Read Married for Christmas (Willow Park) for Free Online

down about this.”
    She was suddenly overwhelmed with a wave of attraction for
him. Daniel was tense and annoyed and deeply authoritative. He felt really big,
standing only a few inches away and glaring down at her.
    She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to touch her.
    She forced the attraction back—since he obviously didn’t
feel the same attraction for her. There was no use arguing about this anyway.
Things would happen as they happened. “Fine. You go right ahead and put your
foot down.”
    He blinked, obviously surprised by her response. “I’m
serious about this.”
    “I know you are. That’s why I said you could put your foot
down.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “Something’s not right here.”
    “Why would you say this?”
    “Because you’re not the most compliant of women.”
    Lila had been compliant. Sweet and loving and tiny and as
delicately beautiful as a porcelain doll. And naturally submissive. The perfect
pastor’s wife. Everything Jessica was not.
    But Jessica was determined to do this right—to be as perfect
a pastor’s wife as she could possibly be.
    As long as Bear didn’t get turned out of the bedroom.
    “Why would you say that? I can be just as compliant as anyone
else.”
    Daniel suddenly choked on a burst of amusement. “Arguing
with me about how you’re compliant is not the way to prove your point.”
    His amusement was infectious, but she managed not to
smile—since it seemed to give him some sort of victory.
    “Anyway,” she concluded, “the point is that you put your
foot down and that’s totally fine with me. Bear sleeps on her bed. Most of the
time.”
    ***
    “You look absolutely beautiful,” Martha
Hendricks gushed. “I had no idea you could look so beautiful.”
    Martha was the wife of one of the church elders, and Jessica
had known the woman all her life. Martha made sure she got her hands in any
event that occurred at the church, including Jessica’s wedding.
    At the moment, the gray-haired woman was fluttering around a
large Sunday School room, which had been turned into a dressing room for the
occasion.
    The wedding wouldn’t start for another hour, but Jessica was
already dressed. She didn’t know why she was so nervous. She didn’t usually get
uptight about things.
    But she was really nervous.
    One of the women from church who ran a beauty salon had done
Jessica’s hair and makeup—curling her long straight hair until it fell in soft
waves around her shoulders and applying more makeup than Jessica had ever worn
in her life, although everyone assured her it looked very natural and wasn’t nearly
as much as most women wore for their wedding days.
    She’d then put on her dress and, with nothing else to do,
was left waiting the rest of the time remaining. In the last fifteen minutes, her
anxiety had built up to a frantic blur.
    “Thank you,” she told Martha. She wasn’t sure she was
beautiful, but at least she looked prettier than she normally did. “What time
is it?”
    “One-thirty,” Kim said. Her friend was her only attendant,
since Jessica didn’t have a huge circle of close friends and had almost no
family. Daniel had a lot more friends, but his only attendant was his brother,
Micah. “It’s still a half-hour until the photographer wants to do pictures.”
    “Okay.” Restless, Jessica walked over to where her mother
was sitting in a corner near the window, wearing a pale blue suit. “Are you
doing okay, Mom?”
    Her mother blinked at her with a familiar vague expression.
“You’re getting married.”
    It was almost a question, as if she’d just learned of the
fact.
    “Yeah. I’m getting married.”
    “To Daniel, who broke my window.”
    Jessica smiled, pleased her mother remembered so much and
could put the pieces together today. She’d been concerned such a long outing
today would rattle her mother and overtire her. “Yeah. I’m marrying Daniel.”
    “I still can’t believe it myself,” Martha said, bustling
around organizing