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

12. Rachel

12

RACHEL

“ P ass the potatoes,” my brother told me for the third time since dinner started. Not because he was gorging himself on starches—though he surely was doing that too, all in the name of “carbo-loading” so he could be in tip-top hockey captain shape—but because I hadn’t heard him the first two times he’d asked. This third request was mercifully louder, but it had its own drawbacks. Like how it made my parents and Bria all stare at me, wondering why I was so spacey.

I couldn’t very well tell them I was fantasizing about Roman Jett and his plentiful giving of orgasms. You couldn’t waterboard that information out of me. Especially at the family dinner table.

We’d restarted this long-standing family tradition the second I got home, so it wasn’t a particularly special occasion, though it was slightly rarer that Bria was able to join us. Plus, it felt different sitting down to a meal with my parents as a grown adult with a job and a degree—more a gathering of equals than it had ever been when I was a kid. Regardless, I simply should not be spacing out while I sat at the dinner table with my family, especially when the thoughts drifting through my idle brain were so sinfully explicit.

“Anyway, the Douglas firs are in prime shape this year,” my dad resumed a story I hadn’t been listening to. “Those big-city farms aren’t gonna know what hit ’em.”

Typical. My dad always talked about Christmas trees, even when it was the offseason for such a thing, since he was obsessed with his self-built tree farm business and frequently boasted that his was the biggest one in Mistletoe. Steve Henning was a proud, self-proclaimed “tree nerd,” even studying the best sustainable farming practices and the genetic differences in the different evergreen tree varieties in his spare time. At least I hadn’t missed anything really important while I’d been mentally replaying the way it felt to be impaled on Roman’s cock.

“As long as you save the biggest and best tree for my gala,” Mom piped up, pointing her index finger at Dad, her eyes narrowed in playful admonishment.

“Of course, dear,” my dad said, ever the dutiful husband. My mom beamed.

This was another predictable turn of the conversation; every year, my mom’s biggest showcase of her socialite talents was the Christmas charity gala she organized. Glitz and glam galore, all wrapped up in a charitable cause she and her other well-off friends would feel good about supporting; the proceeds from the ticket sales and the hefty donations the event solicited went toward local food banks and buying gifts for low-income kids. It was the perfect picture of Christmas-spirit philanthropy, and Mom made it her personal mission to turn an event for a cause into the event of the season. Just about everyone in town attended the gala every year. I wondered, still feeling too X-rated for this wholesome family moment, whether Roman ever came to the shindig. There were certainly plenty of women and booze to go around at such a thing, and that was his bread and butter.

“Isn’t that right, Rachel?” Mom’s voice broke through yet another reverie, and before I could process what she was asking me to agree to, I was playing the perfect daughter. I knew my lines anyway.

“Yeah, totally,” I said, and when Mom’s face became sneakily self-satisfied, my stomach dropped. What had I agreed to? My twin seemed to sense my distress and confirmed my fears, leaning in to whisper while Mom and Bria picked up talk about the theme of this year’s gala at the other side of the table.

“You just signed on to be Mom’s personal lackey for gala-gate,” Michael said, almost snickering. “Good luck picking out centerpieces and whatever the hell else.”

I almost groaned aloud. If Michael and I had been alone, I definitely would have, and he definitely would have told me to “suck it up”— not “man up,” since I’d beaten that misogynistic phrase out of his vocabulary when we were in middle school. In theory, helping my mom with party planning shouldn’t be that bad—but I knew better. Paula Henning was a nightmare control freak when it came to hosting. I could still remember the Great Roller Rink Twin Birthday Fiasco of ‘09, and just the thought of it made me shudder.

It served me right, honestly. After the world’s biggest lapse in judgment had turned into lots of sexual satisfaction, I deserved to be punished in some way. Sleeping with Roman Jett could only end in trouble, and this was just the start of it.

The bigger trouble that loomed on the horizon, though, was how badly I definitely wanted it to happen again. And again, and again, and again.

It wasn’t like I wanted a relationship with him or anything. But if I could learn to tolerate his presence enough to make a longer-term, friends-with-benefits situation happen, I’d gladly throw caution to the wind and do it. Anything to taste his mouth, to experience his incredible physique, to feel his hot seed pump inside me again.

God, I needed to think of anything else. But the more my brain grasped at non-horny straws, the more it found reasons to fantasize about a certain two other hockey players instead. Sawyer’s lips on mine that morning at the ice center, a kiss so different to Roman’s but no less incredible which neither of us had the guts to address since it happened. Wes Robbins’ blue eyes, the sweetness he seemed to still have underneath his jock exterior.

Damn it, it was useless. I couldn’t bring myself to focus on idle family chatter with all of this hormonal hockey hoopla in my brain. I never thought I’d look forward to the start of hockey season in Mistletoe, but at this point, I’d do anything to see less of the three men my body wanted far more than my brain did. I prayed for a disproportionate amount of away games this season so I could achieve maximum distance from them all.

