Dragon's Fake Wedding Date - Riley Storm

Chapter One

Gayle

It was a Friday evening at precisely 6:52 when Gayle Weber’s happily planned out life came to an abrupt, screeching halt amid a pile of flames and shattered dreams.

She didn’t even see it coming.

Until that point, her evening had been its usual, consistent self. It was Friday. That meant it was date night.

After getting home from her cubicle day job, a place so very unlike the little dragon gift shop where she worked part-time on the side, Gayle ate a quick snack, showered, and began doing her makeup. Her long-term boyfriend Mike would finish his plumbing work at 5:30 and pick her up at 6:45.

They had reservations at Climbers, the nicest restaurant in small town Five Peaks. Dinner there, drinks at Peaks Pub, and then some fun back at either her place or his, depending on their weekend plans.

They’d been doing the same thing for so long, she didn’t even have to text him to confirm that they were still on. She just knew in her heart that he would pick her up. He always did.

“Tonight’s going to be different though,” she told herself, triple and quadruple checking the way she looked in the mirror, applying some last minute touch-ups to her makeup.

Gayle wanted it to look perfect tonight. She had a hunch that something extra was going on. Mikey had been a little nervous when she’d called him at lunch. More tense than usual. It wasn’t like him. Which meant something was up.

Biting her lip to hold back a smile, Gayle forced herself to repeat the same line over and over in her head, to try and get the point home, so that she didn’t overthink things.

It doesn’t mean he’s going to propose. It doesn’t mean he’s going to propose.

She’d thought it a hundred times and would think it a hundred more before Mikey knocked on the door. It was important that, if something else happened, she wasn’t upset by it. That wouldn’t be fair to Mikey, though she hoped he was going to propose.

It had been two years now of dating. Her 30th birthday was on Sunday. Gayle was beyond ready to start the next chapter of her life, and she hoped that Mikey was ready to take that step too.

Engagement would come first of course, she thought with a happy smile, adjusting one wayward strand of short crimson hair that had gotten caught up in her glittering diamond earrings. They would have a year-long engagement, after which there would be a wedding.

Her best friend, Karen, would be the maid of honor, of course, Gayle thought with a smile. The two of them went back over a decade, and she couldn’t imagine anyone else by her side. It would be a medium-sized wedding—fifty people, maybe seventy-five. No more than that.

The dress had already been picked out in her mind, and she couldn’t wait to have her father walk her down the aisle to Mikey, where they would begin their lives together.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kostwick,” she said to herself in the mirror, adjusting her cleavage as it shifted in the flowing black dress she’d donned for the occasion. “Certainly has a wonderful ring to it.”

She smiled even wider at the word ring.

It was after the wedding though, that she was looking to perhaps the most. Gayle wanted to be a mother. She longed to hold her babe in her arms and look down upon the future and watch them grow into their own woman or man. The miracle of life, and she was going to be the one who created it.

A shiver of excitement ran through her at the thought.

She glanced at the clock as there was a knock at the door.

6:46.

Grinning to herself, she all but darted for the front entrance, forcing herself to slow. She didn’t want anything to fall out of place. When she opened that door, Gayle wanted Mikey to look on her with wide eyes as he took in his—hopefully—future wife.

Undoing the deadbolt, she opened the door slowly, smiling wide as Mikey stood there looking nervous and uncomfortable. Like a man about to propose. He shouldn’t be nervous though. It wasn’t like there would be any surprise to her answer. He had to know she would say yes.

The smile faltered and then died amid a look of confusion as the door opened wider to reveal Karen, her best friend.

“Hey,” Karen said with a happy smile.

Was this part of Mikey’s plan, perhaps? Was Karen going to ‘tag along’ for some lame reason and then end