The Mistletoe Effect

by Melissa Cutler

  Chaplain Roberts rubbed his chin. “You do have a point.”

  Decker gaped at them. What it would be like to have the universe and Mother Nature and all of humanity bend to your will? Guess that’s what money and a complete lack of self-awareness bought you.

  “Whom should we find to marry Carina, dear?” Mrs. Briscoe asked her husband.

  Decker stepped between Carina and her father, his temper rising. “She’s not getting married. There’s no wedding license, no groom, and no such thing as jinxes.”

  “You, be quiet,” Ty said. “Don’t forget who your boss is and what that means for your future.”

  With that threat, Decker did shut his mouth, even though it pissed him off, because Briscoe was even more on-target than he knew. For nine years and eleven months, Decker had poured his blood and sweat into working his way up from mucking stalls to managing the resort’s stable, but nine years was his limit. He’d made a promise to himself not to get to ten, so when an opportunity to apply for his dream job had fallen in his lap several months back he’d seized on it. He was all lined up to start in January, and though he had yet to give his notice at the resort, his prospective new boss had made it clear that the deal hinged on Ty Briscoe’s recommendation.

  Decker felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Carina step out from his shadow. “Thank you, but it’s okay. I’ll do it. Decker’s right. There’s no marriage license, so it wouldn’t be a real wedding. And if Granny June thinks this is what it’ll take to make the guests happy, pacify the Wedding World journalists, and keep future couples believing in the Mistletoe Effect, then I don’t see the harm.”

  A light twinkled in Ty’s eyes. “That’s my girl. Tough as nails.”

  Carina Briscoe was many wonderful things that had held Decker’s interest for nine years, but tough as nails wasn’t one of them. “You don’t have to do this, Carina.”

  She met his searching gaze and smiled resignedly at him. “It’s okay. Really. Better me than Haylie. I can’t believe you’re friends with that jerk Wendell.”

  “Friends might be an overstatement.”

  There was a time when Decker and Wendell had been the best of friends. They’d started working at Briscoe Ranch Resort around the same time, both in their early twenties, and had run around together, making hay and causing trouble, until Decker realized he wasn’t getting what he wanted out of life by womanizing and hard drinking.

  He’d stumbled into a celebration of Wendell’s engagement at the hotel bar, which was where Wendell had announced that he needed to pick a best man before Ty Briscoe chose one for him. The couple beers in Decker had turned him sympathetic to Wendell’s plight of having Ty Briscoe as a father-in-law, and the next thing he knew, he was volunteering.

  “I told you to stay out of this, Decker,” Ty said.

  “Yes, sir.” And Decker would, because Carina had clearly made up her mind. If she agreed to let her family push her around, then Decker wasn’t going to risk his dream job to keep her from it. Not only that, but also he was smart enough to realize that the next step in putting on a fake wedding was finding Carina a groom. Time for Decker to get the hell out of there.

  He was two steps gone when Ty grabbed his sleeve. “Wait a minute. Maybe this does concern you. You’re single, right?”

  Behind Briscoe, Carina gasped. Decker couldn’t decide if he should be insulted or honored by her reaction.

  “Daddy, please. Decker isn’t interested.”

  “Don’t Daddy, please me. As much as this is your fault, Decker, here, shares the blame. He was Wendell’s best man. How come you didn’t help him with his vows?”

  Decker wasn’t sure how to answer that without getting himself fired. He was still formulating a comeback and refusal when he took another look at Carina.

  She looked worn to the bone. Her hair was in disarray and her dress was scuffed from the dive she’d taken to catch Haylie’s flowers. His thoughts slid on their own free will to the sight of Carina’s panties as she lay at Granny June’s feet. Maybe it wasn’t all that polite of him to have noticed, but she looked damn fine in them, even if they were covered in a Halloween print and edged in neon orange lace.

