A Naughty Little Christmas

by Lili Valente

  It’s a damned shame, really.

  Lynn is the one who’s studied our ancestry and takes pride in being distantly related to the Delacourts, the family that inspired the town’s Frozen Dead Dude festival when their patriarch had himself cryogenically frozen and stored in a Tuff Shed on their property.

  The annual celebration in honor of the local nut job takes place the week leading up to Christmas Eve and is Lynn’s absolute favorite time of the year in Lover’s Leap. She adores bowling with frozen turkeys in the square and cheering on the coffin race through downtown.

  I, however, don’t put much stock in hokey festivals.

  Or heritage.

  What good are distant relatives? None of my second cousins stepped in to offer Lynn or I a place to live when Child Protective Services knocked on our door all those years ago. Lynn insists it wasn’t our extended family’s fault—our dad kept us isolated—but I don’t really care. I don’t hold a grudge against our relatives, but I have no desire to put faces with names, either.

  The year our father bailed on us for good, I almost lost my sister. We were placed in separate foster homes for three months while a caseworker tracked down our great aunt and arranged for our transfer to L.A. If Aunt Maggie had decided she was too tired to raise two teenage girls, Lynn and I would have been torn apart. And Lynn, who was only thirteen at the time, would have lost the only person she’d ever been able to count on, the mama bear of a big sister who had been her defender and provider from the day our mother died when Lynn was still in diapers.

  I don’t have the time for anyone who failed to keep that from happening, and I have nothing but contempt for the person who set the terrifying wheels in motion—Dean effing Roberts.

  “Bastard jerk-face jerk,” I mutter, attention fixed on the snowy street, half hoping Dean will walk by so I can glare at him until he bursts into flames.

  He apparently still lives here. Olivia only moved back to town a few days ago, but she was quick to get the dirt and give me the scoop on my old flame.

  Dean lives in town, in a cottage not far from Evergreen Lane. He works as a wilderness guide, runs a camping-supply rental business, and has lunch with his mama every Friday at the elementary school, where she still works as the nurse. Olivia mentioned an ex-girlfriend she didn’t think Dean had been too serious about, and some sort of drama with Matilda Williams, the tiniest, shyest girl in elementary school—the one I can’t imagine creating a sound above a whisper, let alone any drama.

  But no matter how much the gossipy part of me wants to know more about both the ex and the drama, I didn’t press Olivia for more information.

  Dean’s existence isn’t relevant to me. I couldn’t care less what that liar is up to or who he’s up to it with. He’s nothing to me now, just another ghost haunting a town I can’t wait to leave the moment Olivia and I finish our lunch date tomorrow.

  The only good that would come from seeing Dean would be the satisfaction of looking him in the eye without an ounce of feeling and then turning and walking away.

  But I don’t have the time for grand and chilly gestures, either.

  The storm is kicking into high gear, the snow getting deeper, and there are fewer and fewer people on the street outside the café. If I’m going to check into my hotel near the slopes before the storm strands me in downtown, I need to make tracks. The mountain passes will be treacherous by later this afternoon.

  I finish my biscuits and gravy, thank Matty O’Sullivan for a delicious meal, and leave a generous tip because Matty’s mom was always so generous with me back in the day. From the time I was a kid coming in for breakfast on the rare weekend when my old man hadn’t lost his paycheck to the slots, Sandy O’Sullivan always slipped me an extra side or two for free. It was as if she knew that I couldn’t always count on a morning meal, let alone bacon with my pancakes.

  “Good to see you back in town, Macy,” Matty says as he collects my signed check from the table, a warm expression on his guileless face. He was always a gentle giant, and it doesn’t look like much has changed in the past decade. “You gotta come back for happy hour while you’re here. We’ve got a killer Christmas brew this season, and our IPA won gold at the state fair last fall.”

  “Congratulations, that’s amazing. I’d love to taste both, but I’m on a tight schedule this trip.” I push my chair away from the table and reach for my coat and purse. “I’m on an evening flight out of Denver tomorrow. My clients get antsy if I’m gone for more than a few days at a time.”