When we wrapped up dinner, Bria found her way to my side, nudging me with her shoulder in the familiar way she’d done a lot when I was a teenager. I could tell the look on her face was one of concern even before she quietly asked me, “You alright, Rach? Wanna take a walk with me?”

I nodded even though I knew this walk was just a pretense to get me to open up. Bria was good about getting people into that vulnerable talking state, but I wasn’t exactly interested in sharing my internal angst. Still, a walk might help clear my head. Bria and I left Michael to help Mom with the dishes, heading into the chill evening for a stroll around our neighborhood.

“Your brain has been whirring ever since you came back,” Bria started, not pulling any punches as we passed our neighbor’s impressive willow tree. “Is there something wrong? There’s this…distance, and we all just want to be close to you.”

I watched my feet as we walked, not wanting to look Bria in the face as I confessed to her. “I know. I…I want to be close to you all too. Just…maybe not this close.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mistletoe,” I clarified quietly. “I…it’s weird being back.”

“We’re happy to have you,” Bria comforted me, but it only made a pang of guilt shoot through me. She watched me as we strolled past a house where a new family with a baby had recently moved in—when I was a kid, an old man lived there named Mr. Gorman, and Michael and Wes had always joked that he was a secret killer even though he was actually a sweet guy. All these surroundings were familiar, which meant that I was the one who had changed, the reason Mistletoe no longer felt like it fit. Bria seemed to come to this conclusion at the same time that I did, letting out a soft, knowing, “ Oh. You…you’re not happy to be here.”

“I’m happy to be with all the people I love,” I reassured her. “I just…Mistletoe isn’t where I want to end up long term. I don’t think it’s where I belong.”

Bria nodded carefully and threw an arm around me, squeezing me against her side. “That’s fair enough, hon. You always had those fantastical big-city dreams—or, well, at least fantastical compared to the rest of us small-town folk.” She and I exchanged a short laugh, lightening the overall mood. But Bria had more to say, and she stopped us on the sidewalk, turning to face me. Her hands held my arms with a gentle, comforting pressure. “There’s nothing wrong with going after what you want in life, Rachel, and all of us want you to have whatever that ends up being. But I hope that while you’re dreaming, you can sit in the moment long enough to notice any little flickers of goodness there might be right here under your nose. Mistletoe has its charms, you know. After all, it raised you, didn’t it?”

I smiled, giving Bria a nod I didn’t fully mean, even as my brain instantly found some good things to notice about Mistletoe. Namely, the gorgeous physiques of three of its hockey players.

Somehow, our little walk down toward Blitzen Boulevard and Donner Drive had brought us back to our familiar side of Comet Court, just a few yards away from my family home. Mom had left the porch light on for us, glowing gold in the dusky blue evening. We were stopped in front of the Robbins house, and as if I’d manifested it somehow, the front door opened then, drawing Bria’s eyes as well as mine. And there was Wes Robbins himself, the quintessential boy next door in all his tall, slim glory silhouetted in the light from his mom’s entryway. He was carrying a box brimming with dark green wires—a tangle of outdoor Christmas lights, of course.

“I’ve got it, Ma,” he was saying over his shoulder. “You go sit down, and I’ll let you know when it’s time for you to come critique my work.”

Damn it, he would be helping his mother with the arduous outdoor decorating, only further banishing all attempts at hating him from my mind. He was determined to be endearing at every turn since that one bad night at Candy Cane Jane’s. And there was no way he could be faking this helpful son act for my benefit, since he didn’t even turn and notice us watching him until Bria let out a suspiciously fake cough. I wanted to throttle her.

“Rachel?” Wes called from his porch, his tone surprised but not annoyed to see me. “And hey, Bria.”

“Hiya, Wes,” Bria said, but then immediately followed it up with a huge yawn. “Oh, my—I’m not as young as I once was, so if you all don’t mind, I’m going to excuse myself. Leave the night to those of you who still have the energy to experience it, huh?”

I could practically smell the bullshit. Bria traveled like crazy, finding new exciting lovers in foreign countries and regaling us all with her adventures far more than I could ever see myself doing despite the few decades she had on me. No, this was just her attempt at meddling, and before I could protest, she was scurrying away, shooting me a wink and a little wave as she left me with no choice but to interact with Wes.

Well, no choice but to interact with him or come off as the rudest bitch on earth. And if I didn’t unfortunately have to work with him—even in personal capacities, since he was also supposedly helping Michael with his proposal—I would have taken that second option in a heartbeat.

But instead, I was forced to play nice. Wes, unable to leave well enough alone, put down the box of lights and bounded off the porch, coming down to meet me by the sidewalk.

I hated forced small talk at the best of times. But knowing I had to struggle through a friendly interaction with a man I’d just been lusting over at family dinner…yeah, this was going to be painful. A new frontier of awkwardness to be explored and endured.

As Wes smiled at me, his eyes like deep sapphires in the dim streetlights, I wanted to sob at how beautiful he was. Like my memories in the few days it’d been since we’d last seen each other were sorely lacking compared to the real sight of him in front of me. I could write internal sonnets about this man’s strong, elegant features. Instead, I appeased my brain with a safer thought: Bria is a dead woman.