Dashing Through the No (Summersweet Island 3)

“Let it all burn, my little firestarter,” Bodhi says softly, while I stare up at him, wondering where in the hell this man came from.

“I am definitely sleeping with you tonight,” I inform him as we both lean over the railing and toss popcorn to the seagulls while the sun sets out over the ocean.

“Excellent.” Bodhi nods with that adorable, lopsided smile. “Good thing I put on clean underwear.”CHAPTER 7Bodhi

“O Come All Ye Firemen.”Present day

“The womenfolk are all at Sip and Bitch, and I was promised a goddamn good time. Someone better get off this stupid video call and start showing me a goddamn good time, or I’m getting my baseball bat from my golf cart.”

“Oooh, look at this! I’m on Pinterest and found The Top Twenty Most Romantic Ways to Propose at Christmas. I’ll just read them off one-by-one, and you shout when one of them tickles your fancy.”

“Instead of Sip and Bitch, I’m gonna call this Drink and Dicks, because you’re all being a bunch of namby-pamby little dickwads.”

“You need to have some respect and stop proposing during or after a sexual activity. If you wouldn’t have left the island, you could have done it for national television last night when ESPN was here. She would have had no choice but to say yes, knowing millions of people will be watching when it airs tomorrow night.”

“Number one, spell out the words ‘will you marry me’ with Christmas stockings. Okay, that’s pretty fucking cute. I could whip up some sparkly ones and overnight them to you.”

“Can the Golden Girls stop yammering about this Hallmark bullshit and drink some beers already?”

“I’m telling you, go big or go home. Birdie still tells everyone who will listen about how I proposed on the 18th hole of that televised golf tournament. ESPN wanted an update on you anyway, so I can have them call you to do a quick video interview that they can add to the special before it airs, and you can propose to her then.”

“Number two, write out the words ‘will you marry me’ with Christmas lights. Good, but not sparkly enough.”

“Can you work out some kind of pyrotechnic display for the video call? ESPN will eat that shit up.”

“Yes! Fireworks! Those are super fucking sparkly! Where was I? Number three or number four?”

“Back in my day, you didn’t ask a woman to marry you. You told her you were getting hitched.”

“No one gives a shit what happened back in 1910, Murphy. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Don’t hit me!”

“Number three, hire carolers to serenade her some fun Christmas hits such as ‘We Wish You’d Merry This Guy,’ ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Groomsman,’ and ‘Hark the Herald Wedding Rings.’”

“I agree with the older gentleman.”

A scream unlike anything I’ve ever heard comes out of me and echoes around the living room of The Redinger House, and my cellphone goes flying out of my hand, when Sheldon suddenly inserts himself into my FaceTime call with Palmer, Shepherd, and Murphy in a quiet voice right by my ear.

“If you need some rope to make sure she doesn’t run away when you tell her what to do, I’ve got some in my trunk,” Sheldon finishes.

When my heart rate finally drops back down to normal, I look over my shoulder from where I’m lounging on the couch to sigh at Sheldon, who just seems to pop up out of nowhere all the freaking time. When I got to the end of the breakfast buffet table this morning after I’d filled my plate, I turned around to go to my table and bam! He was two inches away from my face, asking if I had any zip ties in one of the many pockets of my black cargo shorts.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he wanted those things to wrap a present, and not a human, but that was clearly stupid of me.

“You’re a scary little dude, you know that?”

“Why do people keep saying that? Is it the reindeer antlers? It’s the antlers, isn’t it?” Sheldon reaches up and touches the red-and-green antlers perched on top of his bald head before turning and shuffling out into the foyer.

I lean forward on the couch and grab my phone off the carpet by my feet where it landed when Sheldon bent over the back of the couch with his head over my shoulder to give his two cents about my proposal to Tess.

After I set her up with a two-hour massage by a fire, and the rest of the guests left to head over to the other side of the mountain to do some last-minute shopping, I decided to kick back alone in this room filled with a seriously ridiculous number of nutcrackers and call my boys for some advice. They were all hanging out at Wren and Shepherd’s giant mansion for the afternoon while the women went shopping and day-drinking. The guys were only shocked for about ten seconds when I told them that blowjob proposal two months ago wasn’t an accidental slip of the tongue, just because Tess’s tongue was slipping all over my dick at the time and made my heart go pitter-patter.