Have Yourself a Crazy Little Christmas

by Megan Crane

  But Vaughn was close enough to see the way it matched the hectic glitter in her eyes. And he knew. He just knew.

  All these feelings washing through him and over him weren’t only happening to him.

  “Why not?” she asked, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. “Look around. My family is exhibit A. My grandparents had four children and only one of them has managed to have any kind of lasting, meaningful relationship. Maybe because my grandparents have been married this whole time themselves, but not exactly happily—a gift they handed down to most of their kids. And us. And I love them all, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think there’s a single faction of the Grey family that isn’t a holy mess. My mother’s just the most obvious.”

  She had tucked her hands under the blanket and she moved one then, resting it on his thigh. And it was an exquisite thing, her hand on him like that. Because it was so cold and a touch like that, provocative in a bar, could never lead to anything, out here. And so it had to be no more and no less than what it was, just a touch.

  As if she was trying to soothe him. Or maybe herself.

  “I promised myself since I was a little girl that I was never, ever going to let myself be part of the great, Grey mess.” Her fingers clenched a little beneath the blanket, as if she was trying to make a point. Or hold on tight. “I like my life the way it is. Clean. Controlled. Absolutely devoid of messes.”

  “I’m going to choose not to be offended that you consider me a mess, darlin’.” But Vaughn grinned at her when her eyes flew to his. “Seems to me like only part of your life is clean and dependable and swept free of clutter. Because here you are. Not just an attendee at your mother’s circus, but the main ringleader.”

  “I would be outraged that you’re calling me the ringleader of this insanity...if it wasn’t true.”

  “Truth hurts.” Vaughn shifted a little bit, but he kept his hands on top of the blanket, just in case her uncle Billy was paying more attention than he seemed to be. And because he couldn’t entirely trust himself. “It seems to me that what you have isn’t so much a life as it is a dichotomy.”

  “Pretty fancy vocabulary word for one of Nashville’s homeless,” she said dryly. “I had no idea there was so much reading on the mean streets.”

  Vaughn really was over the homeless thing. But this wasn’t the time to start ranting about his accomplishments. In point of fact, he didn’t believe there was ever a time to rant about accomplishments. A wise man had once told him that it was always better to stand in a room and be underestimated than to make a jackass out of himself by listing reasons folks should respect him. Vaughn had taken that to heart, even though his father was showing precious little wisdom currently.

  “Tell me that you actually have a life, Devyn,” he said, instead of ranting about his awards. “That you’re not holed up in your carefully controlled existence in Chicago, telling yourself how happy you are while waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because sooner or later, you always end up back in the show, don’t you? Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, the greatest show on earth, whether you like it or not. And if you perform every time the circus comes to town, does it matter how safe and dependable your other life is?”

  Her gaze was darker. “It does if I don’t want to be in the circus.”

  But she did, or neither one of them would be here. And Vaughn’s life seemed to depend on pointing that out to her, all of a sudden.

  Something he had no intention of excavating.

  He focused on Devyn instead.

  “The question you have to answer is this. Are you a quiet, unassuming, and perfectly happy office manager getting pulled into the circus against her will? Or are you the ringleader of the circus who only pretends to be a comfortable, clean, and controlled office manager in between shows?” He nudged her with his knee, under the blanket. “Or maybe it’s even worse than that. Have you made it one or the other when really, deep down, you’ve always been both?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was weak. Breathless.

  “Ask yourself this,” Vaughn challenged her, unable to look away from her. Not even when the horses pulled up in front of the ski lodge again. “What if you actually don’t have to choose between the two?”

  “Life is choices.” She shook her head at him. “You said so yourself.”

  “There are all kinds of choices. Think about it, Devyn. Really think about it.” He didn’t reach over and touch her face, the way he wanted to. He didn’t hold on to her when she stood. He didn’t do anything but hold that gaze of hers and recognize the fire that still raged on between them, licking all over his body the way he wished she would. “What if you could be anything you wanted to be—a little bit crazy and a little bit controlled and anything else your heart desired? What would you be then?”

  Chapter Nine

  Vaughn’s questions haunted her.

  Devyn tried to dismiss them in the hustle and noise of the end of the sleigh ride adventure her mother had wanted so badly. There were any number of people she needed to talk to, after all. Her mother’s friends, who viewed Devyn as a surrogate niece. The ex-almost-stepfathers who were as awkward around her as she felt around them. Even the family members who had shown up to take part in yet another one of Melody’s flights of fancy.

  “Why does that guy look familiar?” her cousin Luce asked in the din of the grand old ski lodge.

  Luce was blonde and slim and absurdly pretty, which led strangers to assume that she was as delicate as she looked. She wasn’t. Luce was the product of harsh Montana winters and every last one of her hardheaded ancestors, who had carved their lives out of the unforgiving land with their own fingers, if necessary. She never minced a word or faked a smile under any circumstances, and she wasn’t even looking at Devyn as she asked the question. She was watching her three sons, aged nine through thirteen, shove each other in a little scrum of boundless boy energy and homicidal brotherly urges, right there in the hotel lobby.

  “Hey!” she belted out, before Devyn could respond. “Do not hit your brother.”

