by Traci Hall
“Or,” she told him with a huff, “We could just invite them over to play with the dog.”
Chapter Eighteen
They’d decided before going in to Pet Rescue that they weren’t interested in the cats, so they’d asked to see the dogs from the website. A gorgeous Maltese with a purple bow in her hair, and a small black terrier. A shepherd mix of some kind with cocoa brown fur.
Christian had pointed at the center cage. “I like them all, but I especially like the guy in the center. He looks smart.”
“Let’s go,” Sinead said, excitement in her belly.
According to the records at Pet Rescue, the dog, brown fur with a white chest, forty pounds, had been discovered near the interstate without a collar or microchip.
Sarah, super sweet owner of the place, assured them that he had all of his shots and a gentle temperament.
“My sister is having a baby, so we have to make sure that the dog will be good with kids.” Sinead wondered if they’d have to baby-proof their house.
Sarah showed her a picture of an adorable little girl with her arm slung around the dog’s neck. “This is my step-daughter. She can be very high energy but this dog is really patient with kids.”
“Let’s meet him,” Sinead said.
Christian held her hand and they followed Sarah to the back area and the kennels. Sarah stopped before a large metal crate in the center. “I’ll get him out.” Sarah unlatched the gate.
The dog hustled free of the kennel, looking from Christian to Sinead.
“Sit,” Sarah said.
He did.
“I told you he looked smart,” Christian said.
Sinead stared into the canine’s brown eyes and he gave her a look right back before his butt wiggled off the floor with his happy tail wagging. As if he couldn’t help himself he gave her a lick on the hand.
Startled, she laughed and fell backward but Christian caught her elbow to steady her.
“Well?” he asked.
“He’s the one.” She took Christian’s hand. “Don’t you think?
“I like him.” They’d been in sync, which didn’t surprise her any. “He should be named Alfred.”
“Why?” Alfred?
“I don’t know. It feels right.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
After conferring with Sarah, Sinead took a picture of the cocoa brown shepherd-ish dog and sent it to her mom and sister. “Meet Alfred. Christian wants to teach him how to answer the door and take drink orders.”
They bought a bed, a kennel, a leash and dog treats.
“This feels strange. How is it that after living all this time together we never had a pet?” She watched the way Alfred walked around the pet place, sniffing, his full tail high before he returned to Sinead’s side.
“We never wanted anything else. We traveled.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t time yet.”
They gave Pet Rescue a generous donation and took their purchases, including Alfred, to the car.
They’d driven her CRV since the seats were fabric instead of leather. She got behind the wheel and the dog jumped into the front seat with Christian.
“Uh, no. Down.” Christian spoke around the dog’s excited body.
“You have to put him in the back,” Sinead laughed.
Christian looked at her over the dog’s head. “We should have asked for a really old dog.”
“Why?”
“One that wouldn’t jump around all over. He has a lot of energy.”
“Just put him in the back.” She grinned.
“He doesn’t want to go.”
“You get to be the boss. That should be fun for you.”
His dark brow arched. Alfred barked and wiggled. Christian got out of the car and put the dog in the back. Alfred squeezed his way to the passenger seat before Christian could climb back in.
After the third attempt, Christian gave up and made room for the dog on his lap. “Let’s just go.”
“I am so glad we decided to get a dog. Great idea, honey.” She couldn’t stop giggling. “Yeah, we just gave in to a dog. We are not ready for a baby.”
Christian set up the crate in the spare room, which had been mostly cleared of gifts they’d returned to the senders. Some really nice stuff, too, but since they hadn’t actually gotten married, it felt wrong to keep it.
Sinead had written out personal notes that he’d signed as well. She’d told him that he had to sign too or people might think they’d broken up instead of just not officially getting hitched.
“Alfred isn’t going to like it in there,” Sinead said, her arms crossed as she watched him set everything up. “He’s going to feel punished.”
“Every kid wants his own room.”
“He’s a dog. He’s going to feel alone. Dogs are pack animals, honey.”
When she said it like that, it suddenly made sense. He sat back in his heels. “Well then where do you think his stuff should go?”
“We are mostly in the kitchen or living room. Maybe have his crate here, but his dog bed by the back patio slider. That way he could see the living room and the kitchen.”
Compromise. In every relationship, there had to be compromise.
“So, the crate stays here for at night, but in the day, he’ll have a dog bed by the slider?”
She nodded.
“Okay.”
Alfred darted between where she stood at the door to the spare room to the crate where Christian was kneeling, to the unused treadmill and the few remaining boxes. The one that Alfred was sniffing had the cradle.
“Hey, maybe we can give that gift from Cousin Misty to your sister. Keep it in the family but out of the house, you know?”
She rubbed her chin in thought. “We can ask her.”
“Well, what about right now? Maybe her and Xavier can meet Alfred.”
“I’ll call. We can do pasta or something easy for dinner.”
Sinead pulled her phone from her jeans’ pocket but it rang before she could make a call. “Hello, Mom. Yes, Alfred is adorable. Very smart. Christian has him learning the alphabet already.”
