Christmas With You

by Tracey Alvarez

  “Oh, I’ll find something. Your mum’s already been online checking out European cruises, and Bounty Bay has a top-notch golf course. Never had much time or energy before.” He leaned over and patted Kip’s shoulder. “The farm has served its purpose all these years, but it’s time for a fresh start—nothing you need feel bad about.”

  “No guilt allowed,” Heather said. “We love you and support you, whatever choices you make. We want you to find your place in the world and be happy.”

  The tightness building all day in his chest eased. Carly had been right; she’d seen through their intentions to the heart of the matter. He’d been so tangled in his own guilty feelings that instead of talking to his parents over the last two years, he’d chosen to run—a bit of sticking his head in the sand, himself.

  “I am happy, Mum. I wake up every day…and not at 5:00 a.m.”—he shot a quick grin at his dad—“and I look forward to going into work and chatting with the locals.”

  “They’ve certainly woven you into the fabric of their community, haven’t they?” His mum lifted the corner of the pram cover. With a satisfied nod, she dropped it back in place. “And then there’s Carly.”

  Kip opened his mouth to interject, but she steamrolled on. “Yes, she’s another thing that’s none of our business, but since you’re in love with her, it makes her a teeny bit my business, after all.”

  In love with—? Kip held up a finger. “Hold on a—Wait, I’m not…”

  She raised an eyebrow, and his dad chuckled.

  “First time I’ve seen our boy speechless since we found him wrestling with his pretty girl on the bar floor,” he said.

  “Didn’t you know you were in love with her?” She made soft clicks with her tongue. “Ah…your father was the same. His mum had to point out I was the girl for him.” She sighed. “Sullivan men—so gorgeous but so slow on the uptake.”

  Kip groaned and lowered his head into his hands. It sucked big time when your mother had to state the bloody obvious. Yeah, in the last ten days, he’d zoomed through admiring, respecting, lusting-after, and liking Carly, and had fallen in love with her. And the odds of ever falling out of love with her were equivalent to snow falling out of this perfect summer sky.

  He looked up with another groan. His parents studied him with enormous grins, his mum nudging his dad in the ribs.

  “Don’t smile,” Kip said. “I think I screwed up everything with her last night.”

  His mum rolled her eyes. “You’d better think of a way to fix it, then. We’ve already paid the deposit on this place for the holidays next year.”

  Kip’s jaw sagged. “You have?”

  She chewed her bottom lip. “Is that okay? Once your dad and I realized you belonged here, we decided to get in quick. We’ve all had such a fantastic time.”

  Kip waited for tension to wire through his shoulder blades at the thought of his family descending en masse again, but it never happened. “Sure. Next time, bring Rachel and Kristan, and I’ll hire tents for the backyard—the kids’ll have a blast camping.”

  “Wonderful.” She beamed. “And there’s a perfect spot under the pohutukawa trees for a Christmas wedding—just saying.”

  His dad coughed and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t scare the poor boy.”

  “He’s not scared, are you?” His mother whipped an indignant gaze in Kip’s direction.

  “Actually, Mum.” He stood. “I’m freaking terrified. What if she only wants me for you guys?”

  Both parents gawped at him open-mouthed.

  “Are you nuts?” his father asked.

  Kip shoved his hands into his shorts pockets. “She really likes everyone, and she’s always wanted to be part of a family…” Okay, it did sound a little lame in the light of day.

  “Oh, honey.” Heather shook her head. “We like her, too, and we’d love her to be part of our family. But trust me, Kip, no woman looks at a man the way she looks at you and secretly thinks, “I can’t wait to snag this guy so I have my future in-laws around me 24/7.”

  James snickered. “Got that right.” Then he folded his arms and pinned Kip with a stare. “She’s the one, though, isn’t she?”

  “Um.” He shot his mother a sideways glance. Maybe he was a little slow on the uptake. “How do you figure that out?”

  “You think of it this way.” His dad grinned. “You’ve got another fifty or sixty Christmases left in your lifetime; who do you want to spend them with?”

