Page 10 of What Happens This Christmas
Allegra peered down at her daughter, who was curling her hair around her chubby finger. “Candy,” she repeated as she slid the dish in front of my wife. “What a pretty name.”
I couldn’t agree more. Like her, there wasn’t anything average about the name.
“Thank you.”
Allegra nodded. “This is Gina. She’s a little fussy, so I decided to bring her down to see Daddy. What I didn’t know was that Daddy would be putting us to work,” she informed us, while offering her daughter animated expressions. She looked back up for a beat, her eyes landing on me. “Yours will be right out, Nick.”
“No worries.” I extended a hand to touch Gina’s chubby toes. “Yeah, we were just talking about how busy it is here,” I pointed out, turning around to take another pass over the place. I didn’t think there was an empty seat to be found.
Eyes lighting up, the corners of Allegra’s lips curled upward. “You don’t remember what tonight is, do you?” She bounced Gina on her hip.
“What’s tonight?” Candy inquired, flipping over the fish on her fish and chips plate. Maybe I should’ve ordered her the Irish stew instead.
Before Allegra could answer, Jack stopped playing his guitar and his booming voice filled the pub over the mic. “All right, it’s that time. Where are all of my swinging Santas?”
Swinging Santas…what the fuck fresh hell had I just walked into?
How could I have forgotten?
That was it. We were getting out of here. Candy should be happy, especially because she’d yet to actually take a bite of her dinner.
“Don’t be shy. If you’re a swinger, make yourself known.”
Like hell we were. Candy was mine, even if it was for only one more Christmas. We weren’t the sharing type. We were pretty selfish in that fucking way, especially me.
I grunted and grabbed Candy’s wrist. “We’re leaving.” We could make our great escape like Allegra had clearly done, stepping away from the bar and into the back somewhere around the time Jack scared the shit out of me.
Jack was still giving instructions on how my worst nightmare was about to go down, but Candy jerked away from me. She stood suddenly, pushing away the invisible wrinkles from her clothes. “No. I think we should stay.”
I thought a lot of things too, but it didn’t mean that I said them all aloud. I stood up at her side and leaned in. “We’re not swingers.” I slammed my teeth together. And we never would be because I didn’t want to screw another woman. I wanted to screw my wife, and if that wasn’t happening, then I wasn’t screwing anyone. Yeah, that was right, I was a saint, deserved a medal, and didn’t give a shit about any of it.
A mischievous smile crossed her face before she reached for her beer and brought the frothy drink to her lips. She actually took a drink. It was a good thing I witnessed that firsthand, otherwise I wasn’t sure I would’ve believed that she just had her first ever sip of beer…the one drink she had no tolerance for the smell of.
“How was that?” I asked, cocking a brow.
“Disgusting.” Then she winked at me. A sip of beer and a wink? What the hell was running through the vents in this place? “I know we’re not swingers, but there’s no harm in having a little fun, right?”
Fun would have been tossing her over my shoulder and smacking that cute, little ass of hers until we got to the car where I ate her out, grateful we had tinted windows.
“Take up knitting.”
“I think I’ll take up swinging Santa instead.”
Defiant. Insolent. Headstrong. Now this was the unmanageable woman I’d married.
Chapter 6
Care to touch my elf?
Candy
My existence with Nick was quiet. We were together but not connected.
It had been that way for a while now.
It had grown on me, like mold did cheese.
But Nick was messing with the balance of everything. What was he thinking taking me to this pub? Introducing me to his boss and his boss’s family?
