Page 16 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

THE SILLY SEASON

Alix

It was a mansion. It even had a tower. Also a regulation-length lap pool and a basketball court. That was the only part of the evening that went the way I’d anticipated, though.

The door opened, and there was a woman behind it.

Not the kind of woman I’d expected, which was along the lines of “girlfriend of Brian,” but a more normal-looking one.

Pretty face, red hair, pale skin, not much makeup, and more curvy than skinny.

Wearing a smile along with a frilly green-and-white apron over a purple dress that emphasized the curves, and looking much more like milk and cookies than a supermodel.

Before she could say anything more than, “You must be Alix and Sebastian. I’m so glad you came.

Oh, wine. That was nice of you,” a blond preschooler in a green dinosaur helmet with spikes rolled past her on a sort of low plastic tricycle, ran into Sebastian’s leg, and announced, “I have a bike. I can go fast.”

“I see that,” Sebastian said, not rubbing his leg. “Santa bring that for you? ”

“Yes,” the kid said. “Because I’m a very good boy.”

“You’d be a better boy,” a voice said, “if you didn’t run into people.

Stop before you hit them, OK?” That was Harlan, who was wearing dress pants, unlike Sebastian.

They were both wearing something less casual on top, though.

In Sebastian’s case, a leather bomber jacket—distressed, brown, and looking scarred and old, rather than brand-new, navy blue, and twelve hundred dollars of suede—and under it, some kind of very finely knit sweater, probably merino, in a golden brown that looked great against his olive skin and amber eyes.

And, man, did the guy look good in jeans. Thighs.

Also butt. I’m just saying.

I can’t remember what Harlan was wearing.

“I have a pirate ship,” the toddler announced. “I can climb up.”

“Cool,” Sebastian said. “You can show us, then.”

“Yes,” the boy said with great seriousness. “I will go very, very high.”

“Yeah, dude,” Harlan said. “That’s the problem. This is Nick,” he told us. “He’s a big talker, in case you didn’t notice. Wonder where he gets that from. And my wife, Jennifer.”

Jennifer had taken our coats now, and Nick said, “Come see,” and tugged at Sebastian’s pant leg.

“Give me a second,” Sebastian said.

“No,” Nick said. “Now.” And tugged harder.

Harlan picked Nick right up off the trike and said, “Let’s go do a puzzle. Sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “Exciting day. No nap, apparently.”

Jennifer headed around a corner with the coats and wine, and that left me alone with Sebastian. I said, feeling ridiculously shy, “You look nice.”

“You look more than that,” he said. “I think the word is ‘beautiful.’”

I smoothed a nervous hand over the deep-blue sleeveless sheath dress.

Not a loose one this time, but not skin-tight, either.

I’d bought it for the way its self-belt showed off my waist, and for the rich overlay of floral lace along the high neckline.

And, of course, for the eight inches of lace at the bottom. Refined but, I hoped, not entirely.

Jennifer came back and said, “I can’t believe I left you out here. Come on in.” But when I walked through to the interior of the house ahead of Sebastian, he put a hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “I like the back even better.”

I wasn’t sure why I was shivering. His breath in my ear, the warmth of his hand …

whatever. Or, just maybe, the knowledge that the dress had a fairly deep vee in back.

The front was ladylike, despite the border of transparent lace that started a few inches above the knee.

The back, though? That was a little more extra.

And the pointed-toe, high-heeled, black suede pumps were, in my humble opinion, about the sexiest shoes I’d ever owned.

Suede was stupid in Portland, but there you go. I’d done it anyway.

I said, “I didn’t want to be embarrassed. Or to be more nervous than I already am.”

“Never,” he said, and took my hand.

“Also,” I said, “I didn’t want to look like an electrician in winter rain gear.”

“Trust me,” he said, “you succeeded. Although I kinda dig the electrician, too.”

Sebastian

Time to pull my head out and focus, instead of just staring at Alix all night. Right. Living room. People. Festivities.

Harlan was right. His house did seem casual, because this was a lot more like “Christmas down home” than a cocktail party.

Three comfortable-looking couches were arranged around a huge gas fireplace full of leaping flames shielded by a metal screen bolted to the floor, for obvious Nick-related reasons.

Most of the ornaments on the Christmas tree looked like the kind kids made in school, and then there was the plastic trike, a wild collection of other toys, and, yes, a fairly enormous climbing structure in the form of a pirate ship.

Not to mention a whole lot of people. At the moment, Owen Johnson’s oversized frame was obscuring the tiny form of Nick, who was scrambling up a climbing wall with more determination than success.

Johnson had a hand at the back of Nick’s overalls and was lifting him with one big arm, saying, “There you go. Climb on up there.”

A pixie-looking young woman, pretty as can be, with half her platinum hair swinging over her forehead and the other side shaved, all kinds of piercings in her ears and eyebrow, said, “Mom’s not going to love you nearly as much if your present sends Nicky to the ER, Owen.”

“Don’t even say that,” Kristiansen said. “Watch him good, Owen. I need to go help Jennifer.”

“Hey. I gave him a helmet, too,” Johnson said.

“The box says ‘3 to 6,’ another young woman, also a blonde, said. This one was on a couch, her hands pressed between her thighs, but the Valkyrie look of her suggested she was Kristiansen’s sister. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Annabelle Kristiansen.” So there you were.

“Oh, whoops,” the pixie said. “Dyma here. And Owen, if you don’t know Owen.

NFL, obviously. And my great-grandpa Oscar, the one who’s reading a fishing magazine and thinking we’re way too loud.

He’s glad he lives alone now. Welcome, and Merry Christmas, and all that.

