Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
It’s the best night of my life.
And all the proof I need that magic is real—at Christmas and any other time you’re lucky enough to spend with the one you love.
* * *
Nancy Tucker
* * *
A wedding officiant about to
make an indecent proposal…
* * *
The only thing better than a wedding?
A December wedding in a snow-dusted pine grove—flaming torches flickering, fire pits crackling, bright red poinsettias tucked into every bough like ornaments. A chipmunk in a tux.
And me, the smug officiant who just got to declare Holly Jo Hadley and Luke Ratcliffe husband and wife.
The bride: faux-fur trim, curls pinned up with baby’s breath, grinning like she swallowed a constellation. The groom: wool tux, eyes shining, looking like a billionaire who understands that money can’t touch what he’s holding.
I’ve known the Ratcliffes my whole life—Elliot and I have been best friends since we were kids—and still, I’m stunned.
Even a year ago, the “Grouchisaurus Who Hates Christmas” (our private nickname for Luke) moving here full-time and plugging happily into the community would’ve sounded like a fever dream. Now he’s helping Holly into the sleigh for the reception, raising their joined hands while the whole town whoops, and Cheeks does a little victory strut in his tiny tuxedo.
Miracles are real. I’ve just signed paperwork to prove it.
And that, more than just about anything else, gives me hope that what I’m about to do isn’t completely crazy…
As the other guests stream toward the line of sleighs, I hang back in the empty grove. Partly because I promised to stay until the event team finished putting out the fires.
Partly to make a wish alone in the freshly fallen snow…
I close my eyes, cross my fingers, and lift my face to the pink-and-orange-streaked sky as the winter sunset takes hold.
Let Elliot say yes. Please let him say yes.
“Hey you, that was one hell of a ceremony,” a familiar voice rumbles from behind me.
My heart surges into my throat.
Elliot.
As if summoned by a Christmas wish…
I turn to see him standing a few feet away by the last of the still-flickering torches in a dark-green suit that fits like sin, hair slicked, cheeks pink from the cold. If he weren’t my best friend, I would have tried to climb him like a tree long ago. But he used to be a world-class flirt with a minor in sorority studies, and I was smart enough to protect the one relationship I never wanted to lose.
I’m thirty-four now.
Older, wiser, and smart enough to know that sex doesn’t always have to mean the end of a friendship.
Right?
“You okay?” he asks, a faint frown creasing his brow. “You look a little…sad. Or something.”
I shake my head. “Not sad, just thoughtful. Weddings always make me think, you know?”
Mostly, they make me think about how I’m nowhere close to getting married or finding a man to father the baby I’m running out of time to conceive. I’m not getting any younger and fertility issues will complicate this journey more for me than the average woman in her mid-thirties.
Elliot nods. “Yeah, I get that. Time is going by so fast, isn’t it? It seems like just yesterday, we were sixteen, stealing beer from the cooler at your dad’s third wedding and getting drunk in the barn.”
I smile. “I was so sick the next day.”
“So sick,” he agrees. “Let’s keep it more respectable tonight, all right?”
“For sure,” I agree, arching a brow. “But not too respectable.”
He laughs as he wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Absolutely not.”
I’m glad he’s on board. It will be much easier to say the things I need to say if we’re both a little tipsy. Because as soon as the speeches end and the band plays a slow song?
Well, I’m going to ask Elliot Ratcliffe to be the father of my baby.
I might even ask him to start trying…tonight.
* * *