  Devyn didn’t know which boy she was talking to, and she didn’t think her sons knew either. But it was an all-purpose order. The aggression in the little knot of surly young men went from about a twelve to...maybe an eight.

  “What guy?” Devyn asked, though she suspected she knew.

  “The hot one you were snuggling with for the past hour,” Luce said, rolling her eyes. “Or did you think I meant Uncle Billy?”

  “Oh,” Devyn said mildly. “Him.”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “You’ve met him before, though it was a long time ago. Christina was looking at colleges and you all came down and stayed with us in Alabama.”

  “I remember that,” Luce said after a moment. “I think I wanted to escape Hal. I don’t know why else I would go looking at colleges with Christina. It’s not like I ever had any interest in school. That was all her.”

  “Did you not have any interest in school or did you carouse around Marietta with Hal the whole time and get pregnant three seconds after high school graduation?”

  “I actually consider Hal an education all his own,” Luce said, her mouth twitching as if she was biting back laughter. “I earned a master’s degree in douchebags. Our marriage was a lot like a hazing ritual, which a lot of movies have told me is a critical part of the college experience. And kicking him out three years ago was a far more meaningful graduation ceremony than the one from high school. I’ve never looked back.”

  Devyn nudged her cousin with her shoulder. “If it helps, I never really liked Hal.”

  “Nobody really liked Hal. I didn’t really like Hal. My advice to you is never to have a shotgun wedding. Because one way or another, where there’s a shotgun, you can be sure you’ll end up getting shot.”

  But Luce laughed as she said it, which Devyn found both a surprise and something of a relief. Because her cousin had been a little too bitter since she’d thrown Hal out of her
life. Or maybe just the right amount of bitter, given the fact that her husband had been stepping out on her with a whole lot of strippers. And possibly worse, right there in the tiny little town where they’d grown up together and everyone knew them, which meant Luce and her sons had received reports of Hal’s behavior in the supermarket checkout line.

  Sweet, close, neighborly Marietta, where everybody knew everybody else’s business. Devyn was agitated at the very idea that anyone might figure out that she and Vaughn had gotten closer than they ought to have the other night. She couldn’t imagine an entire town filled with people who knew her every move before she did.

  “Anyway,” Devyn said hurriedly, to cover her own shiver. “That’s how you know Vaughn. He was almost my stepbrother.”

  “It’s weird though,” Luce said, her gaze across the hotel lobby, where Vaughn was standing with his father and Melody and looking entirely too...Vaughn for Devyn’s liking. Tall and gorgeous and impossible to ignore, even when she wanted to do just that. And especially when he asked her questions she didn’t know how to answer. “I don’t feel like I remember him. I think I’ve seen him somewhere, and a lot more recently than one of Christina’s trips to look at colleges.”

  “Have you been to Nashville recently? Rumor is he roams the streets there. Some kind of wandering troubadour.”

  Luce grinned. “Do they have troubadours in Nashville, wandering or otherwise? I don’t think they do.”

  “I’ve actually never been to Nashville, so I couldn’t say.”

  “I’ve also never been to Nashville and yet I think I can say, with certainty, that troubadours are not a thing,” Luce replied. “Homeless people, on the other hand, sure. There are homeless people everywhere. But you know and I know, Devyn, that your stepbrother doesn’t look homeless.”

  He certainly did not.

  His coat was open because they were inside now, showing a fine merino wool sweater over what she imagined was a T-shirt, or possibly a base layer to combat the cold. And if he was wearing a base layer up top, he was likely wearing some beneath his jeans, too. And yet none of it seemed to add any bulk. Vaughn looked lean and muscular and a little bit dangerous in his boots, the way Devyn could personally vouch that he really, truly was.

  Everywhere.

  “The thing is, he’s actually not my stepbrother. So I don’t know anything about his life or whether or not he’s the best dressed homeless man of all time.” Devyn shrugged, then forced herself to smile brightly at her cousin. “You should ask him yourself.”

  Luce’s gaze slid back from Vaughn to Devyn, and held. And somehow, despite the fact that it was much harder than it should have been, Devyn didn’t blink. Or worse yet, flush hot and obvious.

  “Maybe I will,” Luce said, and Devyn didn’t know why it sounded as if she was holding back laughter. “Maybe I’ll hunt him down at one of these parties, ply him with liquor, and ask him about his feelings on the Grey family women. I’m sure he has more than a few.”

  Luce moved to intercept her nine-year-old as he launched himself at his older brothers, and it occurred to Devyn that she really might go ahead and do just that. Luce would have no qualms rolling right up to Vaughn and interrogating him—or doing anything else with him, for that matter, if she felt like it.

  Devyn supposed she’d have to figure out a way to live with that, too.

  No matter if the very idea made her feel like she was trying to choke down broken glass.

  In some places, she texted Sydney, Friday is considered the weekend. And yet I just had to go on a SLEIGH RIDE, packed full of exes and assorted other horrors, while you are... STILL NOT HERE.

  She stared down at her phone, mostly to look as if she was doing something while she cast around for some semblance of serenity, and was shocked when her sister replied.

  I’m flying out early tomorrow morning, Sydney’s text read. Relax.

