The Anti-Social Season (First Responders #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Twenty-Six

T hea, bundled up with a lumpy handmade hat on her head, made an adorable picture as Simon filmed her demonstrating how to use an electric snow thrower without severing the cable and possibly either electrocuting the operator or blowing out the power for an entire block. By the time they finished getting all the rough footage, her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold and the path between her house and Mrs. M’s was perfectly clear. Mrs. M brought them hot cocoa, her blue eyes twinkling with mischief and delight.

“I guess Simon’s set to spend Christmas with you, then?” she asked Thea as the younger woman blew on her cocoa.

“Simon’s flight was blown all to heck and he is actually perfectly happy about that,” he responded.

“Well then. I hope you can also make it to my Boxing Day party tomorrow evening.”

He nodded, a warm glow suffusing him despite the cold. Yeah, he was going to enjoy this reprieve from being the go-to person, the one who was only appreciated for the role he filled. Mrs. M and Thea just wanted him around because they liked him.

It was sad that that felt so unusual.

Thea gulped the last of her cocoa, handing the mug back to a grinning Mrs. M. “Okay, we have pasta to make, then I’ll clear your paths. Hopefully the plow will come soon.”

Mrs. M waved an airy hand. “They’ll come when they come. As long as my guests and caterers can get here tomorrow, that’s all I care about. And Katrina, of course. My other kids are spending the holiday with their families.”

“Sweet!” Thea said. “Katrina’s awesome.”

“You two always did hit it off. I just wish she could find someone special the way you two have. Okay—you kids go off and do your holiday stuff. If you need anything from me, you know where I’ll be.” Mrs. M collected Simon’s mug and went back inside her massive home.

“We’re stopping by later and bringing her something, right?” Simon murmured as they trudged back to her house.

“Totally.” She twinkled up at him, loving how natural and couple-y his question had felt. “We’re not monsters.”

Thea loved making fresh pasta. There was something about the simplicity of it: four ingredients, a little bit of effort, patience and a surprisingly small amount of skill were all that was needed to create toothsome deliciousness.

“That’s it?” he asked as she wrapped the dough to rest.

“That’s it,” she said, washing her hands before she dug in her cabinets for her pasta machine. “If you’re a true purist, I guess you need to use a rolling pin, but frankly I don’t know anyone who does that.” She cleared the rest of the stuff off her island to make a nice long landing pad for the pasta before she clamped the machine to the top. She attached the handle and gave it a spin. “This bad boy can make so much pasta so much quicker though.” She’d made a double batch of dough, just in case they were able to get to her parents’ place today.

And heck. If they couldn’t, she could freeze it. Selfishly, she’d be perfectly happy with spending the day alone with Simon and making enough pasta for them and Mrs. M. Those future plans he talked about had begun to spin out in her head too. Not just special occasions either. Somehow she knew that even the simplest of meals would be more fun, more romantic, more special with Simon.

“While this rests, do you want to set up a video call with your family, maybe?” she asked. “It might help settle your sister and your mom down.”

He sighed and scrubbed his face, and she felt like a heel for popping their little bubble. “Yeah. Good idea. I’ll go through Dad though. He’ll hopefully be able to keep a lid on the fireworks.” He dug in his back pocket for his phone and typed out a quick text. Just a few seconds later, his phone chimed and he nodded. He looked up from the device and shot her a crooked grin that made electricity zip down her spine. “Unless you hate the idea, I’m going to introduce you to my family.”

She shrugged. “Works for me.”

One auburn eyebrow lifted. “As my girlfriend?”

Her stomach fluttered. “That works for me too,” she said, her voice going kind of squeaky.

“Good.” He tapped his screen and the phone began to warble, then a man’s voice boomed out.

“Son. Good to see you. Can’t believe you’ve got yourself a white Christmas.”

Simon grinned. “I couldn’t believe it either. But we do. Looks like a greeting card out here.”

“Where are you? That doesn’t look like your apartment.”

“It isn’t.” He reached out and drew Thea to his side, and she could now see a man whose graying hair and beard was threaded with the same auburn Simon had. “This is my girlfriend’s home. Dad, this is Thea.”

She waved, feeling a little silly, but the man’s face broke into a smile almost as handsome as Simon’s. “Hi, Mr. Osman. Nice to meet you.”

“Same here. Let me get the rest of the gang together.” He called out to Simon’s family, and then the phone was passed from hand to hand. Greetings were exchanged, Simon’s nephew wanted to see her tree and, with a preschooler’s knack for not understanding geography, demanded that Uncle Simon come over and play with him now .

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He sounds just like Ash,” Simon murmured out of the corner of his mouth as Noah disappeared and Simon’s brother-in-law took over. “Hey, Ray. How’s it going? Merry Christmas.”

Ray, a husky man with thinning sandy hair, scrubbed his hand over his face. “Well, we’re doing our best here, man.”

“I take it that means Ashley’s not going to be wishing me any happy holidays?”

Ray sighed. “No, she’s here.” He angled the phone, and a pretty woman with strawberry blond ringlets came into view on the screen. Her mouth was tight and she gave them a curt wave.

“Hi. Merry Christmas. I didn’t catch your name.” Her voice was flat and inflectionless.

“This is Thea,” Simon said, squeezing her shoulder as he spoke. “And I am sorry I can’t see you guys in person, but I’m glad you can at least meet her virtually at this point.”

At this point. This was really happening. Her heart was so full it might actually explode.

After the call with his family, Thea deemed the pasta to have rested long enough in its cling-film shroud and unwrapped it, cutting it up and spreading the first piece into a disc with her hands until it was thin enough to go through her little hand-cranked machine. She spread a layer of flour on both sides and cranked it through, then ratcheted the rollers one notch closer together.