  “You’re some sort of guru or something now, right?” Matty asks, his tone so sweet I can’t get annoyed at the misrepresentation of my life’s work.

  “Not really. I do massage therapy for people with chronic pain and help them manage their symptoms with meditation. I have a loyal following, but I wouldn’t call myself a guru.”

  “Oh, well, that sounds great, too.” Matty grins. “Olivia and Daisy were in the other day. They said your business is kicking ass, but I wasn’t surprised. You always had your shit together, even when we were kids. Seemed like there wasn’t anything you weren’t good at.”

  Except figuring out who I should trust and avoiding getting my heart broken into a thousand pieces. The thought is all the confirmation I need that getting out of Lover’s Leap ASAP is the best thing to do.

  I’d love to have more time to spend with Olivia, to catch up with Daisy, and to sample the Fish and Bicycle’s brews, but this town does things to me. Bad things. It aggravates old wounds, the ones that roughed up my heart when I was still too young to know how to process that kind of pain.

  The ones that have never fully healed, not the way they’re supposed to.

  It’s better if I get in and out as quickly as possible and get back to L.A., where the weather is sunny and so am I.

  L.A. Macy doesn’t growl into her coffee or glare at the street thinking about setting people on fire with her eyeballs. L.A. Macy is the friendly neighborhood speed-walker who always stops to chat, pet your dog, and talk smog and Santa Ana winds. L.A. Macy has even learned to live with the hellish city traffic, though she secretly prefers days when she doesn’t have to leave her cozy Venice office to make house calls, and dreams of opening a retreat center somewhere quiet and having her clients come to her.

  L.A. Macy also has hope—loads of it.

  She has hope that someday she’ll find that perfect-for-her work situation and then her good life will get even better. She believes in a wide-open future filled with opportunity, adventure, and maybe even love in store when the stars align and bring Mr. Right into her orbit.

  But in Lover’s Leap, it’s too easy to slip into the skin of the hopeless girl I once was, the one who watched through a social worker’s car window as Dean grew smaller in the distance and my heart broke so hard even my practical sister agrees it made a noise.

  It was a soft crack that filled the back seat, vibrating in the air as we were spirited away.

  So I don’t linger any longer over friendly conversation. I hug Matty goodbye, wish him all the luck in the world with his brews and business, and get on the road, setting my Elantra on a course for the Summit Hotel.

  As a teen, I drove these roads hundreds of times, sitting behind the wheel of Dean’s old truck, learning how to drive from the boy next door instead of the father who was never around.

  I don’t expect to have any trouble getting to my hotel. I’m sure everything will be fine.

  But I should know better than to take anything for granted, especially around here.

  Not ten miles from town, I hit a patch of black ice and go spinning—God, don’t let me die in Lover’s Leap, screaming through my head as the car rushes toward the guardrail.

  I can’t go out like this. Not like this.

  Not in the one place I vowed to put in my rearview mirror forever.

  Just like in the movies, my life rushes past my eyes, filled with love and regret and a few too many scenes featuring Dean Roberts…

  I think
about his warm brown eyes and his kiss and the way he always knew exactly what to say to make me smile, to make me laugh, to make me feel loved and understood.

  A part of me wishes that I’d been able to feel the way I felt with my first love one more time before it was all over.

  But wishing won’t heal a broken heart or stop a car speeding toward a giant tree en route to a head-on collision.

  Chapter 4

  Dean

  “It’s beginning to look a lot like payday. Everywhere you go…” I belt out the words, accompanied by the heater purring in the cab of my truck.

  It’s a damned nice ride, a tricked-out Toyota Tacoma, a present to myself three years ago on the fourth anniversary of the grand opening of Lover’s Leap Outdoor Adventures.

  Getting my business in the black in the first year felt like an accomplishment worthy of a splurge. Of course, if I’d known then that Mom’s arthritis was going to get so bad she would have trouble continuing to work, I wouldn’t have paid cash for the truck. But I’ve managed to sort out the money situation, and I can’t deny I love this machine and its steadiness on the mountain roads. Years of driving a beater that could barely make it up the hill at the edge of town make a man grateful for a reliable vehicle.

