A Perfect Bride For Christmas (10 page)

Alex liked his privacy, and he had a thing about closing the drapes at night.

“I’m not marching around, bare-ass naked, for

all of Kansas City to see.” He took in the huge maw of the fireplace carved from a wall of unfinished concrete. Maybe it was supposed to say something to him, in an architectural sense. It could only be described as ugly. Butt Ugly, as Clint would say.

She dropped the pillow on the floor. Typical

Sydney. Why put anything back to where she got it?

That’s what she paid a maid for. How many times had he heard her laugh and say she supplied job security for someone less fortunate, like being a slob equated to national service? He used to think it adorably funny. Now, he felt annoyed with her

patronizing attitude.

Sydney sensed his lack of enthusiasm. She

skipped over to the kitchen with an island of black 73

Dyann Love Barr

and stainless steel accented with a healthy dose of red. Maybe her designer chose the color to

camouflage the blood if someone sliced off a finger while trying to use the culinary gizmos on the

counters.

“Look, at the kitchen. State of the art.” She

sounded more like a real estate agent trying to convince a prospective customer to sign on the

dotted line.

“Who’s doing the cooking?”

“Me, silly.” She opened a cabinet and pulled out a cookbook with enough French names on the front to require a degree in linguistics to decipher. Sydney flipped through the pages and pointed her finger at a recipe complete with step-by-step instructions for something or other
en croute
. The picture showed what looked like a hunk of meat wrapped in pie

dough.

“When did you learn to cook?”

“I don’t know how, at least not yet, but I plan to take lessons after our honeymoon. I want to make special dinners for you and hold parties. Lots of parties.” She slicked her hand over the black

granite, past the sink, before ending at the

refrigerator. “Ta da.” She pulled out a bottle of champagne and took down two glasses from the rack hanging over an island. This must be her first

attempt at planning a party for two.

“I thought we might celebrate.” Sydney gave

him the smile that usually signaled some hot nasty sex. “To break in the place.” She gave them a sassy little shake, along with her backside. “Follow me.”

Not an inch of arousal stirred his dick to action.

He knew everything worked just fine, especially after his lunatic kiss with Zoe yesterday morning.

Nope. Everything was in dandy work condition.
It should’ve worried him that Sydney’s antic left him cold. Instead, he followed her out of curiosity, rather 74

A Perfect Bride for Christmas

than her blatant sexual lures.

“This is the bedroom, the only bedroom, and it

takes up at least a third of the loft. I told the architect I wanted an adult’s playroom, as well as a bathroom to die for.”

The ultra-modern living space gave way to a

bedroom that could’ve been straight out of an old Rudolph Valentino silent movie. Sheer Morocco. A sultan’s harem. Reds, golds, glitter, and mirrors everywhere, and enough material hanging off the bed and walls to clothe a small country. She’d

already lit some obnoxious incense that made his nose hairs burn.

Sydney set the wine and glasses on an etched

brass table and flopped down on the bed of red and gold. “Isn’t this delish? And look.” She rolled over onto her stomach to open a chest by the bed,

revealing every sex toy known to mankind. “Our own naughty box. The girls gave me this X-rated shower and well, I designed the room around the box. I found it at an antique store.”

They’d played with some pretty spicy stuff in the past, but some of the things in the box looked like they’d come from a medieval torture chamber. He stepped back with a slight cringe. “Cute friends.”

“I thought so.” She opened the bottle, poured a glass of wine and held it out to him with a giggle.

Her laughter stopped.

The champagne bubbles fizzed and popped in

the silence that followed.

“This is the only bedroom?”

Sydney nodded. “I already told you that.”

“What about a guest bedroom, a place for my

office?”

“You already have an office.” She put the glasses on the table and walked out of the bedroom into the main part of the loft with a lot of attitude. “It’s suddenly gotten a bit cold in here.”

