A Christmas to Remember, page 5
part #8.50 of Lucky Harbor Series
Her eyes were fascinating. Hazel fire. “Give. Me. My. List,” she said.
No way. This was just getting good. But clearly far more motivated than he, she twisted the grip she had on his shirt, yanking out those few hairs she’d caught.
“Hey. Ouch—”
Aubrey got a better grip on the pad so that now they were tug-o-warring over it. “Seriously,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“None of your business,” she said through her teeth, pulling on the pad.
He still didn’t let go, even though his chest was on fire and missing a few hairs now. “It’s my business when you’re carrying around a list with my name on it.”
“Why don’t you Google the name Ben and see how many there are?” she said. “Now leave me alone.”
The door to the floral shop opened and a uniformed officer walked out. Luke, with his impeccable timing as always. Eyeing the tussle before him, he raised a brow. “What’s up, kids?”
“Officer,” Aubrey said, voice cool, eyes cooler as she yanked the pad from Ben’s fingers. She shoved it into her purse, zipped it, and yanked it up to her shoulder. “This man is bothering me.”
Luke grinned. “Should I arrest him?”
Aubrey slid Ben a speculative look. “Can’t you just shoot him?” she asked hopefully.
Luke’s grin widened. “I could, but there’d be a bunch of paperwork. I hate paperwork. How about I just beat him up a little bit?”
Aubrey didn’t take her eyes off Ben.
Ben cocked his head at her.
Finally she blew out a breath. “Never mind.” Still hugging her purse to herself, she turned, unlocked the bookstore, and vanished back inside it.
The door slammed shut.
“I thought the store was closed,” Ben said, absently rubbing his chest.
“It is,” Luke said. “Mr. Lyons is her uncle. She’s going to renovate and reopen it. She’s living in the tiny little studio above it.”
“How do you know so much?”
“Because I know all,” Luke said. “And because Mr. Lyons called. He needs a carpenter so I gave him your number.”
“Mine?”
“You’re still good with a hammer, right?”
“Yeah.” Ben’s phone rang, and he looked at the unfamiliar but local number.
Luke looked, too. “That’s him,” he said. “Mr. Lyons.”
Mr. Lyons opened with a gruff “Don’t say no yet.”
Ben sighed. “I’m listening.”
“I need a carpenter.”
Ben slid Luke a look. “So I’ve heard. I’m not a carpenter. I’m a civil engineer.”
“You know damn well before you got all dark and mysterious that you were handy with a set of tools,” Mr. Lyons said.
Luke, who could hear Mr. Lyons’s booming voice, grinned like the Cheshire cat and pointed at Ben.
Ben bit back a sigh. “Why not hire Jax? He’s the best carpenter in town.”
“He’s got a line of customers from Lucky Harbor to Seattle, and I don’t want to wait. My niece Aubrey needs help renovating the bookstore. She wants to reopen next month. I know damn well she can’t afford you, so I’m paying. For my sweet Gwen’s memory. Don’t give Aubrey the bill, and whatever you do, don’t tell her how much you’re going to cost me. I don’t want her worrying about it. She’s going through some stuff, and I want to do this for her. For both my girls.”
“You should be asking me for a bid.”
“I trust you.”
Jesus. “You shouldn’t,” Ben said. “You—”
“Just start the damn work. Shelves. Paint. Hang stuff. Whatever she wants. Can you do it or not?”
Ben started to say no. Hell no. Being closed up in that bookstore with Aubrey for days and days? Surely one of them would kill the other before the month was up.
But he couldn’t deny that he wanted to know what she was up to. “Yeah,” he said. “I can do it.”
Whether he’d survive it was another thing entirely.
Dear Reader,
Growing up, it’s impossible to write about one Christmas that was a Christmas to remember.
See, when I was a kid, we didn’t have a lot. My mom worked hard and made sure we had everything we needed, but she was rarely able to give us what we wanted.
Except at Christmas.
