Page 190 of Screwged for Christmas

“As long as it’s not your hospital scrubs, you’re good to go. Tradition among the townsfolk is you do their version of the polar bear run, you do it naked and drunk. It’s seventy years in the making. Anyone is welcome to join in on the festive fun as long as you can shoot back homemade hooch and don’t mind your tatas grabbing some winter air.”

“It sounds like someone got bored and horny and came up with a drinking game in the dead of winter.”

Zahara laughed. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Or at least that’s how the elder Savage put it when he told me all about ‘the tradition.’” Zahara threw up air quotes as a smirk played at the corner of her lips.

Ivy had made promises to visit her sister over the last year Zahara had made Savage Ridge her new home… and hadn’t. She’d skipped out on every promise. Flaked out for one reason or another and honestly, the list of her lame excuses was embarrassing. Local crazy customs should have made at least number three on that list but she’d failed to do all her research. And her new Alaskan guidebook riddled with facts about the state failed to mention anything about snow streaking.

Well, one thing was for sure. I beat sitting around in a cold, bland apartment all alone for the holidays.

Maybe getting a little tipsy and stripping wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

A wicked grin played over Ivy’s lips. She just might survive this trip after all. She bounced on the tips of her toes in time with theJingle Bellsthat blasted out over the crowd. “Well, you don’t have to worry about my scrubs. I left those back at the office.”

Permanently, she thought wistfully. Dropouts didn’t need scrubs. But she kept the real reason she braved an Alaskan winter to herself. For now. Busting her sister’s bubble with bad news seemed pure evil on a day like this when everyone around them smiled and cheered with an astonishing amount of holiday spirit. “But I am armed, you could say.”

The midday temperatures easily dipped below holy shit Fahrenheit and settled in for a very long-lasting deep freeze. It felt twice as cold with the wind chill factor, and Ivy thanked her new lucky leg warmers she’d decided on more layers rather than the opposite.

“Your nose is scrunching up like it does when you want to say something but don’t.”

Damn. Time for deflective tactics. “Well, I wouldn’t call them scrubs, per se. They’re really cute, though, and red if that counts for something. With little bitty mistletoe all over them.” She held up her thumb and forefinger to show the actual size.

“Oh, sexy!”

“Sure. Sexy booty warmers.” And Ivy left it at that with a wiggle of her brows. “You know this is past crazy and straight into batshit zone, right?”

Zahara patted her cheeks and stepped back from the cleared path down Main Street. And Ivy really got her first look at what lay ahead of her. Her heart tumbled to the ground and dragged her stomach with it. Main Street was better described as her strip of doom.

“Holy shit I’m screwed.”

“You always did like to tell it as you saw it.”

She shot a sideways glance down Main Street’s or Savage Ridge’s frozen version of a slip and slide.

Two teams barreled down the street in their birthday suits, tied at the leg. She cringed as the team on the left took a nosedive and crossed the finish line on their asses.

Oh man. She couldn’t do this. Not and actually manage to cross the finish line. But if she managed to win, maybe telling her sister she’d quit med school would go over easier.

She could hope. The only reason Zahara had come to Savage Ridge was to help her pay the mounting school debt she’d racked up.

Her teeth threatened to clatter, so she raised her gloved hands and cupped them around her face. “Remember that time I tried ice skating. You know that double date I ended up saving you from?”

Zahara set the metal canister down on the table and waved to someone over Ivy’s shoulder. “Oh my God, whatever you do, please don’t do a repeat. When you fell on that ice you somehow tripped everyone. There had to be thirty people on the rink!”

There were four times as many lining the streets watching the Risky Whiskey.

“Well, it’s not like I meant to.” With another long look down the icy lane, Ivy let out a heavy sigh and fisted the material of her coat over where her heart wanted to pound out of her chest.

Her date had been a great guy but the ice skating had led to mountain climbing, which led to her twenty thousand feet above jagged peaks contemplating survival probabilities with a questionable parachute strapped to her back. And that was where she drew the line. Nerdy girls with book fetishes didn’t do extreme sports and this sat at the top of heroh-hell-nolist.

She took another gander at the street and scrunched her nose in horror. This would easily turn into a game of human bowling in less than five seconds. She paused, fingers clutching her sister in place, only long enough to grimace at the possibility of a total wipeout in front of the entire town. NAKED.

Men clad in loincloths with lumberjack physiques dotted every snowy surface her eyes touched.

And every single one of them would witness her wipeout.

No.

She shuddered long and hard. And Zahara wanted her to strip in front ofthem?

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