by T. S. Joyce
A VERY OUTLAW CHRISTMAS
(OUTLAW SHIFTERS, BOOK 1.5)
By T. S. JOYCE
Other Books in this Series
For the Love of an Outlaw (Book 1)
For the Heart of an Outlaw – (Book 2) Coming January 2018
A Very Outlaw Christmas
Copyright © 2017 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2017, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: December 2017
T. S. Joyce
www.tsjoyce.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover Image: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Jonny James
Contents
Other Books in this Series
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
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Chapter One
Trigger Massey puffed air out of his cheeks in frustration as he squatted down next to the hole he’d dug under a couple of loose planks in the barn floor. He was running low on his cash stashes thanks to setting up the new Two Claws Trail Rides business. He was one week out from Christmas, and Ava deserved a special present, but until the business started bringing in income, he was strapped for cash.
“What are you doing?” Ava’s brother, Colton, asked from behind him.
Trigger didn’t turn around. As quick as he could, he shoved the old rusted coffee can filled with dollar bills back in the hole, scooped the cold dirt over the top, and replaced the wooden floor planks.
“I’m gonna fuck this up,” he muttered to his best friend.
The creaking sound behind him told Trigger that Colton had settled on the old bench he and Dad had built when he was ten. It was a match to one they’d made for a cluster of shade trees out by the river. This bench was scooted up against the stall next to Harley’s. Dangerous territory. God, this place still felt empty without the old man bustling around.
“You’re gonna fuck what up? Your relationship with Ava? Nah, she’s got stars in her eyes when she looks at you. They say love is blind, and I believe it now. She settled for your hideous ass and moved all her shit into your cabin. You’re in. She don’t pick her people easily, but when she does, she sticks to them like superglue.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and blew out a long, frozen breath in front of him. Then he scrunched up his face. “It’s actually annoying. Ever since she came back, she’s been trying to fix my life, like it needs fixin’.”
“Listen to you bellyachin’,” Trigger teased. “For the last ten years, you complained she never came home, and now that she’s here, you want her gone.”
“Grass is always greener,” Colton said. The scars on his face were a stark reminder of what Trigger had done to him five years ago. He was a life-ruiner, and he didn’t want to be that to Ava. He wanted to be better. “The grass is greener under your own boots if you water it enough,” he said softly.
“Who are you and what have you done with my pissy friend?”
Trigger chuckled and shook his head as he stood to his full height. “Your sister is a force of nature. It’s hard for a stone in a river to stay still if the water’s pushing it constantly.”
Colton narrowed his eyes and leaned back against the stall door. Trigger’s pitch-black stallion, Harley, stuck his head out and snapped his teeth about a foot away from Colton’s face, but he ignored it. Colton knew exactly how far that asshole could reach with his bite. “Sometimes lately, you remind me of your dad,” Colt said. “In a good way.”
“Yeah well, he couldn’t make my mom happy, and now look what I’ll do with Ava. I can’t even afford a damn Christmas present like she deserves.”
A single bellowing laugh came from Colton. “Ava don’t even like Christmas, so you’re in the clear.”
Harley was repeatedly kicking the stall now, and it was messing with Trigger’s senses. Maybe he heard Colton wrong. No one hated Christmas. “What?” Trigger asked, meandering to the bench.
“Oh, she used to be a total elf before Dad left. This holiday was the one time of year that the old bastard tried. He was nice all December, but wore himself out for the rest of the year. We went and chopped down a tree together every year like some lumberjack family, matching in our flannel shirts, and decorated the tree with ornaments from the dollar store. That I purchased by the way because Dad was only good at spending money, not earning it. Ava would make hot chocolate every night in December. And she would make this lame countdown calendar and make us go to every stupid parade and celebration and school party.”
Boom! Boom! Harley was giving a go at escaping again.
Trigger shook his head hard, trying to get rid of the building headache behind his eyes. “And then your dad left, and it changed?”
Boom! Boom! God, he was glad they’d reinforced Harley’s stall.
“Oh, yeah. She became the biggest Grinch. Look around your cabin, man. It’s a week to the holiday, and she hasn’t put up a single decoration in there. No tinsel, no wreath, no peppermint-scented hand soap. I’m pretty sure you’re screwed if you ever want to do Christmas up right. She’ll eat you up and spit you out if you even mention getting a tree.” Colt wrenched his voice up an octave to mimic his sister. “Trees belong outside!”
Trigger snorted because Colt actually could do a good impersonation of his mate’s voice.
Boom! Boom!
“Harley!” They both yelled at the same time.
Silence. Thank God.
Boom! Boom!
“I think I hate him,” Colton muttered, glaring at the window of Harley’s stall.
