Her mouth made an O of outrage. “I’m not some high school ho!”
He leaned closer, his breath brushing her ear. “I write much better songs than I did in high school. Real panty wetters.” He winked at her then was out the door before she could think to respond.
Some guys would get slapped for saying something like that, but he said it with such a sexy, confident air, that she did feel a stirring in the female zone. Not to mention, he would know the reaction his songs had on his fans. Sighing, she pulled open the door to the kitchen and went back in. Too much to do before the bazaar began. She’d better set a timer so she knew when she had to be out the door.
~
Bax centered the gingerbread house he’d purchased from Yakima on a red table runner on his dining room table.
“That’s pretty,” Valkyrie Erickson said. On break from med school and the same age as Thora and Ingrit, her father, Beau, was Haldana’s cousin. “I’m guessing you didn’t make it, unless you’ve really changed.”
“Not that much,” he grinned. “Though I have more free time than I used to.”
Valkyrie made a face. “And I have none. But I’m done with school in June, then on to residency.”
“Where are you going to go? Do you know?”
“I’m hoping to work around Los Angeles somewhere. My family has been moving south for work and I’m the only one who’s been living in San Francisco.”
“I still have my house in L.A. If you work anywhere near it you can live there, but with the traffic, you’ll have to be pretty close to make it worthwhile with the hours you’ll be pulling.”
Valkyrie ran a finger along the licorice chimney. “I’ll be doing my interviews soon, but I haven’t heard what hospitals are interested enough in me to offer yet. We’ll see how it all lines up.”
“Cool. I’m happy you were able to come north for the party.”
“I’m just glad to get a few of us out of California. You won’t believe how busy Crowe and Thor are, along with Dad.”
“I know Crowe has his new girlfriend keeping him busy. But no Viking either?” Bax said, mentioning the oldest of Valkyrie’s brothers.
“No. He’s in Arizona doing field research for his Ph.D. program.”
“He never seems to be around.”
“I know.” Valkyrie smiled as Remy came into the room and wrapped her arms around Bax. “This your girlfriend?”
“Ex,” Bax said, disentangling himself. “But we’re still friends, as you can see.”
“With benefits?” Valkyrie said with a smirk as Remy preened.
“No,” Bax said flatly.
“Hey, man.” Will Dealy came into the dining room.
Bax hadn’t realized the country music star had arrived. He hadn’t RSVP’d. An unrepentant country boy, he wore flannel, boots, and a cowboy hat, but his jeans were designer, giving a hint as to the state of Will’s bank account these days.
Valkyrie’s professional demeanor sagged a bit as she took in the sight of six foot five inches of country-boy-done-good. Even Remy blinked.
Bax unwound Remy from him and did the handshake shoulder bump combo with Will, then introduced his cousin and his ex.
“How y’all doing?” Will asked. “Merry Christmas.”
Valkyrie opened her mouth but no words came out. Yakima entered the room through the opposite door, holding a heavy silver tray with fancy red glass cups. Thankfully, she didn’t seem effected by the sight of Will Dealy, and she set the tray down without any damage to either the glasses or the new off-white carpet the interior designer had inexplicably installed in the room, while leaving the hardwoods elsewhere.
“Whew!” Will exclaimed. “That’s quite an armful. You must have waitressed once-upon-a-time.”
Yakima nodded. “During college. My muscles are relearning the balancing arts now that I’m catering.”
“I can’t wait to try this.” Will winked. “Though I’m normally a beer man.”
Bax’s eyes narrowed as he witnessed the exchange. Why was Will flirting with Yakima? Where was an “Off Limit” sign when you needed one?
Will picked up one of the glasses and drank half the contents. “Woohee, that’s delicious. Cranberry, right?”
Bax wanted to tell him to cut out the beer-battered bullshit, but Will always talked like something out of an old Cowboy Western, while simultaneously looking like a cowboy from an old cigarette ad. Old school, that was Will Dealy. “How is your sister and the baby?” he asked.
“Good. Spending Christmas in Atlanta.”