My sister and brother and I would have to take turns, every third Christmas, getting the “big gift” (like a tape recorder, a record player, or a small black and white TV). But we didn’t mind, seeing as Mom saved all year to spoil us on that special day in a myriad of ways that maybe weren’t so big but were always precious.
And she did. We lived with my aunt and grandparents on a small farm in Indiana and Mom and my Auntie Bec took the stockings down, placed them where we were to sit on Christmas, and stuffed them so full they were overflowing. As the days led up to Christmas, they held tons of gifts back, pulling them all out and spreading all the presents across the floor of our mudroom so when we woke up on Christmas Day, the entire room was taken up with Christmas.
It didn’t even matter what was wrapped in those boxes.
What mattered was that, even at a young age, it was not lost on us that it wasn’t just a day, but an entire year Mom had worked hard and saved precious money to light up that family holiday and make it special for the kids she loved.
And it wasn’t just that day we knew how much she loved us. It was just that she knocked herself out so that on Christmas we would be in no doubt.
We never were.
Not back then. Not until the day she died. And beyond.
We still do up Christmas like nobody’s business. Last year, moving home from England after a decade, I finally got to have another Christmas with my family.
We had it at my sister’s house.
And my sissy took the stockings down and filled them to overflowing. She set them where each of her loved ones would sit during the festivities. And she spread the presents across the floor so when the big day dawned, the room was filled with Christmas…
And love.
To Emily Sylvan Kim and Amy Pierpont, both of whom talked me into writing this story when I was certain I didn’t have the time, and I wasn’t certain I could do “short.”
I loved spending Christmas with the Allens and the Cages.
And I’m glad Emily and Amy didn’t give up on me so I got that chance.
Every Year
Kristen Ashley
TABBY
“Do you think this is a good idea?” I asked.
“No,” Tyra answered, but she had a smile in her voice.
We were standing outside on the deck next to Tyra and Dad’s house in the foothills of Colorado outside Denver. It was two a.m. In other words, the early morning hours of Christmas Day.
And it had just started snowing.
The darkness before us was cut with a floodlight. Therefore, Ty-Ty and I could clearly see what was happening around the huge, tall tree at the other side of the drive.
“If Shy falls off that ladder and breaks his neck, I’m blaming Dad,” I joked, and it was a joke because this wouldn’t happen. My man could do anything, including what he was right then doing up on a ladder out in the snow.
“Where Tack’s standing, if Shy falls off, he’ll fall right on your father,” Tyra replied.
I grinned because this was true.
Out in the dark, my dad and Tyra’s husband, Kane “Tack” Allen, my man, Parker “Shy” Cage, my brother, Cole “Rush” Allen, and Shy’s brother, Landon, were all working by the bright light of the floodlight at the tree.
In truth, they weren’t all working at the tree. There were two ladders on either side of a stout branch. Shy was up one, Rush was up the other, and those two were currently working at tying a rope to the branch. At the bottom of the rope a tire was tied. So it was only Shy and Rush who were working.
The reason for the tire swing?
It was a Christmas present for my baby brothers (Dad’s kids with Ty-Ty), Rider and Cutter. This present came about because six-year-old Ride had seen some kid on a TV show on a tire swing and he’d gone ga-ga over it. It had been all he’d talked about for the last four months. And by talking about it I mean begging Dad for one.
Since Ride’d been talking about it (or begging), four-year-old Cut got in on the action. And Cut hadn’t even seen the show with the swing. But it sounded like all kinds of fun to him and Cutter was all about fun, the wilder the better.
In other words, neither he, nor his big brother, fell far from the tree.
So Dad, being just that kind of dad (always), was giving it to them.
Except he wasn’t. He was standing at the base of the tree barking orders up to my man and my big brother, and although Dad supplied the tire and the rope, he wasn’t the one up the tree.
For Landon’s part, he wasn’t bothering to hide the fact that he thought the whole thing was hilarious—primarily how long it was taking—and he was doing this by shouting jokes.
