Page 14 of An Undisputed Christmas
The smell of coffee and bacon greeted us as we descended the stairs, along with Connor's steady voice and Adrian's animated chatter.
Christmas lights twinkled from every surface, and the large windows framed the freshly falling snow like an enchantment.
"There's our star!” Adrian called the second he spotted us, already bouncing toward me with a Santa hat in each hand. "And her noble protector. Good morning, you Christmas-y people!"
Jax accepted his hat with far more grace than I expected. “Christmas-y,” he repeated.
"It's Christmas vacation!" Adrian declared, plopping a hat on my head before I could protest. "And you, my festive friend, get the regular jingly one. Connor gets the extra-special Grinch edition."
From the kitchen came Connor's long-suffering sigh. "I can hear you, you know."
"That's the point, Mr. Grinch!" Adrian called back cheerfully. "Someone has to balance out all this Christmas joy!"
"I'm going to put bear spray in your coffee," Connor threatened mildly.
We girls settled at the long kitchen table with steaming mugs of coffee and heaping plates of pancakes, bacon, and fresh berries.
The sun poured in through the frosty windows, casting golden highlights over the polished wood and garland-strung banisters. The scent of cinnamon mingled with pine and frying butter, making the morning feel both festive and decadently indulgent.
On the floor, Toffee demolished his bowl of wet food, purring like a tiny, contented Christmas train.
He’d lost his sweater somewhere but looked perfectly pleased, licking gravy from his bowl and glancing up hopefully every so often at the bacon.
"He's really going to town," I laughed. Toffee, for all his dignity, ate like a mini lion.
“Connor spoils him almost as much as they spoil us," Sierra said with a grin, giving Toffee an affectionate look from her seat.
As we ate, conversation buzzed about what to do next. Sledding was suggested, snowman building made us all laugh, and Isla threw out snowshoeing with calm, practiced confidence.
“I can ice skate,” she added. “But only if no one plans to take pictures—my face will be frozen solid.”
That sparked the morning’s first truly wicked idea.
I glanced slyly at the others. “We should do ice skating,” I declared, knowing full well the trio of boxers were probably too huge to pull off a sport as delicate as ice skating.
“It’ll be hilarious to watch them try and balance those monster thighs. Their legs alone are like tree trunks.”
A round of snickers circled the table as the girls immediately latched onto the evil genius.
The plan was set: Ice skating—a guaranteed ego blow for the hulking, tattooed champions. We agreed unanimously, both for our amusement and pure chaos value.
Only Isla could actually skate between us, but that was beside the point.
Content with our plans and full of delight at the anticipation of seeing the guys off-balance for once, we lingered over syrup and apple cider until we noticed the kitchen had gone eerily quiet.
“Anyone else find it suspicious they vanished mid-pancake?” Sierra asked, looking around. “It’s too quiet. That’s never a good sign.”
We all stood at once, sharing a look. It was a mix of trepidation and mischief. This was trouble, and we were absolutely marching straight toward it.
In haphazardly thrown on coats and boots, we crept outside into air that bit at our cheeks and burned our lungs with every indrawn breath.
The world was silent, almost sacred, save for a distant—thunk.
Then anotherthunk. And the sharp chorus of masculine laughter echoing around the side of the house.
We rounded the corner and stopped cold.
Six feet of snow was nothing to the vision before us: The guys, utterly shirtless, out in the icy sunlight.
