Legend (Arizona Vengeance 3)

Yeah…makes so much sense.

I shift and roll toward Pepper, finding her mouth in the dark. I kiss her softly as a measure of gratitude for being a good sounding board. When I pull back, I tell her, “I would have been a total mess these last few days without you.”

“You would have been just fine,” she says with self-deprecation.

“Would not,” I mutter and tilt my head to put my mouth to her neck.

She giggles and pushes me away from her. “Before I forget, though…do you have plans for Christmas? If you don’t, you’re more than welcome to come over to my parents’ house and partake of the ritual holiday Tofurkey.”

“To-what?” I ask in horror.

“Turkey made out of tofu,” she replies with a laugh.

I shudder thinking about it. “Actually, Dax and Tacker are going to come over tomorrow evening for a low-key Christmas Eve dinner and some drinks, but even if I didn’t have plans, fuck no I wouldn’t go to anyone’s house that served Tofurkey.”

Pepper barks out a laugh. “I told you my parents were health nuts and completely vegan, but yeah…I’m not looking forward to that either.”

“I’m so glad you eat meat,” I tell her earnestly. “Otherwise, I don’t think we could hang.”

“Well, the offer is there, and if you also want to come hang on Christmas day. I’m going to stay the night there so I can see my niece and nephew first thing in the morning when they come to my parents.”

“As you should,” I tell her, and then find her neck again with my mouth.

She moans and her fingers twine throughout my hair. On a breathy sigh, she adds, “But if you get bored and want to hang with me and my family, just let me know. It’s an open-door policy and my parents are pretty cool, outside of their eating habits.”

I ignore the comment and the invitation. I find running my lips along her skin to be much more interesting.

Besides, meeting her parents takes this further down the road than I’m comfortable with right now. My hand slips between her legs, then she’s arching up and into me, and I know the Christmas holidays have been forgotten.Chapter 10LegendUsing a piece of tape to seal the top of the colorful bag shut, I admire my handiwork laid out across my dining room table.

Christmas presents all perfectly wrapped and ready to be opened.

Granted, these are actually bags because I don’t wrap presents worth a shit and I’m too lazy to stand in line for complimentary gift wrapping. So I bought a bunch of Christmas themed bags in varying sizes. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to have tissue paper in there to hide whatever present was inside, but I forgot to get it so I’m just taping the tops shut to keep the contents a secret.

Not that Charlie is old enough to look inside. She can’t even hold her head up and will have no memory of the roughly five hundred dollars’ worth of toys and clothes I bought her.

Charlie woke Pepper and I up around 6:00 a.m. I fed Charlie her morning bottle and Pepper slipped away to get some last-minute Christmas things done before she went to her parents’ house.

I did, however, get her to agree to come to my house for dinner the night after Christmas so I’ll be seeing her in just two short days.

Grabbing an armload of bags, I walk into the living room and put them beside the fireplace. It’s made of hardwood, and finished in cream with fluted columns and crown molding along the breast.

It’s very traditional.

And I realize…boring.

Looking around my living room, I see nothing but taupe and creams, rich leather seating and heavy, solid pieces of unadorned furniture. My throw pillows are brown and cream plaid with a hint of green you can barely see. Contrasted with the rainbow of colors over at Pepper’s house, I realize my house is kind of dull.

I shake that off because now is not the time to Martha Stewart myself, and even if my house is dull, I’ll never decorate it like Pepper’s. Maybe a bit more color, but not much.

As I arrange the bags so they are all standing up, I have to admit I’m really feeling guilty about not having a decorated tree. In my nine years of adulthood and living on my own, I have never put up a Christmas tree and that’s mainly because as a professional hockey player, I was usually traveling or playing in a game, or in the rare opportunities that the schedule worked out the right way, I’d have a few days to fly home.

This year, it just worked out that Christmas fell in the middle of a loose home schedule. Ordinarily and being child free, I would have flown home to Boston to see my parents.