Page 7 of Big Santa

“That’s exactly the point. A marriage based on clear expectations is less likely to fail than one based on emotion.” I stare at my friend. Across the square, the courthouse clock begins to chime the half hour. “Can you draft the contract or not?”

“Oh, I can draft it.” He pulls a yellow legal pad from the drawer, uncaps a pen with his teeth, and sets the cap on the desk between us like a chess piece. “I’m just trying to determine how many clauses I need to keep you from ruining some poor woman’s life.”

chapter

two

Noelle

“You married a stranger,” my best friend, Josie, says.

“I did.”

“Because you’ve never paid attention to my story of how I ended up here in Whiskey Run?”

I chuckle. “No, I remember. But look how everything turned out for you.”

Her face softens. “Yes, but that was just mostly dumb luck and the matchmaking skills of Violet Chambers.”

Josie stops folding the sweater in her hands. “You know, when you say technically, it usually means the thing I just said is completely accurate, and you’d prefer I phrase it differently.”

“That is not what technically means.”

“It is when you say it.” She tosses the sweater into the open suitcase on my bed.

I pick it up. “You folded this terribly.”

“I’m sorry. I’m distracted by the fact that my best friend has apparently become a mail-order bride.”

“I am not a mail-order bride.”

“You married a man you’ve never met, and you’re moving across two counties to live in his house.”

“I feel like mail-order implies postage.”

Josie stares at me.

“Also possibly a catalog,” I add.

“Noelle.”

“I’m just saying nobody mailed me anywhere yet. I’m driving.”

She closes her eyes.

I smile despite myself and refold the sweater. “There. Much better.”

I tuck it into the suitcase beside three pairs of jeans and the ridiculous number of Christmas sweaters I own. Ridiculous number for a person who’s never worked anywhere with an ugly sweater contest.

Josie is still staring at me when I reach for the next shirt.

“What?”

“You’re really doing this.”

I glance around the room, the mostly empty room, the room that hasn’t actually been mine since I was sixteen and Grandma decided I should have the bigger bedroom because Grandma needed the one closer to the bathroom.

I’ve slept here every night since.