Bax moved in for the kill. “And how’s your little one?”
Remy’s forehead wrinkled at edges, where the botox wasn’t keeping it paralyzed. He knew that Will having a child would cause his ex to lose all interest. Yakima, on the other hand, had leaned in, as had Valkyrie.
Just then his father stepped in, followed by his brothers, and Beau. The four men filled the room, but Will stayed focused on Bax.
“My little slugger is with his mama and his grandparents for the holidays. We share custody, but since he’s still breastfeeding I don’t mess with the schedule right now,” Will said.
“Just a baby then,” Valkyrie said. “What’s his name?”
Remy’s attention had moved to Dare and Niall. She seemed to dismiss Bax’s youngest brother quickly enough, but her gaze lingered on Dare, who had been dressed by their father for the evening. He wore the infamous green bow tie, just like their father.
“Crockett Bear Dealy,” Will said. “He has some growing to do to fit his name, that’s for sure.” He laughed uproariously.
Chapter Nine
Bax introduced his family to Will and Remy, feeling a little bit proud and a lot grateful to a have a couple of bona fide stars at his party to show the town and his visiting relatives that he had indeed made good. After he finished intros, Remy wandered off with his brother Dare.
“When did you buy this place?” Beau asked, as Haldana delivered him a latte fresh from Bax’s espresso machine.
“You aren’t supposed to be working,” Yakima hissed.
“He’s my cousin, too,” Haldana said. “I can make my favorite cousin a latte. Calm down, girl.”
Yakima threw up her hands as Beau chuckled, and grabbed the empty tray so she could fill it in the kitchen.
“I bought it just a couple of months ago,” Bax told Beau. “I turned it over to a decorator and then came up when it was furnished.”
“Didn’t want to shop yourself?” Niall asked, scowling.
“It needed more than furniture,” Bax tried to explain. “The walls were pretty damaged and the carpet was shot. The appliances were original to the house. I could have shopped for beds and stuff, but I didn’t want to live here while the repairs were being made.”
His father shrugged. “Makes sense to me, as long as the work was done locally.”
“It was,” Bax assured him. “I used Field Interiors, and you know their offices are in Battlefield Village.”
“Sure, I know Drusie Field, worked on her car plenty of times,” his father said. “Nice woman.”
Bax’s shoulders lost a little of their tension. At least he’d done something right in his father’s eyes.
“Can I get a beer?” his cousin Thor asked. A strapping guy even larger than Will Dealy, he looked like a surfer but dressed like the part-time Alaskan heavy equipment operator he was.
“The bartender is set up in the living room,” Bax said.
Yakima appeared with another full tray. Thor reached out one large hand and plucked the tray from her arms, setting it on the table without so much as a wobble.
“Show off,” Valkyrie said, nudging her brother’s arm.
“I haven’t been up here since Tricia’s funeral,” Beau said, then drained half his mug.
All the holiday joy vanished, as if sucked away. Bax saw his father’s head sag on his neck, and Niall’s face went hard. Bax wished for a beer. He and Thor could finish off a six-pack together in half an
hour. Not that it would take the words away. Tricia’s funeral.
“We don’t celebrate the Christmas season much anymore,” his father said, running his hand through his hair. “Too painful.”
“That’s right. The funeral was what, December twenty-third?” Beau asked.
His father nodded. “Basically cancelled Christmas. Hard on the kids, but thank God I opened the presents she’d bought them. Crazy stuff, just demented. But that left me with nothing for them, because, well, you know what funerals cost.”
“Highway robbery,” Beau agreed.
Beau had lost his wife to an expensive battle with cancer six years before. Bax had attended that funeral, unlike his mother’s, but he’d been the only member of his immediate family there. It hadn’t seemed odd at the time, since he was the only Californian Connolly. But maybe his father couldn’t cope with funerals anymore.
“What did she buy us?” Niall asked. “After all these years, I’d like to know.”
“No you wouldn’t,” their father said. “Let her rest in peace, Niall.”
