Christmas of Love

by Erin Wright

  Sometimes, it was nice to have a sister.

  Sometimes.

  Declan passed Iris her present, pulling Iris’ attention away, and Ivy watched with morbid curiosity. Was he going to propose to her right here in front of everyone? The box looked a little large, but Ivy wouldn’t put it past Declan to give Iris a rock the size of a baseball, just so everyone knew she was his. After his stunt fifteen years ago, Ivy hadn’t thought she’d ever forgive him, but now? She couldn’t ignore the love on his face. Yeah, maybe he’d made mistakes in the past, but it was time to move on. Iris had, and Ivy needed to trust her sister’s judgment.

  Not to mention that Declan only had eyes for her. They followed Iris’ every movement as she opened the box and then gasped with pleasure. “Thank you!” she exclaimed, pulling some colored, cut stones out of the box.

  “I bought these stones from the same company that Great-Grandpa Miller worked for when he first moved to Long Valley in the 1800s,” Declan said proudly as Iris ooh’d and ahh’d over each one. “We’re not called the Gem State for nothin’, you know. I thought you could use them in the canes when you carve them.”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Iris said, throwing her arms around him and kissing him with joy.

  And kissing, and kissing, and kissing.

  Ivy couldn’t stop laughing. After having been on the other end of this scene just minutes before, it was rather delightful to see her sister fall into the same trap.

  Finally, they pulled apart and Iris collapsed against Declan’s chest, her face a nice brilliant red. Ivy grinned in delight.

  Yes, revenge was sweet.

  Next to her, Austin was laughing. “So you’ve finally figured out how to kiss a girl, eh?” he said to Declan.

  “Ohhhh…this sounds like a story I want to hear,” Ivy piped up.

  Her mom said, “Yes please!” while her dad tried to shush her.

  But Austin wouldn’t be stopped anyway. He was on a roll and was going to have some fun at his best friend’s expense.

  “So there we were, on a double date up at the University of Idaho. Declan here is paired up with some really cute girl, but he doesn’t seem to be into her much. Probably because she doesn’t have red hair and blue eyes.” He winked at Iris, who flushed red again. “At the end of the night, we’re dropping off our dates, and this girl goes up on her tippy toes for a kiss. Declan here dodges her and pecks her on the cheek instead. Mumbles something about how he won’t kiss a girl in public, even though it was pitch-dark outside and no one could’ve seen ‘em!”

  As the laughter roared, Ivy looked over at Juan, who looked half-thrilled to be included in such adult talk, and simultaneously embarrassed to death. According to Abby, he would be eleven soon, which meant he was about to discover that girls were really, really cool.

  As handsome as he was, Ivy was pretty sure Abby and Wyatt would have to fend off said girls with a baseball bat.

  “Well,” Declan drawled as soon as the laughter finally let up, “you aren’t the public – you’re family!”

  Everyone bust out laughing again, but this time, Ivy was the one mortified. Did this mean that Declan was planning on proposing to Iris? And did he think Austin would propose to her?

  It was way too soon in their relationship to be talking about marriage. Ivy gulped hard. Maybe Declan knew something she didn’t. Maybe Austin was getting a lot more serious about her than she’d realized.

  She chanced a glance up at him and saw him grinning and laughing as he and Declan exchanged friendly insults. No, it’d been a joke. Nothing more.

  Which she was happy about.

  Very happy.

  Chapter 14

  Austin

  He looked down at his wobbling knees and back up at Ivy. “You think this is a good idea, huh?” he said doubtfully.

  It really didn’t seem like it to him.

  She skated in circles around him, her laughter spilling out. “C’mon, just push forward a little. It’s actually easier to stay upright if you’re moving. Like a bike, except—”

  “Except here, I have thin metal blades between me and death?” he interrupted.

  Ivy let out a huge laugh at that one, her cheeks a rosy red color, her eyes sparkling in the dim winter lighting. She was brightening up this dark and dreary winter day just by being her. He wondered if she realized what a gift that was.

