Have Yourself a Curvy Little Christmas: A Perfect Fit Holiday Novella (A Perfect Fit Novel) (13 page)

“Me either.”

She looked up at him. “I can’t marry you, Ben. I’ll never take Dash away from you, but I’m going to stay with my parents for a little while.”

No. He wasn’t accepting that. He wasn’t going to let her go. He lifted her from her spot on the floor and sat with her on the plush rocker that was nestled by the window.

“I’ve been very happy since you came into my life.”

“Ben…”

“I was saying good-bye, Dina. To Karen. That’s why her picture was there. I loved her very much, but she’s gone now. And I had been so busy mourning the loss of everything we could have had that I stopped living. But then you come along and in less than twenty-four hours made me want to live again. You gave me hope for the future and at first I didn’t want to talk about her because it seemed so wrong to think about her when I was falling in love with you, but if you want to know about her I’ll tell you everything.”

“What?” Her eyes snapped up to his.

“We can talk about Karen if you want.”

“No, go back to the part about falling in love with me.”

“I love you.” He smiled. “It’s very foolish and impetuous of me to fall in love so quickly, but I think it’s about time I started acting a little foolishly.”

“Ben…”

“And that’s why I don’t want to marry you either. At least not yet. I don’t want you going in with doubts.” He slipped a ring out of his pocket and placed it on her finger. “I want a fresh start for both of us. That means we leave the past and all our old demons and start over together. I know you love me, but I would like you to take a year and really think about if you would like to spend the rest of your life with me. Dina, the only thing I need is for you to be happy.”

“A year?” She sat up straight, shaking her head. “I changed my mind. Hell, I’m getting old. I want to pop out some more kids before I dry up. And you expect me to twiddle my thumbs for a year. Screw that. I want the old deal.”

He wasn’t expecting to hear that, but it was exactly what he needed to hear from her. “Okay, Dina.” He gave her a very long, deep kiss. “Whatever you want.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“But don’t expect me to just sit around here and be your wife. I was serious about wanting to open my dance studio. I want to work for something. I don’t want you to think I’m marrying you for any other reason than love.”

“I know, sweet girl. I couldn’t have fallen for you if you didn’t.”

“Da?” Dash sat up, rubbing his eyes with his fist.

“Good morning, son. Did we wake you?”

“Did you hear that?” Dina looked at him wide-eyed and then rose to collect Dash from his crib. “He called you Da.”

“I did.” He collected them in his lap, holding them close. “It’s official now. We have to be a family.”

“We already were,” she said. “From the moment we walked through the door.”

“Merry Christmas!” Phillipa burst into the room, her family following close behind her. “How is everybody this morning?”

“Great. Do you guys have to rush off tomorrow?” Dina asked.

“No, we’re all off this week.”

“Good. Because we have a wedding to plan.”

“A wedding!” Ellis screamed. “How soon? I need at least two weeks, Dee.”

“For what?”

“I have to make your dress. I have one already started down at the shop that we can make over in a few days, but if you want one from scratch it’s going to take me two weeks.”

“I could buy one, Ellie.”

“Over my dead body.” She turned towards the door. “Mikey, take me to the shop. I have to get my things.”

Her husband sighed as he followed her out. “But, baby, it’s Christmas day.”

Ellis just blinked at her husband before she walked out the door.

“Don’t you think you should eat breakfast first?” he called after her as he followed her out.

“We have to go too, Walter,” Phillipa said to her husband. “I need to get my address book. I have to invite Cynthia Silverman. That woman said my Dina would never catch a man as good as her precious Becky’s, but I’ll show her. My girl has snagged a billionaire.”

Suddenly they were alone again. He had his family in his arms and contentment in his soul. And he thought for the first time that this was what it must feel like to truly have it all. “Are you ready to start your life over with me, Miss Gregory?”

“I am.” She smiled at him. “And I couldn’t be happier about it.”

Read on for an excerpt from Sugar Jamison’s next book

THROWN FOR A CURVE

Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Chapter 1

I feel pretty…

“Almost finished.” A heavy blast of breath-stealing hairspray hit Charlotte Rudy just above her crown.