Bax felt nauseated, as he always did when his mother came up. His last image of her might be her waxen form at the church at the funeral, but he’d never forget finding her lifeless body. “I thought you always celebrated the holidays,” he said to his father.
“Halloween and Thanksgiving,” his father said. “Father’s Day, birthdays. Fourth of July cookout. Not Christmas.”
Bax pressed his lips together. “I didn’t know.”
Beau wrapped his arm around Bax’s shoulder. He was closer to Beau than his father and accepted the man-hug he would never get from Harry. He and Beau had even had dinner as recently as August, when Beau was in Los Angeles on business. “Don’t worry about it, son. It’s been so many years. Time to form new traditions. And this is a lovely party, a lovely house.”
Bax forced a curt nod. “Thank you.”
“How about we sing some carols?” Beau let him go. “I want to see what you can still do on the guitar. It’s your right wrist that’s the problem, right?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll duel,” Will said, putting his hands into air guitar position. “You and me on guitar, everyone else can sing. How about it, buddy?”
Numb, Bax let Beau lead him out of the room. He tried to catch his father’s eye, but he was whispering in Niall’s ear, leaving Bax feeling more disconnected from his family than ever.
“We’re going into the living room,” he heard Haldana tell someone. Probably Yakima, because she appeared with another set of glasses, just behind the crowd.
Most of the other party guests were gathered around the tree. The locals, especially. Remy was at the piano at the back of the room, with Dare sitting next to her. Bax knew a lot of the guests were missing and assumed they were in the kitchen and were watching Yakima do her thing and eating the choicest appetizers directly from the oven. Over fifty people had come.
Bax’s gaze went to Yakima, even as Will handed him his favorite Fender acoustic guitar. Instead of quickly leaving the room, her eyes widened. He followed her gaze and saw his ex nuzzling his brother’s ear. In front of the crowd. How much had she had to drink? She wasn’t in a safe room, full of other celebrities, but in a small town with a group of locals. He could just imagine the headlines on TMZ and Radar Online. “Pop Princess Remy Shades Bax Connolly: Drunken hookup with ex’s brother.”
As if hearing his thoughts, Remy’s body swiveled on the bench and her gaze caught Bax’s. She smirked at him, her gaze not as unfocused as he expected it to be, and she slid her arm around Dare’s shoulder.
Will called Bax’s name, and he turned back, knowing Dare was a problem he’d have to deal with later. If he had a scene at his first big party, that would be what everyone in Battlefield remembered about him.
~
Eerie quiet made Bax’s house seem uninhabited when Yakima came into the kitchen the next morning. In the wee hours, Bax had given her the key codes to the garage and the house alarm, and a key to the door between the kitchen and the garage. He’d told her to go home and clean up the next day after the holiday bazaar. Since it didn’t start until noon and Haldana was doing the prep for it, she decided to get some of the cleaning done in the morning.
She thought she’d probably finish in the kitchen before Bax even woke up, but his SUV hadn’t been in the garage when she pulled her van in. Morning donut run maybe. She set her box of supplies on the kitchen counter and pulled out a big garbage bag, then started in the dining room, piling paper plates, napkins, plastic silverware, and cups into the bag. She had filled three of them before she had the disposable goods cleared away.
The party had been a popular one, not one of those where the party throwers could dine on leftovers for the next three days. Exciting to see none of her food had to go into the trash. Even the large sheet cake platter had nothing but crumbs and the gingerbread house was down to the frosting snow on the base, along with a few multicolored bits of candy cane lamp posts. She’d spent ages on that house and hadn’t expected anyone to really eat it. She tried to remember if there had been kids at the party, but her four hours of sleep hadn’t allowed much to be committed to long term memory.
Some things had gone in though. Like the sight of Remy Rose tonguing Dare Connolly’s ear. He hadn’t reacted much, but he hadn’t leaned away, either. She’d been so embarrassed for Bax. Ex or not, he obviously cared for Remy, and she’d done him wrong.