  His body stirred to life at the memory, even as his heart grew warm and a smile threatened his lips at the incongruity of her wearing Halloween lingerie to a Christmas wedding. He couldn’t wait to tease her about it when they were alone.

  The thrill of thinking he’d be alone with her if he agreed to the sham solidified the choice in his mind. “I’ll do this, but on one condition. We go ahead with the reception—”

  Mr. Briscoe stuck out his hand, ready to seal the deal. “I paid for the food and the band already, so I don’t see a problem with that.”

  “I wasn’t done, and I was talking to Carina, not you,” Decker said, holding her wide-eyed gaze. “If I do this, then we go ahead with the reception—and you agree to move into my house as my wife until Christmas, just to be on the safe side to make sure the Mistletoe Effect isn’t jinxed.”

  The way he reasoned it out, this was his sole opportunity to spend time alone with the one woman who was off-limits to him without worrying if he’d have a job to go to in the morning.

  Carina’s skin turned a becoming shade of pink.

  He was afraid Mr. or Mrs. Briscoe would protest or at least feign discomfort at Decker’s request, but instead, Briscoe clapped him on the shoulder. “Good thinking, son. We can’t be too careful about something so important.”

  Decker nearly lost his cool, knowing that Briscoe was referring to the mistletoe jinx and not his daughter, as should have been his most important concern, but kept his attention on Carina. For a split second, Decker thought she might refuse his proposition, and his gut twisted. That was when he fully realized how badly he wanted her to say yes.

  After a minute of chewing on her lower lip, she nodded.

  “I want to hear you say it out loud that you’re all right with those conditions.”

  “Okay,” she croaked. “Husband and wife until Christmas. In your house.”

  An unexpected thrill coursed through him at the words husband and wife, said in that breathy, quiet way of hers that got him wondering if she was even more okay with the arrangement, and with him, than she was willing to let on in front of her family.

  Mr. Briscoe grabbed Decker’s hand and shook it. “Then it’s settled. You two are getting married in five minutes. We’ll skip all the walking down the aisle baloney. Chaplain Roberts, get ready. Let’s get this event back on track.”

  Any other chaplain might object to performing a pretend marriage ceremony, but Chaplain Roberts’s parish didn’t boast a building named the Ty and Eloise Briscoe Fellowship Hall merely because Briscoe and Roberts were old friends and golfing buddies. Besides generous contributions to the church, the word was that Briscoe made his money work even harder for him by greasing all the right palms in the greater central Texas area, and Decker didn’t doubt that was the case with the good chaplain.

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the bridal party and Carina’s parents had filed out of the room, Decker and Carina stood in tense silence. That’s when he decided there was no time like the present to break the ice and ask the question that had been on his mind.

  “I have one concern before we do this.”

  “What?” she breathed, her shoulders tensing.

  He slid an arm around her waist and leaned close, getting his lips right by her ear. There was no real need to, seeing as they were the only ones there, but if he was going to be sealing their vows with a kiss, then they might as well get used to the feel of each other. “Jack-o’-lantern underwear?”

  She sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t pull away. He’d nearly written off his hope that she’d answer him, or at least find his teasing charming, when she turned her chin up and answered, looking adorably indignant, “What can I say? I like Halloween.”

  “Better than Christmas?”

  Her indignation turned genuin
ely weary. “Christmas is complicated.”

  “Complicated how?” Suddenly it was very important that he learn more about her during their time together, not just her underwear preferences but also what made her tick and why she let her family push her around so much.

  He needed to know what she had against Christmas, the time of year that was near and dear to his heart. The urgency of the feeling reminded him that up until this point all he’d really felt for her was lust and the challenge of her being unobtainable. It was obvious now that there was so much more to her than he’d allowed himself to see.

  “This isn’t the place or the time. But, getting back to your question about my underwear, I had to do something to counterbalance this awful dress.”

  He shoved his longing to have a real conversation with her aside. She was right; they’d have plenty of time later. For now, he’d settle for flirtation.

