Merry Humbug Christmas (24 page)

On the fourth day of Christmas,

Murphy’s Law gave to me . . .

four yapping dogs,

three wrenched necks,

two mismatched gloves,

and a big rockin’ Harry Winston ring.

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4

“Welcome to the Palmer Family Flophouse.”

“Are you kidding me?” Reese exclaimed as the mag-

nificent home came into sight. “I thought we were walking down

another road! This is
the driveway
?”

Damian chuckled as he took her hand and tried to lead her

toward the house, but Reese stayed rooted to the spot and squirmed out of his grasp.

“It’s . . .” Dropping the scarf from her face, she gawked at the

sight at the end of the driveway. “. . . spectacular.”

The sophisticated—
and massive!
—home looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting or a movie set. Three stories, the first of them fronted almost entirely by glass . . . perfect, clean lines of twinkling, white lights framing every inch . . . a snow-covered walkway outlined with immaculate red-and-white lanterns . . . a

twenty-foot evergreen standing at one side like a muscular sentry, ignited with thousands of colored bulbs and sporting a blazing white-gold cross at the top.

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Merry

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“Exactly how much money am I marrying into?”

“You’re betrothed to a neurosurgeon,” he replied with a snicker.

“Unless you marry my father instead, the keys to all of this would only be on loan for a weekend getaway or a few days at Christmas.”

Reese’s heart palpitated, and she tapped her chest with her ugly

gloved hand. “I . . . can’t really . . .
breathe
.”

“Reese?”

She loosened the scarf and yanked it from her neck, stuffing it

into his hands. Flapping the collar of her coat, she gasped for air. “I don’t know . . . what’s . . .”

Damian stood before her, straight and serious, and he placed his

hands on her shoulders and looked her squarely in the eye. “Take in a deep breath and just hold it for a minute.”

She did as he instructed, her eyes bulging and her cheeks puffed

with air.

“Now just let it out very slowly.”

Instead, the air pushed through her puckered lips with the

sound of a sputtering raspberry. Before she’d expelled all of what she’d taken in, she prattled, “I’ve never even seen anything like this, Damian. I mean, it’s probably the biggest house I’ve ever seen in person . . . well . . . outside of a hotel we stayed in once in Seattle.

My mom got some sort of special deal on it, and we were only there one night before my dad insisted on checking us out so we could stay somewhere more realistic. Not that your family home isn’t realistic.

I mean, in all seriousness, it’s not really, but I just mean—”

“Reese,” he interrupted with a sweet smile. “Calm down, baby.

It’s going to be fine. It’s just a house.”

Waving her arm over his shoulder with a dramatic flourish, she

exclaimed, “This is not just a house, Damian. This! This is an
event
in logs, stone, and glass.”

“No, it’s—”

“I won’t know how to act, Damie.” She felt the caving-in pro-

cess as it set in, and she tried to pull herself together to no avail.

“You haven’t met my parents yet, so you have no way of knowing.

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sweet and sour pickles marinated in Kool-Aid. And I’m not entirely certain, and I could be wrong I guess because I don’t have any real proof, but I’m pretty sure they sometimes smoke weed in the base-ment!” The rambling had begun, and she couldn’t stop the snowball from plummeting down the hill. “Our big Christmas tradition was

watching my brother do a dance from
The Nutcracker
in the living room, which was alarmingly entertaining when compared to the fact that, from the day they retired to Key West, my father hasn’t worn anything besides a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts even one day.

The last Christmas I spent with them, he played a ukulele and sang

“Jingle Bell Rock” until Hersch and I couldn’t stand it anymore!

I don’t . . .” She glared at the house again for a long moment and rubbed her forehead. “I don’t fit here.”

Damian held both of her hands to his heart and smiled at her.

“Look at me.”

You poor, sweet, deluded man,
she thought as she gazed into his chocolate-brown eyes and melted a little.
You really think you can shove
this square peg into that giant round hole up there, don’t you?

Damian kissed her wacky mittens and smiled. “You fit with me,”

he stated. “There’s not one single doubt that you fit with me. This is just a remote and distant part of who I am . . . like your family isn’t the sum total of who you are. You’ll do fine here because you fit
with
me
.”

Reese sighed. “You need an intervention.”

He arched an eyebrow as he asked, “Out of the two of us, you

think
I’m the one
who needs an intervention?”

“All right. I need one too.”

“So we’re perfect for one another,” he deduced. “Now can we

go inside and warm up before we freeze to this spot? My mother

despises those little statues people put on their lawns. I don’t want us to become the life-sized ones she finds on hers in the morning.”

“Gnomes,” she croaked, shaking her head and nodding at the

same time. “My parents have three of them in the vegetable garden.”

She slapped her hips with both hands and moaned. “My parents have gnomes in their yard.”

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“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Reese followed him up the sidewalk to the massive front door.

Damian cranked the knob and sighed.

“Wait here.”

She watched him jog down the sidewalk again, stopping at the

end of it and peering up at the top floors.

“What are you doing?” she asked him from the porch.

He raised his index finger at her without reply and hurried

around the side of the house.

“You are not going to climb that Christmas tree, right? Damian?”

It seemed like a really long time since he’d disappeared, and

Reese had begun to shiver, wishing she’d held on to that scarf of his.