  The answer popped into his brain faster than a speeding bullet.

  Carly.

  Every Christmas, every New Years, every Valentine’s Day, every damn Saint Patrick's Day. He loved her, and if she was prepared to give him a chance—and he wouldn’t hesitate to use his bartender charms to talk her into it—he liked the odds of her one day loving him back.

  “A morbidly romantic idea, darling. I’m impressed,” his mum said.

  “We men might be slow to catch on, but Sullivans go after what they want. So go sort things out with your lady.”

  As Kip walked away from the table, a lightness to his step he hadn’t had twenty minutes ago, he came up with a plan. A half-assed plan, at best, but it was a start toward showing Carly how much she meant to him.

  ***

  Zoe rushed across Glenna Harland’s massive living room to where Carly curled into an armchair, engrossed in a game of chess with Ben. “Your phone’s ringing!” The girl shoved the phone into Carly’s hand, and she hit the answer button.

  “Apologies for interrupting your Christmas Day, dear.” Mrs. Taylor’s voice squawked down the line, not a bit apologetic. “But you’d better come home. You’ve left all the lights burning, and you know how much power costs. I’d go down and switch them off myself, but my arthritis is playing up today.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Carly frowned at her phone. “I’ll come down now.”

  Hadn’t she turned the lights off this morning before West picked her up? Perhaps not. She’d had very little sleep the night before—tossing and turning while she tried to convince herself she wasn’t in love with Kip. The convincing part hadn’t worked well for her.

  It’d been an hour since she’d last daydreamed about him. Well, closer to twenty minutes. Fine. Technically, three minutes, since Ben complimented her chess skills by saying she was on par with Kip.

  Double-dammit.

  “I’ve got to run home; I must’ve left the lights on,” she said.

  Ben stretched out his arms, and Zoe grabbed his hand. “Can me and Jade go for another swim, Dad? Mama says she doesn’t want to because her hair looks like Medusa, so she said to ask you. Pleeeeease.”

  Ben cut Carly a lazy, hooded glance. “Maybe we’ll walk over to Sunshine Bay, and you two can play with Logan and Lucas again. I’m sure Carly will join us afterward.”

  Zoe switched her mega-watt smile to Carly. “Awesome. I’ll go tell Jade.”

  “What have West and Del been saying?” she said, once Zoe skipped from the room.

  Ben edged around the coffee table. “Didn’t need to tell me anything. It’s all over your face when I mention Kip’s name, plus”—he pointed a finger— “remember the kids’ party? Nothing wrong with my ears.”

  “Didn’t think I was that obvious.”

  “All day, you’ve looked like a kid who got an empty box instead of an X-Box on Christmas morning. So go turn off your lights and meet us at the beach. Kip will be glad to see you.” Ben sauntered off.

  She wasn’t a hundred percent certain about that, but decided to think about it on the way to her place.

  Fifteen minutes later, Carly walked through Mrs. Taylor’s gate and along the path. Funnily enough, there were lights on in her little house…colored, twinkling, fairy ones strung across the windows.

  What the…

  Her heartbeat quickened with her footsteps, then leaped into a wild gallop at her open front door. Freaking hell—somebody was in her house! Somebody who’d sneaked past Mrs. Taylor…Carly paused, na
rrowing her eyes.

  No one got past Mrs. Taylor.

  So, it must be someone who hadn’t quite got the idea that burglarizing meant taking stuff, not adding stuff like sparkly lights.

  She edged closer to the open door.

  Someone inside sang about decking the halls in a smooth baritone. She eased her head around the corner. The someone displayed a perfect ass encased in khaki shorts, and a tight red tee shirt stretched across broad shoulders as he added a star to the top of a huge, decorated Christmas tree—a tree that hadn’t been there this morning.

  “Kip?”

  Kip jumped, sending the star whizzing across the room and bouncing off her couch.

  He spun around, his face a comical snapshot of shock with a side-dish of guilt. “Hey! You’re, um, back early.”

