2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (10 page)

“Oh my God, Fynn, wake up! I have to go!” She jumped
out of bed, only vaguely remembering getting into bed in the first place. She
hadn’t had a sip of alcohol and she still had only a hazy recollection of how
she ended up between the sheets.
That
was how good the sex was. She
remembered being up against the dresser at one point and then on the floor, but
the bed?

“Come back here,” he moaned into his pillow.

Catherine flopped down on the edge of the mattress,
reaching underneath the bed, trying to find her socks, her bra—her anything.
When she felt a strap she yanked triumphantly, her bra whipping up into her
face like a slingshot. She slipped it on and hooked it and then went fishing
for her panties, groaning loudly to remind him she was still here and still
panicking.

“Babe, it’s… what is it? Four-thirty?” he asked,
squinting at his alarm clock. “You’ll never make it.”

“I have to try. I can’t just go back to bed and forget
that I have a life to get back to in New York.”

No answer from the bed.

She stood up and whirled around, facing his already
drifting form, feeling incensed that he didn’t give a crap that she had to go!
Now! Was this just about sex? Was she spending all her time and money just to
get screwed? She could get screwed in the city for free—even get drinks and
dinner too. Maybe she was barking up the wrong tree with this whole long-distance
sextival thing they had going.

Magnus came skulking into the room. “I wish you could
drive,” she humphed at him, and he looked back at her, appropriately shameful
of his evolutionary deficiencies.

“Where the hell is my underwear?” she groused. “Fynn!”

“What? What? I’m up.” He lifted his head, eyes bleary.

“I’m going to miss my flight,” she enunciated clearly.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up,
rubbing his face. “God, you’re like some kind of drug.”

“What?”

“What you do to me,” he said.

“Don’t,” she cautioned, holding a hand up. She wanted
to keep her mad. She didn’t want him throwing out lines that made her melt. She
could feel her resolve and her body beginning to liquefy.

“Come here,” he cooed, reaching out and grabbing for
her hand. “I wanted to give you a proper goodbye. Something to remember me by.”

“Sweet,” she said coldly, in no mood for humor
involving sex secretions to remind her of him.

Undeterred, he continued, “I love your hands, you know
that?” He caressed the one he had captured. 

“I don’t have time for—”

“I love the way they feel and—”

“Fynn,” she warned, eyeing the clock.

“There is just one thing miss—”

She yanked her hand away, grabbing her jeans that had
been slung over the footboard and shoving her legs into the leg holes. “I have
to go. My plane…. I can’t keep doing this,” she said, dancing around, trying to
button them, careful to avert her shit-brown eyes from his crystal blue ones.
He
even has good genes that I can’t offer a relationship
.

“It’s ridiculous,” he agreed.

“I can’t keep track of the time zones on my watch. It
takes me all week to figure out how to change back the time after you set it
for me while I’m here,” she moaned, yanking on her turtleneck sweater, pissed
off. Usually her misgivings didn’t show up until she was back in New York.
Right now she was still supposed to be on ecstasy time.

He chuckled, always seeming humored by her utter
ineptitude in life, the universe… everything. He stood up and went to her,
reaching for the neck of her sweater and folding it down properly, carefully
pulling her hair free. “I can always set it for you before you leave,” he
noted.

“That’s not my point, Fynn,” she said darkly, hating
that he was always pushing her off her mark and lulling her into this whole
thing
all over again.

“So then what is it? Is it the sex? Because you know I’ve
been studying up on that—going to strip clubs, hookers, trying to up my game.”

“Fynn,” she warned again.

“I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on,”
he said plainly.

“You should know what’s going on.”

“I should?” he asked, bemused.

She huffed, figuring his emotional incompetence wasn’t
worth anymore breath than that.

He stood there dumbly, waiting, a wry look on his face
that she was being one of those pesky “girls” again.

She stared him down, frustrated that he couldn’t seem
to see any problem here.
Of course there’s no problem here. Not for him. He
goes about his days like he always did and then sex flies in on the weekends
for free. Why would any guy have a problem with that?
Finally she just
blurted it out. “I’m exhausted.”

“Ooh, well I can take you to bed and take care of that
in a jiffy,” he said with a wink, holding out his hand.

