Christmas In The City (Imperfect Match 1.50)

“The fortune teller failed to add this into her prediction,” she says quietly.

I shake my head. “Shall I sue her?” As I ask her, I realize that I will, if it’d make Reggie happy.

She laughs throatily. “I think I’m fine.”

“Sad? Happy?” I coax.

“A bit of both.” She bites the side of her lip again.

I turn my attention back to Pierre. “So this is…”

“Oh.” He pushes himself up into a standing position, putting most of his weight on his cane while shaking his head frantically. “Don’t you dare, Horace.”

“Don’t I dare what?” I blink, confused.

“You touched my daughter. I heard you going at it all night. Prepare to die.”

Epilogue

Horace

Two years later

“Smells like burnt cheese in here.” Reggie sniffs the air on a frown, looking left and right as we pour out of the train from London to Paris. It does not, in fact, smell like burnt cheese, but I came to know my fiancée well enough to never argue with her when it comes to her memories about Paris. The whole experience in the French capital was a drama-filled blur to her.

“How about breathe through your mouth?” I knot my fingers through hers as I take her hand and we breeze toward the taxi.

“You have such an oral fixation,” Reggie notes with amusement. “You think the solution to ninety-nine percent of the Western World’s problems is my mouth.”

“Because it is.” I pat my junk in a less than classy manner when we slip into the cab. I give the driver the address to the facility where Pierre is staying these days. We try to visit him often, which he is very grateful for.

Reggie clutches my hands in hers in a death grip when the taxi merges into the traffic and we get closer to the facility.

“What if he doesn’t want to be seen by my whole family?” she asks. It was her idea to have the wedding in Paris so he can attend. She thinks the rest of her family will be joining us tomorrow and the ceremony will be this weekend. It was also Reggie’s idea to wait for two years—making it a long-arse engagement in which we learned everything there was to learn about each other—while she completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing in London. At least we got to live together the entire time and tie each other to every single piece of furniture in my Knightsbridge flat.

“He will be fine.” I pat her hand reassuringly.

“How do you know?”

“Because seeing you getting married is more important to him than what people think about him,” I say without missing a beat. I may have lived next to Pierre only for a year, but I came to know him quite well in that time. We spent a substantial amount of time together.

We talk about it some more, until I’m completely sure I diffused any worry in Reggie’s mind about what the weekend is going to look like.

When the driver drops us off at the nursing home, I grab my fiancée’s hand again and squeeze it hard.

“Promise me one thing?”

“Okay, but I reserve the right to kill you if you stray.”

I flash her a puzzled look. Why would I stray when we have sex six times a week? Not that it would matter if we’d have none, but how much can a man take?

“Don’t kill me,” I say.

“What?” She laughs. “Why would I—”

“Surprise!” People pop up from behind couches and furniture in the lobby. There’s a huge sign above our head that reads:

“SHE SAID YES (TWO YEARS AGO, BUT WHO IS COUNTING?)”