Page 32 of Hell Bent

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 housedidseem casual, because thiswas 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 itsays‘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 Iwillfight 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. Veryactiveping-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.”