She gave him a thumbs up.
“Of course I’m kidding.” She walked into the room, petting Alfred. “Next weekend? Church?”
Christian shrugged and then nodded. His dad wasn’t coming in for another week and Madge had sounded excited about showing off the old church.
“Sure. Cool, Saturday afternoon services?” She perched on the exercise ball. “Perfect. Hi to Stephan.”
She hung up. “I’m glad that we are out of hiding. But now we have a very full social calendar.”
“How so?”
“It’s the holidays. In between our office parties, Sydney and John’s stuff with the kids, your dad, my mom, and now our dog, we needed to spend the last few months resting.”
Alfred snuck up behind Sinead as she balanced on the ball, her feet in front of her. Her excellent posture didn’t save her as Alfred rushed and poked the ball with his nose, sending it flying.
Sinead’s feet went in the air and Alfred chased the ball out of the room with a happy bark.
Christian laughed so hard tears came to his eyes as he tried to help Sinead to her feet. Alfred rolled the ball back into the room, using his forty pound furry body to take out Sinead behind the knees.
Sinead dropped to all fours. Alfred licked her face and ran circles around her with excited yips.
“Oh yeah,” he said between gasps for breath. “Getting a dog was an excellent idea.”
Chapter Nineteen
“I should feel bad for putting Alfred in his crate,” Sinead confessed as they got into Christian’s Mercedes for church and then Madge’s party.
At four in the afternoon, the winter sky was just turning from clear blue to a palate of purplish gray and rose. About fifty degrees, but no rain or snow, which suited Christian just fine. His family had moved from southern Florida to New York at the beginning of high school and he’d learned the hard way about ic
y snow and freezing cold.
“Alfred has a way of looking at us, like we’re abandoning him or something. I gave him a rawhide to chew.” Christian adjusted his suit jacket from where it had bunched at his back and started the car. He backed out of the garage to the road. He hated leaving the house in a rush—it left him tense.
“It’s only a couple of hours.” Sinead lifted the hem of her skirt, which now had a jagged edge from where Alfred had played with it. Bugger had sharp teeth. “I said I should feel bad, but I don’t. I paid a fortune for this red suede skirt and now it’s ruined. He’s lucky we don’t take him back to the pound.”
Christian eyed the hem and sighed. Alfred was taking some getting used to, but at the end of the day, the dog snuggled between them on the long couch and it felt right. “We didn’t get him from a pound. He’s a rescue, and that means that he might have some issues he needs to work out.”
He put his hand on Sinead’s shoulder to calm her down.
She gave him a death-stare.
“Do you want to change?” he asked.
“We are already late!”
Her voice rose to an annoyed pitch.
Christian stopped at the stop sign and checked for traffic. “I’ll take that as a no. Maybe nobody will notice. The inside of the church will be dark.”
“There are times when you are such a man that I don’t even know how to communicate with you.”
He drove in silence.
After a few minutes she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take my frustration out on you.”
“It’s okay.” Holiday lights decorated the streets and carols came from the car speakers at a very subtle pitch. He added, “We’ve only had him a week. He’ll get better.”
“He better. Or else.” She stared out the window.
“We have to train him, Sinead. We can’t give him back because he’s acting like a puppy—he is a puppy.”
She refused to look at him, her chin angled stubbornly. She’d been in a rush to get out of the door so one of the bows in her hair was slipping free. Christian didn’t mention it. Maybe her sister would fix it.
The memory of her chasing Alfred as the dog happily raced down the hall with her red leather boot in his mouth—the other boot on her foot—brought a smile to his face that he knew he’d better hide.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
And she did, to him. So what if her red suede pencil skirt had a bite out of the bottom hem? Or that her red leather boots, the right one, had canine teeth imprinted on the side?
Her hair, braided in the back, had small red bows pinned between the strands. One of them dangled precariously. Her earrings, ruby and gold stars, dangled festively.
“I do?”
“Of course, honey.”
“I was just so mad!”
“Well, we are here now. Wow, the parking lot is packed. Do you want to get out and I’ll find a spot? Meet you inside?”
“No. We’ll go together, since we’re late. It’s not like I can slip in without being seen, you know?”
Sinead was out of her comfort zone—he knew how much she preferred everything planned down to the last minute. Alfred was teaching them to readjust time expectations as well as how to deal with surprises. Christian was sure that they’d all adjust eventually.
He parked and Sinead faced him under the street lamp. “Oh, Christian. You have dog hair all over your suit jacket.” She picked off a few strands of brown fur and released it to the night breeze. “We used to be fashion icons.”
“What? You, maybe.” He brushed at his lapels. It was true that he liked looking nice…but he was no David Beckham.
“This is how we are with a dog. Can you imagine us with kids? God, we’d probably walk around smelling like sour milk.”
“Yes.” He scooped his arm around her waist. “Who cares if we are late?”
“I do. You used to.”
He slipped his hand over hers. “Let’s go. We can try and sneak in quietly.”
She flipped the braided tail of her auburn hair back over her shoulder. The little red bow went flying. “Oh no!”
