In Love Before Christmas (3 page)

Matt laughed. “Like I’d ever think you’d fall in love with an escort in three weeks.”

“Two weeks now, Matt. You’ve had a week. And hey, I’m desperate. I’d fall in love with a horse if I thought it would save me from the St. Mary’s Curse.”

He laughed again so hard he had tears coming out his eyes.

“I’m glad one of us can find this funny.” She snapped. It wasn’t his future on the line here.

“You do realize that being in love isn’t the same as just saying you’re in love.”

“Why not? I could just think I’m in love for a few days right? I mean, that sounds good.” In her mind that would work just fine.

“I don’t think that would count. So, let’s see…who have you dated that you actually liked?”

“Nobody,” she admitted. Lani looked around at the art on the wall, the subtle shades of blue and silver of his décor, and the tile flooring he had installed which everybody thought was crazy because of how cold those floors would be in the winter. He, of course, had managed to add area rugs where they were needed. His place was cute and very perfect for him. Of course thinking about the fashionable design of his place wasn’t solving her problem. She needed to focus. She needed to be in love within two weeks and that was going to take some serious work. They hadn’t found anybody yet. There had to be somebody.

Matt looked over his crazy friend. She was beautiful, but this was the craziest thing he had seen her do—ever. If it weren’t for the fact that he, too, feared the St. Mary’s Curse he would have told her to let it go and forget about it, but given the history of that church and the promises made there he believed with confidence that something bad could happen to her if she didn’t go through with her promise she and Derek had made. He didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, and he certainly didn’t want her marrying their jerk of a child-hood nemesis turned boss.

“What about Jake?”

“He called you a buffoon.”

“And you broke up with him over that?”

“It was rude. Nobody talks down about my best friend like that.”

He nodded. Maybe he was a bit of a buffoon, but every time he got around Lani he seemed to have unavoidable accidents. He would either trip over his own feet, fall down two steps, knock a plate of food over on himself or spill his drink while he was trying to drink it. He had been that way since the first time he saw her. In fact, the first time he saw her he was the new kid in her school. He took one look at her while the teacher was introducing him to the class and the next thing he knew he had tripped over the trash can, tried to steady his fall by reaching his hands out, but instead of finding balance he ended up grabbing hold of the projector screen and ripping it clear out of the mounting device as he fell. Everybody laughed, including the teacher, but not Lani. Lani got up and helped him up before pulling him over to the empty desk two rows over from her. He probably looked like the biggest buffoon to the entire class at that point.

“What about Steven what’s his name? Steven…Steven…”

“York,” she supplied the last name for him.

“Yeah, what about him. He was smart—a doctor right?”

“He said your eyes were weird.”

“What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Nothing at all. He said they were a weird shade of hazel to the point of almost being amber.”

“They are not!”

“Well, they are a little golden, but I think it’s cute. It’s like brown meets gold with flecks of green and blue. It’s different.”

He sighed. “So you broke up with him because of that?”

“No, I broke up with him because when I defended your eyes he told me it was either him or you. I don’t ditch my friends—especially not my best friend.”

He nodded his understanding once again. He had walked out of a couple relationships for the same reason…although nobody ever put Lani down. She was gorgeous. She had that light brown sugar color with big ash colored eyes. She was five seven, skinny, but curved in all the right places, and she was the most classy, eloquent woman he knew. Nobody could find anything negative to say about her that would be in any way close to being true.

“Daniel…you liked him.”

“He was okay,” she admitted.

“Let’s put him on the list then.”

“There wasn’t really any chemistry between us.”

“He seemed to really like you.”

“Let me rephrase that. There was no chemistry on my part. I just didn’t…I looked at him as a brother type.”

He scratched the name off the list. “We can’t have you falling in love with your brother.” He shrugged. “Lani, if you find something wrong with every guy we’re not going to have anybody to work with here. We only have a couple weeks.” He tapped his pen on the pad. “You know if you didn’t put things off until the last minute…”

“I don’t put things off until the last minute; I forgot about the stupid pact.”

“You put things off until the last minute, Lani. You put your stories off until they’re not even a day away from being due.”

“That’s not last minute. I have several hours before they’re due in.”

He grumbled. She knew exactly what he meant and he knew that. “Three weeks wasn’t enough time. And now that we’re down to two weeks it is definitely not enough time.”

“Make it enough time. You’re the guy who can pull rabbits out of hats…you know what I mean so don’t get all technical,” she admonished. “If I have to marry Derek I’m going to ask him to permanently make you his assistant. I swear it on St. Mary’s.”