  “Yeah, death,” she said dryly when she finally calmed down enough to speak. “Do you want me to ask the front staff how many have died while ice skating this past year?”

  “No, no, I’m willing to participate in this death-defying stunt,” he said airily, as if bestowing a great gift upon her. “But only if you’ll take my hand and help me.”

  She skated a little closer, and then flipped around and started skating backwards. “You want me to hold your hand?” she said teasingly. “Don’t boys have cooties? I’m pretty sure I learned that somewhere.”

  He pushed forward a little, his ankles shaking almost as much as his knees. He was missing Bob just then. Horses were easy. Ice skating was scary. He didn’t care how Ivy made it look; he knew the truth.

  “Hold on,” he said, puffing as he tried to keep up with her, “I thought you said you didn’t have an athletic bone in your body! Were you sandbagging me, so I’d agree to go ice skating with you?”

  Her laughter tinkled out again. “I guess I didn’t consider ice skating to be athletic,” she admitted with a shrug as she did a quick twirl in front of him. “It’s balls that get me. They fly at me and smack me in the face and break my glasses and they’re just horrible little objects.”

  “Glasses?” he asked between pants. They were almost to the other side of the rink, where he could grab onto the railing and rest for a minute. Whoever said that ice skating wasn’t a sport – ahem, Ivy – was obviously in better shape than he was. His thighs were burning from the strain of trying to keep upright. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

  “Contacts now. But yup, glasses and braces all through junior high and part of high school. Would you believe they had me in braces for four years? My tormentors weren’t especially bright, and so they stuck with nicknames like ‘Metal Mouth’ and ‘Four Eyes.’ Heaven forbid they strain themselves in the creativity department…”

  She shot him a brilliant smile, showing off her gorgeous and very straight white teeth. He had a hard time imagining anyone teasing her based on her appearance. She was so damn beautiful. His eyes drifted down her body, which she was showcasing to perfection with a drapy sweater thingy that clung to her generous curves.

  Damn beautiful.

  They’d made it! He grabbed onto the railing that encircled the ice skating rink and stood still for a moment, happy to be upright and stable.

  She skated up to him and then stopped abruptly, spraying him with ice shavings. “You know what movie we should watch tonight?” she asked rhetorically as she skated back and forth next to him, waiting not-so-patiently for him to recuperate. “The Cutting Edge.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure I’ve—”

  She held out her hands for him, and he took them, placing his trust in her to keep him upright.

  “I’m not sure I’ve heard of it,” he finished as she began skating backwards, pulling him forward like a small child on training wheels. She was wearing his Christmas present today, and he had to admit, she did it with style. She made those gloves look good.

  She made everything look good.

  Skating with a soft-on was probably not helping matters.

  “Never…” she stuttered, staring at him with horror as she easily navigated them around the curve of the rink and into the straightaway. “Well! I know what we’re doing tonight. Never watched The Cutting Edge,” she muttered under her breath with disgust. “What did you do during the 90s? Live under a rock?”

  Pretty much.

  But he wasn’t about to say that out loud.

  They did a few more laps around the skating rink, enjoy
ing it all to themselves except a father-son pair off to the side who were busy trying to keep each other upright. Both of them seemed to be able to ice skate as well as Austin…which was to say, not at all.

  They needed an Ivy.

  The world was better with Ivys around.

  His heart twisted at that thought, because he knew he’d be losing her soon. She’d be returning to California after New Year’s, which was just five more days.

  Thankfully, one of the benefits of being an extension agent was that not too many farmers and ranchers were planning next year’s crop and animal rotation between Christmas and New Year’s. This meant that Austin could take the week off without anyone caring a bit. He’d normally take the week to catch up on paperwork – that’s what he did last year, anyway – but he was losing Ivy soon. He’d much rather spend the week with her. Paperwork would always be there.

