Karen is gone.
But instead of being relieved I feel like she’s stalking me from the bushes.
Jesse opens the cottage door and waves me in. “Just… forget about her. We’re not gonna see her again. We’re just gonna close up the curtains and pretend we’re the only people in the world.”
“Right.” But I know it’s not true. Kraken Karen is back for a reason. She saw us in the news or something. Our engagement was in the tabloids. They even featured us on some gossipy cable entertainment show the week after Halloween. In fact, according to my mother, that’s right around the time she bought her old house.
Something is definitely up with the Kraken.
The driver helps us with our luggage, Jesse tips him, and then he closes the door and turns to face me with a sigh. “Come on, Emma. It’s Christmas. We’re here with your family, there’s a huge party tonight and a big Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow. Then the big day, and lots of pie, and mashed potatoes. And then it’s a whole week of exploring beaches, and diving, and having sex on secret sandbars.”
I smile, picturing it. He’s right. Karen won’t be around for any of that stuff. So what if she manages to squirm her way into our tree-trimming street party? She won’t get any closer than that. For sure. It’s just family after tonight.
But… God. I just can’t shake it. “She’s like a bad omen,” I tell Jesse.
“No, she’s not. It’s just… she’s just a minor blip. That’s all. She’s got no staying power. And besides, we don’t really live here. We live three and half hours away by private jet. She can’t follow us back to the city.”
“I know. But… I just don’t understand why she’s back. She’s been gone for like fifteen years. And then all of a sudden we’re engaged, and in the news, and she’s here. Why?”
“Maybe she missed you?”
I cough out a laugh. “No. That’s not it. She was my worst enemy.”
Jesse makes a face at me. “Then why does your mother like her so much?”
I tsk my tongue. “I never told her about all the things Karen did back when we were kids.”
“Maybe you should tell her now?”
“What’s the point?”
“Well… your mom would take your side. You have to know that. Your family is fiercely overprotective. One word to Alonzo about—”
“Oh, no. You don’t understand. He dated her!”
“What?”
“Yeah. For almost a year when he was a senior in high school. And she is the one who broke it off with him! He was crushed.”
“Wow. OK. Well… I didn’t see that coming.”
“I know. But she’s not back for Alonzo, because she’s married.”
“That logic holds true for me too, Emma. I’m taken.”
“It’s different.” I chew my lip, trying to work it out. “Something is fishy here.”
“Well… I don’t know. I think you’re making too big of a deal about this. Just...” He wraps his arms around my middle and leans his forehead against mine.
Which makes me smile and only think about him. Because yeah. Well done, Emma Dumas. Well done. Jesse Boston is the catch of the century.
So… is this just my own insecurities showing?
Maybe.
I drape my arms around his neck. “You’re right. I’m gonna just… let it go. It’s Christmas, we’re here with our family, and we’re gonna have a great time.”
He kisses me and all my dark, evil thoughts about Karen fade away in an instant. And when he breaks away and presses his forehead against mine, he says, “Ya know, she could be after you and not me.”
Which makes me giggle. “Right.”
“You’re hot,” he says. “You’re bossy. You’re super-rich, and super-smart, and super-pretty too. In fact, now I’m a little worried she might steal you away from me.”
“Stop it. You’re being silly.” But I get it. I’m being silly too.
“So… are we ready then? Should we go find your mom and dad? Get this street party started?”
I kiss him one more time, lingering in it just a little bit longer than I normally would, then whisper, “Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s go make a ruckus.”
The rest of the afternoon is filled with last-minute details. Jesse joins the volunteers with getting all the lights and ornaments on the big palm tree in my parents’ front yard ready for the lighting ceremony and I make sure all the vendors set up in the middle of the street have what they need.
Dumas Street is the length of five cottages on either side, plus one—my parents’ place and family home—at the top of the cul-de-sac, right in the middle.
The Emma and Jesse cottage is on my parents’ immediate right as you’re looking at the house, and across the street from us is Alonzo’s cottage. Next to us is Tony’s place, and across from Tony’s place is Luke’s, which is now filled with some random holiday family because Luke is living a sexy dream life with Zach and naked girl right next door. The rest of them are all rentals.
The street isn’t very wide, and almost all of it is taken up with street vendors and food trucks, which are lined up down the middle. Yes, there’s shaved ice. There’s always a shaved ice truck. But we’ve got a beer garden, and a pizza truck, and even a pop-up Cuban restaurant. Not to mention a merry-go-round and a Ferris wheel at the bottom of the street and even some carnival games.
It’s a pretty big deal to rent one of the Dumas cottages during the annual tree-lighting ceremony. And while this is not really a city event, the whole island gets in on it. It’s just a big ol’ night of fun.
Back when I was a kid it was a block party. This was before my parents bought up the cottages and they were filled with neighbors. We had a potluck, and that tradition continues today, but it’s only for family and volunteers now. It happens in the back yard after the palm tree is lit up and the festivities are winding down. And all the kids back when I was little would play in the blocked-off street. Some years we had fireworks. That was the big deal back when this all started.
I can honestly say I never imagined it would turn into this.
