Monsters Under Mistletoe

3. Carol

Chapter 3

Carol

“ W ill your brother ever stop being an ass?” I snarked, grabbing another one of the yummy hors d'oeuvres, plopping it into my mouth.

“He’s on the phone,” Ella gesticulated at Patrick, holding a small device against his ear, while pressing a finger in the other to mute my voice.

“It’s Christmas, Pats,” I yelled, throwing an ice cube at him.

“Ouch.” He swiveled, “I got to go.” He hung up.

“How do you do that?” Ella wanted to know.

“What, not let him get away with bullshit?” I retorted, glaring at Patrick.

“Yeah, that,” Ella grinned.

“Treat him like one of your cooks,” I suggested.

Ella’s soft spot for Patrick only encouraged his bad behaviors, and had nearly ruined their wedding. What was I thinking? Had ruined their wedding.

This was the same woman, who ran the fanciest restaurant in town with an iron fist, terrorizing her cooks under the guise of training them.

“Don’t you put any ideas in my Ella’s head,” Patrick warned, embracing Ella and kissing her cheek. “No more work baby, I promise.”

He turned to me, “So what crime has my insufferable brother committed this time?” He asked me with an exasperated huff in his voice.

“He told his coaches your father is sick, so he could play hooky from practice.” I explained.

Patrick laughed, “He’s playing hooky from practice? That’s a new one.”

“Didn’t you hear me, he lied about your dad,” I blustered.

Patrick shrugged, “Good for him.”

“I don’t get the problem.” Ella chimed in.

“You don’t joke about stuff like that. Especially after the health scare your dad had last year.”

Henry McCloud fought a bout of cancer the previous year, fortunately he had only needed a few months of chemo treatment and a small surgery to resolve the issue. But he was being monitored every year now.

“I love you, Carol, you’re my best friend.” Ella embraced me from the left.

“But you, my friend, need to get laid,” Patrick hugged me from the right.

I pushed out of both their embraces, “Some friends you are.”

“Exactly, you know we’ll always tell you the truth,” Patrick asserted.

“Even when it hurts,” Ella added and I stared from one to the other.

“Alright, you two are hard to take with your lovey dovey on a normal day, but now that you’ve taken up finishing each other’s sentences,” I shook my head in mock annoyance.

“It’s a bit much,” a voice behind me finished my sentence. I rolled my eyes at Patrick and Ella, knowing full well who stood behind me. I didn’t even have to look at my trembling fingers to recognize the voice. “I fully agree with you, talls.”

I swiveled around, ready to unleash my full fury at Gabe, and faced his chest, his very wide, very manly chest, covered in a red sweater. I dry swallowed as my anger evaporated, as it, unfortunately, so often did when I faced his hot, Adonis body.

Thankfully the doorbell rang, announcing the first guests’ arrival, sparing me any embarrassment I might have created for myself.

Most of the guests were made up of friends and family, with a few people from Patrick’s work, some customers he wanted to shmooze, the mayor, and a few members of the city council. Building this subdivision had been Patrick’s dream after his football career came to an abrupt halt. Ever since the monsters —as they called themselves—had come out of the woodwork and revealed their existence to the world at large, Patrick had wanted to build a community just for them. And he did. This mansion of his stood smack center in the middle of it. A community just for monsters and their family members.

Did I mention Gabe and Patrick were bear shifters?

This community had gotten so successful, monsters applied to live here from all over the world. Patrick was going to expand it on city owned land, which was why he had invited all these politicians.

Gabe’s—the star football player, the golden child of our city, Stetson—attendance only added to Patrick’s plans, and now I realized why he hadn’t been upset about the fib Gabe told his coaches.

For me, the event was more than torturous, aside from a few shifters, I was the tallest person in the room, and I hated all the attention.

“My, will you ever stop growing?” Aunt Hattie, Henry’s sister, asked, shaking her head.

“What are you now, six two?” remarked Olivia Blake, one of many of Gabe’s ex-girlfriends from high school and now married to the mayor.

“How’s the air up there?” Ricky, a friend of Patrick’s, who had never forgiven me for being Pat’s best friend.

“Some help with the top shelf?” Miriam, Ella’s half-sister giggled—also main source of torture duringhighschool.

From there, the list only went on and on and on.

“They’re idiots,” Ella comforted me when I ran into the kitchen to catch a breather, but soon learned there was no such thing here. The kitchen looked more like a battlefield. Red frosting was everywhere.

In the end, I retreated outside. Surprisingly, it was a mild night, the temperature hovered somewhere around fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, but there was no wind. The air was fresh and brisk, and the sky dotted with a gazillion stars.

The moon reflected off Patrick’s pool and the lake farther out. Pines stood all around us, as the subdivision had been built right in the middle of a forest, leaving most trees where they stood except for roads and where the houses had been constructed.

“Too stuffy in there?”

I groaned, why was Gabe following me everywhere tonight?

“I just needed some alone time,” I replied, hoping he would catch the hint.

No such luck, he sidled up next to me at the terrace’s pony wall. “It’s beautiful out.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled noncommittally, still hoping he would get the hint.

“A bit chilly though, you’ll catch your death out here,” with those words, he placed a jacket around my shoulders.

Surprised, I turned, lifted my head, still amazed by the unfamiliar gesture. His warm whiskey eyes looked down on me. I couldn’t have said what rode me, what insanity possessed me to admit, to him of all people, “It’s like a high school reunion from hell in there.”

His laughter took me even more off guard. “I’ve always loved your sense of humor and snarkiness.”

“You do?” The moonlight played with the dark strands in his moussed up hair, that, as always, seemed to call at me to put my fingers through it to tame it or mousse it even more.

“Yeah, there is always one thing I can count on you for.”

I couldn’t resist, I had to bite, “What’s that?”

“Your honesty,” he said in such a low voice, it sent shivers down my spine. The good sort of shivers, the ones that made you want to do a snake dance to keep the sensation going.

Speechless I stared up at him, straight into his deep, beautiful eyes. Eyes that could hypnotize a girl straight out of her panties. Eyes I had dreamed about ever since my ovaries announced their readiness.

“You’ve always fascinated me, Caro.”

What was a girl to say to that? I blamed it on the moment, the moonshine, the faint Christmas music coming through the closed doors, the stars high up in the sky, the smell of pine, and the beautiful, dark lake splayed out before us. And of course the man who had been the center of all my girlie fantasies for what seemed like forever. The only man who could make me feel not like a giant, clumsy, well, giant. With him, I believed in all those romance stories, where the hero carries the girl off to live happily ever after. Not only because he was one of the few men I knew who physically could, but because it was him. Gabe. My Gabe.

Slowly his head lowered and a rush moved through my body. Holy cow, was he going to kiss me?

“Caro.”

I tilted my head to the side, closed my eyes and opened my lips just enough. I wondered if I had fainted from hypothermia or something, because this … this just couldn’t happen.