A Bad Boy for Christmas (16 page)

And then he pulled a silent Nash back in his arms.

“Beautiful,” murmured Zoey.

“Yeah.” Possibly why Mia had tears in her eyes again.

Eli sighed heavily and turned to Caleb. “Do you feel left out?”

Caleb’s smile grew positively wicked. “I do feel a
little
left out, what with all the yelling and the hugging.
I
could use a hug. Possibly even a kiss.”

At which point Eli descended on him in what might have been parody but soon turned into solid welcome, and then Caleb hugged Bree and then everyone was hugging everyone.

“You all right?” Nash asked when it was their turn, and she nodded and burrowed in close.

“Hell of a night. What was it like out there?”

“Crazier than anyone’s letting on. The Franco boat’s gone by now. Those boys were going to die out there.”

“You reckon there’ll be yelling and hugging in that household too?”

“And tears. Thank God there’s no tears here.”

“Speak for yourself. You’re not leaving tomorrow, are you?” she asked as she pulled away.

“No,” said Cutter. “He’s not. We’re keeping him a while longer now. Told you it’d work out.”

“Have I hugged you yet and told you how wonderful you are?”

“No.” he said. “And you
should
.”

She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. “You big hero. You realize I was back here worrying like crazy about you and trying desperately to hold myself together until you returned?”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“I did all right. Until I started berating your father for not calling Nash by his name.”

Cutter smiled, sweet terror that he was. “What’d he say to that?”

“He
hugged
me.”

“He does that.”

“Yeah.” She smiled a little helplessly, still too jacked up on adrenaline to think straight. “I noticed. I thought—just then I thought—

“You thought my argument with him was going to get physical?”

“Yes.”

Cutter drew her aside until they stood a little distance away from the others. His smile had faded and he looked a little solemn, a little anxious. “Mia, I wish I could say I’ve never used my fists, but I can’t. If someone tries to hurt me and mine I’ll fight. I fought Caleb last year and that was a bad call on my part and I apologized for it. I’ve never hit my father and I never will. He’s never raised a hand to me or my brothers and heaven forbid he ever raise one to my mother. Tonight’s argument was never going to escalate beyond words, but you didn’t know that. I’m sorry. Knowing what your childhood was like and what you fled from … I won’t do that to you again. No more arguments.”

“Oh, really?” she said dryly.

“In your presence,” he added.

“What happens when you want to argue with
me
?”

“I will very calmly and respectfully disagree and then there will be hugging.”

“I’m okay with shouting.” She didn’t know how to navigate this conversation but it was one they had to have. “I have it down pat. I have a martial arts black belt. I
know
how to fight. All your thoughts about when to fight and when not to fight—I have them too.” She studied him solemnly. “The level of mayhem here tonight? I understand it better than you think. I can deal with it and be a part of it as long as I know it’ll be punctuated with a hug and not a fist. So don’t try and protect me from it. I want in.”

“You do?”

“I do. High seas, emotional thunderstorms and everything. You asked me earlier this evening if I’d stay here with you. My answer’s yes. I’m all in. I love you just the way you are.”

He was doing that Jackson hugging thing again, strong, firm and full-bodied.

“Cutter, don’t break her,” his mother said.

“Mia doesn’t break. She’s fierce and true and mine to love.” The next thing she knew, he’d slung her into his arms and was heading for the stairs. “Mia and I are leaving now to talk dragon boats and unicorns and getting married as soon as possible.”

“Married?” she murmured. “First I’ve heard of it.”

“Say yes and I’ll love you forever.”

“Are we dealing? Is this your real marriage proposal? Because if it is I want forever and a day. Forever and
two
days.”

“Forever and always.”

“Zoey, I need to buy that dress,” she said next.

“No problem.” Zoey’s voice floated somewhere above them, for they were already half way down the stairs. “Bree’s going to take the wedding photos. We’re on it. You just say when.”

“Are you guys betting on wedding dates, by any chance?” Not that Mia was suspicious. Or anything.

“Yes.”

“I love your family,” she murmured. “What about February?”

Cutter nodded. “Where and when? I’ll be there.”

“Sunrise on the jetty. And I’d like to arrive on a dragon boat pulled by dolphins.”

“I’ll put Zoey on that detail,” he said. “If she can command dolphins we’ll have
proof
she’s Aphrodite.”

They’d reached the bottom of the stairs and Mia had no idea where they were going but she was going there with this man. And she was content.

C
hristmas day in
Brunswick Bay dawned bright as a beacon. Christmas breakfast started at Bree and Caleb’s house, and Christmas lunch had been delivered at Geoff and Claire’s. Christmas dinner this year was taking place at the houseboat, with two cruisers and three yachts moored alongside it. Floating bedrooms for all; and Mia had looked at the boats roped together in wonder because never in all her years had she imagined a Christmas quite like this.

There were hats. Zoey had made them all and they were extraordinary.

There was seafood. Breakfast had been light and fruity; lunch had involved traditional ham, turkey, roast beef, and a dozen different vegetables; the evening meal showcased the bounty of the ocean. Oysters and prawns, lobsters and pearl perch. Lemons and limes, a big BBQ and all the sauces.

There were pearls. Mia wore a strand around her neck and they dipped low to her waist and were the color of clotted cream. Cutter had given them to her as a Christmas present, along with earrings and pearl pins for her hair. This family was big on Christmas presents. The cardboard-framed caricatures Mia had drawn for each of them, and the books Nash had bought for everyone had only added to the mountain.

Bree’s living room this morning had rapidly become a sea of discarded paper and ribbons and no one had been in any hurry to clean it up.

Finest mess Mia had ever seen.

