Page 50 of Home For Christmas

Greg reached over and pulled Jasper into a hug, kissing his forehead. “Don’t put the cart before the horse. Their flights don’t get in for hours. Anything could happen between now and then.” Despite his encouraging words, I could hear the disappointment in his voice. We’d find a different time to have the ceremony, but it sucked regardless. It was hard trying to keep smiles on our faces so we didn’t ruin the morning for the kids.

I’d seen the pile of gifts “under” the tree—the tree that was buried to the point I couldn’t see the bottom two feet of it when I’d looked in the den earlier. I had no idea how they were going to get home with all that stuff. The best guess I had was that they planned on keeping a lot of it here. It wasn’t like they weren’t back at the ranch often enough, but that meant I got to see my nieces and nephews frequently, so I didn’t complain.

Well, I hadn’t thought I’d complain until we got to the actual event… and what an event it was. I wiggled my way between Greg and Jasper on the too-small couch farthest away from the tree. “How long will this take?” I asked, looking at the five kids sitting around the tree, nearly vibrating with energy and excitement for what was to come.

“Fifteen minutes,” Greg responded as he pulled me so I was nearly sitting on his lap.

I laced my fingers with Jasper’s and relaxed into Greg’s embrace as Jasper began to speak. “Mom won’t let them go hog wild on them. She’s super organized about Christmas—you know that.”

“I say thirty minutes,” I offered with a slight yawn.

“Ninety or I’ll eat my shoe,” Jasper countered with a smile.

“Which shoe? The new ones Greg bought you for Christmas or your work boots?” I couldn’t help but tease him, and Jasper grinned but casually flipped me off.

“Behave. Both of you,” Greg admonished us, but his voice was full of laughter.

A light, lingering headache pressed behind my eyes. “Think some of Marla’s spiked hot chocolate is ready?”

“Contrary to popular belief, more liquor is not the cure for a hangover.” Maybe it wasn’t, but Greg’s big hands digging into my tense shoulders would likely help some and might just put me to sleep.

My eyes closed for what I thought was only a few seconds, but when I opened them, a pile of gifts had appeared at my feet. “What the hell?”

“The gift fairy arrived, aka Derek,” Jasper informed me. “And you’ve been asleep for quite a few minutes now.”

I wanted to argue that I hadn’t been, but judging by the fog in my brain and the pile of discarded gift wrap by the kids, I’d definitely missed something. I was getting ready to mention that I was good to go back to sleep when a knock at the front door had us all looking over in confusion.

“Who the hell would that be at this hour?” Ty asked no one in particular. He and Declan were both sitting on the floor with a kid on each of their laps. Derek and Colt weren’t trapped beneath kids, but they were both working on opening complex packaging. Being closest, Jasper slid out of our little cocoon and shivered slightly as he headed toward the front door.

“Throw an extra log on the fire, Dad. It’s cold in here.” He’d made it almost all the way to the door when I heard him mutter in confusion. “Huh, I don’t recognize that car.” The door opened and there was complete silence for so long I looked over to see what had happened.

In the doorway a group of people stood looking cold and expectant. I recognized Nate and Emma immediately, as well as Cody.

As I scrambled to get off Greg and help him to his feet, Jasper’s shock must have faded enough that he remembered his manners. “Come in, come in,” he urged, stepping aside and holding the door farther open, gesturing inside.

Greg kept blinking at his family, emotions passing over his face faster than I thought possible. “What in the? How? When? You’re here!” His feet started moving and he pulled his kids into a tight hug.

“Merry Christmas,” I greeted them as I made it to the door.

Cody looked a little shell-shocked. His wife, Shelly, had eyes that were red and her cheeks were rosy, but she looked like she’d been laughing more than crying. I assumed that was a good guess considering she was still smiling so broadly.

“I am so glad to be out of the car,” Cody said. “Sorry to interrupt Christmas morning and all, but I didn’t think I could handle being cooped up much longer.” He pointedly avoided Slade’s eyes, and we all knew Slade well enough to know he’d likely been, well, Slade the entire car ride.

Slade chuckled lightly, and through his attempt at humor, I could see his embarrassment. “My filter doesn’t always work very well.”

Emma threw an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “You’re fine. You make my brother happy. That’s all I really care about.”

Jasper was grinning so wide I thought his face was going to split in two. I knew what he was thinking without him speaking a word. If he felt even a fraction of the relief I did at seeing Greg’s family in the living room, I knew it was overwhelming for him. I took a few steps back and gripped Jasper’s hand while Greg hugged everyone as they entered. “How the hell did they get here?” he asked in awe.

I lifted a shoulder. His guess was as good as mine, but their appearance meant that our ceremony was going to happen, and a weight I’d been carrying around since the snow started to fall disappeared.

Between hellos and introductions, Cody told the story of running into Emma at the hotel in Denver the night before. Christmas flights were always a nightmare, so they’d both taken flights from different airports on Christmas Eve, then decided to stay over in Denver before their Christmas Day flights. They’d both happened to get rooms at the same hotel, and when they bumped into each other in the hotel’s restaurant, the snowstorm was just picking up steam. They’d made a decision then and there to rent a car and drive the seven hundred plus miles from Denver to Pleasant. They’d been driving all night and had stopped long enough in Wichita to pick Slade and Nate up from Slade’s parents’ house at some ungodly hour of the morning.

“There was no way in hell we were missing this,” Cody said as noise levels died down slightly.

They were all completely exhausted while simultaneously grateful for Marla perpetually cooking for an army. In ten minutes she’d had leftovers warmed up. We’d pulled chairs in from the dining room and pushed couches around, and the entire family, Greg’s included, was sitting in the living room while everyone opened gifts.

The extra people added to the volume in the house, and I was thankful for the few minutes I’d dozed before they’d arrived. Of course, the additional chatter, extra laughs, and general level of excitement made the two hours it took to unwrap gifts go by in the blink of an eye.

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