It’s Mother-Pucking Christmas!

9. Dakota

9

DAKOTA

H e stood up automatically when I approached.

“I got us a table,” he explained, holding out a hand to me.

“We hugging or a handshake?” I gave him a confused look.

“I’m helping you with your jacket,” he said as he removed my coat with the barest brush of his warm fingers along my neck.

Ryder slid my chair in behind me as I sat.

“You really are a Boy Scout.”

“You’re on a date with me,” he replied, like that explained things.

I glanced at the empty beer bottle on the table. “Ah, shit.” Eyes narrowing, I grabbed his arm, sliding up his sleeve, ignoring the way the muscles under my fingertips jumped at my touch. “Yep. Five thirty.”

“You’re late,” he said, before he could stop himself.

“Late? The hell? It’s 5:29,” I argued as he took his hand back. “I’m early.”

“If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.”

I glared at him.

He stared mulishly back.

“All right, Boy Scout.” I leaned back and crossed my arms. “I guess I’ll be five minutes early for our next date.”

“I was twenty minutes early.”

“I was still in bed twenty minutes ago.”

“With your—” He clamped his mouth shut.

“Boyfriend?” I raised an eyebrow.

“You did say you wanted to sleep with me, not date me,” he reminded me. “You might, I don’t know, have a boyfriend. I’ve had girls go out with me because they just wanted to… scratch an itch.”

“No wonder it’s so hard to get a man if bitches are out here with three of them,” I muttered then moved one of the obnoxious Christmas candles out of the way before it caught my sweater on fire. “Look, no. I sleep with one guy at a time. That’s enough for me. I have a job and family obligations. I cannot be juggling a reverse harem. The bed only held me and my Rudolph pillow.”

“Is that some weird”—Ryder searched for a PG word—“sexual innuendo?”

“You’re thinking of the rabbit, which is a vibrator.”

His cheeks went red. “Oh!”

He looked down at the mound of greenery on the tiny table and grimaced. “Maybe the guys were right. It has been a while since I’ve been on a date. I’m out of practice,” he said to himself.

Since he wasn’t looking at me, I felt safe to smile at Ryder. He was adorable.

His back straightened, and he rolled his shoulders, sending all that muscle under the frankly sinfully tight gray T-shirt rippling.

I wished I’d gotten a better peek at the Christmas package in the black jeans before I’d sat down.

“What are the magic words?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Like, what do I have to say to get you to take me home and fuck me into your mattress?” I rested my chin on my hand.

“I—that’s—I don’t do that on the first date,” the hockey player sputtered.

The waitress came by, saving him, and I ordered Ryder another beer and a Christmas Cosmo for me, extra vodka.

“Don’t tell coach I’m having two beers,” Ryder said, like a guilty kid who’d peeked at his Christmas presents.

“Ooh, two whole beers.”

“Do you always do that?” The handsome face scowled.

“Do what?”

“Mock whatever people say.”

“Only for hot guys.” I winked at him. “You gotta take them down a peg, or they just run ragged all over town. Entitled little shits.” I laughed when he winced. “You’re so cute when you’re offended.”

“You’re negging me,” he said accusingly.

“I’m negging you?” I drawled.

“Yes.” He nodded. “It’s a terribly offensive dating tactic. Putting someone down so they try and overcompensate to make the other person like them.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I blew him a kiss. “It’s just because you’re the captain of a team I hate. If I was actually negging you, you’d be curled up under the table,” I said as the waitress brought our drinks.

Ryder glared at me over his beer.

“Hey! Don’t knock it! It’s actually gotten me in the bed of many a hot Manhattan finance bro, though”—I tapped my chin—“in hindsight, they may have had a humiliation kink.” I sipped my drink thoughtfully.

“Well, I don’t neg women or—”

“Humiliate them when you fuck them?” I laughed into my drink.

“Sincerity is nice.” Ryder looked right at me then, trapping me in the intense blue of his eyes. Like an ancient glacier lake, they were that kind of cold, pure blue that steals your breath and reminds you that you are alive.

I swallowed, trying to find my breath. “In honor of sincerity”—I clinked my glass against his bottle—“you have the most stunning eyes I’ve ever seen.”

A slow smile spread across his face, sending him from attractive to smoking fucking hot.

“Thanks.” He looked down briefly then back up, pinning me in the intense cerulean. “The only nice thing my father ever did was give me these.”

Cocky bastard.

His blue eyes widened slightly. Suddenly I was drowning in his gaze. I sat frozen across from him, glass clutched in my hand, halfway to my mouth.

Then he shook his head, breaking the spell. “Sorry, that line works better when Utah does it. Er, when Rick does it.” He looked up at me from under the unfairly long dark lashes— Fucking wasted on a man —though I wanted to feel them flutter against my skin when he kissed me.

“I actually don’t really know what color eyes my father had,” Ryder admitted, drawing shapes in the condensation on his beer bottle.

“Oh, did he pass away?”

Ryder laughed sadly then ran a hand through his hair, making it a little messy over his forehead.

I had to sit on my hands to keep from reaching over and smoothing it down.

“I was adopted.” The words tumbled out from him in a rush. “And my parents didn’t leave any documentation, or maybe they did, but the social workers didn’t give it to my adoptive parents.”

“Uh, what?”