That’s thirty-two times.
She had counted every last spray as she sat cross-legged on the floor between her grandmother’s substantial thighs.

Thirty-two sprays and fifty-five minutes.

She didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that long gone was her mass of unruly waves. Armed with a comb and a can of chemicals, her grandmother had turned her once-soft hair into a golden steel helmet.

Tornado-proof hair,
she thought wryly as she patted the hard sticky mass. It felt a little like crystallized cotton candy. She wanted to eat cotton candy, not look like it.

“Move your hand, Cherri!” her grandmother scolded in her still-thick Ukrainian accent as she smacked it. “I’m not done yet.”

Cherri moved her stinging hand just before another cool blast of hair-freezing chemicals hit her square in the face. “Good grief, Baba!” she choked, the air in her lungs now replaced with spray. “Are you sure that stuff is legal?”

“Legal?” Her grandmother frowned at the can of industrial sized of Hold Her Forever. “Of course it’s legal.” She sprayed Cherri once more. “I’m not sure why they stopped making it in 1986.”

“Baba! It probably causes cancer.” She confiscated the can and made a mental note to throw it out as soon as her grandmother wasn’t looking.

“Oh, stop freaking up. I’ve used this ever since I came to America in 1957 and I’m still healthy as an ox.”

Cherri shook her head. Fifty plus years and her grandmother’s grasp of the English language was still lacking. “The saying is freaking out, Baba. Not freaking up.”

Baba shrugged. “Freaking out, freaking up. Whatever. You young people think everything causes cancer. In my country nobody has cancer. We die from hard work and old age. This hair spray does nothing but make one look beautiful.”

Cherri touched the sticky mass atop her head once more; positive that beautiful was the wrong word to describe how she looked. But she nodded at her grandmother’s statement. She knew that there was no use arguing with Baba. She couldn’t win. Besides, her time left with the old woman was limited and she wanted to make the best of it.

That’s why she’d agreed to let her aging, half blind, slightly unstable grandmother give her a makeover tonight.

“And don’t think about throwing it out either,” Baba warned. “Because I bought two cases when I found out they were going to stop making it.”

Wily old broad.
Baba was three steps away from being featured on an episode of
Hoarders.
“I would never think to throw out your things,” she lied sweetly. Cherri was going to have to start making trips to the dump again.

“Good girl.” Baba patted her cheek. “Now go look at yourself. You’ll be the most stunning girl at your birthday party.”

Cherri stood, hearing the rustle of the taffeta as she walked towards the full-length mirror. She didn’t want to look at herself. When her grandmother presented her with the homemade dress earlier that day, she’d gritted her teeth and plastered a smile on her face.

Taffeta and crinoline and gold. Oh my!

“Open your eyes, dumb-dumb.” Baba poked her in the behind with the cane that she only used when it suited her. “Who looks at themselves with closed eyes? You look ridiculous!”

“I’m just savoring the moment, Baba.”

Cherri forced her lids open, taking in the whole spectacular picture she presented.

She flinched.
Holy frickin’ crap on a cracker!
Ridiculous was an understatement. She was covered in bows. On her shoulders. At her bust. On her hips.

I can’t leave the house like this. I look like a six-foot-tall Christmas present.

It was as if every eighties prom and every horrible bridesmaid dress ever created banded together and threw up on her. Puffy sleeves and ruffles complemented the bows. The gold of the dress turned her skin a sickly green color. Even her feet hadn’t escaped the horror. Her normally big stompers looked enormous in golden pumps, dyed to match her one-of-a-kind dress. And her hair … It was logic-defying and oh-so-high.

She was a walking hot mess.

Come and get it, fellas.

“Well?” Cherri met her grandmother’s hopeful eyes in the mirror.

“I love it!”

“You do?” Baba smiled brightly, her green eyes twinkling with pleasure.

“Of course I do.” She bent to kiss her grandmother’s soft wrinkled cheek. White lies were fine. Right? Okay, so maybe this was a big fat whopper of a lie but how could she tell the woman who raised her, who went without so that she could have, that Cherri didn’t like the thing she’d spent so many hours creating? She couldn’t. “Thank you for doing this for me.”

