Her Mistletoe Minotaur: A BWWM Paranormal Holiday Romance (A Very Alpha Christmas Book 1)

by Erin St. Charles

  This was her opportunity to learn something important about this man. Maybe it was rude of her to ask, but she did it anyway.

  "How long have you had the business?" She broke eye contact in order to give him some emotional space.

  "Twenty-one years last May," he told her. He looked impatient with her, like he was about to reach the end of his ability to make small talk. Like he wanted to flee.

  "How old are you, Mitch?" She tried to make herself sound casual. Like she was making small talk, not evaluating him as a man. But she was nervous, and her hand trembled a little when she reached for the condiments. She kept her eyes averted.

  She heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by an awkward silence. When he didn't say anything for long moments, she took a bite of her lunch to distract herself. She swallowed the dry bite of food, then chanced a look at him.

  His big, barrel chest expanded as he took a big breath. He stood next to the kitchen sink, his stance vigilant. But his eyes smoldered with lust, and one foot tapped the wide plank wood floor. She wanted so badly to touch him right now, to place her hand on the center of his chest to see whether his heart was beating out of his chest as hers was.

  Tension crackled between them, an arc of sexual attraction as potent as an electric shock. She took a deep breath of her own and held it, waiting to see what he'd say next.

  "Too old," he grunted. "I'm too old for you."

  What a way to let a girl down.

  She recognized the signs of being pushed away, forcefully. She swallowed, her throat parched and dry. She got to her feet to get herself a glass of water. Mitch recoiled as if a venomous snake suddenly lashed out at him. She sidled past him, their torsos less than an inch apart, to get to the sink. She got her glass of water, took a gulp, and blinked up at him.

  "How come you never hear anything about the tenth reindeer, Olive?" she asked him, her tone serious.

  This definitely caught him off-guard. Confusion wrinkled the ruggedly attractive contours of his face. This close to him, he smelled great.

  "Did you say 'Olive'?" he asked her.

  "Yes. How come you never hear about the tenth reindeer, Olive?" she asked again, this time more insistently.

  "I didn't know there was a tenth reindeer," he said.

  "Yeah, there is definitely a tenth reindeer," she said, matter-of-factly. "Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names..." In keeping with the season, she sang out the punchline with a great deal of cheer, though her face remained deadpan.

  Mitch stared at her wordlessly, his expression impassive. Clearly, of all possible outcomes that might result from his conversational bomb, he had not foreseen one involving corny Christmas jokes.

  Mitch excused himself, mumbling distractedly that he needed to go look for stranded motorists. Tu wanted to ask to go with him, but knew he'd say no. Again.

  "Yeah, knock yourself out," she said acidly.

  He left without responding. She ambled to the great room window holding her not-cheese quesadilla, which was surprisingly good, given there was no actual cheese in it. She watched him jog down the front steps, shrugging into his winter jacket as he went. She wanted to scream from frustration. The dude inspired a persistent tingling of her lady parts, and she knew she made him hot, too. So, why was he pushing her away? Wouldn't it be fun to pass the time waiting for the snow to melt... together?

  Tu decided she didn't give a flying flip what his problem was. She also decided she was bored. Her Omni didn't work here so she couldn't do any random movie watching, and she was stuck here for the foreseeable future.

  She munched her quesadilla thoughtfully as she watched Mitch drive away in his big, blue wrecker, feeling a profound sense of sadness. And anger. Possibly more anger than sadness. Definitely more anger than sadness.

  She finished the quesadilla, put the plate in the kitchen sink, and dashed up the stairs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Deck the Halls with...

  Tu ran up the stairs to the third floor on a mission. She paused for only a moment, chewing on a cuticle and stewing before opening the solid oak door by its froufrou, ornate knob, and running up the short flight of stairs to the attic.

  Too old. I'm too old for you.

  Good-looking bastard! The man was hot, the man was hot for her, and she knew she was cute wearing her own unmentionables with his t-shirt. Her getup was every man's fantasy, wasn't it?

