The Sheikh's Virgin Bride(117)
In the silence of her trendy city apartment, Yvonne repressed a sigh as she picked up her keys and bread from the counter and made her way to her car, a recently purchased sedan. It had been her gift to herself after the first couple of paychecks working under Zadid, who was quite generous with his salaries. Sometimes Yvonne wondered if part of her crush stemmed from the fact that he treated his workers so well.
It certainly didn’t hurt, when combined with his searing chocolate gaze and perfectly-chiseled jawline. She remembered that he would be joining her the next day, and her heart beat a little faster as she pulled out of her parking garage. She would have very little time to prepare a proper Christmas for him, but she would stay up through the night if she had to. She wanted Zadid’s first American Christmas to be beyond perfect—even if she didn’t totally know how to make it so.
Yvonne turned on the radio, finding a station that played holiday tunes as she drove along the highway out of Washington D.C. towards Maryland. As she drove, she braced herself for the trip to her mother’s house—her childhood home.
Yvonne’s parents had married immediately out of high school. They had been sweethearts, convinced that they would stay in love until the end of time. Unfortunately, after having a child, that theory was sorely tested. Add to that a bit of financial struggle, and when Yvonne had turned thirteen, she’d found herself sitting on the couch as her parents told her over and over again how their divorce wasn’t her fault.
She remembered staring up at them in disbelief, her world crumbling to the floor. While the divorce was amicable, especially compared to so many others, that day Yvonne’s life had been fractured, broken apart forever. Her father had moved two hours away and met another woman; her mom had met another man; and before she knew it, Yvonne had two completely different families, while not really wholly belonging to either one.
Instead of dwelling on it, Yvonne had opted to focus on her career, moving to D.C. as soon as she was able to get into a good college, and never really going back. Her parents often visited her in the big city as an excuse to get away from the craziness at home, and Yvonne welcomed their company. It was still always separate, her life in perfectly-kept halves.
It had been over a decade since she had last felt whole.
Turning up the radio, Yvonne began to sing loudly, drowning out her thoughts with cheerful music about jingle bells and reindeer, skipping over the sadder ones about being home for Christmas.
She wound through the familiar neighborhoods of her past, the neighbors still loading their front lawns with blown-up snowmen and twinkle-light reindeer. In the light of day, they were far less impressive than when the stars came out, and Yvonne found herself wishing she had opted to go later, if only to catch the stunning light show her mother’s neighbors put on every year.
Pulling into her old driveway, Yvonne turned off the engine just as a song about Santa Claus was ending. She grabbed her purse and her bread, her breath puffing out in a white cloud before her as she half-jogged to the front door and finagled around to turn the knob. After a few moments of fruitless effort, she finally pressed her arm against the doorbell, the sound echoing across the house as a chorus of dog barks sounded behind the door.
The sound of running feet approached, and a twelve-year-old blond girl pulled open the door with a big smile.
“Yvonne!” she cried.
“Hey, Mya,” Yvonne breathed, wrapping her arms around her half-sister. “Can you take this before I fall over?”
As she spoke, two small Yorkshire terriers circled around her ankles, yipping excitedly as they jumped up against her boots, their tiny paws barely pressing against her. Mya took the bread and ran back toward the kitchen, which smelled of cooked meats and a variety of side dishes.
“Mom, Yvonne’s here!” Mya called out.
Another girl came running down the stairs, identical to the first.
“Hi, Megan,” Yvonne said.
The girl looked up and gave her a shy smile.
“Hi, Yvonne.”
“How you doing?”
The girl shrugged a shoulder before heading toward the kitchen. Yvonne walked in after her, finding her mother wearing a flour-covered apron as she rolled out a sheet of fresh cookie dough. When Yvonne walked in, her mother smiled warmly at her.
“Just in time to get the cookies cut for decorating later. Come on in, sweetheart. The cutouts are over there.”
Mya dashed over, grabbing a large chunk of cookie dough and plopping it into her mouth before sprinting away.
“Mya! We can’t decorate cookies if you eat all of the dough! Megan, talk some sense into your sister.”
“That’s hard to do when she doesn’t have any,” Megan said, curling up on a kitchen chair and pulling out a book.
Yvonne’s mother rolled her eyes.
“Megan has decided to become a moody teenager this morning. Give her an hour or so and we’ll get her back to her old self again.”
Yvonne glanced back at her half-sister, who peeked up over her book self-consciously before ducking her head back under. Biting back a grin, Yvonne sat at the kitchen island where her mother, Debbie, had laid out the dough, grabbing a candy cane cutout and making cookies, placing the shaped dough on cookie sheets with her mother.
“I’ll never be too old for this,” Yvonne said.
“Well, you can still do it like an adult,” Debbie replied, popping open a bottle of white wine she pulled from the fridge and pouring her a glass.