Page 73 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
It was turned on and radiating heat. I’d been given strict hours for the central heating to be turned on in the house thatI owned, and here this pig was, living her best life in front of an electricity-sapping hunk of metal.
Must be nice to be queen.
I put my laptop and phone on the ottoman and turned on the Christmas tree lights. They blinked and twinkled their way to life, and a small smile crept its way onto my face.
Was there anything better than Christmas tree lights?
There was just something about the way they made me feel. They were so magical that it felt for a moment like therewas no stress weighing me down, and I was able to enjoy their twinkles for a minute before reality set in.
You know, the reality that there was alotof stress weighing me down.
I sat down on the sofa and slowly blew out a breath, staring at the lights. My vision blurred until the lights became little stars, and I huffed again.
A part of me wished I hadn’t agreed to plan Hazel’s wedding.
Not only was my Christmas spirit on the verge of renaming itself Ebenezer Scrooge, but I was far too close to the wedding personally to be able to think rationally.
If this were any other wedding, I’d have already found another veil. I’d have it figured out in a heartbeat, but my emotional attachment to my sister and my overwhelming desire for her big day to be a success was clouding my judgement.
Simply put, I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was like wading through miles of sinking sand every single time I tried to fix it, and the one rope that had been thrown my way in the form of Thomas and his mum was snagged on a branch somewhere.
I reached over and pulled a candy cane from the tree. I snapped it in two, breaking the plastic wrapper, and shoved one end of the minty, sugary goodness in my mouth and sucked.
Beatrix Trotter woke up and, upon seeing me, got up from her spot in front of the radiator and walked over to me.
I looked down at her. “Hello.”
She didn’t respond, obviously.
She was a pig.
She couldn’t talk.
I hoped she couldn’t talk. I wasn’t sure I was mentally capable of handling such a revelation right now.
“Can I help you?” I asked, as if she really would just open her tiny mouth and tell me exactly what she needed.
No.
She just…stared. At me. With her two beady little black eyes.
It was like staring into a teeny tiny abyss.
She didn’t move, so I didn’t either. I just sat on the sofa, having a staring competition with a miniature pig.
I’d wasted time in worse ways before. Like my ex-boyfriend.
The front door opened, and moments later Nana said, “She wants to get on the sofa.”
I finally dragged my gaze up and looked right through the living room door to the hallway where I could see her unwinding her scarf from her neck. “I am not picking her up and putting her on the sofa. She’s apig.”
“She’s a house pig.”
“A house pig is still a pig.”
“She fits in my handbag,” Nana continued. “And walks on a leash and poops in a tray. She’s like a dog.”
“But is a pig,” I reminded her.