  She leaned against the doorframe. “Mrs. Taylor called to say lights were on in my house.”

  His eyes narrowed. “She didn’t stick to the plan.”

  “Plan?”

  “She spotted me lugging the tree through her gate. I told her what I was up to, but she wasn’t meant to call until I’d finished.” He raked a hand through his hair and gave her a sheepish smile.

  Carly cocked her head. “I think you’ve used every one of Mrs. Taylor’s decorations.”

  Baubles, silver bells, and gimmicky Santa decorations covered the pine tree, with only a few strands of tinsel left spilling out of the box. He hadn’t bothered color-coordinating or going with the less is better style he preferred, and it touched her deeply.

  He shot her a small smile, crossing to the couch to retrieve the glittery star. “You taught me a thing or two about tree decorating. And about pulling my head out of my ass and talking to my parents—which I did, and we’re cool.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “You didn’t spend the whole day in bed, then?”

  Kip turned the star in his hands and then placed it on her dining table. “No, I’ve been doing all the usual traditional Kiwi things—eating too much turkey, trying to construct Lego spaceships with the twins, and getting sunburned. Christmas Day didn’t turn out to be as bad as I’d feared, except I missed you every single minute.”

  A lump expanded in her throat as he crossed the room and took her hand, his roughened fingers curling around hers.

  His thumb rubbed across her knuckle, his blue eyes intense. Delicious shivers worked their way down her spine.

  “Why don’t you check under the tree, sweetheart? See if Santa left you anything.”

  He tugged her hand, and she let him lead her to the tree, her head filling with the clean, tangy scent of pine. Beneath the lowest branches lay a small, neatly wrapped package. Kip kneeled, drawing her down with him.

  “Were you lying about your gift-wrapping skills?”

  Kip grinned and wriggled his fingers. “I’ve been practicing. Now open it.”

  Carly peeled off the paper, exposing a rectangular silver box. Prying off the lid, she caught her breath. A green pendant in the shape of an infinity twist nestled in the white satin.

  “Greenstone?” she breathed, stroking a finger along the cool curves.

  “Yeah. Maori consider greenstone a taonga—treasure.” He brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear then traced the finger down her cheek, much the same way she touched the pendant. “I chose this pendant because it symbolizes an everlasting bond between two people.”

  Everlasting bond? She glanced up, and oh, God, the fierceness of his stare, as if his soul poured out of him into her, filling all the little gaps and crevices that had remained empty for too long.

  “I love you.” He cupped her jaw. “Since the first moment you fell into my life and kneed me in the nuts, but likely even before then.” His throat worked, and the hot sting of tears burned her eyes. “You’re my treasure, and I want to spend every Christmas with you—today, next year, fifty years from now.”

  Her heart once again rabbited around her chest and she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He loved her, and he’d helped turn her from a Grinch into a believer again. She believed that while family was important, falling off a ladder into the arms of the most incredible man, ever, was more important. Though, in their case, it was a crash-landing with the possibility of concussion, but when she and Kip told the story to their kids, falling into his arms sounded less klutzy.

  Oh, dear God—kids.

  “But…” Her lip quivered. “You don’t want the whole family thing, the requisite three grandkids for your parents.”

  “Sweetheart, I want everything with you, including, one day in the future, the whole family thing.” He stilled her trembling lip with his thumb. “But you do realize that twins run rampant through the Sullivan clan?”

  “Twins?”

  “Many, many sets of twins,” he said seriously.

  “Then I want them, too,” she said. “But more than kids, more than your wonderful, match-making family, I want you Kip. Always.”

  He studied her, his blue eyes warming her from the inside out. “I always thought love made you vulnerable. I guess it does, because, baby, you could crush my heart in your hands.”

  Carly leaned forward, brushed a soft kiss on his lips. “You’re not vulnerable if the one you give your heart to loves you so much she’ll treat it like the most precious taonga she’s ever been given.”

  “You love me?”

