyed me skeptically. We’d known each other pre-med school and she still sometimes looked at me like I’d sprung a second head.
I waved her off. “Whatever. I’m not having a good day.”
Which was an understatement. My house had flooded! Like straight flooded. My room was a wreck. I’d lost half of my closet including all of my shoes. Like every pair except the impossibly high snakeskin heels that I’d scrounged out of a pile of donation I hadn’t gotten to yet. My room was essentially a wash until maintenance showed up. I’d be living on the pull out couch for the foreseeable future.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, I’d been nearly run off the road on the way here. Some dipshit had driven straight through a red light and I’d had to swerve to avoid getting T-boned.
Today was officially over.
I stepped inside of the rustic building the medical school had rented for the event and Cézanne closed the door.
“Well, if you’ve been having a bad day, I hate to ask, but where’s the wine?” Cézanne asked warily.
“What wine?”
“The…wine. You know the case of commemorative wine for Professor Rodgers and the rest for the retirement party. The entire school is coming and…there’s no wine.”
“What the hell? Who was in charge of that?”
Cézanne looked at me blankly.
“No,” I told her.
“It has your name next to it.”
I shook my head. “I swear I wasn’t in charge of the wine.” She passed the list to me and saw where my name was scrawled unintelligibly. I groaned. “Are you sure it was even called in? I didn’t do it.”
“I’m not sure who called it in, but I have the original order request.”
“Let me see it.”
I plucked it out of her hand and stared down at it. Phew! It was three thousand dollars worth of wine. The commemorative case along was a grand. Well, no wonder Cézanne was wondering where the hell all the wine wa
s.
Unfortunately it didn’t say who had put the order in. But I knew for a fact it wasn’t me.
I took a deep breath and then released it. “How can I help?”
Cézanne grinned. “Can you please call the Wine Boutique and find out what happened?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Thank you. Thank you. I knew I could count on you to get shit done.”
I sighed. What else could possibly make this day worse? Might as well try to get the wine so we could all get fucked up today. Professor Rodgers was only retiring once.
Cézanne She checked off a slot on her to-do list that rested on an actual clipboard. I loved Cézanne to death, but sometimes her organizational skills were so extra. There was a reason she was top of our class and in charge of all of our events.
I stepped away from Cézanne to make my phone call. The Wine Boutique’s number was on the top of the order, and I dialed it with another sigh. This was what I got for being dependable. The line rang and rang and rang. It felt like an eternity before the voicemail clicked over.
“Thank you for calling the Wine Boutique. Sorry we missed your call…”
I hung up and tried again. And again. And again.
No answer.
Their hours said that they were open until six. I had another thirty minutes. They should have answered their phone.
“Gah!” I growled, wanting to throw my useless phone across the room. Of course no one was answering. It was just my day. I checked the address on the sheet again. I knew where this place was. It was only a five minute drive downtown on a good day. Today was not a good day, but I had enough time to still make it. “Cézanne!” She glanced over at me. “No one is answering. I’m going to just…head over there and find out what happened.”
“You’re a goddess, Annie. Truly.”
“I still say that I wasn’t in charge of this.”
“Well, find out who was then, k?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered as I headed back outside.
I braced myself against the cold and hustled back toward my car. As soon as I shut myself back inside, I blasted the heat. The Spirit Ranch was a wedding venue on the north side of town that we’d gotten at an uber discount since it was the off season. But Cézanne had somehow still made the space look gorgeous even going as far as renting an outdoor tent complete with heaters. But with the sun already going down, I couldn’t imagine standing out there. Maybe with enough alcohol in me.
I winced.
Right…alcohol. That thing that we didn’t have.
With a groan, I peeled away from the building and headed toward downtown. The Wine Boutique was nestled in the heart of the city between an old city hall and a historic hotel which had recently been renovated into high-end apartments. The downtown was finally finally beginning to blossom into the Lubbock local scene that everyone had always hoped for. It had a long way to go, but I could see where it was headed.
I parked out front, bracing myself for the cold and rushed toward the front door. My hand settled on the gilded hand and I yanked on the door. I groaned, feeling my shoulder give as I pulled too hard on a door that wouldn’t budge.
“Fuck,” I spat.
The hours on the front door said I had another fifteen minutes, because of course it had taken me longer to get here, before they closed. I peered inside of the darkened interior. A few lights were still on and a woman sat behind the counter, typing on the computer.
I banged on the front door. “Hello!”
The woman’s head popped up in confusion. Then she was dashing across the room, unlocking the door, and throwing it open. I nearly fell inside in my hurry to escape the cold.
