Page 2 of A Very Montgomery Christmas

She scrunched her nose. “Watch the lipstick. I don’t want it to come off.”

“That’s why you’re not wearing gloss.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s starting to scare me how well we know each other, especially since you know why I’m wearing matte lipstick instead of lip gloss.”

“Because I want to kiss you. I learn what I need to in order to have those lips on me.”

“Are we ready to go?” Lake asked, before she stood up and twirled around in her dress.

“We are, but first you need to find your shoes,” Arden said.

Lake blushed. “Oops. I forgot.” She padded off to her room, Jasper, on her heels.

“Christmas dinner with the Montgomerys. It’s going to be interesting.”

“Mom’s been stressing out,” I said softly.

Arden looked at me. “Why? Is everything okay? I thought things were good between everybody.”

Finding out that the secrets of my family had been a little deeper than we had all ever guessed hadn’t been easy for us, but we were better because of it. However, that wasn’t what was wrong for the evening.

“This is her first real Christmas as Grandma. I think she’s stressing Grandpa out to the point that he’s ready to come sleep on our couch,” I said dryly.

“Just joking, right? They are doing okay?” Arden bit her lip. I wanted to lean forward and lick at the sting, but I knew Lake would be back into the room at any moment.

I nodded. “Just joking. We know that Grandpa Montgomery is ready to play Santa to the hilt. He actually has a suit, you know.”

Arden laughed. “That I can picture. He has to compete with his brothers.”

“We all know that each Grandpa Montgomery likes to make Christmas the biggest that they can. At least we’re not having a huge conglomerate dinner. Tonight is just the Boulder Montgomerys.”

Arden smiled. “And at least my brothers aren’t coming to this since that adds an entire football team.”

“No, but they’ll be here for New Year’s. Along with Marcus’s family and a few others. As it is, we have my family, Zia, and Meredith, and Ronin, Kincaid, and Julia. I don’t think my mom even owns enough chairs, come to think of it.”

My wife laughed. “I’m sure they’ll make do. It does get a little confusing around you guys, though.”

“I’m ready.” Lake walked in and twirled again.

“Almost,” Arden said, and held out her hand. “This morning, we opened nearly all the gifts, and last night we opened your Christmas Eve gift.”

Lake smiled. “And it was awesome. I’ve never had a Christmas like this. I mean, you always saw it in the movies, and I thought it was just something that they did for Hallmark and all that. But like wow. I just...thank you guys. I didn’t really need anything for Christmas. Because I had you guys, and I know that’s cheesy to say. But we’re Montgomerys now. Cheese is what we do.”

That made me laugh, I couldn’t help it. “Have you been talking to my sister?”

“Aunt Bristol says that cheese is life. And I tend to agree.”

My ten-year-old sounded so prim and proper just then that I knew she was mimicking a family member, but she was right. We had a fascination with cheeses in our family, and now it just became a snowball of jokes, hilarity, and damn good cheese.

“I’m glad you had a good morning with us for Christmas, and you have all your gifts, except you have one more that I’d like you to open.”

Arden met my gaze, and her eyes twinkled.

I nodded, and I went to go sit next to the tree.

“There’s one more here. Did you see it?”

Lake’s eyes widened, and she and Jasper came to the tree, and she looked around.

---