Harley stuck his big black nose out and stretched as far as he could to try to bite Colton again.
“I think the feeling is mutual, my friend. I’m going to take him out and check the creek. The cows are bawlin’ awful loud. It’s probably frozen again.”
“See? This is why I’m totally happy to remain a bachelor for the rest of my life. Girls need stuff all the time. All. The. Time. I can barely take care of myself and my job here.” Colton was staring out the open barn door with a faraway look in his eyes. “Totally happy,” he murmured again, as if trying to convince himself.
Trigger wasn’t doing call-outs on Colton’s lie today, though. He had too much on his mind.
Like how the hell was he going to make December special so that Ava could like Christmas again?
Chapter Two
Ava took another long pull of her coffee, which was now ice cold. She made a face of disapproval and went back to organizing the twenty logos
she’d come up with for Two Claws Trail Rides. She needed more sleep. Lately, she had been so stressed about getting Trigger and Colton’s business off the ground and balancing her own work, she was only sleeping three or four hours a night. She was a financial adviser, newly moved back to Darby, Montana to be with her mate, Trigger, but it meant a whole lot of work trying to get herself set up online to keep her clients.
And with trying to get to know her big brother again, trying to be the best mate she could be for Trigger, and the work-load, she was feeling the pressure.
The front door creaked open, and she sucked on her coffee again. When she saw her man, the weight in her chest lifted. Maybe it was his smile that eased her tension, or just being around him and feeling safe and loved. He was tall as a mountain and wide in the shoulders, so much bigger than her average-sized frame. He wore his favorite cowboy hat. His go-to blue plaid button-down clung to his broad shoulders, and his worn jeans were sporting a new tear at the left knee. The work boots on his feet were so scuffed she was surprised she didn’t see his socks through a hole yet.
When he took off the hat, she went dumb. It happened a lot. It was his routine to remove the Stetson, hang it on the hook by the truck keys, and run his hands through his hair like he was trying to fix it. But it just made it stand up in this messy, sexy way only Trigger Massey could master. The top button of his shirt was undone, and tattoos painted his skin from his neck down into his shirt. She’d traced those so many times now. Those pictures he’d had someone draw on his body were part of his story. And he had a great story. His newest tattoo was a simple A with two claws on either side. It was done in gray-wash ink, right on the side of his neck. It was her favorite. Trigger was now the alpha of the Two Claws Clan, and she was so damn proud of how he’d stepped up for their little make-shift family.
Out of his jacket and hat, he meandered right to her, his boots clomping loudly on the wood floors. He pulled her head against his rock-hard stomach and ran his fingers through her hair. A soft growl rumbled through him, but she knew him well enough that it didn’t scare her anymore. His bear was purring just to touch her again. “Smells good,” he murmured, looking down at her, his smile easy and sexy on his lips.
“Charmer. I just made toast. I forgot to eat lunch.”
The grin faded from his face in an instant. “Ava, that’s not good. You’ll make yourself sick the way you’re going.”
“Says the rancher whose work is never done.”
“Aw, but when I come in here, when I come home to you, work is done. I’m here. You work all day and into the night. And now you ain’t eatin’? Should I be worried? Because I have to tell you that lately, I’m a little concerned.”
“One last big push, and things will steady out. When you start doing trail rides, I’ll be able to pass the work on to you, other than booking the rides. And I’ll have my website up and running in a few weeks, and—”
“Ava. Baby…” Trigger shook his head. “You ain’t livin’. You see that right? You never stop, never take a break. And I get it. You have big instincts to take care of your people, and you’re working just as hard as me and Colton and Kurt to save this place. You’re trying to get us set up, but we’re okay. We’re holding. Next month we’ll do our first trail ride, and we’ll get into the routine. I’ll hopefully not eat all the tourists, your brother too, and we’ll get this place back on track. But for now? I want to see you happy.”
“I want to see you happy too, and you told me once that saving this place would do that.”
“We will save this place. But I don’t want you working yourself to the bone to get us there.”
“But…I have twenty different logos to choose fr—”
“That one,” he said, jamming his finger at one that looked similar to his tattoo.
“Oh.” She frowned. These had taken her all day to put together, and he’d just made the decision in a millisecond. “Okay, well, we need to choose a template for the website—"
“That one’s good,” he said, pointing to her laptop screen.
“Well…okay, but we need to set up a payment page, and we still need to design brochures to put in the shops in town, take out an ad in the newspaper, get a PO box for the company, and—”
“Woman, put your jacket on.”
“What? No, tonight we’re going to put a dent in the work and—”
“I ain’t askin’,” he said, his dark eyebrows arching up high. His eyes were chocolate brown when he was calm, but right now, they were muddy and had gold around the irises. “Put your warm clothes on before I drag you to my truck.”