  Hell, I’m grateful for a lot of things.

  I’m grateful for my thriving business and debt-free lifestyle, for the holiday season I’m about to celebrate with family and friends, for the gorgeous mountain town I’m lucky enough to call home, and for the Sexy Stripper Santa costume I impulsively picked up at a half-price sale last year, thinking I might want to surprise Hannah with something naughty next Christmas.

  Hannah, of course, is long gone—engaged to the guy she cheated on me with last Valentine’s Day—but my Sexy Santa gear has proven to be the best investment I’ve ever made. I bless the day I tossed it into my cart while trolling a novelty store for half-price peppermint fudge.

  And because I’m a pragmatic man, I’m also grateful that I didn’t realize how much money a decent-looking guy could make wiggling his ass when I was an eighteen-year-old kid dying to strike out on my own straight out of high school.

  That knowledge would have been too much, too soon.

  Better that Sexy Santa came into my life now, when I have the maturity to know butt-wiggling is all well and good, but not a sustainable, long-term career choice. I’ve been having a damned good time taking it all off, but once I earn enough to pay off the second mortgage Mom took out on the cabin last year, I’ll happily put my part-time stripper days behind me.

  Though, I won’t hesitate to pass the costume on to any friends in need of a life-changing amount of cash.

  In just two months, I’ve earned over ten grand working nights and weekends providing PG-13 adult entertainment to the sleepy hamlets near Lover’s Leap. I won an amateur night show in Breckenridge, burned a flaming, money-lined pathway through the girls night secret-Santa circuit in early December, and topped it off with a one-man show at a cosmetics convention in Manitou Springs last weekend that left the stage littered with dollar bills and phone numbers scrawled on napkins in Ruby Red lipstick.

  And just this afternoon I made Beatrice Prince’s eighty-first birthday one to remember with a three-song set at the Hidden Hills retirement home. Beatrice declined to sit on my lap—she’d just had a hip replacement—but she was all too happy to tuck a few crisp dollar bills in the waist of “Santa’s” boxer briefs. I’d elected to forego the peppermint-striped G-string that came with the suit, in the interest of good taste and holding my head up in public in my hometown.

  The entertainment firm I’m working with agreed not to book me at any events directly in Lover’s Leap, but the mountain community isn’t a big one. I realized going into this there was a chance I’d end up performing for someone I knew. With that in mind, I kept my act relatively clean, or at least clean enough that I won’t blush ten different shades of red if I run into someone at the grocery store who’s seen me jingle my bells.

  But so far, I’ve gotten lucky, and after just two more performances, I’ll be in the clear.

  It’s only eight days until Christmas and my impending retirement. Colorado snow flurries and roaring fires will be in fashion until the March thaw, but come December 26th, Santa and his elves will pack up their wares for another year. The festive zing will be gone from the air, replaced by grumbles about diets and heavy sighs as people who’ve had a few too many chestnuts roasted on the open fire force themselves off the couch.

  I’ve already seen an uptick in locals wanting to book my ten-mile cross-country skiing trip, one of the many outdoor adventures provided by my expertly trained guides. Soon, I’ll be pulling in money for keeping people safe on the trails instead of shaking my tail feather.

  And I won’t be sad to see Santa go.

  At least, not too sad…

  The suit does get uncomfortable. The pants are skin tight, leaving very little to the imagination when I’m standing up and becoming downright torturous when I’m sitting down. We’re talking a might-not-be-able-to-father-children level of tightness. And though I adore Miller and don’t regret agreeing to be a sperm donor for a single second, I would like to have children of my own someday. A son or daughter I’ll be able to tuck in every night instead of dropping him or her off at the legal parent’s house for bedtime.

  And that’s not going to happen if I spend many more hours in these velvet pants.

  I shift in my seat for the tenth time since setting out from Hidden Hills, rearranging the Yule log and holly berries with a wince.

  The fact that I just called my cock a fucking Yule log is another strong sign that it’s time to retire before I become one of those weird people who keep their Snow Village on display all year long.

