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Authors: Ember Casey

A Cunningham Christmas (6 page)

BOOK: A Cunningham Christmas
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“I don’t care,” he says. He takes me by the shoulders, and his distress is plain on his face. “Look, I’ll explain everything later. You’ll understand then. But right now you can just go back inside.”

I cross my arms. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me a real answer.”

“That is a real answer, Lou.”

“No, it isn’t. What are you looking for?”

He looks away and drops my shoulders. “I can’t tell you that right now.”

“Why not?”

“I just… can’t. Please, just go inside.”

“Ward—”

But before I can say another word, he turns and runs away from me.
Runs.
And then I’m not just confused and worried. I’m
pissed.

“Ward!” I call after him, but the word is carried off by the wind.

Part of me wants to turn around and march back into the house and leave him to his stupidity. But I can’t. I won’t.

I take after him through the snow. The icy wind brings tears to my eyes, but I flick them away and keep running. My jeans are soaked through to the knee. My gloves haven’t stopped my fingers from growing numb with cold. But I keep going, following his footprints across the grounds.

The depth of the snow keeps him from going too fast, at least. Through the haze of swirling white flakes coming down around us, I see him disappear into the hedge maze.

Why is he going in there on a night like this?

I curse him under my breath as I follow. I didn’t think it was possible, but it’s even colder inside the maze. Rather than offering protection against the wind, the hedge walls have created a sort of wind tunnel effect, and I gasp as the first blast hits me. I tug my scarf up higher and keep my head down as I follow his footprints into the labyrinth. It’s harder to see them here than it is outside of the maze. The hedges block out most of the glow of the floodlights, and the wind blows snow almost immediately into the impressions left by his boots.

I’ve been walking for a full five minutes before I realize I can’t see the footprints at all anymore.

“Ward!” I call. “Ward! Where are you?”

But if he hears me, if he calls back in return, I don’t know. The wind carries all sound away. I wrap my arms around myself, shivering as I search the ground for any indication of which way he’s gone. I’ve reached a point where the path splits, and if I make the wrong choice, I might be hunting for him all night.

What the
hell
was he doing, running out here? Does he have some sort of death wish? If
I
am shaking with cold, wrapped up as I am, he must be a block of ice right now. If he’s not dead when I find him, then I’m going to throttle him myself.

Assuming, of course, that I
do
eventually find him. My eyes shift from one path to the other. Both look exactly the same. The one to the left, I know, leads around to the back exit of the maze. The one on the right leads to the courtyard at the center. I can’t imagine why Ward would just run
through
the maze—in one way and out the other—so it only makes sense to take the path to the center of the maze.

For a while, I still see no footprints. He’s had plenty of time to get ahead of me now, and the wind has had plenty of time to blow away all signs of him. Still, I keep my eyes down, hunting for any clue that I’m heading the right direction. My whole face aches with cold, and my cheeks and ears are getting chapped by the wind. My nose won’t stop dripping. My fingers and toes are almost too stiff to move. My legs burn from having to trudge through knee-deep snow.

But I keep walking. What else am I supposed to do? And then, just when I’m ready to give up and go back to the house, I hear something—frantic movements. Cursing.

I try to run toward the sounds, but the snow’s too deep and I fall face-first to the ground. It takes all of my energy to drag myself to my feet.

I’m going to kill him. I swear, I’m going to kill him.

By the time I step into the maze’s center courtyard, I’m seething. I spot him immediately—he’s on his hands and knees again, searching frantically through the nearly two feet of snow beneath him. Once again, he doesn’t notice me approach.

This time, I’m not playing nice.

I reach down and grab a handful of snow. It’s hard to shape a snowball when your fingers are completely numb, but I manage. And then I march toward him and let it fly.

It hits him on the side of the face. He jumps up in shock.

“Are you going to run from me again?” I demand. I’m already forming a second snowball. “Or are you going to come back inside before you get frostbite?”

I can see he’s going to make excuses, so I don’t wait to hear him speak. I throw the second snowball at him. This one hits him in the chest, and without his coat on this time, I know it soaks right through to his skin.

“Lou, I—” He puts his arms up in the sign of surrender. “Look, I can explain.”

I ready my next snowball. “Then explain. You have ten seconds.”

He lowers his hands. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“I promise you, I’m plenty surprised already. I wasn’t aware you were completely insane.”

“I know, but… this was supposed to be special. You’ll understand when I—”

I hurl the snowball at him, and it splatters against his stomach.

“You’re just making more excuses!” I say. “I want the real answer. The whole truth.”

“Lou, if you’ll just—”

I charge him, tackling him with the same move he used on me earlier today during our snowball fight. We both go down onto the pillowy snow, but this time I’m on top of him. He tries to push me off of him—and he easily could, if he weren’t afraid of hurting me—but I hold on. I straddle him, keeping him down in the snow beneath me. His strong hands grip my waist.

“Five seconds to explain,” I tell him. “Spill it.”

He shakes his head. “Lou—”

“Five.”

“I’m not doing this like this,” he says.

“Four.”

“Lou,” he says, his fingers pressing a little harder into my waist. “If you’ll get up, I’ll—”

“Three.”

“You don’t understand,” he says. “Get up. Give me five minutes, and—”

“Two.”

“Lou.” His blue eyes bore into me, and even out here, surrounded by darkness and swirling white snow, I feel their power. But I shake my head.

