Page 8 of Three Cranky SEALS and a Christmas Menace

“Now put on your clothes and get a move on. We need to sleep.” They started to remove their jackets and then their boots. She dumped her clothes onto a chair and haughtily wrapped theblanket tighter around her, then crossed her arms over her chest like a school teacher.

“Well, I can’t get a move on out of here,” she said, air quoting ‘move on.’ “I ran out of gas coming here.”

“You what?” Holden thundered.

“I ran out of gas coming here.”

“I heard what you said,” Holden growled, running his hands through his short hair.

“Then why did you ask me to repeat it?” she said cheekily.

“Because we’re trying to understand your recklessness. You could have gotten caught in a storm in the middle of the road and shivered your irresponsible ass off to death. Do you understand you’re in the middle of nowhere? Did you tell anyone you were here?”

“No, but—”

“The only butt should be yours, streaked red with our handprints.”

“Excuse me?” She said, again, completely affronted. Were they talking about spanking her?

She gasped as the image took hold in her mind, filling her with outrage, hot, mind-altering outrage. They wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.

“I’m not that stupid,” she carried on. “I had a plan. I was supposed to go back home with Todd. But no. You had to scare him away, so this really is your problem now.”

All she heard were their very low rumbles of frustration littered with the wordfuckas if they were throwing confetti on her.Hello? This was their fault. Serves them right that she was now their problem, and if they wanted to get rid of her, they would have to drive her off themselves. Or better yet...

“If you want me gone, you’ll either have to drive me or give me your car keys. Your choice. You know—” She stopped talking as the wind picked up drastically outside. And then it started to howl, so much so that she thought she felt the floor move underneath her feet.

Oh god. Snow started to bang against the windows with such sudden ferocity, her heart started to thud. She had the foresight to check the weather at least, and there hadn’t been anything to worry about, no warning about a snowstorm or anything close to it.

Great. Now she was stuck with them for who knows how long.

All the storm did, though, was increase their crankiness by the bucket load.

Chapter Eight

Well, they made their bed by sending Todd away, and now they had to sleep in it.

Literally.

“Look, I don’t expect you to drive me home in that storm, so I’ll just take your car, and Jeff can arrange something for you later.”

No one in their right mind would drive in the raging storm outside—well, no one except Mercedes. She was still very much on a mission to lose her virginity by Christmas, and no cranky SEALs were going to get in her way. She planned to drive straight to Todd’s, and if they had to do it in his coffee shop, on the floor, so be it.

“How the fuck you managed to stay alive until now is the biggest mystery in the universe,” Myles shot at her, a flabbergasted look on his face; his stupidly, excessively attractive face. An unwanted memory flashed into her mind. Jeff had gone to live with their father for a while after the divorce, and Holden, Waylan, and Myles stepped in as her big brothers.

She’d been around five years maybe and insisted she could ride a big girl bicycle—no training wheels. Her mom would not hear ofit, worried she would bruise herself in a million different places. But it had been Myles who encouraged her to try. Telling her she could do it. He would catch her if she fell. She rode a bicycle that day pretty well for a first-timer. She remembered Myles always daring her to push her boundaries, but he would also be there to catch her. But that had been eons ago.

“I manage just fine, thank you very much. Now give me your keys,” she said.

“No, Missades, we’re not giving you the keys so you can go and get yourself killed in the storm,” Holden said. His eyes turned to a dark forest green. She’d seen that look before, albeit a little more intense. There’d been a boy in her class when she was in fifth grade who kept stealing her lunch and pulling her hair. The instant her brother found out, he said he would sort it out. But it had been Holden who wanted the privilege. That boy never bothered her again. In fact, when he passed her by in school, he’d bow to her, apologizing profusely and calling her Miss Mercedes. He scared the crap out of the guy and made sure to ask her if anyone else was giving her problems. Holden always took the role of protector, working behind the scenes to ensure no one dared mess with her.

And when she scraped her knees or dropped the ice cream from her cone, it had been Wayland who patched her up with band-aids, gave her more ice cream, and made her laugh. He fixed whatever was wrong with her.

Then she went away to boarding school, and her brother was back home, and suddenly she was only seeing them for a little while over the holidays if she was lucky. Then it had been years, even though she continued sending them Christmas cards and gifts every year without fail, until the year she turned eighteen and things changed for her.

Who knew they would turn out to be such giant asses?

“Ugh, my name is Mercedes. Why can’t you just call me Mercedes?”

---