“Now you,” she said, handing him the lengthened piece of dough.

He took it gingerly, dipping it into the gap and rolling it through. He’d never made pasta before, but he had made sugar cookies, so he was half expecting the dough to stick or the machine to jam, but the thinner piece emerged smoothly. “Magical,” he said.

“Yup.” Thea cranked the machine down another notch, her breast pressing against his arm. A pulse of heat went through his midsection.

“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

She raised doe eyes to regard him. “Doing what?”

He moved his arm, pressing his biceps against her softness. “Distracting me with your hot bod from the task you set me.” He cranked the piece of pasta through as she chuckled and moved off to dampen a kitchen towel and drape it over the other pieces of pasta.

“Momentary lapse of judgment,” she said, shooting him a sunny grin.

“Well. Don’t let it happen again.” He infused his voice with mock sternness that made that grin stretch even wider.

“Flour that before you run it through again.”

He looked at the dough and realized he’d settled into the rhythm of the little hand-cranked machine. It was soothing in a way that he’d never have achieved if he’d been with his family, even without the cross-country flight.

Who would ever have thought that being with the human hurricane that was Thea Martinelli would be soothing ?

She moved around the kitchen as he steadily made the pasta longer and thinner, until she finally called a halt.

“That’s great.” She spread the length of dough out on the counter and dusted it with flour again, then moved the crank to a different hole. The machine was in some ways basic and in other ways really clever. “Now we cut it. I’m thinking fettuccine. It’s my favorite.”

“I’m with you all the way,” he said, fascinated as he helped her feed the sheet through into another set of rollers, which cut the pasta into long ribbons.

“And that’s it,” she said. “Now this can hang out and dry a bit and we can make it for lunch.”

Simon craned his neck to peer out of the windows. The driveway was still covered in a thick blanket of snow. “Are you thinking we’re not going to get plowed out in time to go to your family?”

She shot him a wicked look as she pressed out the second piece of pasta. “I’m thinking I don’t much care. I’m selfishly having far too much fun with you.”

He tugged her to him and kissed her gently. “How is it possible that we’re so different and yet we are so much on the same page? I was thinking the exact same thing.”

“Just lucky I guess,” she murmured against his lips. “Now let’s roll out the rest of this pasta and really get lucky.”

It was a perfect Christmas. They finished making the rest of the pasta, then Thea dragged a very willing Simon into her bed for slow, achingly intimate sex, the winter light painting pale shadows on their bodies. They lounged in her rumpled bedsheets, exchanging quiet confidences until Thea’s head lifted off Simon’s chest. A dull rumble and scrape outside made her squeeze her eyes together.

“It’s the plow,” she groaned as Simon quirked an eyebrow at her. “We’re getting cleared out. But I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to stay here with you.”

He cuddled her head back to his chest. “Well, then we stay here.”

“But we’re plowed out,” she groused. “My parents will expect us to be there.”

He chuckled. “How do they know we’re plowed out? For that matter, how do we know all the roads between your house and theirs have been plowed?”

She turned her head to place a kiss in the center of his chest. “I really like the way you think, you know that?”

He gave her bare bottom a light slap. “Well, you promised me pasta and made me work up an appetite, so let’s get in the kitchen and start cooking and give them a call. That way we have all our family obligations out of the way and can just enjoy the day.”

She sat up and kissed him. “Mmm. I really like the way you think now.”

They got cleaned up and dressed. He set a pot of water on to boil while she thawed a frozen batch of tomato sauce she’d made over the summer. She set her phone up on a little tripod on the kitchen island and called her folks. Her mother appeared on the screen, the family’s elderly fake tree in the background. “Hi, Ma. How is it over there?”

Her mother waved, making an extravagant sad face. “Still snowed in here. Missing my girls and my grandbabies today.”

“Yeah. Same here. We made pasta though, so traditions will continue. Just not together this year.” She gestured behind her at the pot of water that had yet to come to a boil.

“We? Is Mrs. M spending the day with you?”

Thea shook her head, suppressing a smile, and tugged Simon by his sleeve into frame. “Nope. Meet my boyfriend. Simon, this is my mom. Mom, Simon.”

“Hello, Mrs. Martinelli,” Simon said stiffly.

Her mother gasped with delight as Thea knew she would. “Well, hello, Simon. You call me Anita. Roger!” she bellowed for Thea’s father as Thea cracked up and Simon’s cheeks reddened. Her parents were utterly predictable. “Come meet Thea’s boyfriend!”

A grumbling sound ensued and Thea’s dad came into view. “Merry Christmas, sweetie,” he said gruffly. Then he appeared to examine Simon as closely as he could under his thick, dark brows. “Young man.”

“Yes, sir,” Simon said, straightening his spine.

“You love my baby girl?”

“Dad!” Thea exclaimed. “Simon’s my new boyfriend. Don’t put him on the spot like that.”

Simon put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. Like Thea said, it’s early. But I can tell you that I respect her and like her and admire her a whole hell of a lot. She’s a really special person and I’m glad you care about her too.”

Thea’s heart did a full revolution as her dad grinned and said, “Good. Now go make that pasta and have a Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you both next Sunday for dinner, okay?”

“Okay, Dad. Merry Christmas.” She ended the call and they did have pasta, and when Simon produced a little box with an enamel pin of Inferno Girl in it and she dashed over to grab his present from under her tree—an ornament shaped like a library with windows that lit up—Thea’s heart was so full she thought it might burst.