Page 1 of Knot what I want for Christmas
Chapter One
Hollie
I push the rickety luggage trolley through the airport arrivals, dodging tourists, swerving small children, and struggling to keep the sucker on the straight and narrow.
Why do I always pick the trolley with the freaky wheel? I mean, this time I even inspected all four, and they looked absolutely fine until I started pushing. The thing keeps veering to the left no matter how hard I push it in the opposite direction.
Finally, I make it through the big airport exit doors, out into the Rocky Mountain air and…
It’s snowing!
It’s actually snowing!
Snowflakes swirling in the air, everything covered in a thick icing of white, powdery dust. It’s like I’ve just stepped straight into a snow globe. And it whips my breath right away.
Snow. I haven’t seen snow since… When was it? Some vacation with Mom when I was a kid, probably seven or eight, and that snow was sludgy and wet and dirty. Now this is real snow. Pretty, sparkling Christmas snow.
I can’t help but laugh, reaching out my hand to let the snowflakes land in my palm. When I left Rockview five hours ago, it was in the 70s and blazing hot sunshine. Now I’m here in the Rockies and it’s snowing.
I fling my arms out wide, spin around, and then I do what any other sensible 30-year-old woman would do who hasn’t seen snow since she was seven years old. I stick out my tongue and try to catch one of those flakes in my mouth.
“Hey!” a deep, growly voice says from beside me, making me jump out of my skin, and nearly bite my tongue in half.
I stuff my tongue straight back in my mouth, flip my head to the side, and try my best to suppress the groan I’m feeling.
Please let it be a stranger. Please let it be someone random looking for directions, or thinking I’m their Uber ride.
It isn’t.
Because of course it had to be.
Clay.
My best friend Annie’s big brother.
An alpha – unlike his sister and their parents – all betas.
If I thought I had a thing about wonky wheels on trolleys and bad luck, I have an even bigger thing when it comes to Clay and embarrassing situations. He’s just seen me with my tongue sticking out trying to catch snowflakes. This is not the most embarrassing interaction we’ve ever had. The first time I met him was when Annie and I were sharing a dorm room in the first year of college. He arrived when I had the world’s worst cold. Think swollen nose, streaming eyes, and snot. Snot everywhere. I opened the door to him, thinking it was one of the other girls that lived on our hallway, dressed in my ancient hoodie and sweats, hair scraped back that hadn’t been washed for, I confess, probably four days, and instead found not only a man standing the other side of the door, a hot man, a hot alpha. I proceededto sneeze all over him. Yep. Great big globs of snot flying right at him.
The second time I met him, I was so embarrassed about the first time that I fumbled my desk drawer and sent my bright neon pink vibrator buzzing across the dorm room floor. And the final time we met, several years ago now, at our college graduation, I nearly took his eye out with my graduation cap.
On all three of these occasions, the alpha with the stick shoved up his backside had just stood in silence, staring me down with a withering look, making it clear how silly and pathetic he considered me to be.
Yep, me and Clay have history, but it’s not the kind of history that alphas and omegas usually have. It’s the kind of history that creeps up on you in the middle of the night, drowning you in embarrassment and reminding you just how cringingly awful your life is.
“Hey, Clay,” I say.
We stand there, staring at each other.
Of course, he looks as gorgeous as he always has done. Tall. Broad. Solid. A jawline so sharp it could chisel marble. Lips unsuitable soft on such a manly-looking man. A full-head of richly dark hair and eyes clear blue like the morning sky.
He has one or two more lines drawn around those eyes than he did that first time we met, and he’s even more well-built than he was back then, but he is definitely still hot. Hot Clay. Particularly today, dressed in a pair of faded jeans, an old padded jacket and a cowboy hat.
“Annie went inside looking for you,” he says, pointing his thumb in the direction I’ve just come. “She was – ”
He doesn’t finish his sentence because he’s interrupted by the biggest, most high-pitched squeal I’ve heard in a long time. And then my best friend, Annie, is sprinting toward me and flinging her arms around me, squeezing me as tightly as shecan and even lifting me right off my feet. Annie is about a foot shorter than her ginormous brother, but she’s still a good two or three inches taller than I am. She also has flaming red hair and the same blue eyes as her brother.
“Hollie!” she says, dropping me back down to my feet. “You’re here! You’re really actually here!”