  “To the North Pole and back.” She laced her hands around his neck, smiling until a sudden chill nipped her conscience. “Oh, my goodness, I didn’t—”

  He cut her off—kissing her until she melted into him. He gathered her close, and she found herself flat on the floor with the Christmas tree towering above, and hard, pine-scented male wedged between her legs.

  “You didn’t what?” Kip kissed his way down her throat. “You didn’t shut the door? It’s okay; I think Mrs. Taylor understood the second part of my plan.”

  She laughed, as the fine line of stubble surrounding his gorgeous mouth tickled her skin. “No—I didn’t get you a Christmas present or a birthday present.”

  Kip wriggled his eyebrows. “Sweetheart, look at yourself all flushed and beautiful. Do you think I want anything else?”

  She couldn’t have asked for a sweeter, sexier, kinder man to find underneath the tree—but maybe Santa had a little help from a certain flyboy in choosing the right man for her. Carly threaded her fingers through Kip’s thick, dark hair, her heart so full to overflowing she wondered how her vocal chords still worked.

  “No,” she said. “We both got everything we wanted.”

  ###

  Thank you for reading Christmas With You! I hope you enjoyed diving into the Due South world. If you did…

  1. Please help other readers find this book by writing a review here.

  2. Sign up for my newsletter so you can find out about upcoming book releases and other cool stuff.

  3. Come like my Facebook page.

  4. Check out my website.

  5. I love to hear from my readers on any social media platform or you can e-mail: tracey@traceyalvarez.com

  More from this Author

  The Due South series focuses on family, community, and of course, each book contains a scorching hot romance.

  Other books in the series:

  In Too Deep (Due South Book 1)

  She vowed never to return.

  To save her brother from financial ruin, Piper Harland must do the one thing she swore she'd never do—return to the tiny island hometown where Ryan "West" Westlake crushed her heart. Piper is tough, resilient and a little wild—much like the remote and beautiful Stewart Island where she grew up. As a cop who's part of the elite New Zealand Police National Dive Squad, bringing the dead back to their families still doesn't stop the guilt she feels over her father's drowning death. Now nine years later she's obligated to return to a hostile community as the outsider, and forced to work with the man who was once her best friend and first lover.

  She's a risk he can't take.

  Wes
t is an Island man, through and through. As owner of the local pub, he lives and breathes the local community, and sure as hell can't imagine living anywhere else. But most of all he refuses to ever fall for a woman like his flighty mother. He lost Piper once to give her the chance to fulfil her dreams of becoming a cop. But now she's back for an unexpected six week visit to help her brother—his best mate. Maybe West wants her a little bit, maybe he can't resist the temptation to tease and touch her, but can he fall in love with such a flight risk?

  Saying goodbye for the second time might just destroy them both.

  Click here to buy In Too Deep

  Melting Into You (Due South Book 2)

  Big, sexy men who don’t relate well to kids need not apply…

  Kezia Murphy plays her widow card well. When you don’t trust people not to let you down, it’s easier to not get involved—and getting involved with a man who makes her skin sizzle just by looking at him would be una pazzia—crazy! Four years ago while Kezia’s daughter, Zoe, battled leukaemia, a tragic accident stole her husband’s life. Starting over in the little town of Oban where she’s adopted into the close knit community on Stewart Island, Kezia and her daughter are all the family the other needs. Except Zoe yearns for more.

  New Zealand’s worst candidate for instant fatherhood…

  Ben doesn’t do gooey emotional stuff. He doesn’t do cosy home and family. And he sure isn’t the big teddy-bear Kezia Murphy, the woman he secretly fantasises about, thinks he is. So when Jade, his surprise eight-year-old daughter arrives on his doorstep, he’s a D-minus student struggling to pass a crash-course in parenting.

  They’ll either melt or raze their lives to the ground…

  When the sparks of attraction between Kezia and Ben fan into an inferno, Ben doesn’t know how much longer the layers of resistance around his heart can resist melting into the gooey mess he fears. The more he fights it the harder it is to make the choice that will destroy the family he now longs to claim.