  Ivy would not.

  His heart twisted again.

  “You okay?” Ivy asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Oh yeah, of course!” he said brightly, and then realized that he sounded overly dramatic. Like he was trying too hard.

  Which he was, but he wasn’t supposed to sound like it.

  “You just looked like you swallowed a live frog,” Ivy said, smiling as always, but her eyes revealed her worry. They were scanning his face, just like his were scanning hers.

  “A live frog, eh?” he asked jovially. Dammit, he was not doing a good job of playing it cool here.

  “You know, like…ribbit?” She made the sound of a croaking frog.

  A sick, malnourished frog.

  He mock-glared at her. “That is not what a frog sounds like,” he informed her. “It needs more gusto, more from the gut.” He pulled his hands away unthinkingly to gesture at his stomach, which meant no more Ivy holding him up.

  His arms started pinwheeling and his forward momentum carried him right into Ivy and they were crashing into each other and down to the ground and he threw himself underneath her, trying to save her from hitting the ice, which meant she hit his lungs instead. The air whooshed out of him as the world went a little black around the edges, and he kept blinking, trying to bring the world back into focus and she was staring down at him, her mouth moving but nothing coming out.

  Finally, her voice started to filter in. “If you don’t talk to me in the next six seconds, I’m going to drag you to the ER,” Ivy yelled at the top of her lungs.

  Right next to his head.

  He looked up at her and tried to focus on her face, swimming around in front of him. “I can hear you,” he said, a lopsided grin on his face.

  “You can…” she sputtered. “First Iris and now you – I don’t think I could handle someone else with a brain injury!”

  He pulled her down on top of him, snuggling her against him. “I think you should kiss me all better,” he said as he felt himself harden against the curves of her body. She glared down at him, indecisive about her response. She wanted to yell at him more – it was written all over her face – but she was also beginning to see the humor in the situation.

  “You sure are needy,” she breathed as she inched closer, the wanting to kiss him part apparently winning out.

  Thank God.

  “You’re the one who promised me that this wasn’t a death-defying feat,” he reminded her, their lips just a hair-breadths apart. “I think a kiss to make me all better isn’t so much to ask.”

  “Mmmm…” she murmured, her eyes drifting shut. “I like how you think.”

  He pulled her a little closer, her lips opening up as she began to melt into him. She flicked her tongue out, inviting him to come in to play, and he chased her tongue back into her mouth, tasting hot chocolate and joy. He started to harden even more while his mind began to wander into naughty territory. What did her gorgeous curves look like in a pair of bra and panties? If they were a light beige color, edged with lace, she would look like she was wearing nothing at all.

  He wanted to explore every curve and swell, memorizing her body before—

  “You two need help?” a voice asked, breaking in. Ivy jerked away, shoving an elbow into his side as she tried to scramble off him.

  “Oof,” he grunted at the same time that Ivy said gaily, “Oh no, we’re fine!” She was straightening her sweater and adjusting her scarf. “Just fine!”

  Austin sat up gingerly, rubbing his side and head, and looked up at the pimply-and-oh-so-bored teenager standing over them. “We’re good,” he told him. “Just getting up now.”

  The employee sent them a look that clearly said And no kissing while you’re doing it! before turning to head towards the pay booth to hunker back down with his iPhone, if their entrance into the ice skating rink was anything to judge by. Austin was surprised the teen had looked up from his phone long enough to notice them kissing, although, thinking about it, they had been kissing for quite a while.

  After the teen left, Ivy looked at him, and instead of being mortified, she was grinning hugely.

  “Why are you so happy?” he asked absentmindedly while considering the best way to get to his feet. He finally decided that flipping over onto his hands and knees and trying to stand up from that position seemed the least likely way to get himself killed in the process. After some scrabbling at the ice and then a hand up from Ivy, which he wasn’t too prideful to take, he was on his feet.

