Her Naughty Holiday

by Tiffany Reisz

  years to get my degree,” Val said. “We handed her a college education on a platter and she threw it in our faces.”

  “Well...no,” Erick said. “She didn’t do that. I get that you and your husband are both academics. Clover told me. I get that you worked your ass off for your education. I get that you think that’s the most important thing ever. But the money you gave your daughter for college was a gift. Gifts aren’t supposed to come with strings attached. It wasn’t a loan, it was a gift. She used that gift for a few years, decided she didn’t need the gift anymore and then she got a job in a field she loves. If you gave her a car instead of a college education and she drove that car three years, decided she didn’t want or need the car anymore and sold the car, would you be this bitter and angry? Would you?”

  Val and David didn’t answer. They looked at each other, both of them seemingly daring each other to say something, but they had nothing.

  “Thought so,” Erick said. “A gift is a gift. You all seem to think you gave her a fifty-thousand-dollar car and she got drunk and crashed it into your house, flipped you both off and ran away laughing into the night. She didn’t waste the education you gave her. She just found a different way to use it.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Val said. “Nothing at all about our daughter.”

  “I understand that when she told me about the buyout offer on her business and I said, ‘I’m proud of you,’ she burst into tears because that’s all she ever wanted to hear from her family. You busted your ass to get a PhD. She busted her ass to build a business from the ground up. Clover makes good money, she’s a good person, she’s a smart businesswoman, and instead of saying, ‘Proud of you, Clo,’ I hear you all mocking her for not being married, not having kids and not having a college degree. Are you all so insecure about your lives that you’re threatened that Clover’s happy without doing what you all did? Is that it? Kind of sounds like it. Could you maybe look at what Clover has instead of what she doesn’t have? I don’t have a college degree, either. I framed houses after high school, then got my girlfriend pregnant when I was twenty. I started my own company so my family could have a roof over their heads. Not a promising start, either, but now I have a job I like and a kid I adore and a girlfriend I’m madly in love with. You don’t hear my parents telling me to get married and have more kids. They’re just happy I’m happy. And with Clover, I’m happy.”

  “Erick?”

  Erick turned around and saw Clover standing on the staircase.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “Sorry. I’m trying to get everyone to leave, I swear.”

  “You’re madly in love with me?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Erick grinned. God, it was good to see her.

  She walked down the steps and he met her at the bottom. She threw her arms around him and he held her close and tight.

  “I heard everything you said,” she whispered in his ear. “All of it.”

  “Good.”

  “I heard everything they said, too.”

  “Don’t apologize. Not yet,” he said. “You can later if you need to but not yet. Let them stew.”

  “Excuse me,” Hunter said. “We’re still here.”

  Erick looked over his shoulder at Hunter.

  “I see that. Why are you all still here?” Erick asked.

  “I know how to get rid of them,” Clover said.

  “Brew coffee?”

  “Not coffee.”

  Clover kissed him hard on the mouth. So hard and it felt so good. He kissed her back just as hard. They made a show of kissing passionately, almost cartoonishly.

  “Clover Elizabeth Greene!” Val said in a horrified huff.

  Erick sighed and let Clover go.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of Clover’s family,” Erick said, “we’re about to have makeup sex. Probably on that couch. Maybe on the floor. I’d leave if I were you, but even if you don’t, it’s not going to stop us. Bye-bye.”

  He gave a little wave, then grabbed Clover around the waist and pulled her against him dramatically as any hero in any old Hollywood movie. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, not dramatically this time, not putting on a show to send her family scurrying. He kissed her as hard as he loved her and he loved her as hard as he kissed her, so it was no surprise they were both breathless by the time they looked up and saw Clover’s family was long gone.

  “Finally,” he said. “Thought they’d never leave.”

  “Was I too hard on them?” she asked.

  “You were incredible. Give them a few days to lick their wounds, then you all can talk it out calmly. But damn, you weren’t kidding. They are awful.”

  “I wish I was kidding. I guess it didn’t bother me that much when it was me, you know. But hearing them go after you, and after Ruthie especially... I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. I erupted.”

  “Mount Hood’s got nothing on you. And just so you know, standing up to your family to defend my daughter is the sexiest thing any woman has ever done. If I wasn’t in love with you before, I fell in love with you right then and there.”

  “I thought I was in love with you before. And I was. But now...thank you for saying what you said, for defending me even after I kicked you out of the house. Sorry about that. I went a little scorched earth there.”