  “I don’t know. I kind of like the dress. It makes me want to sit on your lap and tell you what I want for Christmas.”

  “You think I look like Santa Claus?” She smoothed a self-conscious hand over the fluffy white material lining the dress across her chest. “That wasn’t exactly the vibe Haylie was going for when she picked out these dresses.”

  The reality was that Carina was gorgeous and sexy and didn’t look a thing like old Saint Nick. But Decker had her talking real good now, and he could hardly believe it. Carina never loosened up enough to say more than a few words to him while looking like it pained her to use her vocal cords, but tonight she did, so he was going with what worked. And what worked was pushing her buttons.

  “A little bit, yeah. Let me hear you say ho, ho, ho.”

  She mashed her lips together, her pink cheeks turning red, then seemed to relax, as though she’d given herself permission to lighten up. “First of all, I don’t have a bowl full of jelly for a stomach.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s true.” He loved her stomach, actually. Not that he’d ever let on that he’d seen it. The Briscoes’ private pool faced the ranch’s northwest riding trail, and every so often he caught a glimpse of her sunbathing in a bikini. Needless to say, he made that particular trail ride as often as he could.

  “Or a ruddy complexion,” she added, cutting into his memory of the last time he’d seen her lying poolside last summer.

  “But you do blush a lot.”

  She wrenched her face away and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “Only around you.”

  He liked that idea. Liked it a lot, actually. “I have one last question before we tie the knot.”

  “You already asked your one question and then some, but I’ll allow another if you hurry because I’m sure the chaplain is about ready to start.”

  “Fair enough. What other seasonal underwear do you own? Independence Day? Easter?”

  “None of your business.” He could hear a hint of smile in her tone, though she was trying her darnedest to look offended.

  “A husband has a right to know what he has to look forward to with his wife down the road.”

  “We’re not actually getting married. You do understand that, right?”

  He did, and he hoped that’s what Ty Briscoe was reminding the wedding guests, too, although he couldn’t quite make out the words of the speech it sounded like Ty was currently giving the crowd. But knowing the truth and messing with Carina were two entirely different animals. To be honest, it turned Decker on to think about her pledging her body and heart to him, if only temporarily.

  “Until Christmas, we are.”

  The string quartet that the resort kept on retainer during the holidays began to play a classical piece. Decker offered his arm to Carina and, together, they stepped from the room. The crowd had stayed. If anything, more folks had arrived, but all sounds quieted at Carina and Decker’s appearance.

  Getting to the altar was a blur, but once they were in front of the chaplain, facing the cross, under the massive cluster of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling and the fog of the nasty holiday incense, shit got real for Decker fast.

  Struggling for breath behind the bow tie and tightly buttoned shirt collar, he wiped the sweat from his palms onto his slacks and tried to keep himself from ripping the tie off and running out of the room like Haylie had only a few minutes earlier. It wasn’t that he was against marriage, or church for that matter, but this was a whole lot of steps beyond what he had in mind in all his years of scheming to seduce Carina.

  Over the time he’d worked at Briscoe Ranch Resort, he’d come up with more than a dozen half-baked plans toward that end and every one of them crashed and burned with the realization that she was his boss’s daughter and, therefore, off-limits.

  That the boss in question had invited Decker to fake a wedding with his little girl in front of everybody they knew as well as reporters, the resort’s staff, local wedding planners, and other prominent members of San Antonio royalty had him wondering if Ty gave a whit about his daughter’s reputation at all. And, to top it off, he’d been totally fine with her and Decker living together for the month. Come to think of it, what kind of man set his daughter’s honor and reputation on the line for the sake of a business, even if that business was a multimillion-dollar enterprise?

  Carina interrupted his thoughts with a nudge to his arm with her shoulder.

  “I have a Saint Patrick’s Day thong. Shamrocks,” she whispered.

  Just like that, his temper evaporated. Who the hell cared about Ty Briscoe’s screwed-up logic or the sham they were embarking on in front of God and three hundred witnesses when he got to spend more than three weeks in the company of the woman who’d fascinated him since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her?