“My adoptive parents thought they couldn’t have children, but then they could,” he said rapidly, “and they had a little girl and two little boys—triplets. They were so tiny.” His face softened. “I loved watching them sleep. The mom didn’t like it though. She freaked out because I was a big kid. The mom was afraid I was going to hurt her miracle babies and told the dad to get rid of me.”

“You can’t just abandon a child,” I fumed, suddenly furious.

“You can if you don’t do it through the state. You just sign over guardianship to some other adult.” Ryder gave me a wan smile.

“The dad picked me up from school one day, drove me out to the country, said we were going pumpkin picking as a surprise for the mom. Then he left me with these smelly people in an old farmhouse. There were a bunch of other kids there. And cats. So many cats. They collected them, I guess. The kids not the cats. They didn’t seem to like the cats much. They just bred. There were kittens everywhere. Anyway, one of the girls had had enough.”

“Holy shit.”

“A month after I got there, she up and started walking down the country road. Got picked up by a state trooper, and they came and took us all away. Then I bounced around foster care. I think I couldn’t get adopted while I was young and cute because they were trying to get my legal parents to take me back. But my adoptive parents refused to see me. They didn’t even give me my things back. Said they’d thrown them out. I had this stuffed rabbit named Funny.”

He had a lost look in his eyes.

“Sometimes I go in thrift stores just to see if I happen on him one day… Anyway, then my ex-parents finally terminated their rights. At that point I was too big. ‘Weird and awkward’ was how one foster dad described me. Then I turned eighteen, and my foster mom told me to get out, that she wasn’t getting any more money from me and I had to leave.”

I stared at him, not knowing what to say. What do you even say to that? Probably something that’s not “You’re coming home with me so I can force-feed you homemade pasta then round up all my aunts and cousins so we can beat the shit out of your so-called parents.” I might give my family shit, but none of us were going to dump so much as a goldfish out in the country with some creepy kid hoarders.

“What the literal fuck.”

The big man winced. “You didn’t need to hear that,” he said sadly. “That’s not first-date material. I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

God, he was a fucking cinnamon roll. Like a warm, gooey cinnamon roll. I wanted to wrap him in blankets and make him a mug of spiced tea. Shower him with stuffed animals ’til I got one of his brilliant smiles. Fuck me, right?

“So you trauma dump and girls ghost you, huh?” I knocked back the rest of my syrupy red drink.

“Yeah. I’m not supposed to.” Ryder looked down, unhappy.

I reached out. “Don’t be.” I rested my fingers lightly on the back of his hand. “I come from a long line of oversharers.”

He gave me a slight smile.

“When you come to one of my family parties, you’ll see. The litter box you spent your formative years in is nothing compared to the graphically violent stories of childbirth my aunts will regale you with.”

His smile grew a little more hopeful. It was tugging right on my heartstrings like a sad kicked puppy.

“You have a big family?” he asked.

“Correction, I have an obnoxiously large family. I have a crap ton of siblings. My parents have two crap tons of siblings. All they do is make babies. My family is… It’s too big,” I warned. “They’re insane. It’s complete chaos. Everyone always eating or forcing you to eat. They’re all in your business. They’ll barge in the bathroom when you’re trying to pee and wave a pregnancy test at you while another aunt is asking if you are developing hemorrhoids like your mom did when she was your age. This is all at the top of her voice, mind you.” I scowled. “So you’ll fit right in as an oversharer.”

He looked wistful. “That sounds amazing, like a movie.”

The waitress came by with the bill. Ryder dropped money down before I even registered what he was doing. There wasn’t the back-and-forth the Manhattan finance guys did—where they didn’t want you to pay because it was emasculating but also wanted you to give an SNL-worthy improv skit about how you really wanted to pay so they didn’t feel like they were being taken advantage of by a gold digger even though they only invited you for shitty, watered-down happy hour drinks.

“My mom is hosting one of the many Christmas get-togethers tomorrow. You should come,” I offered as I stood up.

Ryder was right there getting my chair and holding out my jacket. “I don’t want to intrude,” he said as he zipped up his coat.

“You’re not. I see these people all the time. We constantly get together. Dog birthdays, random holidays, someone’s bunion was removed—big family get-together. And we all live near each other, so it’s not like it’s that special.”

“It sounds special.” There was that yearning look again.

Yeah, he was coming home with me.

“Some new blood will keep things interesting. You know,” I said as he escorted me to the door, “I keep threatening to go to Aruba for Christmas.”

“No, not for Christmas. You have to be near family for Christmas,” Ryder argued, getting the door for me.

“Meh. So you coming?”

He stared at me, his blue eyes searching mine, sparking in the Christmas lights on Main Street.

“You want me to come meet your family?”

“Um.” I mean, the last guy I’d taken to meet my family was my high school boyfriend. All the other guys I’d dated acted like I was forcing them on a death march at gunpoint when I’d suggested just taking the train up from Manhattan to Rhode Island. “Yeah,” I said, surprising myself. “Actually, I really do want you to meet them. I think they’d love you.”

“I’d really like to. Thank you for inviting me.” He brushed a kiss on my cheek.

“No kissing on the mouth on the first date, Boy Scout?” I ran my hand up his arm.

“Definitely not if I’m about to meet your parents.”