And it says ‘3 to 6,’ Annabelle, but that’s just a guideline. ”

“Not really,” Annabelle said. “Nick’s still almost a baby. ”

“I’m not a baby.” That was Nick, of course, spinning the steering wheel on the upper level of his pirate ship. “I will slide down. Catch me.”

Dyma said, “I can’t decide which present Mom thinks is the most inappropriate, Owen. This one, or my fire station. I’m thinking yours, and I will fight you about it.”

Jennifer came out of the kitchen at that moment with a tray full of glasses, and I leaped to get it from her.

She said, “Thanks. Hand this champagne around for me, would you?” Then, “I can’t decide myself.

The fire station is already driving me crazy, but then there are the broken-bone possibilities of the pirate ship. ”

Nick, who’d slid to the bottom of the slide on his diaper-clad butt with Owen’s hand on him all the way, said, “Fire truck!” And ran over to another big, brightly colored plastic thing, where he immediately started pushing buttons and cranking a wheel, causing a fire truck to rise into the air on a platform, then sent it down a curving ramp to the accompaniment of a wailing siren and chortles of little-kid laughter.

Lights flashed, horns honked, and, yeah, that was one annoying present.

“Did you just buy the noisiest thing there was?” Jennifer asked Dyma, who stuck her hands into her back pockets and said, “Basically. Nicky likes excitement. And if you really think he’s too little for the pirate ship, we can keep it over at Owen’s house until the summer, then set it up in the yard and put a sandbox in the bottom. If you can stand to make him that sad.”

“I can stand it,” Jennifer said. “I’m excellent at disappointing my children. I’ve had twenty-one years of practice.”

A wheezy laugh from the old man, and he said, “That’s about right. If there was a Super Bowl for tantrums, Dyma’d have won it. ”

“Excuse me,” Dyma said, “but the man of my dreams does not need to hear that.”

“The man of your dreams,” Owen said, “already has a pretty good idea.”

“Ha,” she said, and everybody smiled.

It went about like that for the next few hours.

Barbecued turkey, pie, and ping-pong. Very active ping-pong despite the full stomachs, because Harlan said, when we were down in his game room, “It works like this. We all run around the table in a circle. When you get to one end, you pick up the paddle, hit the ball back, drop the paddle fast for the next person, then run to the other side and hit it again when it’s your turn.

Got to keep running, that’s the main thing.

You start with three points, and every time you miss, you lose a point.

Winners are the last two standing. Oscar’s the judge. ”

“Good thing,” Oscar said, “since you cheat.”

“I do not cheat,” Harlan said. “I live on the edge.”

“Ha,” Oscar said. “Go for it, then, but if you cheat, I’ll see. You’ll be out, too.”

“The ref’s always right,” Harlan said, “even when he’s wrong.”

“If he’s your wife’s grandpa,” Oscar said, “you bet he is.”

Jennifer said, “It’s the silly season, I guess, because that’s how I expect to look.

I’m only playing because I’m always the first one out, so nobody else has to feel bad.

” At which she took off her heels and looked determined.

“I’m telling myself that everybody else here is an athletic genius, and that doesn’t have to be my skill set. ”

“You’re telling yourself,” Kristiansen said, “that you’ve got about the best personality in the world, and you care more about whether everybody else is happy than about whether you are. Which is why it’s my job to make up the difference.”

Jennifer turned pink and said, “That’s—” Then didn’t seem to know how to go on, until she said, “Oh! I guess that was my cue to show off what Harlan gave me for Christmas.”

“Well, no,” he said, giving her a one-armed cuddle and kissing her head, “it wasn’t, but feel free.”

“This,” she said, touching her necklace and earrings as her color rose some more.

They didn’t look the way I’d have expected from her kindergarten-teacher appearance.

Almost industrial, is the word. Modern, I guess.

The earrings were these two big rectangular links, like, big, the top one, attached to the ear, encrusted with diamonds.

The necklace was a smaller chain with the same two big links entwined at the bottom, one of them with the diamonds.

That one looked like a lariat, at least to me.

“They’re so striking,” Alix said. “The silver looks great with your hair.”

“Bite your tongue,” Kristiansen said. “Those are white gold. I don’t do my jewelry halfway.”

Dyma said, “One thing about football players, Alix, is that they like rules. Like, Harlan always gives my mom Tiffany, especially HardWear, and Owen usually gives me Cartier. Probably because I can’t wear Tiffany HardWear.

I’m too goth already, and I’m too small.

It works on Mom because of the contrast. Like, unexpected.

” She eyed Alix. “I’m trying to think what you’d look good in, but I don’t know you well enough.

You seem like it would have to be something very classy. ”

Alix laughed. “That’s funny, because trust me, I’m nothing like that.”

“Really?” Dyma said. “Huh. You look like a …” Some more studying. “Like a princess. An old-time European princess. Russian, maybe. Wasn’t the last Tsarina named Alix? There you go, Sebastian. There’s your hint.”

Alix glanced at me, startled, and I put up my hands and said, “Not me. ”

Alix said, “Sebastian and I barely know each other. He’s not buying me any jewelry.” Which hadn’t been what I’d meant at all. I’d meant the princess thing, but I didn’t know how to clarify.

“So are you going to play this game,” Oscar said, “or what? I’m too old to wait for things. Can’t even buy a magazine subscription anymore, and I look at the date on the meat package real hard, too.”

“We’re going to play,” Harlan said. “Who’s in?” Which was when Alix kicked off the black suede heels and said, “Bring it on. I’m going to beat you like a drum, Sebastian. Get ready to cry.”