That said, since he showed, I was getting a weird feeling from Landon. Shy’s brother was usually a teasing, laid-back, fun-loving guy. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t be intense, especially when it came to his brother. They were tight and looked out for each other. Life taught them to be that way. Mostly, though, he was funny and mellow.
But now, something about Lan was just… off.
This tire swing situation had been going on for an hour. The lateness of that hour was due to the fact that Ride and Cut were so excited Santa was coming they wouldn’t go to sleep, and it hadn’t been safe for “Santa” to go out and give them their swing.
The fact that it had started snowing made the hilarious event of three Chaos Motorcycle club bikers and a soldier tying a rope to a tree seriously hilarious.
“Give it a yank!” Shy called down to Dad.
Dad moved forward and wrapped his hands around the rope, giving it a hefty tug.
For once (and that would be once in about twenty tries), the knot didn’t slip.
“You want me to climb in?” Landon offered. “Test it out? Give it a whirl?”
“You climb on that fuckin’ tire while this ladder is resting against this branch and I’m on it, I’ll rip your head off,” Shy returned.
I stifled a giggle even though it appeared my man was losing his Christmas spirit.
Dad gave the rope another tug.
It held.
“I hope this is done,” Tyra whispered to me. “I need the whole three hours’ sleep I’m going to get before the boys wake us up.”
“And Rush needs the next three hours to wrap his Christmas presents,” I whispered back.
This was the truth. Every year my brother delayed shopping until the very last moment. Then he brought his Christmas stash over on Christmas Eve and spent hours wrapping. And bitching. Though I didn’t know why it took hours or why he was bitching. He wrapped his presents in newspaper and didn’t put bows or tags on them or anything. He just wrote in a Sharpie pen on the paper in big letters who they were for. So it wasn’t that strenuous of an endeavor.
“Come down,” Dad called. “We’ll test it when you got your feet on the ground.”
Shy and Rush descended.
Tyra and I watched.
They moved the ladders and Shy went to the tire. He cautiously put a foot into it and gave it his weight. Then he started to swing.
God.
My man was hot even swinging on a tire in a snowstorm in the middle of the night.
Seriously.
Though, I was thinking this mostly had to do with the fact that I had his back, which means I had a line of sight to his ass in his jeans and his shoulders in his thermal.
Nice.
“Finally, we’re done,” Tyra murmured. “Let’s get out of this snow.”
We’re done?
I grinned again at Tyra’s words but this time to myself, since Ty-Ty and I really had no part in Operation Tire Swing except to provide moral support from afar.
I left the men to the cleanup and started to follow her inside. But I gave a last look at the men and saw Shy approach his brother. Since the Christmas preparations were winding down, I had a feeling Shy had also felt the weird vibe from Lan and was having a word.
I left him to it and went inside.
Tyra was at the stove.
I closed the door behind me and looked left at the brightly lit Christmas tree where, earlier, Tyra and I had spent an hour on our hands and knees spreading all the presents out in a single layer across the living room carpet, adding Santa’s addition. This meant there was very little carpet left. The room looked like a Christmas explosion.
It was awesome.
“Cocoa for the men,” Tyra called, but softly because there was no doubt my little brothers were sleeping lightly. I looked to her as she finished, “Warm them up.”
Three bikers and a GI drinking cocoa?
Was she Christmas crazy?
“Uh… not sure Shy’s into cocoa,” I informed her as I made my way to the kitchen.
She opened a cupboard and pulled out a bottle. Turning to me, she held it up.
Peppermint Schnapps.
“That’ll work,” I mumbled on a smile.
The milk was warming in the saucepan and the mugs with powdered cocoa were at the ready when the men came in.
They didn’t bother to dust off the snow in their hair and on their shoulders. They also hadn’t bothered to put on coats or even jackets although it was below freezing. We were up in the Colorado foothills and everyone knew (and was excited) that after a very dry winter, we were forecast to have a white Christmas.
