Wrapping Up Christmas
The Twelve Days of Christmas, Book Nine
By
Ashlynn Kenzie
©2015 by Blushing Books® and Ashlynn Kenzie
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Kenzie, Ashlynn
Wrapping Up Christmas
eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-217-5
Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design
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About Ashlynn Kenzie
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"I wish I knew what Keryn really, really needs for Christmas."
"What is there left to need, Mark?" asked Suzanne. "You've only been married since May, and you don't even have room for all your wedding presents in your house. Mom's still got at least half your gifts packed away in Keryn's old room."
"I know, but those are things other people gave her—gave us. Christmas will be the first time since we got married that I get to give her something special and watch her face when she opens it. I want that moment to be perfect."
"Good luck with that," his sister-in-law muttered, and dropped her crumpled napkin beside her large plate of half-eaten taco salad. The tone conveyed far more than the simple words. It put Mark Lindell on alert.
"What do you mean?"
The tall brunette sighed and automatically glanced at a message that had just come through on her cell phone, resting on the table next to her purse. "Nothing. Look, I've got to get back to work. I'm glad we ran into each other, and thanks for lunch. I was looking forward to a bag of peanuts and a Coke on the run at best, like most days. This was a nice change."
"Yeah, for me, too. I usually end up trying to make sense of some government bureaucrat's report telling me why I can't do what makes the most engineering sense on a given project. But listen, Suzanne, I'm serious. I really want our first Christmas together to be something special for Keryn. Something she'll never forget. So if you get any hints from her, or remember any ideas she's mentioned before, I want to know right away."
He grinned the grin Suzanne was certain had won her younger sister over to begin with, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him.
"Listen, Mark, I'm afraid I don't have any ideas for you about a gift, although I'll keep my eyes and ears open. But there's something you ought to know. No matter what you give her, you're going to be disappointed when she opens it."
"I'm going to be disappointed? How's that?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow at Suzanne as she stood and gathered up her belongings.
"Because I know you. You love surprising people. You love getting happy reactions. And you'll get one from Keryn. But it won't be real. It won't be genuine, and you'll know it."
He stood as well and put a restraining hand on her arm.
"I don't understand."
"Keryn's a gift sneak—a peeker—okay? She'll sniff out any present you buy, and she'll open any gift you put under the tree and then wrap it back up and put on this big fake reaction when it comes time to open it again in front of you. I love my sister, but it's true, and I think you deserve to know so you can be prepared.
"It's like she has gift radar or something, and she can't help herself when she zones in on a present. She has to know, right then and there, what's in it. She's been that way since she was a little kid. I don't think even Santa has surprised her since she was about three years old. So if you want a real 'OMG!' moment, don't shop until Christmas Eve and then find a place to stash it—not at home, not in your car, not at a friend or relative's house, not at your office—until you're ready to give it to her."
Mark sat back down abruptly. "That's half the fun of Christmas gifts: the surprise. Why does she spoil it for herself?"
Suzanne shrugged. "Can't answer that. I'm just warning you. She'll put on a good show, but she will have had that first moment of pleasure without you there to see it."
"But that's—that's dishonest." He said it with a note of wonder in his voice that his beautiful bride could be guilty of such a flaw.
"Yeah, I guess it is, but you just sort of adjust to it. Mom and Dad used to go thro
ugh all kinds of shenanigans to keep her gifts a secret, so she'd be just like Thom and me on Christmas morning, but they finally gave up and pretended they didn't know what she was doing. She was better at rewrapping her gifts than Mom was at wrapping them to begin with. And trying to outwit her just makes everyone grumpy eventually, because it shouldn't be that way. It changes the whole focus and pleasure of giving a gift when you have to spend all your time and energy keeping her from finding out what it is ahead of time. Sorry to have to burst your Christmas bubble, Mark. You'll get used to it, though."
Then she patted his shoulder and hurried out the restaurant door.
Mark sat quietly for some time, staring through the big plate glass window across the room from his table. Suzanne must be mistaken, or at least exaggerating, he told himself. He thought back over the times he had presented his beautiful Keryn with a gift, and he could swear her reactions had always been filled with genuine surprise and pleasure.
But then, he reasoned, that was in their pre-wedding days, when he was sharing a bachelor pad with two other guys and she had moved back into her old bedroom at her parents' home, trying to pay off her student loans and then to save for their wedding. Any gifts he had given her had been either items he had stashed at his own parents' house until he was ready to deliver them, or surprises he had picked out, paid for, and had someone else wrap and hold for him until the big moment arrived. She had never had a really good opportunity to go snooping, although he did remember catching her in rather odd situations when she was in his apartment at pre-present times. Like the afternoon he found her on her knees in his bedroom, rummaging through his bottom drawer. She had grinned and told him she wanted to see if he wore sexy undies. He had laughed and teased her that there was a more pleasurable way to find out.
Or the time she claimed to have dropped an item from her purse and had it roll in the back seat of his car, where she then had to search high and low for it.
There was also the day she had climbed on a kitchen chair in his tiny three-bedroom and examined the contents of the cabinet above his refrigerator. She had insisted, when he discovered her there, that she was looking for cereal boxes that were past their sell-by date.
He then recalled, rather uneasily, her persistent little questions and her teasing quizzes about his shopping habits—approaches that had only added to his anticipation of pleasing her and his satisfaction with watching her unwrap her gifts from him for the first time. Now those moments took on a different flavor as he considered what she might have done with the information if he had been forthcoming.
