Page 7 of The Mistletoe Kisser
After a long-ass cross-country flight, he was careening through upstate New York—which wassignificantlycolder than downtown Seattle in December—in a tuna can of a car heading into the unknown.
Mistake.
He should have spent the day in his comfortable, organized office, meeting with clients, saving them money, building their empires. But as of last week, that was no longer an option. Instead, he was shoehorned into a ridiculous electric car, off to save his great-uncle from whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into—Ryan’s mother had been a little vague on that part.
Meanwhile, back in Seattle, his carefully planned and meticulously executed life was in shambles.
He felt like one of those razed casinos in Las Vegas. One push of a button, and years of hard work gone in an asbestos explosion.
So instead of having his usual dinner at his usual restaurant after his usual ten-hour Friday at work, he was cruising through Blue Fucking Moon’s downtown. Which clearly had its halls decked by elves on hallucinogens.
To his left was the requisite small-town park. Except the normal open space and meandering paths had been replaced with an army of festive inflatables, including but not limited to a red and green peace sign, a ten-foot-tall menorah, and what looked to be a Kwanzaa unity cup.
Signs stabbed into the frozen ground shouted messages like “Oy to the World!” “Have a Cool Yule!” and “Merry Christmas!”
He was scoping out the huge spruce tree draped from top to trunk in thousands of multicolored lights when his phone rang. It took him half a block and three tries before he managed to stab the Answer button on the car’s minuscule touchscreen.
“Yeah?” he snapped.
“Ryan! My favorite nephew,” his great-uncle Carson’s voice wheezed tinnily through the car’s speakers.
They came from a big family. Ryan doubted he was even in the top five of favorite nephews.
“Hey, Carson. I’m almost there,” he said, checking the GPS route. The too-friendly, too-festive town was thinning out and beginning to recede in his rearview mirror. He fervently vowed never to return.
“About that,” Carson said. “I won’t be there to greet you. You can let yourself in. Door’s unlocked.”
“I can wait outside for you,” Ryan insisted, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone. He wasn’t the kind of person who just barged into someone else’s house.
Carson’s cackle echoed inside the pumpkin orange Micro Machine. “You’ll be waiting a long time, boyo! My sister had an emergency. I’m on my way to help.”
Ryan’s frown deepened.
“Turn left immediately,” the French GPS robot announced briskly.
He slammed on the brakes and barely made the turn onto what was apparently some sort of unplowed, rutted path to nowhere.
“You don’t have a sister,” he reminded Carson. It was a big family, but the mandatory attendance of the Annual Shufflebottom Reunion ensured that all of the generations were reasonably familiar with each other.
Now he was going to have to report to his mother that her third favorite uncle was showing signs of mental decline. Fucking great.
“Did I say sister? I meant second cousin on my mother’s side. She’s like a sister me,” Carson said. “Anyway, that’s why I’m on a plane to Boca.”
Ryan came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the lane. “You’re what?” he asked.
“On a plane.”
“I thought you were the one with the emergency,” Ryan reminded him.
He’d flown across the country and rented the world’s stupidest clown car on zero sleep for nothing. He could have been home in sweatpants, halfway through that expensive bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for the special occasion that had never arrived.
“Idohave an emergency,” Carson insisted. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t help others. It’s the Blue Moon way. My sister’s emergency—” His uncle’s voice cut off, and Ryan thought he heard someone else murmuring on the other end. “I mean mycousinjust broke her… fetlock joint. She’s having surgery.”
Fetlock joint?Ryan was an accountant, not a surgeon. Even so, he was ninety-seven percent certain that the human body was devoid of fetlock joints.
“Okay,” he said, blowing out a breath and counting backward from ten. It wasn’t Carson’s fault he’d gone batshit delusional. “Why did I fly across the country if you’re not even here?”
“Because while I’m helping my cousin, you’ll be helping me,” Carson shouted from the speakers. “I need you to save my farm by Christmas Eve.”
