Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Three Thousand a Month, Again

I lifted my head off his chest.

The spruce lights were blinking red and gold across his face.

He didn't look like a chairman.

He looked quiet and patient, waiting to be called.

"So," I said. "What happens now?"

"You promised me a quiet divorce."

"I did."

"I don't want one."

My throat closed up.

"Bennet."

"I'd like to stay married to you, Alana." He said it the way he said everything, very plainly. "Not through New Year's. Through all of them."

I wanted to say yes so badly I had to sit up to keep from doing it.

I pulled the quilt around me and looked down at him.

"No," I said.

His face didn't change, but his hand went still on the quilt.

"Not like this," I said. "Not in the dark, in my old bed, where nobody can see."

"Where, then?"

"I asked you in my lobby in front of sixty people and a dropped candy cane." I poked him in the chest. "You can do at least that well."

He looked up at me for a long time.

Then he started to laugh.

"Fair," he said.

"I'm a fair woman."

"You're a terrifying woman."

"That too."

My grandmother came home from the pastor's at ten in the morning in last night's clothes, with canasta winnings in her coat pocket.

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