“No, Fynn,” she whined. “I’m tired of living out of a
suitcase… on both ends.”

“That’s why I gave you a drawer—heck, you can have the
whole dresser.”

“I don’t want the dresser, Fynn,” she said, exasperated
at his practical answers for a philosophical problem.

“I see.” He nodded his head intellectually like she’d
just brought up a worthy point.

“This whole thing is just too much. It isn’t working,”
she continued.

His lips were a grim straight line, eyes trained on
her. “No… it’s not,” he said finally.

“What?” she choked out.

“You’re right. It isn’t working.”

She was shocked. This whole thing had been his idea in
the first place! What the hell did he have to agree with or complain about
anyway? He wasn’t the one being packed in with the masses in coach and hurtled
between two worlds every damn week!

“So you feel the same way?” she challenged, hurt. She
wanted him to finally
see
it, not
agree
with it. If this was how
he felt, he should have said something earlier. Saved her time and money. Instead
he took advantage of an easy lay—a woman who melted into a puddle at his feet,
often at the mere sound of his voice.
Probably took great pride in
thoroughly screwing me over one last time.

“I absolutely agree with you,” he said with a swift
and certain nod of his head to punctuate the point.

“Well, I guess that I should get—” 

“The rest of your stuff.”  

Are we finishing each other’s sentences and
breaking up in the same breath? What is happening? Is this payback for my
dumping him?
She felt like this was some kind of awful out-of-body
experience she was having. Sure she’d started this conversation, but it was
stress-induced. She was going to miss her flight! She kind of thought he would
be understanding and come up with solutions for making this whole long-distance
thing easier. Maybe he would offer to come see her every other week or even
just once in a while. But there were Magnus and Cara and others who depended on
him. She knew that. Plus, Nekoyah was their place. Where they started. The few
times he’d come to New York it was just… weird. Their relationship seemed
foreign in the city. But at the first teensy weensy bit of complaining he was
ready to wash his hands of her?

“You might want these,” he offered, dangling her
underwear in front of her.

She jigged her hips the slightest bit, feeling the
chafe of denim. Y
up, I forgot to put on my panties. Brilliant!
She
snatched them from his grasp and shoved them in her pocket, unwilling to admit
that she had dressed out of order; it was a
choice
. Besides, she
certainly wasn’t going to let him have a parting peek at her hoo-ha.

“Well, this is all of it,” she said with as much
conviction as she could muster, pointing toward her suitcase. Now that she had
her panties, the only thing left was her union suit. Maybe she should make a
grand show of grabbing that too, just so he knew she was leaving for good and
she
would
be wearing it for other men in the future (not that other men
would find it sexy).

Fynn’s eyes were burning right through her,
smoldering.
Oh my God, I’m never going to see him again.
She’d never
thought of the additional ramifications of a long-distance relationship. The
long-distance breakup didn’t leave room for running into each other—accidentally.
No drive-by’s or bump-into’s. If this was over, it was completely over. The
lump in her throat—her heart—throbbed.

“Exactly,” he said. “You’re going to need to get the
rest.”

She was too hurt for mind games. “What the hell are
you talking about?” she snapped.

“The same thing you’re talking about.”

She choked on her bewilderment. Coughed once. “I guess
that’s that then.”

“So, it’s a yes?” he asked, life dancing in his eyes.

“What do you mean a yes?”

“You’re moving here permanently?”

Her lips were already pursed for a less than savory
question about his mental state—he was acting nuts. That was
her
job.

“What?” She stopped there, shaking her head to clear
it of everything but his words.
This
she’d never seen coming—daydreamed
it, imagined it, tried to put both her feet there in her mind and walk around
in it… but to hear him actually say it?

“Are you moving here?” he enunciated slowly and
clearly and so loudly that she couldn’t help but to hear it this time.

“Are you really asking that?” she demanded. Her heart
had already slid back into place but now her stomach was aflutter, moving up
toward her lungs and threatening her ability to breathe.

“I’m asking a lot more than that,” he said grimly.

She gulped.
You need a kidney? A liver? Out with
it!
she wanted to scream.