Later, Jesse and I walk next door to my parents’ house and immediately get a warm, over-the-top welcome from my mother—who wants to feed us everything in the kitchen—and suffocating bear hugs from my father. Alonzo punches Jesse on the arm way too hard, but Jesse laughs it off like a good sport, and then Tony does his famous hug swing when he shows up.
I watch Jesse as all this goes down.
My family is… big. Not big as in a lot of people, though four kids and parents is larger than most families these days. But big as in boisterous. We are loud, and we talk over people, and we are all very, very bossy.
But Jesse seems to love it. And I love that he loves it. He soaks it up. Takes all the hits my brothers throw at him in stride. And when we’re down here he never seems to stop smiling.
And my family loves him. Alonzo gives him a hard time, but I can tell Jesse is growing on him. Alonzo invited us to go deep-sea fishing with him this week. That’s no small invitation when it comes to Alonzo. He takes his swordfish seriously.
So I forget all about Karen. I see her and her family every now and then throughout the afternoon and evening. But she keeps her distance and that’s the best I can hope for, I guess.
It’s about eight in the evening when I break away from my job as vendor liaison and find Jesse standing in the shaved ice line.
“What are you getting?” I ask, sliding up next to him and slipping my hand in his.
“Cherry vanilla in a souvenir cup.” He winks. “Wanna share with me?”
“You bet.”
He orders. The girl—a teenager, just like I was that first afternoon when Jesse and I first met on this very island, just a few blocks away—smiles at Jesse like he’s the best thing to happen to her in her whole life.
I know the feeling, chickie. Trust me. I know the feeling.
She turns to us, handing the pink cup over, but then stops and gets a weir
d look on her face.
“Everything OK?” Jesse asks.
“Um… uh…” the girl stammers. And then she turns the cup around and points to the picture on the front.
It says ‘Dumas Street Tree Lighting’ and there’s a picture of me and my whole family on the front. Only this year Jesse’s face is on the cup too.
Jesse laughs. “Will you look at that?” Jesse says, taking the cup. “I’m family.”
“You’re family,” I agree.
We take the shaved ice and walk back over to our cottage and share it as we sit on the top step of the porch and watch the people all around us.
We sit in silence for a while.
Not that anything around us is silent. It’s nothing but noise, actually. But it’s the peaceful kind of noise. The bustle of happy people. The shouts of excited teenagers at the top of the Ferris wheel and the squeals of sugared-up kids as they chase each other in the grass of the cottage front yards.
“I can’t believe this is your life,” Jesse suddenly says.
“What? What do you mean?”
“It’s all just so…”
“Over the top?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “But… yeah. In the best way though. It’s so… different than how I grew up.”
Which gets me curious. Jesse hasn’t talked about his childhood much. Not since that first night we reconnected and ate ice cream at the Tastee-Freez after the bachelor auction. “How did you spend Christmas Eve eve?”
He inhales deeply and holds his breath for a moment, then lets it out slowly. “We didn’t.”
“Oh. Well, that’s understandable. Most families don’t have a tradition like this.”
“I mean, we didn’t celebrate Christmas at all after I was like… ten, I guess.”
I frown. I do remember him saying something like that before. “But when you took me down to the family floor in the Bossy, you pointed out where the tree was.”
“In front of the windows.”
“Yeah. So you must have some good memories from that time, right?”
He sighs, looking out at all the people in the street for a moment. Then he looks at me. “No, Emma. I don’t. I mean, there were a few years when we got presents and had a tree. The only real tradition that I even remember from that time is the stockings we had over the fireplace. And that’s only because Johnny wrote our names on them in red glitter glue. But most years? It was just another day.”
Now I frown. “Oh. I don’t think I realized that.”
“But…” He smiles at me and takes my hand. His is cold from holding the shaved ice cup. “There were a few years when Johnny tried. Once he chopped down a little evergreen shrub out in the Bossy courtyard and hauled it upstairs.”
“What?”
“I swear to God. He chopped down what was basically a bush, hauled it upstairs, and then we went on this massive hunt for Christmas shit so we could decorate it.”
“How old were you?”
“Mmm… maybe six?”
“So he was eight?”
“Yeah. Eight.”
“Did you find the Christmas boxes?”
“No. And I was pretty sad about that because I looked really hard for those glitter-glue stockings. But we did find Easter stuff. And we decorated the tree with pink and green Easter grass and filled up the baskets with forgotten junk-treasure we found while we were searching for the Christmas shit, and those were our presents that year.”
And even though this is kinda sad, it’s also kinda cool too. These three brothers found a way to celebrate. “Was it fun?”
“I guess. Sure. I guess it was, even though it wasn’t really a Christmas.”
“What was in your Christmas basket?”
“Oh, man. This kinda was fun. Johnny and Joey were good junk-treasure hunters. I got an old World War II medal, a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo, and a whole bunch of metal toy soldiers that I’m pretty sure were part of some very expensive custom chess set.”
“What did you give them? Do you remember?”
“I remember.” He’s smiling big now. “I found this little dog statue for Johnny. He always did want a dog, even when we were kids. It was kinda ugly. And it was actually probably an ashtray.”