He gasped. “Thank God that only works if you swear in the church itself. Since you hate the church now I’m sure I don’t have to worry about that happening.”

“I’ll step foot in there just to swear it.”

“Lani, you haven’t been to church in over twelve years!”

“That’s not the point. Misery loves company and best friends are supposed to share.”

“Please, don’t share,” he stressed his words. He did not want that on his plate.

“I mean it, Matt. Two weeks is all we have and I’m not going into hell without you. Well, two weeks and a couple days, but I won’t count those couple days. I need this and I need it now.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are; which is why I won’t leave you behind.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Just please don’t swear it on St. Mary’s because it might actually come true and you wouldn’t want to hurt me, now would you?” He watched her pout and he knew she wouldn’t do that to him. She loved him too much to do that to him.

“I have a friend you might like. His name is Bob. He’s a science and math geek, but he’s a good guy.”

“Great. Set me up.”

He shook his head just thinking about this crazy idea. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. If you weren’t my best friend I would have run screaming when you asked.”

She laughed hard. “Well thank goodness for strong friendships. You know if I didn’t believe in this St. Mary’s Curse thing I wouldn’t even be doing this. Seems rather unfair to be held to a promise I made when I was young and stupid.”

He shrugged. “We all make mistakes. Some mistakes are forgiven while…”

“Others are not,” she placed her hand over his. “Look, Heather was an idiot okay. You’re a great guy with a lot of love to give and she just couldn’t appreciate that. She didn’t deserve you. You make one lousy mistake and she bails on you…please; that is so stupid. Let her go, Matt, and move on. It was your life anyway and it was your right to not take your grandfather’s payoff. You shouldn’t have to give up your dreams just for him to leave you his estate.”

He nodded. Maybe he should have discussed it with Heather beforehand. Maybe that was a mistake, but honestly he didn’t see why he needed to tell her about the offer. “My dad gave it up to marry my mother. He scraped by penny for penny.”

“But he was happy while he did it. Look, you and Heather were serious, but you weren’t married and I can see why you didn’t think you would have to talk to her about the offer your grandfather made. Maybe it was a mistake, but it wasn’t anything so major that she couldn’t forgive you. I think she was just angry that she lost out on a huge sum of money.”

“True.” He had the feeling that’s all Heather was angry about too. She had only mentioned a couple times that he hadn’t consulted her first. The rest of her rant was about the fact that she wouldn’t be able to buy some designer handbag, shoes, vacation to Hawaii…he couldn’t even remember the entire rant, but he could remember that it was pretty much about her and what she could have bought with the money he would have received from his grandfather’s estate. Thankfully she didn’t know about his savings. It wasn’t anywhere near what his grandfather had to offer, but it was enough for him. His paycheck was enough for him too. Unfortunately it would seem that Heather wanted more, more and more. Nothing would have ever been enough for her.

“And look at you. You’re one of the most amazing editorial writers on staff.” Lani reassured him.

“I think you own the rights to that title.”

“I said one of,” she winked at him. “You rock, Matt. You deserve a woman who can see that. Hey, I’ll set you up with a friend of one of my married friends,” she smiled big. He knew that smile. She had a plan and it scared him. “We’ll double date. This is such a great idea.”

“How are you going to fall in love with the tag along couple?”

“You’re not a tag along, silly.” He watched her text her friend. “There, now I just have to wait for a reply. We are so going to go double dating. We haven’t done that since college.”

“That didn’t work out so well,” he reminded her.

“My date was an idiot and you were playing the knight in shining armor. You were so cute,” she patted his cheek.

“He gave me my first black eye.”

 
“He paid for that.”

“You broke his nose.”

She shrugged. “He hit my guy. Nobody hits you.” She pulled the notepad over to her and looked at the non-existent list. “But it was nice of you to try to make him keep his hands off my butt. I had no idea he was a drinker to that extent, but I’m glad I found out early that he was a total douche bag.” They were always standing up for each other, so when Grant Dempsey decided to try to paw her like a wild animal right there in the pool hall Matt came to her rescue, leaving his date behind so he could stick up for Lani. Lani had always told Matt that he really was a good guy and she couldn’t understand why women couldn’t see that. Maybe he just picked the wrong women, she had said.

“You do realize that finding a guy you like that still happens to be okay with our friendship is going to take a lot of work. I’m not sure you have time for that. You might have to ditch me to save yourself.”