  The attic was cold, and goosebumps rose on her skin. The room was flooded with cold winter light, thanks to the large picture window that looked out on the front of the house. Outside that window, snow continued to swirl. Ice glazed the window panes. Mitch preferred going into that weather than spending time talking to her. Watching a movie with her. Making out with her...

  She shook off the annoying thought and eyed the piles of boxes on one side of the attic, and the furniture under canvas tarps on the other. She hadn't thought about poking around up here before. He hadn't told her not to go into the attic. Technically, she wasn't violating Señor Sourpuss's privacy.

  Like a child searching for Christmas presents on the sly, Tu quietly crept toward the boxes. They were labeled, intriguingly, things like "fabric," and "dishes," and "school projects."

  Several boxes bore the label "Mitch's toys." All the labels were old, the text faded. She wanted to open everything at once, but she needed to pace herself.

  She spent a few minutes moving boxes around and reading labels, until she encountered a set of green and red boxes and before she even found the label, she knew what they were.

  Grinning, she opened the lid on the box and gasped when she saw the inside.

  Smaller boxes labeled things like "tinsel" and "cranberry garland" and "icicles" greeted her. She opened each smaller box carefully, admiring the craftsmanship of the items.

  Another box labeled "children's ornaments" revealed the most adorable old, clearly handmade by children, ornaments. Most adorable were the seven or eight reindeer made of glued-together Popsicle stick triangles. These had been painted brown, with either red or black pom poms for noses, pipe cleaners for antlers, and googly eyes. There were origami Christmas trees, and swans. Snowmen made of sliced wood rounds, yarn and glue gingerbread men, multicolored bells adorned with bright red bandanna fabric bows and twine for hangers. Snowballs made from yarn and strung together for garland. Pine cones painted with various doodads glued on for decoration.

  Mitch did, in fact, have tons of decorations. He just hadn't put them up yet. Since she had nothing but time on her hands until the weather broke, and since Mitch had decided he wanted nothing to do with her, she could help out by decking the halls.

  She spent an hour dragging boxes down the three flights of stairs to the ground level. Once she had the boxes down and ready to paw through, she called her sister on the smartphone Mitch had left for her, wanting to share the moment.

  "Hey, it's me," she said when Jasmine picked up.

  "Me who?" Jasmine said tartly. Tu had decided to start with the massive stone fireplace in the great room. This was the focal point of the room, and she wanted to start there and work her way out.

  "Your sister, smart ass," Tu said. "What are you doing?"

  "Not much," Jasmine sighed. "Watching the snow fall."

  "Tell me about it," Tu said. She fingered a strand of fake cranberries. They would look pretty against the gray stone of the fireplace.

  "A little bit of snow on the ground and everyone loses their ever-lovin' minds," Jasmine said dryly. "The amount of snow out there is barely enough to make a snowball, let alone a snowman."

  "I know, right?" Tu said. "This would never be a snow day in Dayton."

  "No kidding," Jasmine said, sounding distracted. Tu could hear her sister bustling around in what she guessed was her own kitchen.

  "What are you doing?" Tu asked as she riffled through the boxes of ornaments. She decided to pair the cranberry garland with the silver and white snowball garland. She laid both on the floor in front o
f the hearth and contemplated how best to string them so that the colors complemented each other. On the mantel, she discovered tiny hooks the same color as the stone fireplace. Tu thought the hooks were specifically for hanging Christmas ornaments and wondered who'd put them there. Mitch's mother?

  "Trying a new recipe," Jasmine said coolly. "Where is Mitch Wayne?"

  Tu frowned at this. She sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I guess when the weather is like this, he goes out looking for stranded motorists. Apparently, his truck is one of the few vehicles that can handle driving in snow and ice."

  "Yeah, AJ told me Mitch Wayne is an unofficial first responder. Since he lives on the other side of the bridge, I've heard he does this quite a lot. The bridge is hard to get over in weather like this."

  "Tell me about it," Tu said. She stood on the hearth and strung the cranberries on the tiny hooks. She stood back, surveyed her work, then made an adjustment. "I was trying to get over Wolf's Bane Creek when I went off the road."