This meant every last one of the guys was in nothing but a thermal, jeans, and biker boots, except Landon, who had on construction boots.
This wasn’t a surprise. As reigning Chaos princess (Dad was president of Chaos) and also as an old lady, I’d known my whole life alpha badass bikers were impervious to cold. And it wasn’t a stretch to learn that military men were just as badass.
“Congratulations on doing that without anyone sticking anyone with a knife,” I said as the men moved into the kitchen.
My man grinned at me.
When he did, my belly got warm and my lips tipped up.
My eyes moved to Landon and I saw he was gazing at the Christmas tree, an expression on his face that made my belly stop being warm and my lips droop down. Before I could get a lock on it, Dad spoke.
“Brothers can work together,” Dad noted. “It’s bitches who get bitchy.”
I decided not to argue this, though, truth be told, there wasn’t anything to argue with. For the most part, Dad wasn’t wrong.
Shy slid an arm around my shoulders. I shivered as the cold still clinging to him transferred to me. So I turned into him, pressed my front into his side and wrapped my arms tight around his middle in an effort to warm him up. This had the effect of his arm around me tightening.
“Spiked cocoa, fuckin’ great,” Landon muttered, eyes now on the mugs. He moved his gaze to Shy. “You in a tree in the snow and loaded hot chocolate. Think I’m gonna like Christmas with the Allens.”
My belly got warm again and I looked to Tyra. When I did, I saw her green eyes were on me. They were soft but lit with a happy light that corresponded with the feel I had around my heart.
This was because Shy and Landon Cage had not had a true family Christmas since Shy was twelve and Landon was ten. That year, on New Year’s Eve, their parents had been murdered. They’d been raised from then on by a shrew of an aunt who’d detested them and the added responsibility and drain on finances they represented, and she didn’t mind showing it.
This was going to be my first Christmas with my man; we’d just hooked up this past summer. And I was totally excited about that—Christmas and hooking up with my man.
But I was more excited about giving him, and his brother, a real, honest–to-God family Christmas.
And the look on Ty-Ty’s face said she was looking forward to the same.
I studied Lan from under my lashes and I hoped, instead of bringing up unhappy memories of all he’d lost, that he looked forward to it too.
“I coulda done without the me–in-the-tree part,” Shy murmured as I gave him a squeeze before I let him go in order to help Tyra, who was now pouring the milk in the mugs.
“That was the best part,” Landon told him.
Shy gave Landon a look and I saved Landon from his retort by pushing a mug of cocoa in Shy’s chest.
Shy looked away from his brother to look at me. But he didn’t take the mug until he bent his neck to touch his mouth to mine.
And there it was again. My belly getting even warmer.
“Tyra, where’s your newspaper?” Rush asked, and again I sent a smile Tyra’s way.
Tyra handed Dad a mug and answered, “Out in the garage, honey.”
“Right,” Rush muttered and moved that way, taking his mug with him.
I moved back to Shy, got close and up on my toes to whisper in his ear. “That’s our cue to get the heck outta here. Rush is gonna start wrapping, not his favorite chore, so it also means he’s gonna start gettin’ pissy.”
Without delay, Shy announced to everyone in the kitchen, “Tabby and me are goin’ to bed.”
Dad gave Shy a chin lift. I made my way to my father and gave him a hug. He gave me one back and a kiss on the cheek.
“See you in the mornin’, darlin’,” he said softly in my ear.
“Yeah, Dad. Merry Christmas.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Merry Christmas, honey.”
I handed out more hugs to Ty-Ty and Landon, the one I gave Lan included me looking into his eyes and giving him a cautious Christmas smile.
He smiled back but I could tell he wasn’t entirely committed to it.
Hmm.
I avoided my brother, who was coming back from the garage, his arms loaded with newspapers, a Sharpie between his teeth, calling out my good night to him as Shy and I headed to the basement.