  “Do you know what Teenage Ivy would’ve done to get caught making out by the ice skating rink employee? Probably a good thing no one offered it to me as a possibility. I hate to think about what I would’ve been willing to do.”

  “Didn’t get kissed a lot when you were a teen, huh?” Austin asked as they slowly made their way towards the exit.

  “If by ‘not a lot,’ you mean ‘pretty much never,’ then yeah. That often.” She sent him a laughing grin.

  He shook his head in disbelief as they sat down on the bench to change into street shoes and return their rented ice skates. “So are all the guys in Long Valley blind as a bat?” he asked as he pulled the laces loose and wiggled his feet out.

  “Four Eyes and Metal Mouth, remember? And even after I got contacts and my braces were removed, all of the guys already ‘saw’ me. You know? They’d known me since I was in kindergarten. They didn’t bother looking at the new me.” She shrugged. “And anyway, if you’d met Teenage Ivy, you probably wouldn’t have liked her either. I was a snob sometimes.”

  Street shoes on, they wandered back out, returning their rentals to the booth as they passed, the teenage boy not even bothering to look up from his phone.

  Ivy rolled her eyes, and Austin wasn’t sure if that was at her teenage self or the teenage boy.

  “I was going to be an artist.” She said the word with a French accent and then wrinkled her nose at him. “Truthfully, it was easier to reject the kids before they could reject me. It hurt less that way.” They climbed into his truck, which he turned on to warm up while he continued to listen to her. Although he knew she was telling him the truth, it was still hard to wrap his mind around the description she was giving, versus the woman in front of him. “Kids can be cruel, and I never really fit in here,” she said softly. “Considering I was born and raised here, that was really hard. It took me a good long while to figure out where I belonged. Who I was. What I cared about.”

  She shrugged, looking out the fogged-up window, refusing to meet his eye as she talked. “I think the hardest part of all was living in Iris’ shadow. She was everything I wasn’t. Popular. Loved. Smart. Tall. Athletic. People didn’t shove her into lockers or into toilets.”

  He let the silence stretch out between them as she stared and stared out the passenger side window. Finally, she turned towards him, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Well anyway,” she said, her voice scratchy. She cleared it and tried it again. “Life in Sawyer wasn’t always easy, but that’s why I left. Being an adult, I could.” She shrugged. “I just had to wait my time.”

  He nodded slowly, putting the tr
uck in reverse and pulling out of the parking spot. They headed out of the parking lot and back onto the main highway that stretched between Franklin and Sawyer.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t really know what to say. In a lot of ways, their lives were exact opposites from each other. Growing up was wonderful for him. Perfect in practically every way. It wasn’t until he left for college that his life fell apart.

  Ivy’s life, on the other hand, didn’t really start until college.

  It was funny to look at the world that way.

  He stayed silent. If she wanted to talk, he’d let her. He would listen to whatever she needed to tell him.

  “I wanted to kill myself,” she said softly. So softly he wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her right. Surely that wasn’t what she’d said. He took a quick peek at her and the look on her face…

  He had heard her right.

  Before he could say anything – was there anything to be said to statements like that? – she continued on. “I was too much of a wimp. I sat in the art closet after school – I don’t know where Mrs. Henderson was at that day – and thought about ending it all. I debated my choices. Hanging. Pills. My dad’s handgun. Where I’d do it. When I’d do it.

  “And then, I stood up and went home and pretended nothing was wrong. Because I couldn’t actually kill myself. If I were more brave, I probably would have. If there’d been a way to do it where I wouldn’t feel any pain – I’d just go to sleep and never wake up – I’m sure I would’ve done it. I just wanted to disappear, but I didn’t want to cause Iris and my parents any pain, so I wanted to disappear completely.

  “I watched It’s a Wonderful Life every year at Christmas, so I knew that the world would be worse off without me. Blah blah blah. But I didn’t believe it. I just didn’t want my parents to have to wonder where they went wrong.