Four For Christmas (11 page)

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’d rather wait and get the awkward over all at once with all three of you so—“

“Georgia?”

She made a sound of frustration. “Because I’m sorry for what I said that morning. I’ve just been a wreck since Grandpa Bale died, but I didn’t know it. And I thought Christmas hated me, and that what I felt for you was just a big setup for something horrible to happen and I was scared.” She took a gasping breath, realizing that she’d been talking so fast that he probably hadn’t understood a word.

Was he smiling? “I was coming to see you and bring you back for Christmas. I was willing to bribe Connie by pulling some strings to make sure she got the midwife she wanted…” He paused and took a deep, steadying breath, proving he was just as anxious as she was. “I’m sorry for what I said that morning, too. I overreacted.”

“I did too. Why now? Why Christmas Eve?”

“Your book. We all read it again, as well as the dedication. He died right before it was published, didn’t he? Your grandfather?” She nodded and he squeezed her hand. “We’d just finished when Jimmy noticed you’d left your locket on the tree. And since none of us could stop thinking about you anyway, I knew I needed to bring you back. At least, I needed to talk to you.”

She was thinking about how hard it was to resist his beautiful blue eyes when he smirked. “Georgia, baby? Why do you have flour all over your face?”

“I bake when I’m sexually frustrated.”

He let out a surprised bark of laughter and she pulled her hand from his, feigning insult. “It’s true. And let’s just say Connie is set on chocolate pies until her child is born. It’s a wonder I’m not the size of a house after all these years, but then,” she licked her lower lip, “I never actually knew enough about what I was missing to be too frustrated about it.”

Until now. It was left unspoken but she knew Chris understood.

One moment they were staring at each other, all the longing of the past few days in their eyes—the next he had pulled her across the console to straddle his lap, his mouth on hers.

Finally, she thought. She kissed him like she hadn’t seen him in years. And it felt like that. A homecoming. A reunion. A frantic reconciliation.

Chris tugged her shirt up and caressed her back with his hands while his tongue tangled with hers. She could feel the heat of his erection through their jeans, and she didn’t want to wait. She couldn’t.

She reached down and felt for the lever on the side of the seat. When she pulled it, the passenger seat went flat, and she was on top of him. His grip tightened and he held her above him as though she were a child playing airplane. “What?”

He growled. “Not this time.”

Somehow he managed to slip her beneath him on the chair, until he was the one hovering above her. She gasped. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” Chris muttered. “Last time I was out of control, in every possible way. I didn’t get to touch you, to take you the way I wanted to. The way I’d fantasized.”

He held himself up by his powerful, thick thighs and undid her pants, tugging them, along with her green silk panties, down to gather around her knees. Georgia inhaled sharply. “You fantasized about taking me in a rental car?”

He laughed leaning his forehead against hers while she helped him unbuckle his belt. “I fantasized about taking you on my own terms. The location was negotiable.”

She slipped her hands inside his jeans and wrapped her fingers around his erection. Now it was his turn to gasp. “Fuck, I’ve missed you, Georgia. Missed reading while you slept. Missed your silly nicknames. Missed your lips.”

He kissed her again and Georgia melted. “I missed you too, Doc.”

Chris smiled against her mouth before disappearing. He backed his hips out of reach of her touch and bent her legs up to her chest. “
Oomph
. Chris, what are you doing?
Oh
.”

For a big man he was very flexible. And creative.  Georgia pulled his cap off his head and sunk her fingers in his beautiful hair, pressing him closer. He kissed and licked and nipped every inch of her sensitive flesh before filling her with his tongue. Again and again, deep and so clever that Georgia was raising her hips, desperate for more. Lost to his rhythm.

“Chris. Oh,
yes
, Chris like
that
. Don’t stop.” She called out his name as the first rush of pleasure washed over her, and he moaned.

“I need to—baby, I need to—“ He swore and struggled to reach his back pocket in the narrow space. He pulled out a condom. She tried to tease him as she shook from her receding orgasm, but she was just too happy to care.

He made a pained face as he slid it on. “I wasn’t expecting anything, but when it comes to you it’s always best to be prepared.”

“Doc the boy scout.”

His look was wicked. “Hardly.”

When he kissed her, the taste of herself on his tongue was distracting. Decadent. And then he was inside her. Stretching her. In this position he could fill her completely. Deeper than she’d ever experienced. In every possible meaning of the word. And she knew most of them.

The windows fogged as their breathing grew harder. Their moans filling the once pristine SUV. Chris’s slow and deep rhythm changed to something more dangerous. Something swifter. And Georgia wanted to move to it.

“I think I like this position,” she panted. “Now I understand why yoga is so popular.”

Chris laughed and swore and moaned all at the same time. “I’m obviously not doing a good enough job at distracting you. Let’s see what we can do about that.”

He rose up with his elbows on either side of her head and looked into her eyes with a smile. “Hang on to something.”

Georgia screamed his name. Yes. Oh, God, yes, this was what she wanted. Hard and fast and deep as he could go. He pressed his pelvis against her clit, again and again until she thought she might pass out before she came.

She saw fireworks behind her eyes and then fire and lightning arced through her body as she heard Chris join her, falling with her. Coming with her. And it was in that moment that she realized it wasn’t the drinks. It wasn’t the night. It was them. It was Chris and Jimmy and Flynn. This feeling wasn’t a fluke.

In fact, it was even stronger than it had been before.

Chris lifted his head, his chest heaving and kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. Her lips. “We should get dressed and get back to the cabin.”

A familiar voice echoed through the radio speakers. “Yes, you should, it’s too cold outside for necking.”

