Christmas Day and she’d gone running without her keys again. He’d been out all morning, at his grandparents’ house where his family assembled for their big celebration. What if Kylie had chosen to run while he was out?
Christmas Day was a good family gathering. It started early, 6:00 AM for the little ones, and finished by noon. Everyone had a lot of commitments after the Reimer gathering. His only sibling, his sister, had to visit her in-laws, as did his cousins, who were all married.
His parents had been killed in a car crash two years before and, with no main squeeze in his life, that left the rest of the day for Will to entertain himself and his friends.
He loved being at Nan and Pop’s house when the little kids opened their presents. He loved the way they crawled all over him to say thank you, their sweet sugary faces pressing up to his for a kiss before they hurled themselves back into their heaps of presents. He also loved taking his leave shortly after the annual brunch that broke up early so his grandparents could start packing for their seasonal migration to Arizona.
He loved cooking and he loved entertaining and with the money he’d inherited from his parents, he’d designed and built the perfect house for both. He would have liked to have invited Kylie to come to his grandparents’ for brunch, too, but it didn’t seem right to throw her into a crowd of strangers, most of whom she’d probably never meet again. He was already sorry she was going back to Australia. His family would have liked her, he was certain.
When he asked what she was up to that morning, Kylie said she was looking forward to a sleep in and Skyping with her mates back home. Her voice creaked with homesickness and he’d sensed he couldn’t do much to help with that problem. But he could cook her a Christmas dinner like none she’d had before.
When she knocked on his door, having locked herself out again, his whole body tensed. He’d warned her repeatedly about such carelessness and he wasn’t going to let her do that again without consequences. When he smacked her bottom to underscore the seriousness of his warning, her pupils had dilated and her lips had partly slightly. In that moment he knew for sure – he’d be putting her over his knee soon.
Chapter 2
Kylie thought about Will’s threat as she inspected herself one last time in the mirror. Her long blonde hair was clean and shiny, flowing almost to her waist in gentle waves. Her healthy skin glowed under the slightest touch of makeup. The daily runs had kept her in shape, so her little black dress clung to her in all the right places. Still, it was high-necked and the hem fell almost to her knees, so it wasn’t too provocative. Unless, of course, someone called Will should lift the hem of her skirt and find the black lace garter belt that was holding up her silky stockings.
If Will was going to make a move, she wanted to be ready. Simply fastening the garters on the seamed stockings made her mouth water. She smiled as she decided that if he didn’t make a move on her, she’d just have to take things into her own hands.
Satisfied that she passed muster, she toed on her aunt’s snow boots, slipped on the bulky parka that made her feel like the Michelin man, and made sure both sets of keys, hers and Will’s, were safely in her pocket before she picked up her bag of presents and the big pavlova she was taking for dessert. She’d topped it with fresh strawberries and kiwi fruit that had been flown in from the southern hemisphere. The fruit had probably spent more time in transit than any other thing she’d ever eaten before in her life and it cost a small fortune. But fresh fruit was part of her Christmas tradition and she paid for it with only a slight flinch. If she couldn’t have the usual Christmas lunch of salad and lobster with sweet fragrant mangoes for dessert, at least this one part of the day upheld the lifelong traditions of her family.
The last thing she picked up on her way out the door was the cloth bag with the black stilettoes she’d borrowed from her aunt’s extensive footwear collection. Sexy lingerie was so much more powerful if a woman was hobbled by killer shoes. They said, I’m defenseless. I can’t run. I can’t escape. I’m at your mercy. Take me.
She’d planned her Christmas outfit carefully, from the modest but clinging dress that she’d brought with her from Oz to the fuck-me shoes. The black lingerie was new, bought a few days ago with the intent to seduce. She hadn’t been sure when she would wear it, but that one smack on the bottom from Will had awoken something fierce in her and she knew tonight was the night.