  "That's a small one," Jasmine informed her. Tu could hear her sister's KitchenAid mixer's low whirring in the background. "The Perdition Bridge is the bigger bridge the town settlers built to give them advanced warning of aggressors entering the town."

  "Oh? When was that?"

  "Not sure," Jasmine said. "Anyway, it's easy to get stuck on the outskirts of town when we get ice storms. Or so AJ says."

  Tu picked up the snowball garland and approached the hearth again. Carefully, she layered the second garland over the first, stepping back to admire the effect and make adjustments.

  "How is AJ?" Tu asked. She sat on the sofa facing the fireplace and looked at the hearth. Tu remembered something Mitch had told her the day before, about her living situation with her sister. Asking about her future brother-in-law could be a good way to lead into that discussion.

  Are you sure your sister wants you living in her backyard?

  Tu had not asked Jasmine about living there. In fact, Jazzy had offered her the space when Tu announced her plans to move to town.

  "He's good," Jasmine said. "He's working on his next submersive experience." AJ Cotter, Jasmine's fiancé, was an artist who made immersive games for a living. He worked out of his home.

  "That's good," Tu said. She wanted to ask about the guest house, but suddenly, she wasn't sure how. She hemmed and hawed until Jasmine came out and asked her what was wrong.

  "How do you feel about me moving into your guest house?" Tu asked.

  "It's fine," Jasmine said in a clipped tone. "No one lives there now, so it's not like we're using the space.

  "Is it really fine?" Tu asked. She frowned, cringed, and braced herself for the answer.

  The mixer turned off in the background. Jasmine sighed.

  "You need a place to stay, and it's not an imposition," her sister said. "Don't forget I invited you." Jasmine was saying all the right words, but her tone was cool, her words, clipped.

  Tu could have left it at that, but now she was curious. She had to know Jasmine's true feelings. "Did you feel you had to invite me? Because you didn't."

  Another sigh on her sister’s end. "You think I really had a choice? What would Mom and Dad say if I didn't offer the guest house to you? How would it make me look?"

  "Put all that aside for a minute," Tu said. "If there weren't any expectations, what would you have done?"

  Jasmine went completely quiet, and Tu had her answer.

  "Why did you invite me when you didn't want to?" Irritated, Tu yanked the lid off one of the boxes of child-made ornaments. She'd realized the only children's ornaments there were, were the ones Mitch had made as a kid. She tried to imagine him carefully gluing the parts of the reindeer heads together, painting them, and hanging them on the tree.

  "Why did you show up for Thanksgiving without telling me?" Jasmine countered.

  "Mom and Dad brought me," Tu said. "I was supposed to have Thanksgiving with my boyfriend, but we broke up the week before. Mom and Dad made me come, and I assumed they had already told you I was coming."

  Jasmine sighed in resignation. "Thinking back, the extra dinner guest was the least annoying thing that happened that weekend."

  Tu chuckled, and the sisters spent a few minutes talking about Thanksgiving the year before, when a wonky refrigerator resulted in a dinner that had been frozen solid hours before it was to be served. Jasmine, Tu, and their mother returned from a trip to town to find AJ trying to split a frozen turkey with an ax. They wound up having breakfast sausages for Thanksgiving dinner.

  "Did you ever find out why he was chopping a frozen turkey?" Tu asked, stifling a giggle.

  "Girl, the best I could figure was he thought he could grill the turkey faster if he cut it up first," Jasmine cackled.

  The sisters shared a good laugh. Tu was happy Jasmine shared her feelings.

  "Well, I'm sure there are plenty of places to live in town, don't you think?"

  Jasmine sighed. "I would think so." Tu noticed her sister didn't insist that Tu stay in the guest house.

  Tu gave the situation some thought and realized she might not feel great about a relative living in her backyard for an indeterminate length of time.

  "Well, I'll figure something out," Tu assured her sister.

  "Oh, by the way, I have an additional data point you might want to consider," Jasmine said. "To be honest, it was the thing that made me commit to moving in with AJ."