She yanked the hat down onto her head and folded her arms, shift-

ing from one foot to the other in the vain hope that it might help her get warm. Just about the time she’d decided to sit down on the rus-tic pine bench angled off to one side, the ornate wrought-iron lamp over her head flooded the whole porch with bright yellow light.

The front door flew open, and she expected Damian’s victorious

greeting. Instead, a large and sleepy young man in a tight thermal shirt and jeans glared at her.

“Who are you, and why are you standing at our door?”

“Oh. I . . . I’m . . .”

“Who
iss
it, Eli?” a young woman asked in a thick Spanish accent as she approached the open door.

“Dunno yet.”

“Oh, you’re Eli!” Reese exclaimed. She started to reach out to

shake his hand, but she caught sight of her horrible mismatched mittens. She discreetly yanked them off and slipped both hands behind her back, tossing them off the porch and into the snow before she took his hand and shook it awkwardly. “And you must be Sofia?”

she asked the stunning, dark-haired woman standing next to him.

“I’m Reese.” Not even the remotest spark of familiarity. “Damian’s fiancée?”

“Oh,” Eli said as he slapped her hand and then excitedly twisted

his own out of her grip. “Where is he?”

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She glanced toward the side of the house and shrugged. “I’m not

exactly sure. I think he went looking for a key or a way into the house so we wouldn’t wake everyone.”

A mischievous smile began to form, and Reese recognized it

instantly.

The Palmer family grin.

“Come on inside,” Sofia invited her with the whisper of her

Puerto Rican accent. “You look like you’re
frosen
solid.”

“We hit a deer a couple of miles back, and the wheels got

jammed. . . . Anyway, we had to walk the rest of the way . . .”

She hadn’t even noticed Eli’s departure until a wild growl drew

her attention to the ground in front of the evergreen. Eli had already tackled Damian, and the two of them wrestled around in the snow

like ornery schoolboys.

“Is that Damian?” another one cried as he appeared in the door-

way, presumably Matthew, and he flew off the porch, his bathrobe

flapping behind him like a superhero’s cape as he dove into the mix.

Sofia rolled her eyes and grabbed Reese’s hand. “Come on.

They’ll need coffee and blankets.”

Reese chuckled and began to follow her inside when Damian

shouted, “Hey! Where are you taking my bride?”

“Away from the three of you before she finds out the truth about

you
imbécils
and runs for her life.” Muttering, she added,
“Idiotas.”

“Good to see you too, Sof,” he called after her. “Merry Christmas!”

He’d barely gotten the words out before Sofia slammed the front

door behind them and led Reese through the towering foyer toward

the cavernous kitchen and great room. A twenty-foot spruce tree

captured most of her attention, even with its six million or so lights extinguished, stretching toward the rafters next to an open loft.

Reese’s hand rested on her heart, and she gasped when she saw

it. “That’s . . . so . . .”

“Enorme?”
Sofia finished for her. “I know.”

“I was going to say exquisite!”

“Really?” she asked as she stood next to her and inspected the

tree with fresh eyes. “It’s just a
leetle
. . . too much for my tastes. But Merry Humbug Christmas.indd 195

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Humbug Christmas

then what else are you going to get with ceilings this tall, heh?” She shrugged one shoulder and tucked a wisp of wavy dark hair behind

her ear as she smiled. “Let’s put on the coffee, shall we?”

The impressive kitchen nearly stole Reese’s breath away. Hickory

cabinets with leaded glass fronts bordered the space around a large center island with a sage green and beige granite counter and a low-hanging row of amber pendulum lights. The appliances appeared to

be built right into the cabinetry, and a huge stainless steel hood hovered over a six-burner gas range with a griddle on one side.

“Ah,
hermosa
. I’ll bet those were cute boots before you introduced them to the snow, heh?” Sofia commented as she produced five ceramic coffee mugs with a white-on-white swirled design, and she set them on the island.

Reese’s lip curled slightly as she looked down at them. “Yeah,”

she said with a groan. “They were.”

Three noisy men rumbled into the house, drawing the women’s

attention.

“I’m warning you,
chicos
!” Sofia exclaimed just above a whisper, and she pointed an erect finger at them and wiggled it toward the railing beyond the Christmas tree. “There are six sleeping children in that loft. If you wake even one of them, you’re all
dormir en el bosque
.”

Damian looked to Eli who translated. “Sleeping in the woods.”

Damian and Matthew both nodded.

“Ah!”

“Gotcha.”

The family resemblance sang true and clear as Eli, Matthew, and

Damian—with their arms around one another’s shoulders—stifled

their harmonious laughter.

“You think I’m joking?” she asked them.

“We would never think that about you, Sofia,” Matthew said with

a snort. “You don’t have a humorous bone in your body.”

She glared, and Eli smacked his brother hard in the ribs. “Don’t

be a blockhead, Blockhead.”

Matthew rounded the island and pulled his sister-in-law into an

embrace, kissing her cheek. “We’re sorry, Sof. We’ll be good boys.”

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“Like you would know how.”

Damian stood behind Reese and wrapped his arms loosely around

her waist. “Can you all pretend to behave, at least long enough to say hello to my best girl?”

The three of them turned toward her, and Reese suddenly felt