She wanted more of his touch and to try to forget that look on his face when Amanda spoke about Georgia. Maybe she should get Amanda’s number and try to find out more about the other woman. Or would Amanda tell Will that Kylie was nosing around, being a sticky beak as they called it back home when someone was prying.
Kylie arrived at Will’s house at the same time as the other orphans and strays. They’d all come in the same car, so she joined them and they walked up the stairs together. Joseph sang Here We Come A-Caroling in a delicious baritone and the others joined in, even Kylie who was tone deaf and rarely sang if she thought someone might hear her. Will, who had changed to slim fitting black jeans and a form-clinging V-neck sweater that showed every ripple of his taut chest, opened the door and added his voice to the choir. The guests paraded into the house like people were doing all over the city, bundled up like Eskimos, laden down with dishes of food and bags of brightly wrapped parcels. Will had slapped a $15 limit on gift giving to make finding presents more about the fun of the hunt than the gift itself. Presents would wait until after dinner.
People sloughed off their winter boots and slipped on their indoor shoes. Thomas looked at Kylie’s stilettos and let out a wolf whistle.
“It’s hot in here,” he said.
Kylie saw Will checking out her shoes and long slim legs and winked at him. He looked away with a hint of bashfulness that melted her heart.
Everyone bustled into the kitchen, laying out a lavish feast on the kitchen island. Will carved the turkey and dished up the stuffing. People picked up warm plates and helped themselves before they sat down at the dining room table.
“Will, I don’t think Martha-bloody-Steward would have a better looking table than this,” Kylie said as she unfurled a white linen napkin over her lap.
“Language,” Will said with the arch of a single eyebrow.
The day he’d taken her to Joseph’s store to buy running gear, he’d told her he didn’t like profanity.
“Well I do and I’m an Aussie so you may as well get fucking used to it,” she’d said.
He’d glowered at her, but she’d hummed and stared out at the traffic like she hadn’t noticed a thing. She wasn’t going to change for some bloke she’d just met. If he liked her he was going to have to accept her just the way she was.
Now, she looked at him over the candles and evergreen branches that festooned the table. “Language? I’m speaking English, you got a problem with that?”
Megan held her cracker to him. “Give it a rest, Will. The whole world swears except you. Haven’t you heard? Intelligent people use more swear words, scientists have proven it.” The cracker pulled apart with a low snap and a paper hat and tiny magnifying glass popped out. “But Kylie’s right. This is one of the prettiest Christmas tables I’ve ever seen. Martha-bloody-Stewart would be jealous.”
Will set his knife and fork down and smiled at Megan. “Martha Stewart probably doesn’t have someone as important as Kylie Sandford, from Sydney, Australia, visiting her for dinner tonight, so she probably wouldn’t have made such an effort.”
Kylie sensed she was being made fun of, but not unkindly. “Too right,” she said. “Too bloody right.”
They all ate with great appetite, but left dessert until after the presents. In the living room the other two couples sat together which left the third sofa for Kylie and Will. The warmth of Will’s thigh touching hers made Kylie wish she could teleport everyone else from the room. Then Will shifted away from her and reached under the tree for the first present. Seconds later, the ripping and tearing started.
The gi
fts Kylie received embarrassed her slightly because it looked like the others had totally ignored Will’s $15 maximum. Megan and Thomas gave her a pair of running gloves that she’d seen in Fit to Thrill for $60 before tax.
“We combined our limits,” Thomas said as if that explained everything.
Amanda and Joseph gave her a ponytail running hat in the same bright pink as the gloves. Another gift over the supposed maximum, Kylie guessed.
Will’s present was the most over the top. It was a running belt with a water bottle and was the most expensive one she’d see at Mountain Equipment when she’d been in there a few days before. It had a water bottle that apparently didn’t ice up even at minus 30 and a phone pouch large enough to take the latest, bulkiest iPhone.
Kylie ran her fingers over the soft webbing of the belt. “Thanks so much, Will,” she said, almost tripping over her words.
“I thought I’d try to make it easier for you to take essentials on a run,” Will said, staring at her levelly. “You wouldn’t want to get into trouble out there, would you?”
