Page 102 of Mountain Men Heroes

With her best deadpan look, she eyeballed her sister without cracking even a sliver of a smile. Her glasses slipped and she edged them back into place with her chunky mittens. “Not. funny.”

Zahara twisted her mouth into a grimace, and it was game over.

“That’s all right. Maybe next year then.” Her sister pulled out the old poor me routine.

It worked. “Damn you, woman. If it weren’t for that little baby in you, I would be stripping your ass naked instead.”

“So you’ll do it then? You’ll race in my place?”

Ivy caught her sister’s smug expression and she narrowed her eyes. “You’re so gonna owe me for this.” Okaaay. So this was happening. Ivy shucked off her heavy coat and tossed it in the bin her sister pulled out from under the table.

“Anything you say, sis.” Those berry red lips of hers peeled back into a bigger grin. “I see the ugly sweaters have made their appearance.”

God, she was such a softy. Ivy kicked off her not-even-broken-in-yet winter boots and then started work on her Christmas sweater. “What? You didn’t think I would leave my Rudolph home alone, did you?”

Ivy loved tormenting her sister with her tacky holiday sweaters year after year. No sense in breaking tradition. This one happened to be her favorite. Solid white with a huge reindeer face hand-stitched on the front with a large red nose.

She glanced up and caught the scrunched expression of horror and smiled with satisfaction.

“Let me make sure I have this straight. You guys do this run every year?” Freaking crazy people.

Next came her socks.

“Like clockwork. Every December twenty-first.” Her sister laughed and shook her head. “Damn girl, how many sets of socks do you have on?”

Ivy choked out a gurgled laugh of surprise. “Did you read the thermometer?” she asked in disbelief as a gust of wind played hanky-panky with the ruffles of her clothing.

Gray clouds swallowed crystal blue sky in vast swaths to settle over the snowy peaks in the distance. Puffy fingers reached, ready to rake over the growing crowd gathered to see the spectacle. A few rays of sun beat back the inevitable, but before long another downpour of snow was due to hit Savage Ridge according to the news report she’d caught back in Fairbanks. Hopefully, not for a little while, though.

“By the way. You’ll have a partner to race with, too.”

Ivy buried her hands in the snow for balance as she toed off her boots and shimmied out of her snow pants to reveal a pair of jeans.

She couldn’t help but think maybe the impromptu trip here wouldn’t be so bad after all. Now that she didn’t have to worry about pristine records, a little pre-holiday fun wasn’t such a bad idea.

Ivy rolled her eyes at herself. Geeky to a fault, she couldn’t approach a man to whip up that kind of ‘date’ if her life depended on it.

“Are you going to leave me in suspense forever. Who’s my lucky partner?”

Free from all her outer layers of clothing, she set to work her second layer. How did anyone manage to move in this brutal cold? She popped the button of her pants and looked up to see her sister smiling again. “Damon.” Red lips curled into something that looked somewhere between mischievous and an oh-this-is-gonna-be-fun kind of grin.

Her stomach dipped. Uh-oh.

“You know the owner of Savage Fire and the most eligible bachelor in town.”

Drop a hint much? Ivy chuckled. “Yeah. I picked up on that. I also got your little hints in your last email, and your last phone call and the phone call before that.”

Zahara pressed a hand to her lips.

The little sly faker.

“But…what ever do you mean?” Zahara snatched Ivy’s boots up and gasped, her red lips in the form of a very convincing O.

“Right,” she drew out with an arched brow. Ivy didn’t buy the good little Southern girl act for a second. Zahara wanted her sister hooked up and settled down right alongside her by any means necessary. Sorry, but that wasn’t about to happen. Especially in Noname, Alaska where her tatas would freeze before she could get a guy interested in warming them up for her.

“Damon? He’s the broody one of the Savage crew, right?” She scrunched her nose. That didn’t sound too fun.

“Hey, Doc, nice long johns.”

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