“One,” I say, my voice trembling slightly. I don’t know what happens when I hit zero. I haven’t planned that far. But before I can figure it out, his grip tightens and he rolls me off of him, flipping me onto my back in the snow. In another second, he’s completely reversed our positions, and now he’s straddling me.

“Get off,” I say, pushing against his chest.

“I will. But you have to agree to give me a few minutes to search before you tackle me again.”

“I’ll give you all the time you want if you explain to me what’s so damn important that you’ll freeze your balls off to find it.”

He’s not used to hearing me use even mildly vulgar language, and for a moment, I can tell I’ve startled him. I don’t wait for him to respond. I take the opportunity to push him again, and when he falls back, I once more pin him down in the snow and sit on top of him.

“It’s a very simple question,” I tell him.

“But not a simple answer.”

“It can’t be that complicated,” I say. “Just tell—
ooof
!”

He’s rolled me onto my back again, and this time his grip on my shoulders is stronger. He won’t let down his guard a second time. I wiggle beneath him.

“Let me up!”

“Promise me you’ll go back inside.”

“I will never—”

“Then promise me you won’t tackle me.”

“Just tell me what you’re doing!”

He must hear the desperation in my voice, because I see something falter in his expression.

“Please,” I say softly. “I’m worried about you.”

I’m not sure if he can hear me over the wind, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything, either, but I can see some sort of battle raging behind his expression.

“I just want to know that everything’s okay,” I tell him. I reach up and cup his face.

He leans down and presses his forehead against mine.

“Trust me,” he says softly, his breath washing over me in waves of heat. “Just trust me.”

There’s something so tender in his voice that I can’t find the strength to refuse him. But I’m also afraid to leave him out here by himself when clearly he’s desperate and upset.

“Let me help you,” I murmur back to him. “We’ll find it together.”

He shakes his head. “No, Lou. I need to find this on my own.”

“But why—”

“You’ll understand. I promise.”

I can’t imagine anything that he’d
need
to find on his own. But it’s Christmas Eve. I don’t want to fight. And I can’t bear when he looks at me like that.

“Fine,” I say. “On one condition.”

“What?”

“You take my coat. And my scarf. And my gloves.”

He starts to argue, but I cut him off.

“Otherwise there’s no deal,” I say. “I’ll survive the walk back to the house. And you’re already turning blue.”

He sits up slightly, still frowning, but he doesn’t protest when I pull off my gloves and shove them into his hand. I take that as a good sign.

I have to sit up to get off my scarf and coat. I wiggle beneath him, reminding him that he’s still trapping me, and he slides off. I’m tempted to push him into the snow again, but I’ve already committed to trusting him. With a sigh, I push myself up onto my elbows, then to my butt—wincing as my now-bare hands sink through the freezing snow. But that pain is nothing to the jab against the tender skin of my palm when my hand accidentally comes down on something hard and sharp on the ground.

I curse and yank back my hand. It’s probably just a rock, but something makes me reach down into the snow again and feel around until I find the object that poked me. I pull it from the snow.

It’s a tiny bag. Small enough to fit completely in my palm. The bag is made of something like velvet, but the fabric is completely soaked, making it clear that there something inside. Something about the size and shape of a bottle cap.
That
is what poked me.

Ward makes a strange sound. I’m not sure whether it’s a curse or an exclamation of surprise, but when I look up into his eyes I realize that
this
is why he rushed out here.
This
is what he was trying to find.

“What is this?” I say, almost to myself. Somehow I know he won’t answer. And I know I probably should just hand it to him, but something compels me to open the little bag. My stiff fingers fumble with the ribbon until it falls open, and then I reach inside.

The thing inside is round. And metal. It’s freezing cold—cold enough that it cuts through the numbness of my fingers. Carefully, I pull it from the bag.

It’s a ring. I know it’s a ring even before I see it—and really, I can’t see much. Not in this darkness and this weather. But it’s a ring, a ring with some sort of large stone, and my eyes fly up to Ward’s.

He’s looking at the ring. His expression is unreadable. But then his gaze rises to mine.

My voice is a whisper. “This isn’t…”

“It is.”

“It can’t be. Ward, it can’t.”

“It is,” he says again. His eyes fall closed and he lets out a long breath. When he opens them again, the emotion in his gaze pins me to the spot.

“This isn’t how I wanted to do this,” he says. “I had this whole thing planned…” He waves his arm at the nearest hedge. “But there’s no running from this now.”

He plucks the ring from my grip but still holds it between us. My gaze shifts from the ring to his eyes and back again. I just keep thinking,
It can’t be
, over and over again.

“Lou,” he says. “I love you. I love you so much. We’ve made a beautiful little girl together. A beautiful home together. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, not just as your lover, but as your husband.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I’m even capable of speech.

“I know this isn’t the most romantic way to do this,” he says. “It’s definitely not the most traditional. But we’ve never been traditional. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. What we have is perfect. And I want the whole world to know it. But most of all, I want you and Ramona to know it, which is why I want to do this.” He takes my hand in his. His fingers feel impossibly warm against my skin.

“I want to make this promise,” he continues. “There is no one else for me. No other life. I don’t want anything but you. But this.” His eyes search mine, looking for something, and then he rushes on, his voice suddenly uncertain. “I know you’ve had mixed feelings about marriage, and I know we’ve talked about this before, but—”

“Are you going to ask me?” I blurt.

“What?”

BOOK: A Cunningham Christmas
5.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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