Page 60 of Scoring Position

But before Ryan could bite off more than he could chew, Yorkie had mentioned a local restaurant that would cater. Downside—he didn’t have the excuse of hiding in the kitchen all day. Upside—not making a full turkey dinner for a holiday he didn’t observe.

He did volunteer to go pick up the meal, which gave him forty minutes out from the forced festivity.

But when he returned to the house around four in the afternoon, the festivity didn’t feel forced at all. The whole place smelled like cinnamon and cloves and… booze. Very delicious booze. Nico and his dad were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, staring each other down at a game of chess, while Nico’s mom stood at the stove stirring a pot of something that looked like hot red wine.

Maybe Ryan shouldn’t have left them alone.

“Uh,” he said, standing there with the bags of food. “Should I…?”

Before he could continue, Nico’s dad knocked over his king, smiling. He and Nico shook hands. It wascreepy.

Then they clinked mugs that were definitely not filled with tea and chugged them.

Ryan was officially weirded out. Also, he wanted some of whatever was in the mugs. It had to be some kind of miracle drink. “Is this a bad time for dinner?”

Nico put his mug down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were stained a deep burgundy. “It’s the perfect time for dinner.”

“Good, because I’m going to need food in my belly before I start putting alcohol in it.”

Nico’s mother laughed and said something in Russian. Then she poured a bunch of rum over the wine pot andlit it on fire.

Nico’s mom was metal as fuck.

“Definitely food,” Ryan reiterated. He nudged Nico. “Come on, we should sit in the dining room, and I think it needs dusting.”

Nico smiled at the weak joke, and Ryan began to rearrange the food bags to hide his surprise.

Neither of them had spent much time in the dining room, even to walk through on a regular basis, but it did not possess mausoleum levels of dust. Still, it was weird to pull out a table cloth and set the table with proper place settings while he managed the whole thing in an intimate dance with Nico. Thank God the view of the dining room from the kitchen was poor enough that Rudy missed it. Ryan didn’t think the older man would see anything innocent in it, which was totally unfair, because Ryan and Nico had achieved this level of domestic harmony long before sex was on the table.

Not that they’d ever had sex on the table—at least notthistable. But now that Ryan was thinking about it, it looked pretty sturdy and the height wasn’t bad. It could probably support Ryan while Nico fucked him standing up—

Ryan shook himself. Now was not the time. God, if he couldn’t last twelve hours without going crazy, he wasn’t sure daily orgasms were wise.

“You okay?” Nico raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“You didn’t answer.”

“Huh?”

Nico shook his head. “I think the fork is placed right. Should we go get food?”

“Yes.” Ryan tried to inject conviction into the word. After seeing the weird byplay between Nico and his dad, Ryan was no longer confident in his predictions about awkward dinners. Not knowingwhatto expect was more nerve-racking than expecting a clusterfuck.

Getting food and people to the table was a complex enough dance that everyone was too busy to talk, and then they were all seated, and Ira pushed a large mug of the hot wine—“Glühwein”—into Ryan’s hand, and food was passed around.

“This isgut,” Ira said after several minutes of mostly silent eating. “Dankeschön, Ryan.”

“Oh, I didn’t really—” He started to wave her off, but Nico kicked his foot and said, “You did most of the work for getting it here.”

“Well. My pleasure.”

Ira beamed at him and then turned to urge her husband to try one of the dishes. Ryan cast a look sideways and caught Nico smiling at his plate between bites. Creepy. LikeChristmas with the Body Snatchers.

The rest of dinner passed the same, with soft conversation that stayed away from hockey for once and quiet stretches while they all ate.

After, Nico shooed his parents away from the mess and into the living room with the tree, ignoring Ira’s protests, and he and Ryan took a moment to clear the dishes and pack away the food.

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