Page 16 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Screw you, Brad. And Rob, I will NEVER screw YOU again, so stop trying.
She blocked the new number, rolled over, and covered her eyes with her arm. Yet another reason to stay out of their new guest’s life and definitely out of his pants, considering this was what had happened the last time.
Cupcake licked her chin and growled softly at the phone.
“Yeah, you and me both.”
She was too wound up to go back to sleep. She gave it another ten minutes or so, ended up looking up random things on her phone in the darkened bedroom (huh, that’s a cute dog sweater, maybe she ought to order it for Cupcake for Christmas) ... then groaned, rolled out of bed, and got dressed.
Just another brand new way Rob had found to ruin her day.
She was already stirring eggs in the kitchen when Dad came downstairs, scratching his ass through his robe. She’d heard his alarm go off at 5:30, or rather, start to go off only to be immediately slammed off at the first beep. Colonel Doug Porter was not a snooze button kind of guy.
“Good morning, Colonel,” she said brightly, snapping off a playful salute. He was wearing his old threadbare gray bathrobe and looking, dare she say it, tired and frazzled. He turned a look on her that combined bleary curiosity with the disgruntled annoyance that all non-morning people felt for morning people. She had never actually been able to get up early enough, let alone to be chipper enough at an early hour, to earn that look from him before. Inwardly, she preened.
After a moment, he said, “Hand and wrist straight and palm down, soldier. Aside from the fact that you aren’t in the military and shouldn’t be saluting in the first place, a sloppy salute is a disgrace to the uniform.” But his lips were twitching.
Holly looked down at her bathrobe, then up at his. Hers was much nicer: it was fluffy, pink, and had flowers on it.
“I strive to behave in a way that is a credit to my uniform at all times. Three over easy? Bacon?”
“You know it,” he said, and slouched off to the bathroom.
By the time he came back, shaved and crisp in a plaid shirt with creases, Holly had fed both dogs, set out her dad’s breakfast, and was hastily wolfing down a couple of eggs on toast for herself.
Her dad stopped at the sight of Cupcake, who was lying under Holly’s chair, wearing a gaily colored sock with holes cut in both ends. Then he just shook his head and sat down in front of his plate. Holly, meanwhile, shoved the last bite of eggs in her mouth, hopped to her feet and put her plate in the sink. She picked up a covered dish.
“Where are you taking that?” Dad asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I’m taking it up to our guest. I thought he might want a hot breakfast for his first morning here, since all we had to offer him yesterday was frozen TV dinners.”
“Hmph,” was all the Colonel said, picking up his knife and fork. “Don’t neglect the dishes when you’re done.”
“Do I ever?”
She was leaving as he answered, but she heard him say quietly behind her, “No, honey. You don’t.”
Holly hesitated. Cracks in her dad’s armor were as rare as a misaligned fence post on the tightly run farm. When she looked back, he had his head down and was shoveling in eggs, pulling his phone toward him to read the day’s weather and the news headlines.
Holly went out through the dining area. Once upon a time, this room used to echo with laughter and cheerful voices. Now it was dark and quiet. She had put up some Christmas decorations out of habit. The Father Christmascenterpiece was on the table, surrounded by what small part of the miniature Christmas village she had been able to find the time and energy to pull out and set up.
When she was a kid, the village was set up on a folding table in the living room, since they needed the dining room table for everything from homework to science projects to its actual intended purpose of eating on. Putting it together started in early December, and it was a big deal for all five of the Porter girls, who had ranged from eldest Carol to eleven-years-younger Merry. Each year, the sisters fought over the placement of miniature houses and skating rinks, tried to find places to add some of Holly’s dolls or Ivy’s toy horses, and all of them looked forward to the big surprise that would always be unveiled on Christmas Eve from their parents: a new piece for the village.
The last new piece had arrived a year before Merry went off to college. By that time, Mom was seriously ill, and the next year wouldn’t be a jolly Christmas at all.
Looking at the half-set-up village gave Holly an uncomfortable jolt in her stomach; it was like seeing the debris after an explosion, which in some sense their lives had become. She hurried on past it, through the living room to the mud room where their outdoor stuff was kept. As she put on her coat and hat, and stamped into her boots, she wondered if whichever of her sisters made it home for Christmas this year would want to finish setting it up. Ivy had said she had other plans. Carol, as always, was a “maybe” because, as a nurse, she might have to work. (“Might” was going to turn into “definitely” closer to the holiday, just like it always did; Carol always signed up to cover everyone else’s last-minute absences and holiday shifts.) Noelle was coming, she even had tickets, but they hadn’t heard from Merry, who was probably slammed with final exams right now.
Well, if it didn’t get set up then it wouldn’t be the firstyear that had happened since losing Mom, and with that not very comforting thought, Holly went outside into the sharp chill of dawn.
The sun had not yet risen, and the farm lay in shades of gray and white, with the pine trees standing in neat dark slashes against the paler hills. The lights of Christmas Village twinkled up the hill behind the farmhouse and outbuildings. Yesterday’s midday warmth had melted the snow, but overnight it had frozen hard as iron. Holly had to pick her way carefully across skating rink puddles and ridges of churned-up mud turned to concrete. Her breath smoked in the cold air.
She began to wonder on the walk if there was any chance Jace Wheeler was up yet, but a warm gold light shone from the front window of Mistletoe Manor.
(Which .... she had to admit it. He was right about the names. But Mom had named them, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in June that anyone in the Porter family was going to rename them now.)
Holly mounted the steps past the cheery little sign on a striped candy cane pole with the cabin’s name. She knocked on the door. “Hi, it’s Holly. Are you up?”
“Come on in,” Jace’s voice called back, muffled.