Kylie felt a blush starting so she took a deep breath and returned his stare. “No, I sure wouldn’t. What do you call a pack like this?” she asked the others.
“Fanny pack,” Amanda said.
“Waist pack,” Joseph offered, and flicked his long dark hair out of his eyes.
“An essential accessory,” Will said, his voice calm and commanding.
Kylie ignored him and said, “Fanny isn’t a polite word in Australia.”
“That’s rich coming from Ms Garbage Mouth,” Will said.
“Why not?” Megan asked.
“It’s a euphemism for…” Kylie couldn’t bring herself to say cunt or pussy. She definitely didn’t want to say something as clinical as vagina. “Uh, the lady garden.”
“Really!” Thomas said and then gave a hoot of laughter.
“What does it mean here?” Kylie asked.
“It means your bottom,” Megan leaned over and squeezed her arm in support. “Ignore Thomas. It’s just the idea of the lady garden sends all his blood rushing to his penis.”
Kylie explained that in Australia they called it a bum bag and Thomas laughed at that too, so she decided it wasn’t just lady garden he found funny. He was a man-child who’d probably snigger at anything to do with genitalia. She was glad she hadn’t bought any funny sex toys from the adult gift shop she’d wandered into downtown.
Still she had to do some creative accounting to justify her overspending. By ignoring the fact that all her gifts were coming from the US, paid for in US dollars, and tallied before the whack of duty she’d had to pay before the UPS driver would let her have her parcel, she could honestly say that none of them had blown the limit. And all of them, except Will’s, were originally from Australia bought at an online store that catered to nostalgic expats. She gave the two women pots of macadamia oil moisturizer. Thomas and Joseph got small jars of exorbitantly priced leatherwood honey from Tasmania.
The one present she went overboard on was Will’s gift. She’d bought him a copy of Time Magazine from 1985. The front cover featured his all-time favorite hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, in his Edmonton Oilers uniform. She’d gone to the expense of having it archival-framed so it wouldn’t deteriorate with age.
Will opened it and just stared.
“What is it?” Amanda asked, craning her neck from the other side of the room. She was still wearing the paper hat from her cracker and it sat lopsided on her pixie cut. Spots of red from too much wine colored her cheeks.
Will cleared his throat. “Thank you, Kylie,” he said and held it up for everyone to see.
“Boring,” said Megan, the only one in the room, other than Kylie, who wasn’t first, an Oilers fan, and second, a hockey fanatic.
“Thank you so much.” Will blinked a couple of times and wiped his free hand over his eyes quickly. “You don’t even know me and you got me this?”
“I know you heaps,” Kylie said. “You showed me your man cave in the basement with the sacred hockey wall. There were a couple of empty spots and I found this online.” She waved at the framed magazine as though it was something she’d picked up the convenience store on an afternoon run. “I decided that I was allowed to go over the limit to say thank you because you’ve done so much for me, taking me shopping, showing me around, letting me use your keys when I get locked out, to say nothing of having me over on Christmas Day. I would have been very lonely if I’d had to stay in Nell and Nick’s big house by myself.”
“I was just being neighborly.” Will’s voice was a bit lower and huskier than normal. He passed the framed magazine around for everyone to look at.
Megan studied it for a moment. “March 18, 1985! Isn’t that your birthday, Will?”
“Yeah, it is. That’s what freaked me out. I’ve never seen this cover before.”
“I think that deserves a kiss,” Amanda said.
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Thomas started the chant and the others joined in quickly. Will and Kylie stared at each other for a moment. Kylie bit her lip and Will placed his hand on the back of her neck and drew her closer. Then he pulled her to his chest, locked her in a proper hug and kissed her hard. Their teeth knocked together slightly and the next thing Kylie felt was his tongue slipping between her lips, licking her teeth.
“Wow! Someone turned up the heat in here,” Megan said, breaking the moment.