  “That’s right, you did kick me out. I better go before you call the cops on me.” He started to pull away from her and she grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Don’t you dare leave me. We’re supposed to be having makeup sex, remember? I’ve never had makeup sex.”

  “I have a better idea,” Erick said as he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs.

  “Better? How better?”

  “Much better. Makeup sex is good but there’s one kind of sex that’s better.”

  “Which is?”

  He sat her on the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor between her knees.

  “There’s a kind of sex I haven’t even had and I’ve done everything. It’s the sex you have with the person you want to be with through everything—good and bad. I got married because I got my girlfriend pregnant, not because I wanted to get married. My other relationships never went anywhere. I haven’t dated since Ruthie’s arrest. What I’m saying is... I can imagine spending the rest of my life with you and I’ve never felt that about a woman before. I hope you feel the same.”

  Clover put her hands on his face and kissed him.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to have that kind of sex with you. I’ve never been able to imagine spending the rest of my life with someone, either, but if my family disowns me and it’s just you and me and Ruthie for the rest of my life, then that’s not only enough for me, that’s all anyone could ever want.”

  Erick kissed her again and started to push her back onto the bed. She stopped him with her hands on his chest.

  “Just one thing,” she said.

  “Anything.”

  “Let’s not get married for a very long time. It would make my parents too happy if we did.”

  “You’re wicked,” Erick said. “I love wicked.”

  He pushed her onto her back and pulled her shirt up to take it off. They froze when Clover’s cell phone started ringing and beeping from the bedside table.

  Erick picked it up and glanced at it.

  “It’s your mom,” he said. “And a text message from your sister.” The phone vibrated in his hand again. “And Lisa. What do you want to do?”

  “You,” she said.

  Erick turned the phone off and jumped onto the bed.

  “They can wait.”

  14

  CLOVER FELT IMPOSSIBLY light even with Erick on top of her. She felt clothed in happiness even as he undressed her. She felt joy even as tears slid down her face. More than anything she felt relief as Erick entered her and she lifted her hips to take all of him. He’d seen her at her worst, seen her family at their worst, and he loved her in spite of it all. And maybe
even loved her a little because of it.

  Erick moved in her with an almost unbearable tenderness, and Clover wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, clamped her legs around his lower back and tucked her head against his neck. She’d liked him the day she met him when he came with Ruthie begging for nothing more than a job interview for his teenage daughter. He’d been so humble that day, almost scared, scared for his girl, who was facing real trouble. “Please, Ms. Greene,” he’d said. “She’s a good kid and smart. She’s a real nature lover, and she’ll work hard for you if you give her the chance.” Clover had asked him about Ruthie’s arrest and what he felt about it. When he’d answered by saying, “I don’t believe in using arson or violence to solve your problems, but when I was her age, I spent my Friday nights getting drunk with my friends in someone’s barn, not burning down barns to protest animal abuse. She made a bad choice, but she has guts and a good heart. When I don’t want to kill her, I have to admit I’m proud of her.”

  I’m proud of her, Erick had said, and maybe that was the day Clover started to fall in love with him. About a year ago. But she’d loved Ruthie, too, which is why she’d hidden those feelings she had for Erick so well. It took Ruthie to bring them together, Ruthie to put them together, Ruthie to make them deal with their crushes on each other and get on with it.

  “What are you laughing at?” Erick said as he braced himself over her and looked down into her eyes.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “You’re not supposed to laugh while I’m inside you. It’s hard on the hard-on.”

  “I wasn’t laughing at you or your hard-on, I swear.”

  “Then what?”

  “I was just thinking about Ruthie.”

  He raised his eyebrow so high Clover laughed again.

  “That is a weird thing to do while we’re having sex.”

  “I was thinking... I’m going to give that girl a raise.”

  “Unless you sell the company.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She sighed. “I’ll figure that out tomorrow. Today I just want to think about you. And turkey.”

  “We did forget to eat, didn’t we? Sex first and food after?”

  “Okay,” she said. “But hurry. I’m starving. Fuck me fast so we can go eat all the meat and pie in the house.”

  Erick dropped his head to his chest and playfully wiped a tear from his eye.

  “What?” Clover asked.

  “‘Fuck me fast so we can go eat all the meat and pie in the house’? Clover, I’ve waited all my life to hear those words from a woman.”

  * * *

  ERICK WOKE UP alone in the bed. He’d done as Clover had instructed and fucked her hard and fast, but as usual he’d succumbed to a nap afterward. He strained his ears, curious where she’d gone. Bathroom? Kitchen? She had better not be eating without him. He found his khakis and pulled them on.

