Page 215 of Wild Then Wed
I pull back, confused, frowning. “No, it’s not.”
“It is.”
“It can’t be.” I grab my phone out of my back pocket and check. The screen lights up with the date.
Shit. December twenty-third.
My stomach dips a little. It is. How thehelldid time move that fast?
I lock the screen and shove my phone back in my pocket. I think back—vaguely—to Jenna saying something about Christmas being in a couple of days. I’d just come out of a colic surgery on a gelding that had been touch-and-go for hours. My hands were still raw from scrubbing out. I was thinking about the owner pacing the parking lot. About whether the horse would make it through the night. Not Christmas. Not decorations or timelines or what day it even was.
I hadn’t even looked up when she said it.
“I’ll find one,” I repeat, locking the screen. “I’ll even make sure it’s got bells and battery-powered lights or something.”
She grins and turns back toward the counter, pouring the batter into a pan. “Good. If I have to suffer, so do you. I think that’s the rule of marriage.”
She slides the brownies into the oven, wipes her hands, then picks up her phone. “Now,” she says, swiping, “you’re gonna hate this, but I don’t care.”
Wren grins as Christmas music plays and she starts swaying her hips, just a little, her hair catching in the light as she backs away from the counter. “Dance with me.”
“Right now? To this?”
She wiggles her eyebrows. “It’s a requirement. I made a whole list of things for us to do.”
I shake my head and huff out a breath, but I’m already stepping toward her. “Do I want to know what else is on that list?”
“Nope,” she says, looping her arms around my neck. “You’re better off just saying yes.”
I snort, and then she starts doing something with her elbows. It’s like a chicken dance, but worse. I don’t even try to name it.
“Oh no,” I say, grinning as I watch her. “What is that?”
“You married this.” She spins in a sloppy circle, then throws her hands up like she’s just stuck the landing.
So I match her. Sort of. I do an exaggerated side-step and then some kind of clumsy hip move that makes her double over laughing.
“Stop,” she says, holding her stomach. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“Iamin pain,” I deadpan. “From watching whatever that elbow thing was.”
She laughs harder, eyes crinkling. “Okay, that was rude.”
The music blasts on, and we both keep dancing—if you can call it that. We’re out of sync and out of breath, but neither of us cares. It’s stupid. Loud. Fun. Her hair’s falling out of the clip she tried to twist it into, and I think this might be the happiest I’ve ever seen her.
She turns, grabs the bowl off the counter, and swipes a finger through the leftover batter. Then she walks right up to me and drags it across my nose.
I stop moving. “You didn’t.”
Her grin goes wide. “I did.”
I look at her—her red hair falling in her face, her smug little smile—and before she can go back for more, I grab the bowl with one arm and swipe my finger through it fast.
Then I drag it straight across her forehead.
Wren gasps. “You cheater.”
“It’s not cheating, I’m just faster than you.”