And now, just when she thought she couldn’t get any fuller or any happier, a car carrier had pulled up on the block of land and deposited an old wreck—
the
old wreck, the 1959 Custom Dodge Convertible that Nash had been chasing from the moment he’d seen it—at Nash’s feet.

It had a big red bow on it, and as Nash stared, his father handed him the key.

“How did you do it?” she asked her soon-to-be husband. “That old man wasn’t budging on the price.”

“The Jacksons now own a wrecking yard.”

Her smile bloomed even as she tried to make sense of Cutter’s words. “You don’t.”

“Oh, but we do. Don’t ask me what we’re going to do with it, because, at this point, no one knows.”

“Best Christmas present
ever
,” she murmured. “Except for mine.” The South Sea pearl engagement ring surrounded by marquise diamonds was hard to beat. It went with the strand of pearls. And the earrings. And the hair pins. She was the Pearl Queen. “I don’t know how to thank you. For claiming Nash. For loving me.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and set his lips to her hair. “Follow your dreams and let me be part of them. Love me, in fireworks and in peace. Be happy, Mia. Here with me. That’s all I need.”

The End

Sympathy for the Devil

Kelly Hunter

Copyright © 2014

E
ighteen-year-old Caleb Aaron
Jackson had one older brother and one younger. Put the three of them in a crowded room and he and his older brother, Cutter, invariably fought for the limelight. Set them to working together and Caleb became a fast-talking peacemaker between free-wheeling Cutter and stubborn Eli. Peacemaking wasn’t exactly his forte but at least he got points for trying—along with the occasional shiner and a reputation as a troublemaker that he absolutely didn’t deserve.

Much.

Give it another two days and his final set of school exams would be over and he’d be joining Cutter and their father and grandfather in the family business. Boat builder, marina lackey, trawler fisherman, dive boat operator . . . he almost had his dive-master’s certification already.

Yacht broker . . . he had a hankering to try his hand at that part of the family business too, although that might take a while, given that he’d have to wait for his grandfather to step aside first. The old man could shake loose every bit of cash in a seasoned yachtsman’s wallet with impressive ease, throw in a second-hand ship’s bell while he was at it, and the buyer would
still
walk away well pleased.

Caleb could see some of those old bells now, piled haphazardly on a dusty storage shelf above a half-built galley kitchen that had come out of someone’s yacht. Mainly because he was currently holed up in his grandfather’s storage area, the place where old ship fittings went to die.

Downstairs, a party rocked on without him; a mixture of his and Cutter’s friends and various girlfriends of the moment. With only eleven-month age difference between him and Cutter, their friendship groups tended to intertwine. Caleb would usually be down there in the thick of it, but not tonight. A bleak, black mood had descended on him and he’d retreated upstairs to the dusty little junk room that was his sanctuary.

Which was why, when he looked up and saw Breanna Tucker standing in the doorway, his scowl deepened.

“Party’s downstairs,” he told her curtly. “Cutter’s downstairs.”

This was pertinent information. Bree Tucker being Cutter’s girl and all.

But she didn’t go away. Instead, she came over to where he sat sprawled on some old deck cushions and stood looking down at him, her expression unreadable. She glanced at the half-full bottle of scotch at his side and her eyebrow rose in silent query or maybe displeasure. He never knew what Breanna Tucker was thinking when she looked at him. He didn’t know why the laughing, fun-loving girl others knew her to be clammed up silent and uncertain whenever he was around.

Or maybe he did know.

Same reason he turned into a silent, brooding ass.

“You don’t like me,” she said.

“You’re Cutter’s girl, not mine. I don’t have to like you.”

“You watch me when you think no one’s looking.”

Caleb shrugged.

“What is it that you see?”

“I see Cutter’s girl. A pretty girl.” She
was
pretty, he’d give her that. Possibly even stunning—all long limbs, sun-browned skin, honey-streaked hair and the liveliest smile. She had eyes that saw too much and lips made for kissing.

Watching her and Cutter kiss could gut him faster than skilled hands could gut a fish. “Cutter’s downstairs,” he growled. “You should be too.”

But she didn’t leave. “You’re beautiful, you know. All three of you Jackson boys are so impossibly photogenic. Eli and those eyes of his. Cutter’s smile. And you.”

She didn’t expand when it came to what she thought beautiful about him and maybe that was a good thing. “Those photos I took of the three of you unloading the morning catch . . . do you remember me taking them?”

He remembered. She’d been waiting on the dock for them one morning, just on daybreak. “Just ignore me,” she’d said to him and he’d wished he could. “Stop posing,” she’d said to Cutter and Cutter had grinned, wide and wicked and she’d caught that smile on film, of course she had. That picture now had pride of place on the boatshed wall, along with a good one of Eli and their father emptying a bin full of fish into the sorting grid.

Bree took his silence as an invite to stay. She settled down beside him on the cushions, picked up his whiskey and started drinking.

“Hey,” he protested and reached for the bottle in order to slow her down. “Easy, light-weight, it’s not water. Also . . . it’s mine.”

“You’re not going to drink it all,” she murmured, even as she shot him a sinner’s smile and licked a drop of stray bourbon from her lips. If she’d been
his
girl he’d have taken care of that perfectly placed stray droplet for her. As it was, he wrenched his gaze away from her lips and let her rest the bottle somewhere in her lap.

“I sent a dozen of those photos to an art school in Melbourne as part of my application for entry,” she said after a long minute’s silence. “I got in.”

“Congratulations.” He meant it. “They were good photos. Everyone loved them. My mother’s going to get the ones you gave to Cutter framed.”

“She hasn’t seen the best ones yet. No one has.”

“Why hide your best ones?”

“They were of you.”

He let that hang there. He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, and a frozen moment later she dropped her gaze to the bottle still cradled in her hands. “Now all I have to do is tell my parents that I got in. And that I’m going.”