She grinned. “Well, that sounds sexy.”
“It won’t be sexy when you’re shivering in my truck and definitely not riding my dick. You’re stressing me out. We need a night away from”—Trig waved his hand around the dining table, which was completely covered with stacks of papers and notes—“this.”
“But…what about Colt?”
“He can eat with his damn squirrel. He’s been getting on my nerves all day.”
“Oh. Well, what about Kurt? He’s all alone out there in the barn.”
“You mean the barn that’s been partially converted to a cabin that’s nicer than this one and Colton’s house combined? And he ain’t alone! He’s got Gunner. We can all go one night without eating together. Come on. We’re wastin’ daylight. You look hot as fuck in those little leggings. I want to take you out, walk around, enjoy the night, eat something other than a quick canned meal. I wanna walk around town and grab your ass and hold your hand.”
“It’s romantic how you listed grab my ass before hold my hand.”
He gave her a devilish smile. “I got plans for us.”
“A surprise date?”
Trig eased away from her and made his way back to the coatrack, grabbed his jacket and hat, and flung open the front door. “Meet me in the truck, Ava, before I pry your cute little ass from that chair. Your work day is done.”
Newly invigorated by the prospect of an actual night off, Ava squeaked and bolted for the bedroom. The leggings were staying on, but perhaps the coffee-stained sweatshirt needed to go. She pulled on a fitted brown sweater and her favorite tan snow boots and ran for the front door. Purse, jacket, pink hat and mittens, and she was out the door in under two minutes.
Colton was tramping through the snow with his hands shoved deep in his pockets like he was cold, but that was his own fault. Her brother never wore a coat. “Where are you going?” he asked.
She paused at the bottom of the porch stairs and struggled into her jacket. “Into town for a date!”
“Oh, gross,” he complained, scrunching up his face. “Wait, what about dinner?”
“Trig said you are annoying and to eat with your squirrel,” she called over her shoulder as she jogged to Trig’s old two-tone brown Ford pickup.
From Trig’s shoulder-heaving laughter behind the steering wheel, she figured he heard her just fine. Colton flipped him off, and Trigger shoved his hand out the open window and returned the bird. Then they were off before she even had her seatbelt buckled all the way.
“I honestly can’t tell if you two like each other or hate each other,” she said about him and her brother.
“Both. The answer is both.”
“Hate,” Colton called from behind them. “The answer is hate!”
She would’ve laughed at her brother except Trigger’s face had gone serious and he kept his eyes carefully ahead on the road.
“He doesn’t really hate you,” she murmured, knowing exactly what was on his mind. Trigger Turning Colton into a bear shifter like himself was never far from his thoughts.
“Maybe he should, though,” he said softly.
“If you hadn’t Turned him, we wouldn’t be here. Colton would’ve followed me to Alabama, and I would’ve never had a reason to come back home. And Kurt and his boy would still be with the Darby Clan, miserable, and this—what we’re doing—it wouldn’t exist. Forgive yourself. Colt has.”
Probably.
Trig slid his hand over her thigh and squeezed it comfortingly. “You’re one hell of a woman, you know that? You’re the only one who could ever match me.”
Ava snorted and drew her knees to her chest, cradling his hand against her stomach. “No one can match you, Trigger Massey. You are a giant of a man with a colossus of a grizzly you’re trying to control. You fight when you need to defend your honor, you protect the ones you care about, you’re loyal down to your marrow, and you work harder than anyone I know. You’re a great man, Trig. And a great monster, too.” Ava rolled her head against the seat so she could look at his handsome profile. “I’m just trying to keep up.”
“If I’m a good man, it’s because I’m trying to be. For you.”
Well, that slapped a big ol’ mushy grin on her face. What power to have sway over a man like Trigger. He was borderline demigod, and she was human, and he was telling her his focus revolved around her, which made her proud.
Great man, great monster.
She was the lucky one.
But she was also the suspicious one, because Trigger turned into the first neighborhood off the main road to town, and he was just coasting down the streets. After the third street, he pointed to a house decorated in red and green holiday lights and said, “Look at those.”
Ava narrowed her eyes at him. “What are we doing?”
“Looking at Christmas lights like a normal couple, and I don’t want to hear your bellyachin’ either. You can wait on dinner for half an hour more.”
He slowly crawled the truck past a house with lights all over the landscaping and a huge blowup snow globe that was raining Styrofoam snow all over a Santa Clause who was holding a beer. The next house had giant wooden story books with the Grinch painted on one and a bed of kids dreaming of sugarplums painted on the other.
And with each house they passed, the discomfort in the pit of her stomach grew. Because now she was scratching at memories she didn’t want to scratch. “Can we go now?” she asked softly.