With a nod and a confused look on her face, Barb takes the gift box and heads into the living room toward the stairs to go up to the rooms, and hopefully nowhere near wherever Sheldon disappeared to while thoughts of sugar plums and skull-drilling dance in his head.
“You have got to stop buying people what you think they should want, instead of what they actually want,” Allie reminds her as Millie waves her away with one perfectly manicured hand.
The two of them bicker back and forth for a few minutes, and it makes me miss my friends. Not enough to get in the rental and head right back to Summersweet or anything, but enough to make me wish they were here for just a second.
Allie stops arguing with Millie long enough to tell me there’s still breakfast food left in the warming trays in the dining room if I want to help myself before she clears everything away and gets ready for lunch. I head through the archway, sipping my hot chocolate as I go, shaking my head and smiling when I glance out the windows to see Bodhi and Jason putting the finishing touches on their giant snowman that is taller than the two of them, before setting my Jack Skellington mug down on an empty table in the middle of the room.
The dining room is as overly decorated as the rest of the house I’ve seen so far, with several small round tables covered in red-and-green tablecloths and mini pine tree centerpieces set up to look like a small restaurant. I grab a plate from the stack at the end of the long table against the far wall and fill it with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, shredded hash browns, a pancake, and some fresh fruit before heading back to my table and digging in. I’m suddenly starving even though I ate almost an entire grocery store junk food aisle no more than a half hour ago.
By the time my plate is empty after one more trip to the breakfast buffet, and I’m happy I had the good sense to put on stretchy pants when I got out of the shower, Bodhi is coming in from his playtime in the snow. He jogs into the dining room as soon as he walks through the front door and sees me sitting in here.
With a ridiculous squeal that makes me glad we’re the only ones in this room as Bodhi nuzzles his freezing-cold nose into the side of my neck, I swat his cold face away until he moves back. He grabs my cheeks with his mitten-covered hands and pulls me in for a quick peck on the lips before flopping down into the chair next to me.
“What’d ya eat for breakfast?” Bodhi nods to my empty plate as I shake my head at his red shirt with a green pot leaf in the middle that says Merry Cannabis.
“The usual.”
“The souls of your enemies? Must be a new menu item Allie added after I ate.” He smiles.
“It was a special.” I shrug.
Bodhi’s smile grows wider, making my heart flutter like it always does when I can see his dimples, as he pulls his mittens off and tosses them onto the table before leaning closer to me to rest his elbows on his bent knees.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“You know I hate surprises,” I remind him, finishing off the glass of orange juice Allie brought out for me after I filled my plate the first time.
“I know. Ever since that one time a girl from your high school shit her pants in front of the entire school when her parents threw her a surprise birthday party.”
“She’s thirty years old, has three kids, and is the CEO of a major corporation, and everyone still calls her Poo-Poo Patty.” I shiver, remembering that cold, dark day our sophomore year.
“I let you torch the hippo pillow in the bathtub before bed last night, didn’t I? Work with me. I promise you’ll love it.”
Bodhi’s smile gets all lopsided and adorable, and I reach out and brush some of his shaggy hair off his forehead. When I notice the small red bump up by his hairline that Allie mentioned from the snowball fight, I lean forward and press my lips to the injury before I even realize what I’m doing.
The shock on Bodhi’s face when I pull back probably mirrors my own WTF expression, because this shit sure is a new freaking development in our relationship, me acting all comforting and… sweet. Gross.
“Did the doctor call yet to tell you I’m dying?” I quickly ask as I drop my hand from holding his hair off his forehead to bring both of us back down to earth and not in some alternate universe where I kiss booboos away.
Bodhi just chuckles and shakes his head at me.
“You’re not dying, and no, he hasn’t called yet. The only call I’ve received was one from Palmer that was just a good five minutes of him screaming at me for leaving him alone with Shepherd. There was a small scuffle last night that resulted in someone falling face-first into a box of glitter, and let’s just say Palmer is going to be very pretty tonight on that follow-up ESPN interview they’re filming of him and Shepherd for the holiday sports special.”
Bodhi grabs his mittens from the table and shoves them in the pockets of his shorts before pulling me up from my chair right as Allie joins us in the dining room, waiting by the doorway that leads into another part of the house.
“I’ll meet up with you when you’re finished with your surprise,” Bodhi tells me, kissing my forehead before grabbing my shoulders, turning me to face Allie, and giving me a gentle push in her direction. “I packed the pointy elf ears. We can have some naked elf fun with them before dinner.”
When Bodhi leaves the room, Allie guides me through to the back of the house to a room that looks like another living room, which Allie tells me is private from guests and just for the Redinger family. It looks like your typical family’s living room at Christmas containing a huge, comfortable-looking sectional with a couple of Christmas throw pillows on it, a tree in the corner with a ton of mismatched ornaments, a crackling fireplace with stockings hanging down from the mantle, and a flat-screen television hanging on the wall above it. With the snow falling heavily outside through the windows on either side of the tree, the dark clouds blanketing the sky make it feel like dusk instead of early afternoon, and it’s actually kind of nice and cozy. The only thing out of place in this living room is a big massage table right next to the fireplace.
“Welcome to your private, two-hour relaxation massage given by Christen Powers, one of the best masseurs in Snowfall Mountain,” Allie informs me as a younger blonde woman gives me a small wave from where she’s standing at the head of the massage table. “Bodhi gave me strict instructions that this massage needed to happen as close as humanly possible to some sort of fire in order for you to be happy. He was very adamant about the fire.”
I chuckle to myself even as the room suddenly gets blurry, blinking rapidly as Allie leaves me to my massage. Once I’m naked and warmly cocooned on my stomach under a pile of heated blankets, I turn my face to the side as Christen rolls down the blankets just enough to start using her magical hands on the backs of my shoulders.
Staring into the flickering flames and listening to the wood popping and crackling in the fireplace, with Christen massaging me into a coma, my eyes drift closed with thoughts of fires and first dates blazing through my mind.
CHAPTER 6
Tess
“My little firestarter.”
Six months ago
“…and then my ass and my dick were just flopping in the ocean breeze as I ran across the sand and dove into the water to start a new life.”