With her three garbage bags tied up neatly along the wall, she got to work in the kitchen, a slow process of gathering serving utensils into the sink, along with coffee mugs, some silverware that people must have taken out of kitchen drawers, her own trays that she might as well wash here. She spent half an hour at the sink, stacking everything that belonged to her on absorbent pads on her new transportable rack, and placed everything of Bax’s on his drying rack.
Her sponge had just touched the counter, ready to wipe them down, when the garage door went up. She checked her cellphone and saw she’d been here for almost two hours already. Quickly, she turned on his coffee maker so he could have coffee if he needed it. If he didn’t want any, she’d take the cup. She had two hours before she had to put her sales face on and work the bazaar.
The door opened just as she was rinsing off her sponge after finishing the first counter. She dropped it into the sink and turned to drink in the sight of Bax, dark stubble dotting his lower face. She could imagine waking up to those hooded eyes and soft, red lips, cuddling up to that morning stubble, imagining the wicked sensations it would create as he kissed his way down her body. Focus, Yakima.
With deliberate steps, she made her way to the coffee maker and dropped in a pod. She’d already placed one of her freshly washed mugs under the drip. The satisfying sound of the pod being pierced was one of her favorite markers of morning.
Bax moved across the kitchen, discarding his leather jacket on a chair, exposing his bare arms.
“You went out in just that? It was about twenty degrees outside when I came in.”
“I took Remy to the airport. She was furious that I made her fly commercial, but I wasn’t going to pay for a private jet after her behavior last night.”
“You don’t make moves on your ex’s brother in front of his neighbors,” Yakima agreed. “Not cool.”
He leaned against the counter and stared at the coffee dripping into his stark white mug. “I’m past caring about her, but what was Dare thinking?”
“Are you sure he knew who she was?”
He shook his head, as if uncomprehending.
“Think about it. We’re talking Dare. Does he listen to pop music? Does he pay attention to who you’ve dated? He might have just thought she was a hot, drunk girl.”
“Someone had to have said something,” he growled.
“When? She was glued to him like marinara on spaghetti.”
Bax’s lips quirked at her colorful description. “She was wearing red.”
“I think you h
ave to forgive your brothers just about everything right now, if you want to move forward. Be glad they came to the party rather than noticing what they did wrong.”
“Niall was great.” Bax opened the refrigerator and pulled out cream, then added a stream of it as the coffee maker belched out the last few drips of coffee. “And I loved seeing the Ericksons.”
“Is that the entire clan?”
“No. Beau has four kids. He, Thor, and Valkyrie are staying at my Dad’s place. Just him there these days, so he has the bedrooms free.”
She remembered how cramped that house had been with seven kids in it. She wondered if Bax’s father was used to the silence now. “Do you have plans to see them again?”
“Dad invited me to brunch. He’s cooking.” Bax chuckled.
“Everyone, or just the Ericksons?”
“I don’t know. I’m just glad he invited me. But after that my cousins are heading to the airport. Valkyrie has to work and Beau and Thor are going up to Anchorage to clean out a storage unit Thor has there.”
Bax added more water to the coffee maker, pulled another clean mug from the cupboard, and dropped a new pod into the machine for her.
“What are your plans? Still working the bazaar?”
“You got it.”
“I want to buy that other gingerbread house from you. I was sad to find the first one was eaten.”
“I know, me too,” she exclaimed. “It was so pretty.”
“Will you make me one if you sell the other today?”
“I’ll text Haldana right now and have her bake new gingerbread, just in case,” she said. She pulled out her phone and quickly sent a message.
“Thanks.” He cocked his head. “So you’re free tonight?”
“Free to sleep,” she agreed, holding back a yawn as she picked up her freshly filled mug.
He passed his mug from one hand to the other. “I’ve sent Remy off. You owe me a date.”
The cup trembled against her lip. She set it down, almost sloshing the frothy coffee onto her freshly wiped down counter. “Right.”
The Rock Star's Christmas Reunion: contemporary holiday romance (A Charisma series novel, The Connollys Book 1) Page 11
