Found A Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate
Brady dumps Katie at the O'Hare gate in front of strangers, her mother forbids her to come home alone, and she asks the man under Lower Wacker to marry her, who pulls a real diamond from his coat.
Brady took the ring off my finger at Gate B9, in front of a hundred people waiting to fly home for Christmas.
He didn't ask for it.
He just took my hand and twisted.
"Brady," I said. "That hurts."
"Then stop pulling."
The ring came off over my knuckle and he dropped it in the pocket of his quarter-zip.
A man in a Cowboys hat stopped chewing his pretzel.
A teenage girl by the window lifted her phone.
"What are you doing?" I said.
"What I should've done in June." He said it loud, the way he talked at tailgates. "I'm not taking you home, Katie. I'm not standing in your mama's living room on Christmas Eve and pretending."
"Pretending what?"
He looked me up and down.
I was in my red coat, with my braid coming loose, and a box of kolaches on my lap for my grandmother.
"Look at you," he said. "Your hands smell like yeast. You get up at five to frost muffins for lawyers. And every morning you stop under the bridge to feed some bum."
"His name is Quinton."
"You know the bum's name." He laughed, and he looked around to make sure the gate was laughing with him. "Y'all hear that? She knows his name."
Some of them did laugh.
Not many.
Enough.
"I found a woman who can actually do something for me," Brady said. "That's all. It's not personal."
"You proposed to me six months ago."
"And I'm unproposing."
He walked to the counter, put my boarding pass in front of the gate agent and said, "She won't be flying."
The agent looked at me.
I looked at Brady.
He winked.
Then they called group two, and he picked up his carry-on and got in line.
He didn't look back once.
I watched the door to the jet bridge close behind him.
The girl by the window was still filming.
"Delete that," I said.
She didn't.
My phone buzzed before I'd made it out of the terminal.
Mama.
I almost let it ring.
"Katie Lynn." My mother's voice was perfectly calm. "Brady called me."
"He called you?"
"He was very upset. He said you made a scene."
"He took my ring in front of a hundred people."
"Well, you must have done something."
I stopped walking.
"Mama, he dumped me at the gate."
"I'm not going to argue about it in a parking garage." I heard ice in a glass on her end. "Listen to me. The whole county is coming Christmas Eve. The Rose Club. Pastor and his wife. Every judge in Smith County. They are all coming to celebrate my daughter's engagement."
"Then tell them it's off."
"I will do no such thing."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to not come home alone." She said each word like she was setting down good china. "I will not be the mother of the girl who got left. Not in this town. Not at Christmas."
"Mama."
"Find somebody, Katie, or stay in Chicago."
She hung up.
I stood there with the kolaches.
Then I got on the Blue Line with my suitcase and rode it back into the city.
It was snowing on Wacker Drive.
I went down the stairs to the lower level, where the street runs under the street and the air smells like exhaust and old rain.
He was where he always was.
The concrete ledge past the loading dock, under the green steel beam, with his back against the pillar.
Navy watch cap. Torn brown work coat. A beard I'd never once seen him trim.
He saw my suitcase and stood up.
He was taller than people expected, standing.
"Katie." His voice was low and rough from the cold. "You were supposed to be in Texas."
"I was supposed to be a lot of things."
He looked at my hand.
At the white line where the ring had been.
He didn't say anything.
That was the thing about Quinton.
He never said the obvious thing.
Every morning since June I'd brought him a coffee and a day-old roll at twenty to six.
In November I'd found him curled on this ledge with two cracked ribs and walked him to urgent care.
I knew he liked his coffee black and his rolls burned.
I knew he'd read every book I ever left him.
I didn't know his last name.
"I need to ask you something," I said. "And you can say no."
"Okay."
"Will you marry me?"
He went very still.
A bus groaned past overhead.
"Tomorrow," I said. "At the clerk's office. Then fly to Texas with me Monday and stand in my mother's living room on Christmas Eve and let them all look at you."
"Let them look at me," he repeated.
"They'll be awful."
"I'd assume so."
"I'll pay for everything. The ticket, a suit, all of it."
"Katie."
"It's insane, I know it's insane."
"Katie." He put one cold hand over mine. "Yes."
I stared at him.
"Yes?"
"Yes. On one condition."
"What?"
He reached into his coat with his other hand.
He found a seam in the lining near his heart and ripped it open with his thumb.
Something small fell into his palm.
He held it out to me under the orange lights.
It was a ring.
A square diamond the size of my pinkie nail, set in old platinum, throwing light all over the concrete.
It was not fake.
I'd worked a summer at a jeweler's in Tyler.
I knew exactly what it was.
"You wear this one," Quinton said.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend