Santa’s Pucking Hat Trick (The Forbidden Reverse Harem Collection)

1. Rachel

1

RACHEL

T he second I crossed the border into my hometown, I almost T-boned Santa Claus with my T-bird. Didn’t seem like a great sign for my return to good old rinky-dink Mistletoe. Not that I was one to look for or rely upon so-called signs from the universe.

“Holy fuck!” I shouted as I slammed on my precious car’s delicate brakes. Rhiannon—the name I’d chosen for my bright blue vintage Thunderbird when I finally saved up enough to buy her a couple years back—screeched and groaned and complained the whole way, but the car did stop before it slammed into the red-suited body that was so stupidly crossing the road without looking both ways. I laid on my horn, in part to vent my own frustration and calm the racing heartbeat assaulting my ears, and Santa stumbled against my bumper. He looked at me with bleary, bloodshot eyes and blinked too slowly.

Of course he was drunk. Typical for a dude who only worked one night a year, I guess.

I could hear the soft mumble of Kris Kringle yelling at me, see his fake white beard jostling along with his words. I honked again, a shorter burst this time that made him jump.

“Get out of the fucking road, asshole!” I yelled, and I must have been loud enough for him to hear me through the glass, because he slunk away on unsteady feet, seeming to disappear into the scraggly woods at the edge of town. Before I could even think about continuing my drive, a whole hoard of Santas seemed to appear at his back, following their inebriated companion like a load of baby ducklings. Made me wonder what the proper term would be for a group of Santa impersonators. A gift bag of Santas? A workshop? A carol of Clauses?

Home sweet home my ass.

With another couple minutes of guiding my car down the familiar small-town streets of Mistletoe, I turned onto the road where I’d grown up, aptly named Comet Court after the reindeer everyone knew was Santa’s favorite. Though I hadn’t missed living in a Christmas-themed tourist trap of a small town for the years I’d been away at college—Michael always theorized that I was born without the Christmas spirit—I wasn’t enough of a Grinch to escape the wave of nostalgic warmth as I pulled into the driveway of my parents’ house.

The Henning house was already decked out for the town’s favorite holiday, even though it was far too early in fall for that to be appropriate, in my opinion. It wasn’t even Halloween, for Christ’s sake. The large brick house looked like a set straight out of a Christmas movie. Red and green candy canes lined the walkway up to the porch and a golden sleigh sat parked in the yard, overflowing with packages adorned in bows and shiny wrapping paper. My mother’s favorite huge, fake snow-covered wreath hung on the front door, which was appropriately painted a true Christmas evergreen at all times of year. Fall or not, ’twas the season as soon as Paula Henning deemed it so.

I parked my car and made it up to the door before I realized there were no other cars visible in the driveway or through the window of the garage. I was tired after the less-than-fun road trip, to be fair. When I checked for the spare key my parents kept under a stone Santa Claus by the porch, I saw a note attached to it.

At a friendly with the Santas. Come watch with us!

(p.s. Welcome home, Rach!)

It was in my mother’s handwriting, hilariously similar to my own, though perhaps neater. I sighed as I trudged back down to my car without bothering to unload all of my belongings from the trunk, knowing exactly where they were telling me to go.

The Skatin’ Santas was our town’s beloved minor-league hockey team, for which my brother Michael was a star player. This note meant that I was supposed to meet my family at the local ice center for a pre-season “friendly” game between the Santas and some other semi-local team. I’d gone to hundreds of hockey matches over the years, and I’d probably been tired of them after the first two. It was typical that I’d have to brave another Santas’ match before I could even unpack and settle into being back at home. I wasn’t about to unload my car of all the belongings I’d been too sentimental to part with before I left school by myself. That was what dads and brothers were for. So, to hockey central I went.

Michael had always been a budding hockey star, even before he’d started playing it for a living. As much as I loved my twin, as much as I rooted for him, there wasn’t a sporty bone in my body, so I’d always found it difficult to be as excited as I probably should be for his success. I would have been cool with never going to another hockey game in my life if he wasn’t on the team. The hockey overload was yet another thing I didn’t miss about being at home.

And yet, the next thing I knew, I was pulling up to the ice center I’d been dragged to over and over again through my entire childhood. Deep breaths, Rach. You can survive a little friendly.

It was easy to find my parents once I was inside the large building, since I’d been visiting this same local ice center for years. I knew they’d be at the main ice rink, since the center had more than one, and once I found the appropriately buzzing center of sports excitement, I knew just where in the stands to go to find my folks. They always sat in the same spot—as close to the rink, the plexiglass shields, as possible. On the home team side, of course. The Hennings were nothing if not a hockey family. That, and predictable.

My mom was wearing her oversized jersey with her son’s last name—well, hers and mine too—printed across her shoulder blades, and my dad was seated beside her in full red and green face paint, a Santa hat on his head and a foam finger on his hand. It was overboard for just a friendly match, but that level of enthusiasm was typical for my parents. It was endearing, really. When I approached them carefully from the side, trying to scooch in to sit beside them without distracting too much from the action on the ice, they noticed me immediately and their familiar, loving faces both lit up.

“Rachel! You’re home!” my mom exclaimed, jumping up to hug me by practically flinging herself over the arena chairs. She pulled me tight against her with a warmth that may have melted my cold heart just a little. I was definitely the family Scrooge, but I wasn’t a monster.

“In the flesh,” I said, laughing a little breathlessly. I pulled back and tugged one of her graying curls. “Your hair’s shorter. I like it.”

“Oh, thank you.” She waved off the compliment. “And look at you! My gorgeous girl, home at last. I’m so, so glad you’re back, honey.” She pulled me in for a second, tighter hug this time, her words rumbling through her chest to mine as she refused to let me go. “Oh, we’ve just missed you so much. And you didn’t even wait for us back at the house! You came all the way out for Mike’s game.”

“I’m the best sister in the world,” I joked dryly, and Mom laughed.

“You’re the best daughter, that’s for sure.” She gave me another squeeze that nearly popped my eyes out of my head.

“Don’t hog her, Paula,” my dad grumbled as he came in to bombard me with a second hug. He looked the same as always, his silver hair cropped short and his face just as wearily kind as always. He worked too hard, but he loved running his Christmas tree farm too much to ever let it go. “It’s so good to see you, sweet girl.”

“You too,” I told him, and it was true. No matter how badly I’d wanted to get out of my small town for college, I’d never had a desire to get away from my family, despite their hockey obsession. Paula and Steve Henning were wonderful people, supportive parents who never let me or my brother doubt how strongly we were loved. Michael and I were some of the lucky ones.

“There any room for me to get in on this hug train?” Another familiar voice piped up from behind my dad, and when I looked around his shoulder excitedly, sure enough, my “aunt” Bria was standing there with a huge smile on her face. She was pulling me into a laughing bear hug in seconds, and I was startled into laughing again—the first positive surprise since I’d breached the borders of Mistletoe.

Bria was my parents’ best friend, an aunt in spirit rather than a biological one, but she felt like family, and that was all that mattered. Her caramel curls frizzed a little around her face, her olive skin lined with age, though she was quite a bit younger than my parents, and a tendency toward laughter that gave everyone else fits too. Her hazel eyes were smiling at me just as surely as her mouth was.

“Good to see you, kid,” she said, and when she used the diminutive nickname, it didn’t bother me at all. She’d called me that forever, so she was allowed. She clapped a hand on my back and turned with me to look out at the ice. “What a welcome party, huh?”

Bria was also one of the only people in this Podunk town who shared my disinterest in hockey. Her wry joke went unnoticed by my parents, who had been sucked back into the action on the ice already. I snorted as I followed Bria to take a seat in the stands a row behind my parents.

“Yeah, a hockey game is exactly the kind of rager I had in mind.”

“Maybe they’ll at least do you a favor and lose,” Bria said quietly enough that none of the Santas’ fans on the bleachers could overhear—covering her ass, likely, since that was the kind of sentiment that could get you drawn and quartered in Mistletoe even now.

“I’ll just be happy if it doesn’t go into overtime,” I said, and Bria and I both crossed ourselves as if in prayer.

Since the sports element didn’t interest me much, I found myself looking for other means of engaging with the fast-paced, sometimes brutal game in front of me. Namely by people-watching. It was, admittedly, harder to do when the players were all decked out in their pads and helmets, but I made do with what I had.

My twin was the clear star of the team, gliding around the ice like he owned it, but without the textbook arrogance I’d come to expect from a lot of hockey bros. His teammates all seemed to orbit around and react off of him, though there was one notable exception. A player who had an offensive position on the team, clearly, but who maybe was a little too aggressive with it, if such a thing existed in this very rough-and-tumble sport.

The player’s jersey declared his last name, Jett , in huge white letters across the back. It wasn’t a name I recognized, but it struck a chord regardless, and it seemed a fitting name from the quick, agile way he flitted about the ice, spraying snowy shavings under his skate blades and adding cocky flourishes to every movement of his stick. It was eye roll inducing, but something about that confidence was a little sexy too.

It was hard to see much of this Jett character’s looks with all of the gear in the way, but there was certainly a jawline that could cut glass and a dazzling white smile visible all the way across the rink. While the women in the stands seemed to swoon for him, the puck itself was almost afraid of this guy, it seemed. It cowered from his slapshot, and so did the players on the other team.

The goalie stood out to me too. The goofy announcer—an old man named Mervus who had done the job for decades—called him Finnegan, though I never saw it spelled out on the player’s broad back. He wore a caged mask over his face, of course, but it wasn’t hard to spot the strands of long, curly auburn hair that fell out of his helmet—or the matching beard that made him stand out from the rest of his teammates. Whereas Jett was a show-off, Finnegan moved with simple brute strength, stopping shots with ruthless efficiency. He was one of the bigger guys on the team too, his shoulder pads making his actual build seem almost inhumanly large. A silly, slightly horny thought struck me—I wondered what it’d be like to be thrown around by a man like that. I may not be a hockey girl, but I was still a red-blooded woman and, apparently, a sucker for masculine strength.

Speaking of strength—the only other player who caught my attention was one I already knew, though he’d physically filled out so much since I last knew him, he may as well have eaten his younger self. I didn’t even recognize him until Bria pointed him out, since the last name on his jersey was average enough that he didn’t immediately come to mind.

“No way that’s Wes,” I whispered to myself as I watched him move across the smooth, white ice.

Wes Robbins was my brother’s childhood best friend, a once-nerdy kid who, as far as I knew, still lived next door to the Henning house. His once-lanky form was now muscled, but still deliciously lean, giving his body that Captain America V-shaped torso effect that was my personal weakness. I remembered his eyes from all those years ago too. A piercing ocean blue that would devastate anyone who looked into them, the kindness behind his gaze a lovely bonus. He didn’t seem to need glasses like he used to either, so they’d be on full display if he didn’t have his stupid helmet in the way.

Talk about a glow-up. Good for him , I thought as the game continued to play out in front of me. He was a skilled player, unconcerned about his appearance or entertainment factor, just happy to support his other teammates on the ice without the need for personal glory. That Jett guy could stand to learn from some of that levelheadedness.

But it didn’t seem that Wes Robbins was rubbing off on his teammates when a fight broke out on the ice. That wasn’t unusual for hockey, of course, but Jesus, this was just a friendly. The referee’s sharp whistle cut through the room. Roman Jett—the apparent full name of the show-off guy, according to the excited commentator—was right in the thick of it.

There was an arrogance to his behavior that really rubbed me the wrong way, even from afar. He dodged a punch from the player he’d clearly antagonized with a shit-eating grin on his face, and he even took off his helmet and shook out his shiny dark hair after the ref put a stop to the brawl. Putting on a show. He wasn’t phased in the slightest when, after presumably giving some smart-ass remark to the referee, he got thrown out of the game entirely. Roman Jett smiled and waved like a royal, blowing kisses to the crowd as he took his seat on the bench, his well-earned throne.

Yeah, I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I kinda immediately hated this guy. The arrogant asshole had been through this song and dance a few times before, clearly, and anyone who went through the world that way wasn’t for me. At least it shouldn’t be too hard to avoid him from now on. I didn’t see myself hanging out at the ice center while I was slumming it here in Mistletoe. Or the local jail, for that matter.

It wasn’t long after the fight incident that the match wrapped up with the Skatin’ Santas clinching a win. It was a good omen for the coming season, which still wouldn’t start for a few weeks. All of the players rushed off the ice, shedding their skates and hugging friends and fans in celebration of this meaningless but morale-boosting win. This moment of camaraderie I could get behind, at least. And soon, my twin was grinning hugely and coming to pull me in for yet another hug, shoulder pads and all.

“Rach! You came!” He was laughing in my ear as he lifted me up and spun me around, which I normally hated, but it was so good to be reunited with my twin that I let it slide. It was a struggle to let go once he put me back on my feet, but I did, grinning all the while as I looked up into his familiar face—eerily similar to my own even after all these years. Same gray-blue eyes, same dark hair.

“I had no choice,” I joked. “Figures I’d have to come watch you play hockey the second I’m back in town. You owe me a reality TV marathon.”

“Hey, but we won!” he beamed. “Maybe you’re our lucky charm,” he added, shoving me a little even as he said something nice. Typical big brother, even if he was only about three minutes older than me.

“Well, don’t get used to it,” I grumbled.

“I’ve got a feeling I’ll make a Santas’ fan out of you yet,” he threatened. “I can’t wait for you to meet all the guys. Sawyer, Wes, over here!”

He turned over his shoulder to gesture to two of his teammates, and I felt my whole body flush as they approached as if in slow motion. If they’d been sexy on the ice, in their helmets and all their gear, they were downright sinful up close.

“Sawyer, this is my twin sister, Rachel,” Michael said, and the man himself stared me down just as surely as I was staring at him.

“A pleasure,” he said gruffly. It annoyed me that I found it a little sexy.

There was something lumberjacky about him. Maybe that was why the unrefined manners had a certain kind of effect on my lady bits. Sawyer’s long, curly red hair looked touchably soft now that it was free from his gear, and I had the chance to see that his hazel eyes were golden-hued and captivating too. An earthy hue—perfect for a mountain man. The strong features of his face stood in perfect contrast to his sensually curved mouth—those lips were kissable even though he was practically scowling at me as I gave him a reluctant, “Yeah, likewise.”

“And you remember Rachel, right Wes?” Michael spoke up again, gesturing to the man who could not possibly be the same Wes Robbins I’d known as a kid, even though I knew he was. With his helmet finally off, I could see his hair, that familiar dishwater color between blond and light brown, was buzzed in a way that highlighted the strong masculine bone structure he’d grown into. Hard, crisp lines rather than the smooth lushness of Sawyer’s face, but Wes was no less gorgeous for it.

“Yeah,” Wes answered with only a smidge less gruffness than his goalie. “Nice to see you again.”

“You too,” I said again, my tone coming out a little starstruck in a way that was almost embarrassing. Since when was I the type to fawn over hot hockey bros? I should really look into getting a fucking grip.

But it seemed that none of the Henning women had access to such a thing, because then Paula was rounding on us like a freight train. Or maybe a fast-moving Zamboni.

“What a great game!” my mom exclaimed as she moved in to hug my brother with the same amount of enthusiasm she’d used to hug me, her wayward prodigal daughter. You would think she would be able to hide the fact that Michael was her favorite child, but I didn’t hold it against either of them. Even if it did feel unfair for her to be just as excited to see her son, who she saw every day, as she was to see her daughter who had been gone for the better part of four years.

“Great, great job out there. You boys were wonderful on the ice today. And I’m not just talking about my star son.” Mom shared a mischievous wink with the three hockey guys who she clearly adored. I gathered that these two, Sawyer and Wes, were the recurring characters in my brother’s various hockey stories. I knew he had three best friends on the team, and a nightmare I didn’t know to fear confirmed itself for me when my mom furrowed her brow and started craning her neck to look around the arena for someone else. The missing link—the third stooge.

“Where is Roman? I was hoping to get a hug from my little troublemaker, even if he doesn’t deserve it after his behavior on the ice.”

Sawyer snorted, and damn it, how could he be hot even while making a vaguely horse-like sound?

“You know how he is, Mama Henning. He’s either off having a celebratory drink with a whole harem of women, or he’s sulking.”

“Licking his wounds,” Wes agreed.

“He’s definitely way more of a baby than he pretends to be,” my brother piped up, a little scolding but not without some fondness.

Oh, shit. I did remember stories about these guys, then—I tried to tune out Michael’s various hockey tales as much as I could without actively being a garbage sister, but I definitely remembered recurring characters from most of his anecdotes, and that one of them was basically his frenemy. Michael would argue that that word wasn’t very manly, but I’d just shoot back that it was accurate, and anyway, he shared a womb with me, so he wasn’t above so-called “girly” slang.

“Well, next time you boys see Roman, tell him Mama Henning misses seeing his pretty face around.” She paused, a pensive look on her face. Then it lit up, shifting to a delighted excitement that told me she’d just had what she thought was a brilliant idea. “In the meantime, though, how would you boys like to come to dinner with the family? We’re welcoming Rachel back to town. Nothing fancy, of course—just going to Candy Cane Jane’s.”

Figures that this was the first I’d heard of my own welcome-back dinner plans. And that my mom would invite two hockey dudes to it without even consulting me. I grinned to hide the fact that I was grinding my teeth, nodding when Mom looked at me with an innocent expression that said Right, Rachel? You’re not going to be rude and not invite them, are you? Painfully, I gave a jerky nod, and my fate was sealed.

As much as I’d dreaded returning to my small town, I loved my family enough that I’d looked forward to spending some quality time with them. But it looked like my first night back home wouldn’t go quite as I pictured—as always, hockey was getting in the way. Already .