  When he found Clover he thought she was crying. She sat on the edge of the guest bed with her back to him. She had her big yellow bathrobe on and her head was bowed. But then he heard her speaking.

  “Mom, it’s okay, really. Please don’t cry. I’m not angry anymore. I just want our relationship to change, for the better. It has to because it can’t go on like this. The way you treat me is unacceptable.”

  Clover paused and Erick went into the bedroom, sat down at her side. Clover leaned her head against his shoulder and it felt so good to be leaned on by this woman he loved he could have stayed there forever.

  “I feel like I’ve been trying for nine years to get you all to listen to me, and when talking didn’t get the message across, I yelled. No, I don’t hate you all, not at all. I love you all. I love you and Dad. But today has to be the last day you bring up that I dropped out of college. The very last day. And you are never to call me your ‘little dropout’ again. Never and I mean it. It also has to be the last day you tell me who I should date or what I should do with my money. I’m not going to put up with it anymore, okay? You all raised me and you did a good job. Trust that you did such a good job that I can make my own decisions about my life.”

  Clover paused again and listened for a long time. He felt her swallowing hard.

  “Thank you, Mom. I needed to hear that. I’m proud of you, too. Where do you think I learned how to work so hard? It was from you.”

  Clover wept softly against his shoulder and he kissed her on the forehead, rubbed her back, which was shaking under the strain of having this long-overdue conversation with her parents.

  “Yeah,” Clover said. “Erick’s something. Better get used to him, though. He’s going to be around for a long time.”

  Erick grinned but he couldn’t help but wonder what her mother was saying to that bit of news.

  “I like that he stood up for me, too. I promise, Ruthie is the best. She wants to be a college professor someday. You two will have a lot to talk about.”

  He left her alone in the guest room but only for a minute. When he came back she was finishing up her phone call.

  “I love you, too, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Clover ended the call and dropped the phone on the bed. After a long shuddering breath, she looked up at Erick standing in front of her.

  “Told you they’d come around,” he said.

  “They are. Slowly.”

  “You ready to eat?”

  “I am. First, I just need a—”

  “Lavender wipe?” He held one out to her and she smiled and took it from his hand.

  “You are the best fake boyfriend ever.”

  “Better than Sven?”

  She stood up and tossed the lavender wipe over her shoulder. Who needed aromatherapy when she had Erick’s sex therapy?

  “Sven who?”

  15

  IF BEING ERICK’S girlfriend didn’t feel official before, it certainly did now. Clover stood at the Portland International Airport security exit as she waited for Ruthie to appear. Erick was in the car in short-term parking so Clover and Ruthie would have a few minutes alone to talk.

  Funny. Clover had one day left to decide if she wanted to sell to PNW Garden Supply and yet the only thing that made her nervous was facing Ruthie. Erick had said Ruthie was happy for them, “stupid happy” even, but that was a few days ago and while Ruthie was in LA. When Ruthie saw her dad and Clover together it might be more uncomfortable than Ruthie had realized at the time. Clover couldn’t stomach the thought of being happy at the expense of Ruthie’s feelings. She could only hope that Ruthie could handle her father dating her boss, because the only thing that would suck more than losing Erick’s love would be losing Ruthie’s. Clover crossed her fingers, and if she could have, she would have crossed her toes, too. She had on rain boots, however, and they didn’t have enough wiggle room in the toes.

  Clover put on a bright smile as Ruthie turned the corner. In one week she’d changed her hair from purple to royal blue. Hello Kitty and My Little Pony stickers covered her rolling suitcase, and she wore black-and-white-striped leggings that made her look a little like Beetlejuice. She was impossible to miss.

  Ruthie spied Clover and a bright smile crossed her face. Instead of walking, she jogged down the rest of the exit way to Clover and caught her in a huge hug.

  “Mommy!” Ruthie said, squeezing the breath out of Clover.

  “Oh, my God, the California sun fried your brain,” Clover croaked.

  “I’m just so happy to have a new stepmother.” Ruthie sighed, leaning her head on Clover’s shoulder and fake-weeping in her hopefully-not-fake happiness. “And just in time for Yule. We can celebrate the Goddess Rite together—stepmother-goddess and stepdaughter-goddess.”

  “I’m not your stepmother yet. Or a goddess.”

  “Ha! You said yet.”

  “Do we sacrifice people during the Yule Goddess Rite because I already have someone picked out if we do.”

  “No sacrificing. You just have to put on a crown of holly and a robe, say some ancient stuff and light the yule log. Then we b
ake