Page 48 of The Grump Who Stole Christmas
Even with me taking over the tree farm, he couldn’t handle the inn by himself. He probably knew it too.
Which raised the potential of selling the place. Pops and I already had an agreement. If it came to that, I’d buy the farm outright, but I wanted nothing to do with running an inn. The two operations could function independently if they needed to. Realistically, I knew that.
There just seemed something sad about the McCleer Christmas Tree Farm and the Buyer to Be Named Later Inn.
This place was Kringle. And Christmas. It was pine needles and snow falling. It was brownies and eggnog. It was a little piece of magic that I’d stumbled into and I didn’t want to let it go.
Breaking it up into pieces didn’t feel right. But it wasn’t my call.
It was her call. She had the most business savvy in the family, she had to know what to do. The sooner she made that decision and went back to New York, the better for everyone.
What the fuck was I talking about?
Her leaving was better for no one. But I wasn’t so naïve to think I was living in some damn Hallmark Christmas movie where the woman from the big city comes home only to find she misses her small town life and wants to give everything up for the Christmas tree farmer.
Fucking lame-ass plot.
I stomped downstairs and found Pops in the living room pulling up YouTube on the smart TV, which wasn’t like him at all. He rarely watched anything on television.
“What’s going on?”
“Press conference for Matt’s homecoming. Apparently the video is already up on YouTube. That’s right, I know about the streaming.”
Right. The whole thing where Ethan and Kay were going to go to the airport with a big warm family welcome-home for the prodigal son. I watched the footage play out. Looked like they were in baggage claim at the airport. A podium had been set up for him.
Matt was there on screen. I could see the family resemblance. Except, of course, for his size. He was huge. He was answering questions about his hockey injuries. Made sense the press would talk about that first. He kept talking about his groin injury, which of course only made me think of my groin and how freaking heavy it had felt last night.
Geezus, would he stop saying groin!
Then it all seemed to happen in a blur. Suddenly Ethan and Matt the Mountain, his NHL nickname, were fighting.
“And there they go,” Pops said with a harrumph as we both watched the TV. “Never could go two minutes without pissing each other off.”
Was this really happening? Were they fighting? Was it serious?
“Oh shit,” I said, squinting at the TV as I watched Kay dive into the fray. “Is that a nipple twist? Is she giving the Mountain a nipple twist on television?”
“My daughter can be ruthless. And she knows how to make those two stop fighting. This isn’t good. This isn’t going to look good for Matt or Ethan. How many times do I have to tell those boys to think first before they act?”
Reflexively, I put my hands over my own nipples. I would have to let Kay know I liked a little pressure on my nipples when I had sex, but twisting them would be out of the question.
Wait? Was I already planning for when we had sex?
I was so fucked.
* * *
Later That Afternoon
Kristen
I stompedmy way through the snow out to Paul’s cabin. The press conference at the airport on its surface had been a disaster. Two brothers fighting hockey style on the local news. Did it get any worse? But like someone once said, any press was good press.
Suddenly the phone at the inn was ringing off the hook, some just wanting to come and star gaze at Matt. Maybe others just remembering that Salt Springs, with the Christmas Jamboree in full force, was beautiful this time of year.
Plans for a Christmas Eve event at the inn were now moving along swiftly and efficiently. All things felt like they were back under my control, when this morning they had been so thoroughly out of my control.
I’d been wanting to talk to Paul alone the entire day, but it felt like he was avoiding me. First, back at the house when we got back from the airport, and now, when he’d left the farm in the hands of the interns.
