A Very Married Christmas: A Silver Bell Falls Holiday Novella(16)

“Okay, okay, okay,” he quickly interrupted and soothed her, gently caressing her cheek. “Don’t get all worked up. I wasn’t implying that anyone was taking my time away from me.”

“Oh,” she said with relief. “Okay. Good.” Tilting her head a little, she asked, “Then what were you going to say?”

With a soft laugh, Josiah took her hand and started walking again. “I was going to say that we still don’t have a wedding date and we haven’t talked about honeymoons either.” He looked down at her and grinned. “We’re seriously bad at this planning thing.”

She knew he was right. Even after she used that as part of her argument not to come to the city, once she changed her mind and asked him to come with her, all of their time and energy had been put into making travel plans and making sure Josiah was okay to fly. Then there was a lot of time convincing him how it was okay to be away from town for several days and that crime would not start running rampant if he were gone. His deputies were more than competent and he knew it, but…he didn’t want to admit it.

Either way, travel plans had been the hot topic and somehow the wedding talk had gotten postponed.

Again.

“Then it looks like we have a topic for our dinner conversation,” she said with a big grin. “So let’s…” Her words were cut off when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. They stepped to the side of the sidewalk as she pulled it out. “It’s Christine,” she said, holding up the phone for Josiah to see the screen.

Answering, she listened to her editor while watching Josiah who seemed more than a little unimpressed with the amount of people walking around.

“Uh-huh…”

Why couldn’t he just enjoy himself? It wasn’t as if she were asking him to move here. This was just a few days of fun, playing tourist and getting away from their everyday life to distract him while he healed.

“So, what do you say?” Christine asked excitedly.

“Um…I’m sorry. What?”

“I said you and Josiah should join me for dinner! There’s an amazing Italian restaurant right next to your hotel and I’m not far from there. Come on, Mel. We can all meet up and talk about the meeting tomorrow!”

“Josiah and I are out right now and I’m not sure what our plans are,” she said carefully, looking at him to see how he might feel about it.

Reading her mind, he looked at her and nodded. Melanie knew he’d agree to go even if he didn’t want to because he was fully supportive of her career, but again, just once she wished he’d be a little unreasonable.

Sighing, she said, “Sure. How about we meet you there in thirty minutes?”

“Perfect! See you then!”

Sliding the phone back into her pocket, she looked up at him. “You totally could have said no to that.”

“You could’ve too,” he countered.

Touché.

“I know,” she said wearily, “but she caught me off guard and we were just talking about what we wanted to talk about over dinner and now we can’t and…”

“Mel, it’s all right. We’ll go and have dinner with Christine and then we have all night to talk. Hell, we have the rest of our lives to talk so…we’re good.”

Frowning, she looked up at him and had a strong urge to stomp her foot. “You know you can get mad at me sometimes, right?”

Now he looked confused. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s like I keep finding excuses to keep us from planning our wedding!” Even as the words came out, Melanie was a bit horrified that she was saying them out loud.

The laughter she was met with wasn’t quite the response she was expecting either.

“What’s so funny?”

“You are,” he said, still chuckling.

“I don’t see how,” she murmured.

“We can both agree that we put off this discussion because we were building the house, right?”

She nodded.

“Then I got shot,” he added lightly and Melanie was amazed at how he could even remotely joke about it. “So that sort of put our conversation on hold that day.

“Not funny, Josiah…”

“Then we had to plan the trip,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Going to dinner with Christine doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the wedding. It just means we have to talk about it later.”

“Fine. But we have to promise that we will,” she urged.

Leaning down, he kissed her soundly and everything in her instantly relaxed as she kissed him back. When he lifted his head, he smiled down at her. “I promise.”

****

And he meant it.

He truly did.

But when Christine was the one to bring up the subject, Josiah couldn’t help but smile a bit to himself.

“So?” Christine asked midway through the main course. “Have you guys set the date yet? You’re in the new house and all and I know that was what you were waiting for.” She looked expectantly between the two of them.

“Funny you should bring it up because that’s what we were talking about when you called,” Melanie replied around a sip of wine. “This last week has been crazy and it seems like we keep getting distracted.”