  I make a mental note to ask my friend Colton if he has any interest in a lightly used stripper outfit—we’re roughly the same size, and Colt has a reputation with the ladies that would segue nicely into a side gig as a pelvic sorcerer—and slow for the next turn.

  The roads are getting bad. Really bad.

  The thought is barely through my head when I ease around the mountainside to see a black Elantra skidding across a patch of ice. The car shoots onto the shoulder, moving so fast it plows through the rickety guardrail and plummets over the edge in a heartbeat, taking my breath along with it.

  My stomach drops, and my mouth fills with the rancid taste of fear as I jerk the truck onto the shoulder and shove it into park.

  Heart thrashing, I slam out into the snow, leaving the Tacoma running as I race to the edge. A sharp rush of relief pierces my dread when I see the slope is one of the more gentle ones on this stretch of road. It’s a forty-five-degree incline that leads down to the Bear Canyon Ridge trail, not a sheer drop that would allow the driver almost no chance of survival.

  And thankfully, the car is already starting to slow as it rolls over tiny evergreens and through snowdrifts impeding its passage. By the time it collides with a tree big enough to stop it cold, it’s only going thirty or forty miles per hour.

  Still, the crunch as the front of the car collapses is enough to make me flinch. If the driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, even a collision at a slower speed could be fatal.

  Instinctively, I reach for the cell I usually keep tucked in my back pocket, forgetting the Santa pants are incapable of containing anything but my own backside. With a soft curse, I start back to the truck to grab the phone—planning to call 911 on my way down to the car—but a sharp whining sound stops me in my tracks.

  I spin, watching as the tree the Elantra crashed into begins to lean drunkenly toward the road. It isn’t falling—yet—but the next gust of wind could take it down, and chances are a Lodgepole Pine that size will crush the car flat.

  There isn’t a second to spare, not even to call for help.

  Heart surging back into my throat, I leap over the brush at the side of the road and into the thigh-high drifts. I fight my way down to the car as fast as I can, the groan
ing of the wood a haunting soundtrack insisting I move even faster.

  The snow is coming down hard now, stinging into my eyes and accumulating on my hair. The last forecast said there wouldn’t be a break in the storm until morning. By the time the road crews come through tomorrow, everything will be drifted over.

  If I don’t get the driver and any passengers out of the car, anyone still inside will be buried alive—if they survive the impact of a few thousand pounds of tree slamming into the vehicle.

  Of course, if the tree comes down while I’m pulling people out, there’s a chance I’ll die, too.

  It’s a possibility I accept without slowing my pace.

  Back in Peewee league, one of my football coaches made a big deal out of my bravery on the field, marveling that a kid without a dad could be so fearless in the face of linebackers twice his size. But I didn’t need a father figure to teach me how to be brave.

  I had plenty of badass role models in my life.

  My grandmother trapped and butchered all her own meat, sometimes dragging bear carcasses twice her size home through the snow, keeping her family fed through the Great Depression while others on the mountain starved. And my mother has saved choking victims in crowded restaurants, performed CPR on a man who collapsed on the slopes while we were out snowshoeing, and put a kid’s thumb on ice after he cut it off in shop—all without breaking a sweat or raising her voice above a soothing whisper.

  And then there was Macy, who practically raised her sister after their mother died. Macy, who hid money and kept dinner on the table while her father gambled away his paycheck faster with every passing year. Macy, who was determined to go it alone at fifteen if that’s what it took to keep her and Lynn together, even if it meant doing without so her sister wouldn’t have to.

  In the months after her father left his daughters for good, I watched her lose ten pounds she couldn’t afford to lose and worry lines form on her forehead. I stood by, feeling helpless as she took extra shifts stocking groceries at the market, coming home later and later and dragging through school the next day, propped up by hot tea and packs of Sugar in the Raw she lifted from the coffee shop. I brought her food and pitched in when I could, but back then, I was helping support my own family, paying for utilities and groceries during the lean months. I was seventeen, still six months away from graduating and being able to work a full-time job. And even when I graduated, I’d been enough of a realist to understand that I wouldn’t be able to earn enough to support myself, Macy, and Lynn.