Page 26 of It's Mother-Pucking Christmas!

I turned on my family. “And, Bella, I remember when you brought home that guy who you thought was a Jonas Brother, and he wasn’t. He was just a knife salesman, and we had to listen to his sales pitch for five hours.”

“A creepy traveling knife salesman is one thing. This guy is the antichrist.” My cousin filed her nails.

“You all are so rude.” Gracie came in behind me. “We are chucking all this food in the trash if you don’t act right.”

“Ryder, we are so happy to have you here.” Gracie squeezed his arm. “Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you go enjoy the bonfire? You can babysit Pugnog and Kringle and keep them out of the kitchen.”

I handed the big man the two little dogs and ushered him outside, where my brothers and cousins, minus a guilty-looking Timmy, were burning blue-and-white Icebreakers paraphernalia in the bonfire.

“These motherfuckers.”

“I’ll be nice to him!” Granny Murray piped up from behind us.

Ryder jumped.

“No, Gran, stay away from him. You have a restraining order.”

12

RYDER

Even when I did meet and greets or signed autographs after a big game, I’d never felt more like a specimen on display than at Dakota’s family holiday party.

I wasn’t even spending time with her. Dakota was constantly being interrupted. She would come by, stroke my head, grab my chin playfully, run her thumb over my mouth, tell me I was adorable, or ask me if I wanted another drink. I let her bring me beer after beer just to keep seeing her. Now I was drunker than I’d been in a long time.

It didn’t take the anxious edge off.

Those moments when she touched me were what I lived for.

I wasn’t sure if I should offer to help. I longed to do something other than take the ugly stares.

Almost worse was the forced cheeriness of her mother and a couple of her aunts, who would come by and loudly ask me how I was and if I was having a good time and wasn’t it nice Dakota finally had a boyfriend and that just because she’d lost her virginity at fifteen didn’t mean that she wasn’t relationship material.

“Mom, stop it!” Dakota raced out into the snowy backyard to chase her mom away from me.

“I think any man would be lucky to be with your daughter, ma’am,” I said to Barbara, her mother, who everyone seemed to call Babs.

“Any man but an Icebreaker,” one of Dakota’s multitude of uncles hollered.

“I just never thought Dakota would be with a professional athlete,” one of her female cousins, Bella, I think, drawled.

“I’m not that kind of athlete,” I said hurriedly.

“You sure drink like one,” Dakota’s Aunt Stacy teased.

I shoved my beer bottle away from me.

“These are all my real teeth, and I’m not a mooch. And I don’t use drugs. I invest my money and don’t spend frivolously,” I rattled off.

Dakota’s dad scowled at me.

“The only qualification I care about is your dick size,” Dakota said loudly.

I inhaled a few snowflakes.

“So he has money and a big dick,” her cousin Violet purred. “You want to try sleeping with a woman who waxes her pussy, not whateverClan of the Cave Bearshit Dakota’s got going on?”

“No! No one is sleeping with the enemy traitor amongst us!” one of Dakota’s uncles drunkenly exclaimed.

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