Kylie and Will’s eyes opened and they stopped, both of them laughing self-consciously, as if they’d revealed a major secret to the room. In fact, they had. At that moment, Kylie knew she wouldn’t be sleeping in Auntie Nell’s lovely guest room that night.
“Thank you very much,” Will said one more time, tracing his finger under her chin. It was unclear what he was saying thank you for.
“My pleasure,” Kylie said. “And I think it’s time for dessert.”
She hopped to her feet and hoped no one noticed how weak her legs were as she walked to the kitchen. The others followed and made light work of cleaning up after the meal. As they pitched in, Will’s Christmas playlist filled the air. Kylie listened for Coldplay again but it didn’t shuffle through the other songs. Was it on a secret list that Will played only for himself?
She had a secret playlist made up of songs that let her open her heart and mourn the stupid mistake called Tyler. She’d been building her heartbreak list since the day of the surfing carnival when Tyler dumped her. She had been waiting for him by the check-in desk, knowing he would be late because he always was. The competition had started and the grommets, the youngest surfers ages seven to twelve, were in the water already but no Tyler.
Kylie, like a fool, kept waiting. She’d signed in for her section but wouldn’t be paddling out for another hour at least. To pass time, she leaned on her board and talked to friends and strangers, trying to actual casual and not check her phone every two seconds.
Then a rough male voice behind her said, “Whoa, Tyler, who’s the new talent?”
Kylie turned to see Tyler, his back to her, with his arm around the waist of a girl who didn’t look old enough to have started menstruating. To remove any doubt about the nature of their relationship, the girl stood on tiptoe, kissed him and whispered something in his ear. He laughed and kissed her back.
Kylie’s mouth went dry and her blood pounded loudly in her temples. She dropped her board in the sand and walked over to him, tapping him on the shoulder so hard he bleated and rubbed the spot where she’d just touched him. She said, “I didn’t know you were babysitting this week.”
The blonde looked Kylie up and down with a curl of her lip. She turned back to Tyler and said, “Who’s the old bag? Is this your mum?” She punctuated that with a childish giggle and Tyler looked at her with so much affection, Kylie knew her day was done.
Twenty-five years old and she had been blown off for a schoolgirl. Swamped with rage and pain, Kylie wanted to rip his limbs off. Something fragile inside her had been crushed, her soul had been brok
en, and she swallowed a long keening howl of pain.
Her first instinct was to throw her board into her car, go home, and climb into bed and cry until there was nothing left of her but a shriveled corpse. As she stood there with tears welling in her eyes she barely heard Tyler say, “Hey Madison, this is Kylie. I told you about her.”
“Oh yeah, the old chick, I remember.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
Tyler kissed the top of Madison’s head and smirked at Kylie. “Madison’s not old enough to surf in your class yet but if she did, she’d take home the trophy. She’s going to be national champion some day.”
Not if I fucking kill her first, Kylie mused. “She has a bit of growing up to do before then, doesn’t she?” Kylie said, grateful for the sunglasses that hid her pain-filled eyes. She picked up her board and forced herself to walk away calmly. Further down the beach, she joined the other competitors who were warming up. They greeted her, oblivious to her personal tragedy. Kylie paddled into the surging waves with a strong rhythm.
She surfed her best that day and took home the top prize, a check for $500, a check she would happily have given back, if Tyler would just phone her and tell her that he was sorry, that Madison was a passing infatuation and he never meant to hurt her.
Except he did. He’d planned to blindside her like that and she knew it. Worse than that, she’d deserved it.
Only six months ago the shoe had been on the other foot. Tyler had taken Kylie to a party where his unsuspecting girlfriend, Brittany, was waiting for him. Kylie had waltzed in, holding his arm, radiant from the attention he’d been pouring on her all week. Brittany took one look at them and started screaming that he was a lying, double-crossing scumbag. Then Brittany left the party in a flood of tears, comforted by a posse of consolatory girlfriends. Kylie froze on the spot, mortified.
A Spanking Good New Year: Short Story Collection Page 11