A Christmas Affair (20 page)

Corona turned and attempted to take off up the stairs, but Ace and his brothers proved that they were still very athletic when they plucked her off the staircase as if she weighed nothing.

“Oh, no, sweetheart. We know that you’re a runner. But this time, you’re going to sit right over here next to your lover boy and work this out.”

“Daddy! Do something!”

Rufus chuckled. “I am doing something, baby girl. Whose idea do you think this was?”

Another chair was produced and set next to Lyfe. Next thing she knew, she was being tied to the chair.

“Wait. Wait. You can’t do this.”

But apparently they could … and they did. When they were through, the five Alton brothers and her father smiled with great satisfaction.

“Now, you two talk,” Rufus said. “We’ll be back down here after we think you’ve worked this thing out.”

“Daddy.”

“I’m only doing what I think is best, baby girl.” He winked and pressed a kiss against her forehead. He then walked over to Lyfe and removed his gag. “You two have fun.” He turned and marched out of the basement with the Altons behind him in a single file.

At the staircase Melody gave her parents a sympathetic smile, but she was definitely in cahoots with her grandpa and uncles. A few seconds later, the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, leaving Lyfe and Corona Mae all alone.

“It’s official. Your father is positively insane!”

“And what about those five mountains you call brothers?” she charged back. “Clearly they’ve all taken a couple of trips over the cuckoo’s nest too.”

Lyfe shook his head. “I should’ve known that you would take their side.”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side. You might want to notice that I’m tied to a chair in the basement too. It’s not exactly how I planned to spend my Christmas.”

“Yeah. I believe that you were hoping to be on your honeymoon with Mr. Box-office by now.”

She gasped at the low blow. “How dare you! Look, I get that you’re mad. But that doesn’t mean that I have to sit here while you hurl insults at me.”

“Oh? Going somewhere, are you?”

“Look, I made a mistake! All I can do is apologize—but I honestly believe that I was doing the right thing at the time. I didn’t set out to deliberately hurt you. Why would I do that?”

“I honestly don’t know. Now I’m doubting everything that I
thought
I ever knew about you.”

Even the second time around, the jab hurt. But this time Corona fought the tears that rushed her eyes. “I’m
sorry you feel that way—because I still love everything about you.”

Lyfe’s jaw hardened as he twisted his head away.

“Look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes while trying to do the right thing. Do my intentions not count? How could I truly believe that you wanted to marry me when my father had a six-gauge pointed at your back?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he spat. “You knew how I felt about you. The whole town knew.”

“Ridiculous?” she echoed. “I asked you that day, down here in this basement, if you really wanted to marry me.”

“And I said yes!”

“No!” She shook her head, her eyes turning accusatory. “You never answered the question. You opened your mouth, but you couldn’t give me an answer,” she reminded him. “Then when I told you that we didn’t have to go through with it, and that my father wouldn’t really shoot you, you joked that since he’d already tried once, he wouldn’t miss the second time. But you
never
answered the question.”

Lyfe’s face softened as he tried to review his own account of that conversation.

“I believe that you loved me like you said, but you weren’t sure about marrying at that time either. We were young—too young. Don’t you see? I loved you enough to set you free.”

The room dripped with silence, but the tension was slowly ebbing away.

“When did you know?” he asked quietly. “About Melody? When did you know that you were pregnant?”

“Three months later. And I almost came back home. I honestly did. It was senior prom time here, and I heard
that you were taking Leanne Henry. You were going on and enjoying your teenage life like I wanted—and, at the time, it seemed selfish and manipulative to just show up. We would’ve been right back where we started, but with more pressure to marry.”

“So you chose to go it alone?” he asked dubiously.

“I was a teenager. What passed for logic then doesn’t make sense now. But once I started down that path, I couldn’t get myself to change course. If I couldn’t come back when I was three months pregnant, I couldn’t come with a newborn, or a one-year-old, or a ten-year-old, or a teenager.” Corona Mae sniffed, but kept up the battle against her tears. “All I can do now is apologize. But I can tell you that there wasn’t one day that I didn’t think about you. There wasn’t a single day that I didn’t wonder where you were. Were you happy? Had I made the right decision? Just like there was hardly a night when I didn’t think about that snowy night when we made love in front of the fireplace. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. My one joy was waking up every morning and staring into our daughter’s eyes and seeing you.”

Lyfe finally met her gaze and revealed his eyes glossed with tears. “I was scared that day,” he admitted. “It was all going … so fast. But the one thing I knew when I showed up in that god-awful tuxedo was that I loved you. And at seventeen, I thought it was going to be enough. Maybe it was—maybe it wasn’t. I guess we’ll never know.”

Corona Mae’s bottom lip began to tremble. “What about now?” She sniffed as her tears started to gain ground. “Do you really hate me?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “Apparently that’s impossible for me.”

A bud of hope began to bloom. “Do you think that you can ever forgive me?”

“I already have. I think that’s why I’m mad at myself.” He chuckled.

It wasn’t enough. She pushed on. “Do you think you can ever love me again?”

“I’ve never stopped. I think that’s another reason why I was mad at myself.” To her surprise, the rope fell from his wrists, and he quickly unbound his legs.

“How?”

“Royce never could tie a good sailor’s knot.” He got up, untied her, and then kneeled by her chair. “I’ve wanted to do this for fourteen years.”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a beautiful two-carat ring. “Corona Mae Banks, will you marry me?”

Tears poured down her face and she shouted, “Yes. A million times, yes!”

Their arms flew around each other and their lips melded together.

The basement door burst open with celebratory whoops as the Alton men raced down the stairs in black tuxedos.

“Looks like today is a good day for a wedding,” Royce shouted.

“What?” Corona Mae jerked her head back toward Ly fe.

He smiled mischievously. “All right. So maybe … I wasn’t
exactly
kidnapped.”

“Oh, you!” She smacked him on the chest.

Bringing up the rear was their daughter in an elegant
pink-lace dress. “Momma, we got to get you up to your room so you can get dressed. You don’t want to be late for your own wedding.”

Corona Mae’s smile continued to stretch. “I wouldn’t miss this one for the world.”