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Dyann Love Barr

A simple touch of the remote control on the glass table by the lime green couch set a blaze burning in the concrete monstrosity. Sydney paced on the

expensive wool area rug in front of the fire. None of the bright colors or the blaze could take the chill off the concrete and stainless steel in the room.

That didn’t matter. If the hot flags of color on Sydney’s face were anything to go by, she would scorch him with a Sydney Stanford Snit.

He didn’t care. “Where do you propose I put my

stuff?”

“Your stuff?

“Yes, Sydney, my belongings. The things that

come with me as part of the whole Alex King

package. Big screen TV, my books, my furniture. My life?”

Sydney pouted. “You don’t need any of those

things. I thought it would be fun to start fresh for both of us. I guess I was wrong.” She did her most dramatic whirl and faced him. “I did all this for you, and you don’t like it.”

“Well, to be honest, no.” God it felt good to have his balls back. “I hate this. You should’ve discussed this with me first. A home is something you

purchase together not just spring it on the other person.” He looked over the loft. “I see a lot of your things around here already.”

“But those are mine.”

“Exactly. You get to keep your belongings, but I have to leave mine in storage? I don’t think so. It,”

he pointed to the room at large, “doesn’t work that way. Or were you planning on leading your life as usual, except for those parts where I become a

convenience?”

The pout turned to a snarl of anger. “If that’s the way you feel, maybe it might be better to call off the wedding.”

Sydney didn’t realize she’d handed him a gift

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A Perfect Bride for Christmas

from heaven. If this were to be the full-blown Sydney extravaganza, he might as well let her have it with both barrels. He had to tell her about the girls sometime. Damn the salads and stupid loft—full

speed ahead. “Sydney, there’s something you should know.”

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Alex guided his Hummer through the snow-

packed streets and out to the highway where it

didn’t get any
better. The snow kept falling, veiling the world in the purest white. Heavy flakes danced in the gray light of the overcast day, fell against the heat of his windshield to melt and die with a sigh.

Lucky snowflake
. If he could end all his troubles that easily.

He needed to talk to his mother, let her know

about his crazy, spur of the moment invitation to Keeley Jacobs. And tell her about his children, for no one could look at them and not see the resemblance.

Sydney hadn’t taken to the news any better

than he expected. She screamed like he’d killed her best friend or set fire to the naughty box. Damn it.

Part of him hoped she’d give him his walking papers.

Instead, she’d forgiven him.

He didn’t want to be forgiven, he wanted her to tell him to get the hell out of Dodge, never darken her doorstep again, in her typical melodramatic Sydney style. When Zoe had said the words, they were cold and final. Sydney started in with her usual, exhausting drama, until she remembered all the hoopla surrounding the big day. If she called off the wedding, it would spoil being the center of attention, the wedding of the year, honeymooning in Paris. It was all about Sydney.

Alex rubbed the bump on his nose. Maybe he

hadn’t done such a good job in his journey to redeem himself. He’d been so busy patting himself on the 78

A Perfect Bride for Christmas

back, celebrating his personal progress, to realize he was still the asshole Zoe’d called him five years ago.

A week ago, he couldn’t wait to marry Sydney. Now, less than a couple of weeks away, a one-way ticket to a tropical island sounded like the perfect escape.

He mourned the loss of his newfound balls. They were shriveling by the second, but he couldn’t chalk it up to the cold and snow either.

Women—six to be exact.

Sydney, Zoe, his mother and three precious

girls. No make that seven, he’d forgotten about Keeley Jacobs. He might as well take up a position as a professional eunuch. That only brought on

images of the Arabian Nights horror in the loft.

Alex pulled into the snow-packed drive and

frowned. Why hadn’t Mom called someone to plow

the snow? He got out of the Hummer and slogged

through the shin-high mess onto the porch. He

stamped the wet snow from his leather boots and rang the doorbell.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow
rang out in the cold air that froze the hairs in his nose. He waited a little longer before he rang again.

Nothing.