  "What was that?" Tu asked, intrigued.

  Tu's mouth dropped open in horror as her sister described walking in on their parents fucking on the kitchen counter that Thanksgiving weekend. Their parents had been divorced for about eight years. They had managed their real estate business together, before, during, and after the divorce.

  "I did scrub down the counters," Jasmine said. "Several times. The problem is more mental and emotional, than logical, do you know what I mean?"

  Tu did. She hadn't been the one to walk in on their parents, but even now, the mental image of her dad pumping into her mother gave Tu the willies.

  The sisters hung up, and Tu felt great that she'd had a chance to hash things out with Jasmine. She also felt less lonely, even though Mitch had yet again run away from her. She almost told her sister what was going on with her and Mitch Wayne, but in the end, she felt strange about doing it. They didn't have a relationship, did they?

  Tu threw herself into decking the halls, excited about Mitch's reaction to her having done this for him.

  CHAPTER 10

  Falalalala lala...

  Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock...

  When Mitch opened the front door to the cabin, it was to the sound of cheesy music and the last thing he expected—his mother's Christmas decorations.

  Yet there they were, draped over the stone fireplace in graceful arcs, snaking around the banister like a festive python, pinned to the door frame where the vestibule opened to the great room. Flames crackled in the fireplace. The vast great room felt somehow warm and cozy.

  As he walked into the room, the details began to assail him. The reindeer heads he'd made as a small boy with his mother, gluing, painting, then gluing again. The glass bulbs he'd swirled paint inside—pale blue, gray, and white—to create a frosted effect. The snowflakes made of beads and pipe cleaners. Barbara Wayne had been big on the Christmas cheer. She'd made these crafts with her youngest child, her late-in-life son, all the while praising him for his creativity.

  Creativity. What a joke.

  The fairy lights that somehow still worked after being shut away for years twinkled merrily from their intertwined places among the home-made garlands of cranberries and snowballs.

  Mitch wiped a hand down the side of his face, taking it all in. Confused, he drifted into the room, letting the front door close behind him.

  What the fuck?

  Christmas music drifted from a tinny-sounding speaker. Where was it coming from?

  He then spied the cheap smartphone he'd given Tu so that she would stop borrowing his a
nd leaving traces of her scent when she gave it back to him. Her scent was guaranteed boner material, and the source of endless frustration.

  The music came from the smartphone on the stout mesquite coffee table that stood in the nest of shifter-sized overstuffed couches. It was so loud it vibrated against the deeply stained wood.

  He was starting to put together the pieces. He understood what was happening here.

  Maybe it was his own fault for putting her in the room just a few doors down from the attic, where all his mother's things were in storage. If he hadn't put her in that guest room, she probably wouldn't have found the attic. Although, who was he kidding? He knew Tu well enough after a couple of days together to picture in his mind's eye her searching the house in a fit of pique at his inattention. He pictured her sashaying up the attic steps, her heart-shaped ass swaying as she went. She would then ignore any quaint ideas about privacy and staying out of other people's business to rummage through the boxes.

  Part of him suspected—or knew—that she had done this in the name of cheering him up, or whatever. Where was his cute little pest, anyway?

  He heard noises coming from the kitchen. It sounded like she was once again moving things around in his pantry, no doubt putting things back in the wrong places. Also, he smelled scorched non-dairy milk. As he stalked toward the kitchen doorway, wondering absently whether there was anything she knew how to cook without burning, he focused on forming an appropriate, even-tempered response to this violation.

  He found her fretting over a large blue mug with white snowflakes. She held it with a potholder and frowned. She was no longer dressed in such a way that her butt cheeks and many inches of shapely brown legs were exposed for his view. Instead, a figure-hugging fuzzy red sweater and a pair of painted-on jeans adorned her curves. Her braids tumbled over her shoulders. Even as irritated as he was, and considering she had burned more of his food, he didn't miss the way the sweater cupped her round breasts and plunged into a V, exposing her soft cleavage. She had a snowball garland draped over her shoulders like a feather boa.