A Beaumont Christmas Wedding Read Online Free PDF

nervous but that’s it. She’s going to be fine.”
    “If
you
can treat her like a normal person,” Phillip added. “Man—I thought you were this expert at reading people and telling them what they wanted to hear. What happened? Hit your head this morning or something?”
    Matthew sat there, feeling stupid. Hell, he wasn’t just feeling stupid—he
was
stupid. His first instinct had been to protect her. He should have stuck with it. He could do that without giving in to his desire to claim her, right?
    Right. He was in control of his emotions. He could keep up a wall between the rest of the world and himself. He was good at it.
    Then he made the mistake of glancing at that silly donkey, who gave him a baleful look of reproach. Great. Even the donkey was mad at him.
    “I should apologize to her.”
    Phillip snorted. “You think?”
    Damn it, he felt like a jerk. It didn’t come naturally to him. Chadwick was the one who could be a royal pain simply because he wasn’t clued in to the fact that most people had actual feelings. Phillip used to be an ass all the time because he was constantly drunk and horny. Matthew was the one who smoothed ruffled feathers and calmed everyone down.
    Phillip was right. Matthew hadn’t been reading the woman next to him. He’d been too busy thinking about old headlines and new lust to realize that she might want his approval.
    “Which room is she in?”
    Jo and Phillip shared a look before Phillip said, “Yours.”

Three
    W hitney found her room on the first try and shut the door behind her.
    Well. So much for her little fantasy about a Christmas romance. She doubted that Matthew would have been less happy to see her if she’d thrown up on his shoes.
    She flopped down on her bed and decided that she would not cry. Even though it was really tempting, she wouldn’t. She’d learned long ago this was how it went, after all. People would treat her just fine until they recognized her and then? All bets were off. Once she’d been outed as Whitney Wildz, she might as well give up on normal. There was no going back.
    She’d thought for a moment there she might get to do something ordinary—have a little Christmas romance between the maid of honor and the best man. But every time she got it in her foolish little head that she could be whoever she wanted to be...well, this was what would happen.
    The thing was, she didn’t even blame Matthew. Since he recognized her so quickly, that could only mean that he’d read some of the more recent headlines. Like the last time she’d tried to redeem Whitney Wildz by lending her notoriety to the Bakersfield Animal Shelter’s annual fund-raising gala dinner. She’d been the keynote speaker—or would have been if she hadn’t gotten the fancy Stuart Weitzman shoes she’d bought just for the occasion tangled up in the microphone cords on her way up to the podium.
    The headlines had been unforgiving.
    Whitney shivered. Boy, this was going to be a long,
cold
two weeks.
    As she was getting up to turn her fireplace back on, she heard it—a firm knock.
    Her brain diverted all energy from her legs to the question of who was on the other side of that door—Jo or a Beaumont?—and she tripped into the door with an audible
whump
.
    Oh, for the love of everything holy. Just once—once!—she’d like to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. She could sing and play the guitar simultaneously. She could do complicated dressage moves on the back of a one-ton animal. Why couldn’t she put one foot in front of the other?
    She forced herself to take a deep breath just as a male voice on the other side of the door said, “Is everything all right in there, Miss...uh...Ms. Maddox?”
    Matthew. Great. How could this get worse? Let her count the ways. Had he come to ask her to drop out of the wedding? Or just threaten her to be on her best behavior?
    She decided she would not cower. Jo had asked her to be in the wedding. If Jo asked her to drop out,