“Connie?” Georgia squeaked.

“Yes, dear. And while you’re at it, maybe you should unhook your cell phone if you plan on rolling around in the car like two teenagers who don’t have actual homes to go to.” She paused. “Oh, shit, I’m already starting to sound like my mother. Merry Christmas, Georgia. And God bless us, every perverted one.”

The dial tone droned around them as they stared at each other in embarrassed silence.

Georgia started laughing.

Chris sighed and moved to open the door, so they could straighten themselves out. “I had no idea cars could call people. Technology should have its limits.”

Georgia glared at the GPS. “You said it.”

***

She didn’t think she’d ever enjoyed a Christmas Eve more.  When Chris had driven up in her car, both Jimmy and Flynn had come out smiling. They’d hugged her as if she hadn’t left so abruptly, though Jimmy did notice that she was a bit more mussed than she should have been for a one-hour car ride.

She’d apologized right away, and they accepted. In fact, Flynn had informed her with a secretive smile, they were counting on Chris to return with her. When they opened the door to the cabin she found out why.

Mistletoe. Mistletoe was everywhere. Hanging from every inch of the wooden rafters, tucked into the bookshelves. Hovering over the door. Jimmy had shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable before saying, “We’d ask you to dance, but not a damn one of us ever learned how.”

It was her favorite story. Her grandparents at the Christmas dance. The mistletoe. They’d done that for her? She knew there was only one response to a gesture that incredibly romantic.

She spent the night teaching them to dance.

The lessons were interspersed with long bouts of another physical activity that each man excelled at. And when she’d woken up to more kisses, all blamed on the mistletoe of course, she decided that Christmas was hers again. Her birthday. Her miracle. Her favorite day of the year.

The men had made her breakfast and then, unable to wait, they’d shown her what they’d each bought Roux for Christmas. Three grown men who’d never had a puppy. Roux was going to be spoiled rotten.

So was she.

“I think it’s time to open our Christmas present from Nicholas.” Flynn was wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a smile, holding a small square box in his hand.

Georgia sat between Jimmy and Chris as Flynn opened the package. On top of the tissue paper was another envelope. His second letter of the year. She leaned her head on Jimmy’s shoulder and placed her hand on Chris’s thigh, knowing this was still rough on them.

Flynn started to recite the letter. “Merry Christmas, guys. I hope you had a good week together. That you talked. That you finally started making plans to build that indoor swimming pool we talked about, or the movie room. Most of all I hope that you all liked last year’s present.”

Georgia noticed Chris frown and look her way, unsure. She squeezed his leg to reassure him as Flynn continued. “The reason I hope you liked it, apart from the fact that it’s a great book, is that in a not so roundabout way, this year’s present relates. You know most of my life story. Heck, you are most of my life story. You know I was given up in the hospital where I was born. That I grew up in the system. You know that not long before I came to live with you and my last set of foster parents, I lived in a home that was worse than the one
we
left behind.”

Georgia wished she could hug the man writing the letter, the little boys they had all been. She didn’t know how they did this each year, but if they did, then she would. For them.

“What I never told you was that there was one time, one day, when I gave up. When I was going to run away, and I didn’t care where I went or what happened to me. I was in Oklahoma at the time, and I found my way to the train station. I wasn’t sure how I was going to afford a ticket, but I’d always wanted to see a train up close, so I went. I sat down next to this older man who was humming to himself and writing a letter. He saw that I was crying and he started talking to me. There was something so kind about him, Chris. You reminded me of him a lot through the years. Steady and good. So I told him everything. He listened to every word, and then he started telling me the most amazing story.”

Georgia smiled. She could picture the scene clearly in her mind. A young boy lost in a train station. A kind old man who told stories. It all somehow sounded very familiar.

“We must have talked for hours. He said he was returning home after visiting a friend, but he’d come to the station early, because he liked meeting new people. He talked about his granddaughter, how pretty she was. How smart. That she’d been born on Christmas Day, just like I was.”

Georgia gasped and lifted her head, all her instincts on alert.
She
was born on Christmas day, just as the sun came up, and named after two famous Christmas characters. Christmas had belonged to her, though for a while she’d stopped believing it. Now…Flynn frowned and stopped speaking in concern but she shook her head and urged him to continue.

“In that moment I wished I were her. That I had someone who loved me that much. As it got closer to his time to leave, I knew I had to go back and face my dragons. If I ran, I’d hurt myself and the other kids still in the house would suffer. I had to report the foster parents and protect the others. It was only years later that I realized his story had helped me make that decision. And it was the right one, since it brought me to the three of you.”

Flynn stopped again, shaking his head. “He said it was bad, but I had no idea.”

“But he went back in,” Jimmy smiled fondly. “That was Nick. He never gave up.”

“Must have been one hell of a story,” Chris murmured.

Flynn nodded and lifted the letter once more. “Before the old man left, he opened his bag and rummaged through it, as if looking for something to write on. I noticed a stack of postcards, the one on top was of the most beautiful mountains I’d ever seen, topped with snow.

 He said he had lots of friends that sent him blank postcards with pictures of far off places so he could create his stories. He also told me that Colorado was his favorite postcard, but I could have it, because he could see I was a mountains kind of guy. He wrote his address on it and scribbled a note, and told me that if I ever needed help, or a friend, I could write and he would be there. My present to you this year is my lucky postcard, and that secret. I don’t know why I never told you about him. I guess I thought of him as my guardian angel. I didn’t want to share him with anyone.”

Georgia wiped the tears from her eyes. She was sure now, but she still needed to hold it in her hand. “May I see the postcard, Flynn?”