Page 1 of Home For Christmas

I

Derek and Colt

Chapter 1

Derek

December 1st

Harrison took a swig from his beer bottle and looked toward the fireplace. “You know, when you wrap your woodpile with Christmas lights, it kinda defeats the purpose of having a fireplace.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “I think it’s pretty.”

He nodded. “It is. I think I’m going to steal the idea for the house. Do you know that your brother has no Christmas decorations?”

“What?” How the hell could that be? He’d lived in his house for over a decade. There was no way my brother didn’t have Christmas decorations.

Harrison nodded at nothing in particular. “Yeah. I went to get them out of the shed after Thanksgiving dinner and there wasn’t a single decoration. I asked him about it and it turns out that he doesn’t have any.”

I took a swig of my beer as I mulled the statement over in my head. “How is that even possible?”

“Poppy!” Carter’s voice echoed through the house. “Poppy! Jack took my crayon!”

Colt shook his head. “Carter, you two should be getting showers, not coloring,” he called up the steps.

“Pop, Carter has marker on his face,” Lydia all so helpfully called down from the steps.

Harrison laughed. “Dude, Colt, I know your sperm fertilized that egg, but he’s so much like Dare at that age it’s scary.”

Colt sighed. “He sure as shit didn’t get it from me.”

“That’s not what your mom says,” I teased as I moved to stand up to go figure out what happened.

Colt stilled me with a hand on my arm. “I’ll get them. You guys have barely had a second to breathe this week. I’ll be very thankful when whatever this phase is finally ends.”

Harrison laughed and pointed at my hand where I’d been jotting notes down while we were in the studio. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

Colt’s answering groan was good-natured. “Am I going to have to scrub you extra well tonight?”

“If I’d known that I was going to get extra attention, I’d have written notes somewhere else.”

Harrison snorted his beer and almost fell out of his chair laughing. “Damn, only you two. Only you two.”

I watched my husband shaking his head at me as he climbed the steps. “You’re trouble,” he called out as he reached the top, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or Carter. Five-year-olds were hell. Then again every age with Carter had been a new form of torture. He’d had broken bones, stitches, and more close calls than the other two combined, and that was just this year.

“You ready for Christmas? I mean, aside from the lack of decorations?” Harrison, my brother, Jasper, and their boyfriend, Greg, had been engaged for nearly a year but had yet to find time to have a commitment ceremony. When Greg’s oldest daughter told them that she’d be in Oklahoma on Christmas Day for a layover, they’d decided Christmas was the perfect time to get married. Harrison and I had stopped at the jewelers in Nashville on the way home that night to pick up their rings, and I might have been a bit jealous of them. The rings were a gorgeous black metal with a black walnut inlay. The wood had come from a branch of a tree on Harrison’s property where Greg had proposed to them. The inside of each band was a different color, and the jeweler had etched the thumbprints of the other two on each ring. They were unique and gorgeous and so perfectly suited for them it was kind of sickening.

Harrison tipped the last of his beer back and stood to grab us new ones. “Honestly, I’m so fucking ready. I never thought I’d be one to marry. After all the shit I’d been through with Neil and the fact that he’d sworn up and down he would never get married and cave to a pointless institution, it seems a bit surreal to be at this point.”

He returned and handed me an open beer. “Neil was an ass. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s totally fucking awesome that after all these years, we’re going to be related.”

Harrison’s cheeks rose with a smile I couldn’t fully see behind his beard. “That’s wild. Growing up, it would have been impossible to be at this point.”

I’d opened my mouth to ask him if he had any plans for his bachelor’s party, but before I could say anything, a blur of pink flew by me and straight into Harrison’s arms. The force of Lydia’s impact nearly toppled the chair backward. “Uncle Harrison!” she squealed as though she hadn’t just seen him a week earlier.

“Hey, kid.” He wrapped large arms around her and smiled. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

She shook her head and laughed. “I’m going to Gramma’s house once my brothers are done in the shower. Pop’s gonna be scrubbing Carter for the rest of the night.”

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