I laugh.
“But he loved it. I wonder where that thing went?” He ponders this for a moment. “I dunno. But he had it around for a long time. Maybe it’s still up there? Up in his apartment?”
“You should go look.”
“I don’t think that place is ours anymore. And besides, Johnny probably wouldn’t like me nosing around in his shit.”
“And what did you get Joey?”
“Joey… I found Joey this cool sword. It was a real one too.”
“What kind of sword?”
“You know, like one of those martial arts swords. A katana or something. He always wanted to be a ninja growing up.” Jesse snaps his fingers. “You know what holiday we did do, though?”
“Which?”
“Halloween. Joey was always a ninja. Every freaking year. We would dress up and go trick-or-treating inside the building.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” He laughs. “Thinking about it now, I’m kinda embarrassed. Like… what were all those people thinking about us? Not all the floors were ours, ya know? They’re actual companies. Big-time companies. And here come the Boston brothers begging for candy. They must’ve wondered, Who the fuck is taking care of these kids? Don’t they have parents?”
“But they couldn’t say anything, could they?”
“Nah. We owned the building. And my father was a scary dude. They gave us lots of shit. Filled up our pillow cases with candy. Or if they didn’t have candy—because no trick-or-treaters were supposed to be showing up at the end of a freaking workday, right?”
“Right.”
“So sometimes we got office supplies instead. We had a lot of staplers at our house.”
I lean into him, feeling simultaneously happy and sad at his childhood memories. “Still,” I say, after a few moment of quiet introspection. “It’s special in its own way, don’t you think?”
“My childhood? Yeah. Definitely not typical.”
“It was Johnny,” I say.
“What?”
“Taking care of you kids. It was Johnny.”
“Yeah. It was always Johnny.”
“What’s he doing for Christmas?”
“Nothing, I guess. I asked him last night at the party and he said, ‘I don’t do church.’”
“He doesn’t have to do church,” I say, giggling.
“I told him that. He didn’t seem to get it.”
“So they’re doing nothing? No tree? No presents? And Megan is… pregnant?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t we invite them to come down here with us? What is Joey doing? Surely they’re getting a tree? For Maisy, at least.”
“Maisy is spending Christmas at the Kane estate. Joey didn’t think it was fair to take her away from her little sister for the holiday. So he’s taking her for New Year’s and having Christmas then.”
“Call them.”
“What?”
“Right now. Call them and tell them to come down here.”
Jesse points to the street filled with people. “There’s not even an empty cottage, Emma. Where would they stay?”
“Who cares? My parents have two spare bedrooms. Some of them can stay in our old bedrooms. Or we can make Alonzo and Tony stay with the parents and Joey and Johnny can take their cottages.”
“I’m sure Alonzo would love that idea.”
“I could make him. He’d do it for me.”
“Nah. I mean… I would like to have them here. But it would be a huge inconvenience.”
“Oh, we’re calling them,” I say, reaching into his pants pocket for his phone. “Right now. At least extend an invitation. And if they say no, then fine. But maybe they feel left out? That would be terrible. Oh, my God. When I tell my mother about this
oversight, she’s going to go ballistic. She will insist. She will fly up there herself and drag them all back here. Please. Call them.”
“Emma. It’s too late.”
“It’s not. I promise.”
“At least ask your family first. If they say it’s OK, then I’ll call and extend the invitation. But don’t get your hopes up. My brothers aren’t into family shit like this.”
“Done. Let’s go ask her right now. They’re getting ready to light the tree anyway.” I stand up, and take his hand, tugging on it to make him get to his feet.
He does. But he pulls me towards him, staring into my eyes for a moment. Then he leans down and kisses me, whispering, “You’re the best present ever, Emma Dumas. All of you.”
And he tastes like a cool slice of cherry-vanilla shaved ice.
Chapter Seven
I tug Emma down the street towards the giant palm tree in her parents’ front yard, trying to see if she will forget about calling up my brothers and inviting them down here. But she doesn’t.
“Here.” She’s shoving the phone at me. “Call them, right now. I’ll go let my mom know.”
“No. You ask everyone if it will be OK first. Then I’ll call.”
She stops, forcing me to stop with her, because I’ve still got a hold of her hand. “Hold on. Do you not want them here?”
“I do. If they want to come.”
“Why wouldn’t they want to come?”
“It’s just…”
So here’s what it is. Christmas—and all the holidays, actually, even our birthdays—it’s a sore spot for us. Because we tried to get my father interested in celebrating stuff like this when we were younger, and it was always a no. Finally, we just gave up. And I could see it in Johnny’s eyes last night when I brought it up. He didn’t want to think about it. It’s for church, he said. But he knows damn well Christmas is for anyone who wants to participate. Not just people who believe the religious aspects. It’s a tradition, and traditions are whatever you want them to be.
But see… we did make Christmas our own. We decided, as a family, a very long time ago, we didn’t celebrate this holiday. I don’t even know what the original reason was, but it doesn’t matter. Trying to invite all my brothers down here for Thanksgiving involved a very circular and frankly tiresome conversation that I don’t want to repeat.
A Billionaire for Christmas Page 35