“Hey! Sorry about that. I didn’t expect any other customers,” the woman said. She wore a dark blue dress with sensible heels. Her dark hair severely parted down the middle and pulled back into a loose bun. Her lips were painted a pretty dark pink and her dark eyes lightly lined.
“Not a problem,” I told her.
“I’m the owner, Sophia. How can I help you?”
“Annie,” I said, taking her outstretched hand and shaking. “I’m actually here from the medical school. We’re hosting a retirement party for one of our distinguished faculty up at the Spirit Ranch today. We ordered a few cases of wine from here, but it was never delivered.”
I passed over the order form to Sophia, who looked even more surprised when she scanned it over.
“I have this order,” she said instantly, “but it’s for next weekend.”
“No, it’s for today. We’re all back in rotations next weekend.”
“I don’t even have to look it up. I know that I have it for next weekend.” Sophia said she didn’t need to look it up but went immediately for the computer. I followed her, standing before the desk. She quickly printed out a similar form and passed it to me.
I glanced down at it. It was actually identical to the form I’d handed her except that the date was in fact for next weekend. What the hell?
“Oh God,” I groaned as I looked at the signature.
Who the hell put Bryan Clifford in charge of this? Bryan was our resident fuck up. He’d only gotten through the last three years of medical school because his mother was on the board and kept bailing him out. I prayed for anyone who had him as a doctor after we finished all of this. Lord save me from mediocre white men.
I had no idea how it had gone from my name on Cézanne’s list to Bryan ordering the wine and putting the wrong date on it. But I was sure going to find out after all of this.
“You’re right. It is for next weekend,” I said dejected.
“I’m really sorry,” Sophia said quickly.
“Do you have the wine in stock?” I asked hopefully.
“Sure, I have it,” she said quickly. “But my drivers are already gone for the day. I don’t even have a van here tonight to deliver it myself.”
My heart sank. “Can’t you call someone?” I asked, teetering toward desperate. “It’s like a three thousand dollar order. You’ll lose that if we don’t figure this out.”
She shot me a panged expression. “I have a meeting after close. I don’t know who I could get to come in time. I can text a few drivers, but I’m sorry. It seems like a stretch.”
“That would be really great. I’d appreciate it. I don’t know what else we’re going to do.”
Sophia patted my hand across the desk. “Let me shoot off those texts. We’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sigh and then pulled out my phone to text Cézanne about the disaster. I had a feeling Bryan Clifford was about to get eaten alive by her after she found out.
“So far it doesn’t look good,” Sophia said just as the bell over the door jingled.
I looked up from my phone, praying to whoever would listen that one of the drivers had come back for some reason or another. Some serendipitous reason that would save my shitty day. We could pack up the van, drive out to the ranch, and I’d look like a hero.
Instead, I turned around and found the last person in Lubbock I wanted to see. The one person who had fractured my trust and left me a little more cynical than I’d been before. Who I still avoided like the plague. A line had been drawn in the sand and no matter that we’d had a one night stand with the best sex of my life, I wouldn’t open myself up to even a friendship that could shatter me the way one look into Jordan Wright’s deep dark brown eyes were capable of.
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A L S O B Y K. A. L I N D E
Like stand alone companion novels about one big family—
WRIGHTS
The Wright Brother
The Wright Boss
The Wright Mistake
The Wright Secret
The Wright Love
The Wright One
A Wright Christmas
Wright with Benefits
Serves Me Wright
Like adult Gossip Girl meets Cruel Intentions—
>
CRUEL
One Cruel Night
Cruel Money
Cruel Fortune
Cruel Legacy
Stand alone companions novels about four friends on the Upper East Side—
THE SEASONS
His for a Season
The Lying Season
The Hating Season
The Breaking Season
Like scandalous political romance—
RECORD SERIES
Off the Record
On the Record
For the Record
Struck from the Record
Broken Record
Like angsty second chance romance—
AVOIDING SERIES
Avoiding Commitment
Avoiding Responsibility
Avoiding Temptation
Avoiding Extras
Avoiding Boxset
Like rockstars—
TAKE ME DUET
Take Me for Granted
Take Me with You
Like drama-filled sports romance —
DIAMOND GIRLS SERIES
Rock Hard
A Girl’s Best Friend
In the Rough
Shine Bright
Under Pressure
Like vampire paranormal romance about blood whores—
BLOOD TYPE SERIES
Blood Type
Blood Match
Blood Cure
Like YA fantasy about a girl who discovers magic in a world where magic doesn’t exist—
ASCENSION SERIES