He scooped it up and put it in his suitcoat pocket. He pulled out a cocktail napkin from the Breakers. Was that the last time he’d worn this jacket? “It’s okay. It will be dark. Your mom will fix it at her place.”
“This is just awful,” Sinead said. “I want to go home. Call Mom, tell her that, I don’t know, I’m sick or something.”
He waited with his hand on her elbow.
“But we can’t,” she decided. “Fianna told me to dress nice. I’m pretty sure that Mom is going to announce her engagement to Stephan.”
Christian watched Sinead’s face. They’d both been instructed that this was a celebration, so they’d dressed for the occasion, but this was the first time Sinead had mentioned that there might be an ulterior motive behind the festivities.
“How do you feel about that?” he asked.
“We can’t expect everyone else’s lives to stop progressing because of our own snafus. I’m trying to be more like you, Christian.”
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Her relationship with her mom had always been strained, but built on love. It worked.
“Yes.” She put her hand on the door to the church. “Thanks, Christian.”
“You’ve come a long way. I’m proud of you, hon.”
She smiled and opened the door. “What a year.”
He’d been expecting dim and reverent candles so the bright lights took him by surprise.
He tightened his grip on Sinead’s hand. “What’s going on?”
The church benches were painted white and had holiday greens with red bows on the aisle sides.
A man in brown trousers and a tweed coat stood behind a wooden pulpit. Whatever he’d been saying had the churchgoers laughing—the place had the feel of a comedy improv rather than church.
Instead of stained glass featuring the stations of Christ, there were dolphins and starfish in blues and greens.
The man looked up with a welcoming smile and Christian tugged Sinead closer. “Welcome to the Chapel by the Sea, where we make all of your dreams come true.”
What the hell?
“Just kidding,” the man in the tweed coat said. “But you should see your faces.”
The congregation turned around and Christian realized that of the fifty people in the room, he knew everybody.
“There’s Sydney and John, and Lilly and Emmet and the baby,” Sinead said in a stage whisper. “With your dad and Aline.”
Christian nodded around the group.
Madge, who had been sitting in the front row, stood up. “Oh, thank heaven! You two had me worried that there really was some kind of curse hanging over you.”
“Curse?” Christian repeated.
Madge walked toward them, wearing her charcoal pantsuit suit that she’d had made for walking Sinead down the aisle.
Fianna and Collette left their seats, carrying simple poinsettia bouquets. Fianna handed Sinead a slightly larger bouquet.
“Here. Oh, wait, give me your sweater.” Fianna wore the crimson dress from the first time he and Sinead were supposed to be married, as did Collette.
Speechless, Sinead traded the bouquet for the sweater.
Xavier, in his suitcoat, stood up. “I hope you’re ready.”
“For what?”
Sinead’s voice lifted with nerves. “Christian, I think we’re getting married.” She giggled.
“But, who is that guy?”
“I am a minister of love and light, as ordained by the Universal Life Church. Welcome.” The man spread his hands wide, palms up.
“That’s an online, thing, right?” Christian asked in an aside to Xavier.
“Yeah,” Xavier said. “But it’s totally legit.”
Christian looked at Sinead. There was no time for anything else to go wrong. His family and friends were here.
“I’m sorry we were late,” he said in general. “We hav
e a new dog.”
The congregation erupted with laughter.
Christian clapped his hand on Xavier’s shoulder and they walked to the front of the church where Paul waited next to the online minister. Minister of Love and Light?
He shrugged at the man and then took his spot at the end of the red paper aisle and waited for his bride.
Sinead’s breath caught in her throat and she gripped the bouquet as Christian, Xavier and Paul walked ahead, with Fianna and Collette.
“If you would have been on time, we could have fixed your hair,” her mom said. “And what happened to your skirt?”
“Mom!”
“Sorry.” She looked at Sinead, her eyes welling with happy tears. “Are you surprised, hon?”
“Totally.” She wished she’d put on powder, or lipstick.
Her mom pinched Sinead’s cheeks. “You are lovely.”
“I’m really getting married?”
“Yes. We’ve been planning this for weeks. We figured that if you didn’t know about it, you couldn’t tempt Fate.”
“What if there was a reason we weren’t supposed to get married?” She lifted her boot to show the bite marks. “We can’t even get the dog to behave.”
“Your love for one another is a very precious gift. So what if you had to work a little harder than most to say your vows.” She turned Sinead toward Christian, who looked as handsome as an angel. “That man loves you, and that’s worth all of the trials you’ve gone through.”
“I know. You’re right.” Sinead felt as if she could soar. “I love him too.”
“I know that! Now, let’s go get you married.”
Madge hooked arms with Sinead. In her right hand, Sinead held her bouquet.
She wouldn’t have chosen poinsettias, although they were lovely. She would have worn something that wasn’t torn or had teeth marks, and she never in a million years would have chosen an online minister, but she couldn’t be happier to be right here.
Right now.
Maybe this journey had been about going with the flow. Taking a leap of faith.
She nodded at her family and her coworkers. She waved to Lilly, who called out, “I love you Sinead!”
