Page 100 of Mountain Men Heroes

His Snowbound Mountain Virgin

One

People who loved Alaska should come with a warning label that read in fat, bold letters: bat shit crazy and loving it! Ivy Kennedy eyed her sister with a stare hot enough to melt the snowflakes clinging to her lashes.

Despite her black-rimmed spectacles nothing seemed to beat back the little, frozen fairy kisses.

Ivy skootched the eyewear up the bridge of her nose and eyed her surroundings, a little nervous at where Zahara had stood them. Sparkly icicles hung from the frozen eaves of the storefronts and several dangled nearby. One good bump from a passerby and she could be spending Christmas in the morgue. Ironic how something so beautiful could be so lethal. Apparently, Alaska and danger went hand in hand and the locals didn’t care about putting themselves in peril.

She drew cold air into her lungs and let it out in a billow of hot air, considering her sister’s batshit crazy request.

“Pleeeease. It’s tradition. You get naked, get drunk, tie yourself to a partner and run. It’s why it’s called the Risky Whiskey,” Zahara crooned, holding up a black-labeled bottle with Moon Lust scribbled down the side in a flourish of gold calligraphy.

Eyeballs glued to the amber liquid, she asked, “Exactly how much do I have to drink and what is it?”

“How much, well that depends how bad you wanna win. And we do wanna win,” Zahara said, patting her plump belly. “Mama needs a nursery and if you beat Ethan for me this year, my prize is a handyman with wood and my set of plans.”

That could be dangerous. When her sister set out to do something, she did it to the nines. Their communal room at the orphanage never saw a holiday without some kind of decoration strung, looped or piled to create a festive holiday. Ivy could only imagine what she would do with a whole house and nothing holding her back. Especially with a baby on the way. Zahara would want everything to be absolutely perfect.

Her sister’s Christmassy red lips parted into what Ivy referred to as the evil sister challenge left over from their childhood days. All teeth and glittery eyes daring her to back down from the challenge.

It got her every time and her sister knew it.

Hoots and cheers erupted from the bottom of the street where the team ahead of them completed their race. White and red streamers snaked through the air, and she couldn’t take in the whole town fast enough with everything that was going on. No rumbling sounds of cars or trains. No smog and definitely no irritated city folks brushing past her on the sidewalk. It was all weird and surreal. Like a small town straight off a postcard. Or out of a tiny snowglobe. The kind she liked to shake at the antique shops in downtown Houston. All hand-painted and beautiful to look at.

At the head of the street where they stood, a long foldout table held down a large amount of real estate with three fold-out chairs on one side and two orange cones in the front. Several plastic trays lined the front with dozens of little shot glasses filled with the same substance her sister dangled in front of her nose.

One team on one side and a place for another opposite them, she assumed. Above it, a single large banner stretched from either side with stark blue lettering, and Christmas lights cast a cheerful glow on the words: Annual Risky Whiskey Run.

“Come on. You wanna fit in, right? Well this is what happens here. It’s almost something every day. You’ll see! I’ll go tell the judge you’re in.”

“Right. Yeah. Sure. An everyday occurrence. Got it.” Ivy brows pinched in confusion, and she caught the sleeve of her sister’s coat before she could escape to tell the judge she’d lured her in to fill her sister’s spot. Not that a six-month pregnant lady could do more than waddle in snow up to her knees if you veered off the shoveled path.

“Did you say naked? As in commando, nada? Not even panties and pasties?” Her voice hit a couple of notes higher than she intended. In a bob and weave fashion, Ivy dodged in and out of Zahara’s line of sight to check if some alien hadn’t kidnapped her strait-laced sister.

“Yep, you’re still Zahara but you don’t sound like my sister. Since when did streaking become a wintertime sport? And for you?” Leaning forward so no one overheard, she whispered, “I can at least keep on the panties and bra? Right?” Some facts you didn’t leave to chance and miscommunication.

“As long as it’s not your hospital scrubs, you’re good to go. Tradition among the townsfolk is you do their version of the polar bear run, you do it naked and drunk. It’s seventy years in the making. Anyone is welcome to join in on the festive fun as long as you can shoot back homemade hooch and don’t mind your tatas grabbing some winter air.”

“It sounds like someone got bored and horny and came up with a drinking game in the dead of winter.”

Zahara laughed. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Or at least that’s how the elder Savage put it when he told me all about ‘the tradition.’” Zahara threw up air quotes as a smirk played at the corner of her lips.

Ivy had made promises to visit her sister over the last year Zahara had made Savage Ridge her new home… and hadn’t. She’d skipped out on every promise. Flaked out for one reason or another and honestly, the list of her lame excuses was embarrassing. Local crazy customs should have made at least number three on that list but she’d failed to do all her research. And her new Alaskan guidebook riddled with facts about the state failed to mention anything about snow streaking.

Well, one thing was for sure. I beat sitting around in a cold, bland apartment all alone for the holidays.

Maybe getting a little tipsy and stripping wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

A wicked grin played over Ivy’s lips. She just might survive this trip after all. She bounced on the tips of her toes in time with the Jingle Bells that blasted out over the crowd. “Well, you don’t have to worry about my scrubs. I left those back at the office.”

Permanently, she thought wistfully. Dropouts didn’t need scrubs. But she kept the real reason she braved an Alaskan winter to herself. For now. Busting her sister’s bubble with bad news seemed pure evil on a day like this when everyone around them smiled and cheered with an astonishing amount of holiday spirit. “But I am armed, you could say.”

The midday temperatures easily dipped below holy shit Fahrenheit and settled in for a very long-lasting deep freeze. It felt twice as cold with the wind chill factor, and Ivy thanked her new lucky leg warmers she’d decided on more layers rather than the opposite.

“Your nose is scrunching up like it does when you want to say something but don’t.”

Damn. Time for deflective tactics. “Well, I wouldn’t call them scrubs, per se. They’re really cute, though, and red if that counts for something. With little bitty mistletoe all over them.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to show the actual size.

---