Read Online Married by Christmas by Scarlett Bailey - Free Book Online Page B

don’t need to tell me I’ve fucked up, I know I’ve fucked up. I know I probably don’t deserve you after this, but listen, when you think about it, you’ll see that I’m right. It’s not
when
we get married that matters, it’s that we get married at some point. OK, so we can’t get married in a week, but all we have to do is postpone for a bit, we’ll hire a detective to look for Charisma so we can prove we tried and then, well, how about a Valentine’s wedding, we could probably get everything sorted by then.’
    ‘I don’t think you usually have a reindeer-pulled sleigh at a Valentine’s wedding,’ Anna said into his chest, willing him to say something that would make the knot of uncertainty and anxiety in her chest melt away and for all the things that mattered to her so very much not to matter any more, because that would be the easy option, the approach that any sensible, pragmatic person would take. Much easier than trying to explain to Tom why cancelling their wedding now would break her heart. ‘Listen, when I was a kid and everything was going to crap all around me, and I was stuck in the home, where the other girls beat me up and made my life a misery, I made myself this silly little girl’s promise about a fairy-tale Christmas wedding, a silly dream that I promised myself would one day come true. And I know it’s stupid, and frivolous, and shouldn’t really matter now. I know that. But even though I know I’m no longer that little girl, in my head, she is still there, staying awake all night in the home because she’s terrified about what might happen if she closes her eyes … I just … I don’t want to let her down, Tom. She got let down a lot.’ Anna hesitated before confessing her other worry to Tom. ‘And I don’t know, I get the feeling that if we don’t get married this Christmas it just won’t happen at all.’
    Tom cupped her face in his cold hands, kissing the tip of her nose, and Anna melted into him, feeling a wave of relief that he understood.
    ‘Now you are just being silly,’ he said and Anna froze.
    ‘Silly?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes!’ Tom chuckled again. ‘Why wouldn’t we get married? We’re not cancelling the wedding, we’re just postponing it. Of course we’ll get married one day.’
    ‘One day?’ Anna looked crestfallen. ‘So that’s it, you’ve given up. It’s over, it’s postponed and we’ll get married “one day”?’
    ‘I just don’t see what else I can do,’ Tom said, uncomfortably.
    Anna sighed, wondering why the plan that she had pretty much already implemented hadn’t occurred to him.
    ‘Martha said you need Charisma’s signature to annul the marriage in time. So it’s obvious! Fly to New York to find Charisma and get her signature so the wedding can go ahead!’
    Tom sighed, which wasn’t exactly the romantic, ‘do or die, never give up, anything for you’ response that Anna was hoping for.
    ‘Well … I mean look, let’s be realistic. Even if I did do that, the chances of me finding her are virtually nil. She left Vegas for New York eight years ago, she could be anywhere in the world now. And if I go off on some crazy wild goose chase all that would mean is that we’d be apart at the very time we need to be together, and if I didn’t find her, which I won’t, you’d be even more disappointed and there’d be even less time to cancel stuff and get back the deposits. And I know it’s a pain, but I promise you,
promise
you, that I’ll get all of the deposits refunded, rebook everything exactly as you want it and we’ll get married
next
Christmas, how about that? Just think, a whole extra year to make me do wedding-organising stuff!’
    Tom’s smile faded in direct proportion to how quickly the expression of acute disappointment and hurt spread across Anna’s face.
    ‘If you won’t do it, I will,’ she said, turning on her heel and going back into the flat, unwittingly almost flattening Liv behind the front door, which