“It was nothing.” Baba, not one for mushy emotions, briefly squeezed Cherri before clapping her hands twice. “Now get out of here. It’s time for you to rip the carpet at your party.”

“It’s cut the rug, Baba,” Cherri reminded her gently. “But I will.”

“You’ll be back before midnight?”

She was twenty-two but her grandmother still didn’t want her out late. And after the past few months Cherri made it a point to stick close to home. “I’ll tuck you in and read you a bedtime story when I come back.”

“Don’t be fresh.” She swatted Cherri. “You know only fast girls stay out late.”

“Yes, Baba.”

“And the only things open past eleven o’clock are legs and liquor stores.”

“Baba!”

“It’s true.” She kissed both her cheeks and shoved her towards the door. “And call me if you get bitchfaced and can’t drive home.”

“That’s shitfaced, Baba. And you don’t have to worry. I won’t drink tonight.”

The prospect of her seventy-five-year-old grandmother driving at night caused Cherri to shudder as she navigated the icy driveway to get to her beat-up Dodge truck. She had to squish the huge dress to her sides in order to get in and once she did, the cold seat touching her bare legs was a shock to her system. It was a chilly fourteen degrees that night, and as the harsh wind swirled around the car, she wondered why her grandparents decided to settle in the Adirondacks instead of Miami.

Oh well.

She disregarded the thought as she stuck the key in the ignition and sent a silent prayer to her guardian angel.

“Come on, old girl,” she crooned at the truck. “You can do it. Mommy loves you so very very much.”

The old thing didn’t start half the time, had a tendency to stall, and the heat didn’t work, but it was good for short distances. And it belonged to her grandfather. Getting rid of it was not an option.

Mercifully the car roared to life, sending a blast of icy air into Cherri’s face. She shivered. Car trouble would have been the perfect excuse to not go to her birthday party that her best friends and bosses Ellis and Mike had decided to throw for her.

“It’s your I’m-an-official-ass-kicking-adult party,” Ellis had said when she first mentioned it and Cherri shot it down. “Let me do this for you, honey. You deserve it.”

Cherri agreed, even though the thought of being the center of attention made her stomach knot. She wasn’t the type of girl who made a big fuss about things. She was perfectly content to stay in the background. Which was no easy feat, considering she was pushing six feet tall, had an unruly mass of dark blonde hair, and resembled an Eastern European giant. But still she tried.

It had been only her and her grandparents up until Papa died seven years ago. Even then, birthdays were small affairs with just a cake and a special meal. Never a big fuss. She didn’t know who her father was. Her mother wasn’t a fixture in her life and had stopped coming around regularly when Cherri turned eight.

Natasha didn’t often sneak into her mind, but on days like this, on birthdays and holidays, she wondered why her mother never bothered to stick around. Why she left a baby with an elderly couple struggling to make ends meet.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” poured from the radio and Cherri realized that her thoughts had turned depressing. She shook herself out of them. It was probably a good thing she was going to a party. For a few hours she could forget the fact that despite her master’s degree, she was still working in a dress shop, that student loans that would keep her broke until menopause, and that the roof was about to cave in on them. Or that Baba…

She shook her head hard. Tonight was her party and even though she looked like the Jolly Gold Giant, she was determined to enjoy herself.

Be happy, damn it! It’s your birthday. Christmas is coming.

She pulled out of the driveway.

Things will get better, she promised herself. They had to.

*   *   *

She arrived at Ellis’s door an hour before the festivities were due to begin, her coat tightly wrapped around her to protect her from the frigid wind that hadn’t let up for days. She rang the bell and waited only a few seconds before Ellis’s husband, Mike, opened the door.

He froze, mouth agape, his hand suspended in midair. “What the hell happened to you, kid?

“What?” She made her expression blank, as if she didn’t know what he was referring to.

“Your hair.” He reached out and touched it, seemingly unable to help himself. “It’s horrible.”

“Mikey!” his wife snapped from behind him. “What are you saying to her?”

“I-I,” He glanced at his wife and then back to Cherri, who was having a hard time keeping a straight face. She wasn’t offended by Mike’s statement. She realized that she put the
B
in bouffant. “Come look at her, babe.”