Page 22 of Tinsel and Teasing

Luke spins around. “Did you at least get her phone number?”

I shake my head no, frustrated that I was so caught in the chaos that I forgot.

“Why the fuck couldn’t you have just chilled? We could have worked it out.”

“I talked to her on the way home. She needs time to think, and so do we. What is our goal?”

Luke scoffs. “We went over this before the auction. We want her here with all of us.”

“She’s afraid she’ll end up dependent on us. We have to come up with a way to respect her concerns, and we can’t do that by smothering her.”

“She could have been part of the conversation if you didn’t rush her home.”

“Look, I expected to like her, but…” I tap my chest. “There’s something in here I can’t explain. It’s too intense. It scared me how much I wanted her, how much I needed her. When she confessed to being a fan, I worried that she wanted the idea of Hardwood, not the reality of me, or us. I love her too much to be a toy.”

I didn’t realize Knox was standing in the open garage door. “I know what you’re saying, man. I had a thing for her. I wanted to keep her around. Then suddenly it was like I understood my life with her in it. I don’t know how she did that to us, but we have to get her back.”

“We will.”

Knox asks, “So what do we do, Luke? You’re the action guy. You have a plan?”

“She’s a fan of Hardwood and knew about the ‘naming the wood’ drawing. Do a mock drawing, write her name on a piece of wood, and profess your love to her on a video. We could all get on camera to do it.”

It’s all wrong. I’m trying to think it through so I can present it in a way they’ll understand. “Okay, first of all, what I do online as Hardwood is fantasy. I don’t feel anything special with any of the women there. I don’t want the feelings I have for Isadora to be mixed up in that in any way. I don’t want to trivialize what I feel for her by putting her name on a fucking log.”

“Women eat that up,” Knox says, “It would work.”

Anger boils inside me at the thought of minimizing her.

“It wouldn’t.” But I have an idea. It’s going to involve a tattoo, but I could put her name somewhere special, an act that will never be a part of my social media.

Knox continues, “I think you should do it. She’ll see it. Everybody will go fucking apeshit on there if you say you fell in love. And Isadora isn’t a common name so it’s not like there’s going to be any mistake who you’re talking about. I bet you’ll have all the women scrolling through every set of comments trying to see who she is.”

I shake my head. “I have a plan and I’m going to need some time to pull it off. Give her some time to get through this holiday season—”

“You’re kidding me,” Luke says. “Let her go through the Christmas season without us?”

“I don’t like waiting any more than you, but she cares about her job, her internship, and college. This woman is smart, so how she ended up with us is beyond me. If we don’t come up with a plan as to how she can keep pursuing her goals, she’s not going to be game for anything we say. We can’t just do everything for her.”

Luke picks up when I pause for a breath. “So instead of steamrolling into her life, we need to show that we care who she is, and give her time to learn that we’re here for her in every way.”

“Exactly, or we’re going to lose her.”

Knox sulks. “It feels like we already did.”

Fifteen

Knox

There’sasearingpainthrough the center of my chest. I’d swear I’m having a heart attack, but I just miss Isadora.

I’m not happy that Clyde has a secret plan. I want this all in the open, but he swears he’ll tell us, and ultimately, I trust him.

We spend a few hours brainstorming, then meet up at Clyde’s cabin to see what we’ve all come up with. It had to be Clyde’s cabin because that’s the only place we’ve ever had Isadora so it’s the closest we can be to her right now.

“What did we come up with?” I ask once we settle in Clyde’s living room, where we first saw Isadora’s perfect naked body. My cock gets hard with the memory.

Clyde says, “We have to address her dogs, and how she gets back and forth to school and her internship. The Santa’s helper job will be over soon, so that’s not as big of a deal.”

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