  And then she sent an emoji with its tongue sticking out, likely because she knew the word relax had spiked Devyn’s blood pressure.

  She shoved her phone back in her pocket and made her way over to her mother, who had moved on from Frederick and Vaughn and was talking instead to the Tomachevsky twins.

  “Are you ready to go home?” Devyn asked.

  Her mother laughed her tinkling bell of a laugh that made men visibly more in love with her, but only ever made Devyn’s teeth hurt.

  “Bradley and Rob and I have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, her voice filled with answers to questions Devyn would die before asking. And might die from anyway, without asking a thing. “I release you.”

  “You release me?” Devyn frowned at her. “From what?”

  Melody waved her hand in the air as if it was a magic wand. “I release you from your bonds, my sullen little serving girl. Off you go.” She waved with her fingers, shooing Devyn away. “I’m sure you have much more fun things to do than hang around with an old woman on a Friday night.”

  Devyn was processing which part of that to be the most offended by when it occurred to her that her mother’s performance wasn’t for her. Sure enough, the Tomachevsky twins fell all over themselves to assure Melody there was nothing old womanish about her. Not one single thing.

  “You are so vibrant, so glorious,” said one in reverent tones.

  Devyn thought it was Bradley. Not that it made a difference which twin it was.

  “You exude youth from every pore!” the other one cried, not to be outdone. “How can you doubt it for a moment?”

  This behavior was why her mother always referred to the twins as gallant, Devyn was aware, though that was not the word that she would use. Not when nauseating would do.

  She was inordinately grateful that the twins had come into her mother’s life after Devyn had moved out on her own.

  She choked down the responses she wanted to make to her mother. She shoved back any unsolicited commentary on the twins. She pretended she felt nothing about the way her mother had just spoken to her, as if it had been Devyn’s dearest wish to hang on her all afternoon. Or spend the last two days putting together the freaking sleigh ride adventure, without anything resembling a thank you.

  Of course, Devyn knew her mother. She would be thanked eventually. Thanked with such intensity and over-the-top enthusiasm that she would actually wish that she’d been ignored instead. It was all one or the other with Melody. It was always careening from one extreme to another.

  Just as Vaughn had suggested in the sleigh.

  Not that Devyn wanted to think about that. Or him.

  And not that she was doing a good job of thinking about anything else, either.

  “Are you coming?” Luce asked, suddenly right there in front of Devyn—which was how Devyn realized she’d walked back across the lobby in a kind of rage blackout. She blinked and forced a smile, because it was that or scream.

  And Devyn wasn’t about to give anyone here the satisfaction of watching her scream. Because that would mean she was the Grey family Mess of the Moment, a distinction she had carefully and deliberately avoided for years.

  “To see Grandma and Grandpa,” Luce clarified. Then grinned. “You might as well get it over with now while they’re settling in. It’s not like Grandma’s going to relax as we get closer to your mom’s party.”

  Devyn knew this was true. The more time Grandma had to brood about something, the worse it got. Her cousin Jesse and his wife had come into town today, she knew, which was the excuse Skylar and Scottie had used to avoid coming on the sleigh ride. They were all getting together this afternoon, then meeting Billy and Angelique for a dinner in town, which everyone wanted desperately to be drama-free.

  Which, this being a Grey family holiday already chock full of drama, was unlikely.

  But it was always more entertaining when the drama was happening in a different corner of the family.

  Devyn packed herself into a taxi with Luce and her three boys. The boys entertained them with exuberant tall tales about their many adventures all the
way back into town, and then over to the budget hotel that her grandmother had insisted upon, because Elly Grey did not throw good money after bad.

  As she insisted on saying repeatedly, especially when Melody could hear her.

  “She probably would have pitched a tent if it wasn’t so cold,” Luce was saying as they walked through the lobby, which felt like a significant downgrade after the hotels Devyn had been spending time in. She snapped at herself that just because it wasn’t the fancy sort of place her cousins—the lawyer who lived with another lawyer and the one who lived with a famous bull rider—and the supposedly homeless Vaughn enjoyed, it was perfectly nice. “Just to make a point.”

  “Grandma?” Devyn asked in exaggerated tones. “Going to excruciating lengths to make a point no one cares about in the first place? Never!”

  Luce and the boys led her to her grandparents’ room, where her grandmother was sitting in the postage-stamp-sized living area, her usual sour look on her face.

  Devyn didn’t know what it said about her that she found this angry old woman so endearing. That there was something about her grandmother’s endlessly dour outlook and harsh tongue that soothed her, entertained her, and made her smile—even when she was the focus of Elly Grey’s considerable ire.

  Maybe all it said about her was that she was family.

  “Hi Grandma,” Devyn said when she walked in. Using that same please don’t hurt me voice all the cousins always used around their grandmother, not that it ever helped. She ignored the scowl on her grandmother’s face as she crossed the room, and bent to give her a kiss on the cheek, whether she liked it or not.

  “No need to make a fuss,” Elly muttered, though Devyn thought that was her pleased voice. She didn’t mutter when she was dropping bombs and curses all over the Thanksgiving table. “I’m not dead yet.”