“Catherine Marie Hemmings will you—”

“Hold on a second, leave Catherine Marie out of this,”
she said, waving her alter ego—the ninny—away and giggling nervously, wondering
if this was how it was supposed to be, the entire moment dreamlike, complete
with the floating feeling and the inability to move quickly.

“Excuse me,” he said formally. “Catherine, will you
watch my dog while I’m out of town next week?”

“I will—” She froze, sifting through the words,
searching for the question that had to be there somewhere—
the
question.
That’s what he’d been building to, certainly. It
couldn’t
be
dog-sitting. She’d had one other false alarm in the proposal category before,
when a guy she was dating a mere month dropped to a knee on the sidewalk at
Rockefeller Center and she quickly let him down easy so as not to embarrass him
in front of all the ice skating tourists. Turned out that he’d dropped his
toothpick from dinner out of his mouth and abhorred littering—conscientious
little fucker.

To be mistaken again? Twice in a lifetime? In a
decade?

“So?” he prodded.

She spoke slowly and clearly. “You want me to move in
so I can watch Magnus?”

“I want you to move in
and
watch him,” he
clarified.

“Oh… well, that just makes it so much better,” she
said sarcastically.

“What do you think? Otherwise I have to line up Mr.
Hall, and you know what happened last time when Magnus broke out and found the
riffraff and brought it back with him,” he chuckled, coming toward her and
wrapping his arms around her. “Who knew that I would fall for the riffraff.”

She pulled out of his embrace and gave him a sour look
that told him he was dangerously close to the edge right now.

“Are you worried about living together before
marriage?” he asked, like he’d just realized the ramifications of such a
choice. “After the last several months and… well... everything we’ve done, I
just assumed that you’d be game.”

“Game? Really? Is that what you assumed?” Now there
was an annoying buzzing in her ears, her anger humming.

“Of course, if it’s a problem—”

“Oh, it’s a problem alright,” she said, her tone
steely, impervious to his boyish grin and those damn eyes. She didn’t care
about living with a guy before marriage, just
this
guy who wanted a
live-in caregiver for his dog—one with sexual benefits.

“We can take care of that too.”

“Take care of what?” she asked, wondering if there was
no end to his cocksure attitude.

“We can make you Mrs. Trager.”

“But—” She stopped. Hardly the proposal she had
imagined and yet the words poured over her like liquid butter and made her toes
curl with something close to ecstasy.
Mrs. Trager.
God that hit the
spot.

When Catherine came to she was on the bed, laid out,
and Magnus’s face was just inches from her own as he sat dutifully watching
over her, or more likely waiting for her to do something for him. Considering
his proximity, she had a sneaking suspicion that the dream she’d had that she
was getting a facial was likely more a slathering in dog saliva.

“There you are, Sleeping Beauty,” Fynn said, his voice
chipper.

“What the hell?” she asked, sitting up. Her elbow
throbbed with the movement and she cradled it against her.

“I diverted your fall to save you another head injury
under my watch, but your elbow didn’t fare as well, Mrs. Trager.”

“Huh?” she asked, stealing a glance at her hand, her thoughts
swimming.
Don’t tell me I passed out into a coma and missed my own wedding.
Her
ring finger was bare…
it is the left hand, isn’t it?
She glanced at her
other hand just in case. Nothing there either. Had he really proposed? It might
have been in an unorthodox Fynn-ish sort of way, but it
was
a proposal,
right?

“Catherine, are you all right?” he asked, concern
suddenly slipping into his voice in place of his jibing humor.

“I just thought that—”

“You fainted before I had the chance to finish my side
of the conversation,” he pointed out. “Although Magnus thought the moment was
lovely, didn’t you boy?” Fynn ruffled his fur.

Catherine blushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know
what happened—”

“Let me shed some light. I was asking you to marry me
and your eyes rolled back in your head. Out like a light. It was hardly the
answer I was hoping for.”

 “That’s called
swooning
,” she snort-giggled,
overwhelmed with the fact that her moment was happening right now and she’d
almost slept through it. She looked down at her feet that were covered in his
slippers.

“I figured you had cold feet.”

“You love me,” she said, as if it was a revelation.

“You’re saying my lines now.”

“But you do.”