The house gave off a strange, vacant, vaguely

menacing vibe. Mom should be opening the door by now, even if she were upstairs or at the back of the house in the kitchen. She might be cooking for

church, a neighborhood bake sale, or one of the many groups where she volunteered. Any second,

she’d open the door and scold him for not coming in the back way.

The wind chime she and Dad hung on the porch

last summer sang a melancholy song in the cold

breeze.

He felt a surge of fear. Without bothering to ring the bell again, or knock, he used his key and let himself in.

The door opened to silence.

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Dyann Love Barr

“Mom?”

No answer.

She knew he’d planned to come by this

afternoon, with his checkbook, to go over the details for the reception. If it kept snowing like this, it would be impossible to pitch a pup tent, let alone one large enough for the reception in the ‘back forty’ as Dad liked to call the huge back yard. And knowing his mother, hell would freeze over before she’d give up on the idea of having the reception here at the house. The island idea seemed better by the second.

“Mom, it’s Alex. I’m here with a boatload of

money.”

No warm smells of coffee or the cinnamon rolls

she promised wafted through the air. The house felt dead.

A rush of panic grew as he checked the rest of

the house, the living room, den, the downstairs bedroom, and the sunny red and white kitchen. He ran downstairs to the basement, but she wasn’t

there either. She hadn’t driven the car anywhere—

his were the only tracks in the long driveway up to the house.

The garage—he hadn’t checked out the garage.

“Mom!” Alex yelled into the wind.

The only thing he got for his efforts were a few rogue snowflakes that tried to strangle him. The pretty, lacy things were deadly when he inhaled them.

He raced towards the detached garage. There,

just barely there, were the faint traces of her size five footprints in the snow leading from the back door of the house to the garage. It was sheer luck he saw them at all. It had been snowing like a son of a bitch all morning long.

The three-car garage, built of white-painted

concrete blocks back in the fifties, had new overhead doors installed last year and a regular door to one 80

A Perfect Bride for Christmas

side of the building. It stood open.

“Mom! Mom, are you here?” he called out. The

overhead heater was on, but no matter how hard it chugged away, it couldn’t compete with the cold air whistling through the door. Twenty-eight degrees, the weather reporter on the car radio had reported with cheer. Perfect Christmas weather.

The temperature in the garage felt close to

freezing.

“Alex.”

Relief flooded through him so fast he came close to breaking into tears. He rushed to where he heard her weak voice, near the back of the garage. She lay on her side, her foot twisted at an odd angle,

surrounded by dry cat food. A pool of blood

surrounded her head.

“Oh, my God. What happened?” He took in the

pink and purple flowered, flannel pajamas and

bright, lime green, pull-on rain boots. She’d pulled a heavy denim jacket over the odd getup.

“I came out here to feed the cats, and one of the kittens, the white one, got underfoot.” She started to move but gasped in pain. “I tried to do some fancy foot work, but I guess my disco days are over. My knee went out again,” she chattered from behind blue lips. “Like an idiot, I left my cell phone in the house. Keep forgetting to take the darned thing with me.” She reached back to feel her head. Her hand came away covered with blood. “That can’t be good.”

“Where does it hurt, anywhere besides the head

and ankle?” He wanted to touch her, but didn’t know if he should in the circumstances. Her body shook with cold. His mother was right—this couldn’t be good, not by a long shot.

“I’m just shaken up.” She tried to sit, groaned, and lay back down. “A head cut always looks worse than it is. I’ll be fine once I’m in the house.”

Like hell.
Her foot canted at an odd angle, 81

Dyann Love Barr

almost a hundred and eighty degrees. She’d said her knee went out, as well as God knew what else. He bit back the nausea lurching around in his stomach.

“Mom, I’m going to run into the house for some

blankets. Where’s your purse? I’m calling an

ambulance, and I’ll need your insurance card.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Your head is bleeding like crazy, and your

ankle is twisted backwards. I am not arguing with you about this.”

A spasm of pain crossed over her face. “It’s on the kitchen counter by the sink.”