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Rubbing my thigh and kissing my temple, Ridge soothed me as best he could. “Little wolf, the Greenthornes make threats all the time. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve tried to sue me since I moved into town. They cause problems. That’s who they are.”
Lifting my head, I frowned at him and he chuckled.
“They’re a piece of work, I don’t deny that, but I can control them,” he said. “We’ve taken precautions to protect your brother. Right now, we need to realize we can’t control anything else. We’ve taken care of what we can, and we need to roll with the punches as they come. Especially since right now, the thing you need to be the most prepared for is lots of questions about our relationship.
“How did we meet? How did I propose? How long did we date before I popped the question? That sort of thing. People come to town functions like this to chat, and I bet you we’ll be the hot topic of the evening, just as you’ve been since our engagement was announced.”
Groaning, I dropped my head into Ridge’s chest. “Small towns need more entertainment,” I muttered.
Ridge chuckled, kissed the top of my head, and rubbed my back. “Sorry, but that’s how it’s done around here and in every small town in America. But you’ll do great because you care for this town and its people. You wouldn’t have such a strong need to protect it if you didn’t.”
I nuzzled Ridge’s chest, inhaling his scent deeply and reveling in his warmth. He was right. I did care, and it sucked because it made everything that much harder. I could’ve been on the run with my brother by now if I didn’t feel so tied to this place. And particularly to this man.
Lifting my head as a thought occurred to me, I asked, “Do people from other towns come to this event?”
Trying to hide his smile, Ridge nodded, “Yes, and it seems to get bigger every year.”
Loudly, I groaned and buried my head in his chest again.
“Clawson has his officers on high alert to vet all visitors as an extra precaution, but we’re not going to stop running our town because we’re scared. We still have to keep living and thriving.”
I glowered at him. “I’m not worried about that. The town is in excellent hands. All I’m getting at is that if more people passive-aggressively ask me for a wedding invitation, I’m going to lose my ever-loving mind. There are only so many ways I can make it clear that we haven’t set a date. People need to hold their horses. Plus, it’s just plain rude.” I shrugged off Ridge’s arm and huffed out my annoyance.
My irritation increased when I saw that Ridge was still wearing an amused expression and playing with my hair as he sat back, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Ridge, it’s not funny.” I elbowed him.
“I never said it was, little wolf. I can’t help it if I find you adorable and cute and sexy when you’re flustered.”
“Ugh.” I shoved at him again, which only made him laugh. He put his arms around my shoulders again. “Okay, how about this? We set a date for the wedding.”
Lifting my eyes, I saw he wasn’t smiling or joking, so I stopped to think it over and realized the idea had merits. It wasn’t like our wedding had to be next week. If I finally had an answer for people, maybe they’d give us a little peace so we could focus on things that mattered.
“Yeah, okay,” I conceded. “For the sake of talking to people at the fundraiser and not losing my shit, we could give them a fictional day. That could work.”
The tension in my shoulders eased. I’d have something to say to people, and hopefully, that’d buy us more time.
Ridge sighed. “If you had to pick a date for a real wedding, what would it be? Did you ever daydream about what your dream wedding would be like? What season and day would it be? What time of day?”
Scrunching my nose, I tried to remember if I’d ever imagined those things. I was coming up empty. “I haven’t fantasized about a dream wedding since I was about six years old. I’m pretty sure back then I wanted to fight Princess Buttercup and get married to Westley in Wonderland while it snowed cotton candy, and we could ride off into the sunset to a castle in the sky on a unicorn.”
Ridge threw his head back and laughed. Watching him had my belly clenching. He was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on.
He settled down and became thoughtful. “I never thought about a wedding date or a wedding until now. It makes me wonder, what do you think about a winter wedding?”
A winter wedding? It was the end of August now, and we wouldn’t be expected to have a wedding this soon. That would give us a lot of time to “plan” a wedding.
“A winter wedding is perfect,” I said. “We could tell everybody we decided on next winter, making it over a year away. It’ll keep people from nagging us about invitations, and it wouldn’t surprise people if we had a long engagement. This could work.”
I gave Ridge my best smile, but he didn’t seem as thrilled.
“No, I meant this winter,” he said.
Floored, I stared at him, waiting for him to crack a smile because he had to be joking. “Why would you want to pretend it would be so soon? That’s only a little over four months away!”
“We could even tell people a sooner date, say before Thanksgiving. It’d make a lot of people very excited.” He nudged my shoulder. “The Magpies might even give you your job back if we announced the wedding was so soon. They’d want to be around you all the time to offer you wedding planning advice.”
My jaw dropped as I stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. What was he thinking?