“I know I do. You don’t have to tell me that. ”

She looked into his eyes, a mix of concern, humor,
tenderness, and definitely love there.
That’s the stuff.

“So, can you stay a little longer?”

“I think I can carve out a few more minutes for you.”   

“Just until something else comes along?”

“At least that long.” She wrapped her arms around his
neck and kissed him.

“Then I guess this old thing won’t go to waste after
all.” He pulled out of her embrace far enough to reach into his pocket,
bringing out a small cylinder.

“Aw, and I thought you were just happy to see me,” she
quipped.

“Like a guy’s never heard that before.”

“I know. It’s overdone. But come on, it had to be
said,” she pled, pointing at the party cracker.

He held one end out to her and kept the other firmly
in his own clutches. “Before I give this to you… do you, Catherine Hemmings,
promise to keep my life interesting as long as we both shall live?”

A smile spread on her face. “I couldn’t help it if I
tried.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” And with that he let go.

Catherine held the cracker for a moment, staring at
the silver-wrapped tube covered in messily glued red dots and capped in sparkly
tinsel on each end. “Did you make this yourself?”

“Actually, Cara helped me,” he admitted, a dimple
appearing in his cheek as he couldn’t suppress a smile.

She looked at the tube again, wanting to hold onto
this moment just a little longer.

“Are you going to open it?”

“This isn’t some kind of gag gift, is it?” she asked,
suddenly wary.

“I guess you just have to open it to find out.” He
shrugged like it was out of his hands.

She held her breath and cracked the tube open,
unleashing a small waterfall of rice. Just rice.

“I wanted to fill it with confetti, but I didn’t have
any… and rice is wedding-like, right?”

While he spoke she shook each half of the tube,
peeking inside, wondering where the real surprise was.
The ring
. Where
the hell was the—

“Looking for this?” he asked, dangling a diamond ring on
a red ribbon before her eyes.

“This was just a decoy?” She tossed the cracker aside.

“I couldn’t make it that obvious or that easy—you sure
don’t.”

She reached for it. “It’s beautiful,” she said,
ignoring his jab in favor of the emerald cut diamond solitaire in a
vintage-inspired, engraved filigree setting. She slipped it onto her finger,
ribbon and all.

“You don’t let me do anything in my own time,” he
admonished, pulling it off her finger, untying the ribbon, and then holding her
hand in his. “I had a whole plan. A New Year’s Eve proposal. But then the snow…
and your little—”

“Let’s not talk about my little anything,” she said,
basking in the glittering rock poised before her.

“I was going to recreate the moment—champagne and
candlelight—but you had to go and rush me.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did. But I still want to marry you, Catherine
Hemmings,” he said simply, slipping
the ring
on her finger where it
belonged. “Your fainting move put me over the top.”

“We never had dinner. I have low blood sugar,” she
pointed out self-righteously, her eyes never leaving
the ring.
Of course
most women remembered every second of their proposal and hers had a blank spot
in the middle, but
the ring
made up for everything. She wanted to throw
her hand up and hail cabs with that hand, pay for groceries with that hand,
cover yawns demurely with that hand—she only wished that she wrote with that
hand. Anything and everything to draw attention to the fact that someone wanted
to be with her forever and she had
the ring
to prove it.

“What’s that self-satisfied smirk about?” Fynn asked,
good humor in his voice. “You look like you just laid a trap and caught
something big.”

“Didn’t I?” she asked, finally looking to him again
and fluttering her eyelashes.

“You going to rub that in my face?”

“I want to rub you and
this
,” she said,
fingering the diamond, “in
everyone’s
face. Kiss my ass Aunt Judy and
Cousin Brenda and Sister Constance, while I’m at it. I salute you,” she
cackled, giving the air
the ring
finger.

“But I thought this was about us,” he said dejectedly.

“Of course it’s about
us,
” she stressed. “But
it is also about all of them and how they were
wrong
about me.”

Again there was that twisted smirk on his face that
said she was totally nuts, but she took it as a good sign that he didn’t try to
grab her hand and yank
the ring
back off right then and there.

“So… I’m guessing that you aren’t planning on making
that flight?” He made a show of checking the time.

“What flight?” she asked breathily, snuggling into his
arms.