Page 42 of Holiday Friend Zones
My Kind of Trouble
BY CLAIRE HASTINGS
Chapter One
KYRA
Davis
All I want for Christmas is to marry you.
There have been a lot of times in my friendship with Davidson Oswald Barnes—Davis for short, and my best friend since we were four—that he hasn’t made sense.
This, however, might take the cake.
Because I have absolutely no idea what he’s getting at.
Well, I suppose I do.No…no, I really don’t.Because there’s no way that text message was meant for me.
I stare back at the text a little longer trying to figure out just how to reply.Because there are so many appropriate responses.Fromwhat the fucktookay, let’s do this!toyou have the wrong person.
But before I can even begin to respond, my phone rings.It’s Davis.
“Hi…” I answer cautiously, still very confused.“Are you drunk?Because it seems to me like you’ve maybe already started hitting the eggnog.”
“Nope, not drunk.It is nine a.m.”
“I am aware, but based off the text message I just got, I’m thinking that maybe you’ve already hit the Tennessee Trouble.”
Not that such a thing would be a first.After all, my family does own the distillery that is home to the renowned whiskey, as well as Ol’ Reverend Moonshine, and our newest line, Wink and Shine, a moonshine specifically marketed toward women, of all things.All from our small mountain town of Trouble, Tennessee.
So yeah, we have been known to hit it rather early at times.
“No, I haven’t started in on the whiskey this early,” Davis continues.“But…I’m thinking that maybe my text needs a little bit more explaining.”
“Oh, so that was meant for me?”I choke out, crashing back in my desk chair.It swivels a bit from the force, seemingly moving in the opposite direction of my thoughts.
“Of course.Who else would it be meant for?”
Errrr…got me there.
“Then yes, it definitely needs explaining.”
“Okay, well, I need you to marry me.”
Well, if this isn’t the most romantic thing I’ve ever experienced…
“We went fromwanttoneedin about ninety seconds.How did I get downgraded so fast?”I joke, hoping that it comes out as flippant as I mean it.
Davis laughs, the rough, gravelly sound making the butterflies in my chest wake up.Almost as if they know that sound was just for us.
Because there’s something about it that tells me that it was.That’smylaugh.I know that sounds weird, but when he laughs with me, it sounds different.It just does.
“I mean…it’s both?”He recovers nicely, in a way only Davis can.A smooth-talking, southern boy with a wild smile and a flair for numbers, it surprised absolutely no one when he followed in his daddy’s footsteps and majored in finance, taking over the investment arm of the local Pitman Dean branch here in Trouble.It’s only a matter of time until he takes over the whole darn bank.If he can keep the havoc to a minimum.“A want and a need.”
“Mmmmmm…”
“So, shall I explain?”