  “Sounds like a lucky pair of underwear.”

  “It has its moments.”

  It was impossible not to chuckle at that, despite his sudden bout of jealousy at the unnamed men who’d gotten a firsthand look at Carina’s shamrock thong. One thing was for sure—he could get used to this side of the boss’s buttoned-up daughter.

  He wiped his palms on his pants one more time, then took her hand firmly in his. “All right, future Mrs. Decker. Let’s get this party started.”

  Chapter Two

  Decker didn’t remember much about the actual wedding ceremony. Sure, it was nerve-wracking to fib in church about something so important, and, yes, he’d made a deal to move a virtual stranger into his house during his busiest month of work. But mostly, his brain was locked on all the many splendid things he was going to do to and share with Carina Briscoe over the next few weeks.

  In the tiny bride’s room to the left of the chapel vestibule that he and Carina had retired to after their walk down the aisle after the ceremony, he came crashing back down to reality at the sound of voices raised in excitement from the other side of the wall that separated the room from the chapel’s front steps. He’d been around enough weddings at the resort to know what was coming.

  “Are we going to get pelted with snow when we walk outside?”

  “Fake snow. And pelting isn’t the idea. More like a sprinkling effect.”

  There wasn’t a doubt in Decker’s mind that the moment he stepped through the doors his and Wendell’s buddies on staff and in the wedding audience would provide him with an actual snow pelting. In his mind’s eye, he could see them scraping up icy, dirty snow from the dusting they’d gotten the night before and compacting it into hard little orbs in their hands. Decker might’ve done a lot of growing up in the past few years, but Wendell and his friends hadn’t seen fit to follow him down the road to maturity. He hoped they’d spare Carina the injustice of their plans.

  “Fake snow,” he mused, taking off his jacket to use as a shield. “Sounds like the perfect end to a fake wedding.”

  He opened the door from the bridal room to the now-empty vestibule and walked with her to the entry’s double doors.

  “Oh, the fakeness isn’t over,” she said. “Wait until you see the ballroom. No expense was spared for my p
arents’ big night, with their princess getting married.”

  She didn’t sound the least bit jealous, which threw him off. Instead, he would have sworn he detected a note of relief in her tone, as though she was grateful that Haylie had to endure their parents’ doting, not her.

  “You’re not their princess, too?”

  The question earned him a grimace. “I don’t want to be a princess. When Haylie and I played castle as kids, I always volunteered to be the knight.”

  “Not the king or queen?”

  “I always fancied myself more of a dragon slayer.”

  Meek Carina, a dragon slayer? Either her imagination had only dreamed up little bitty dragons or something happened to her in the years since her youth that took away her sense of power. Then again, Decker was one to talk. Up until a few years ago, he’d willingly given away his power in favor of a good time. It had taken experiencing a vivid dream about his father on the tenth anniversary of his death to realize how much he was sacrificing by not believing in himself.

  Happy to stall their walk to the waiting horse-drawn carriage, he asked, “What kind of fakery did the resident dragon slayer plan for tonight’s wedding reception?”

  “At our mom’s request, and on Dad’s credit card, I created a magical indoor snow-covered forest reminiscent of the resort’s Winter Wonderland garden.”

  Dang. That was one demanding mother-of-the-bride—and an even more demanding price tag. The winter wonderland garden was one of the main tourist attractions at the resort. It spread from the grounds around the chapel to the base of the nearest foothill and was a landscaping masterpiece of evergreen trees, flowers, topiary animals, water features, and a huge gazebo, all decorated to the nines for Christmas and sporting enough wattage to light a small city.

  “Did you have real trees brought in?”

  “Some real, some artificial. And trees are just the start.” She enumerated on her fingers. “Snow-kissed trees lining the room, ice sculptures, snow confetti over the dance floor, cages of turtledoves and partridges. I pulled out all the stops.”