He was glad he had not known about her sad little habit before, since he had been imagining surprise-induced, emotionally satisfying reactions from past gift-giving occasions in triplicate on their first Christmas as a couple and had been frantically trying to come up with something that would overwhelm her. Now, he realized, his real problem was not what to give her, but how to keep her from knowing what the gift was ahead of time.
Mark set great store by showing his love in surprising and unexpected ways—an approach Keryn had always seemed to delight in. It troubled him more than he could say that the woman he considered practically perfect had a flaw that could upset the whole system, provided he gave her the chance.
It was sneaky. It was dishonest. It was—unlovely, he thought sadly as he signed his lunch receipt and headed back to his office. And he was not prepared to put up with such foolishness from a grown woman the rest of his life.
Something would have to be done about such a naughty habit.
* * *
Keryn was an early shopper, especially when it came to Christmas. Her orderly and efficient mind—one much like her mother's, who always managed Christmas beautifully—demanded that the tree be put in place the day after Thanksgiving and that gifts begin to accumulate around the base of it on a regular basis very soon thereafter.
Her penchant for seeking out her own gifts—an approach unlike anyone else's in her family—meant she always knew what was in store for her on Christmas morning, well in advance of that date, but she never had to worry about having her own surprises spoiled. Having prior knowledge about the gifts planned for her had become a necessity, although she would never have acknowledged the small thrill of power over others and the resulting feelings of superiority such information provided her. She told herself, when she thought of it at all, that knowing about the surprises ahead of time simply made her more in control of her emotions at the actual moment of gift exchange and enabled her to produce a more enthusiastic reaction. She refused to think of what she did as sneaking and was incensed when her family occasionally labeled it thus and teased her about it.
It was the first Friday in December before she spied a package she had not placed there herself and had not noticed before among the gaily wrapped gifts under their first tree. She thought about it all morning at the office, but there was no opportunity to run home at lunch, and Mark was already there when she finally did arrive late in the afternoon.
He had brought home a movie featuring her favorite actor, along with a bottle of wine he had chilled. He had also ordered a pizza that was still piping hot. Keryn was delighted and let him know it with a kiss that promised more action later and a smile designed to make him feel like a king.
He had enjoyed, she could tell, stripping her down to panties and bra, right in the kitchen, and then sending her off to slip into his old football jersey and a pair of his white cotton sports socks that came almost to her knees. He let her know he thought her adorable—with her coal black, shoulder-length hair gathered up into two doggy-ears and her brown eyes twinkling—when she practically skipped with excitement back into the room. She was a little fairy princess decked out in a commoner's old clothes, he said with a smile that lit up his tanned face and showed the gleam of his teeth.
She let loose her sassy attitude, then, delighting in his attention, and squeaked a happy response when he growled and gave her bottom a sexy little smack as she bent over to retrieve some plastic ware and napkins from a lower cabinet.
It was with some surprise that she took note of the package again as they settled in front of the TV with the pizza and wine and a snugly throw to ward off any possible chill. She almost wished she hadn't noticed. It made it hard to concentrate on the film, and she barely remembered eating the pizza or sipping the wine. She did, however, put the gift in the back of her mind when Mark suggested she felt much too warm. She agreed with a grin when she caught the glint in his eye and wiggled out from under the throw.
"Maybe clearing things up a bit will cool me off," she simpered, as she collected their plates and napkins and the pizza box and headed for the kitchen. When she returned, she was wearing only the jersey and a smile.
Mark let her know that was still one clothing item too many and helped her dispose of it right away under cover of the sheepskin throw. Then he explored every inch of her body with his tender hands and talented tongue.
Keryn completely lost interest in anything going on beyond the action taking place on the couch handed down from her parents' attic, where the two of them found tantalizing pleasure in the tease of the 69 position before they righted themselves and sought immediate relief for the erotic tension coursing through their bodies on terms that bound them emotionally, as well as physically, into that mystic union so prized by lovers.
* * *
Two busy days later, another gift appeared. It had not been there on Sunday night, Keryn was quite sure, but on Monday morning, it was front and center in the gift pile that she had contributed to on her own over the hectic weekend that had derailed all her plans to check out the first present.
She left for work with a quiver of excitement racing through her body, almost like an electrical charge full of pleasure, now that there were two gifts to investigate as soon as she could rush home and grab a few moments to herself.
And rush she did, making it to the silent house a good hour before Mark was due.
To her surpr
ise, the stack had now grown to three beautifully wrapped gifts with her name on the cards. Locking the front and back doors carefully, she grabbed the pair of small embroidery scissors she had found useful so many times before, along with a new roll of tape, and dropped to the floor in front of the Christmas tree.
Twenty minutes later, she had carefully rewrapped each of the three gifts and placed them back in the exact spots from which she had first sneaked them. Her pretty little face was marred by a puzzled frown and a small sigh fluttered her nostrils and deflated her chest. What she had discovered were the most puzzling presents she had ever sneaked open. Not one item was something she had ever thought of needing or wanting, and none of them conveyed the affection she had come to associate with her husband's excellent taste.
Perhaps, she thought, they were teasers: gifts with some link to a present that would overwhelm her with its uniqueness and thoughtfulness. As she put away the tape and scissors, she tried to find some connection among the three that would clue her in to Mark's real surprise.
When her husband opened the front door, almost a half hour later, she still had not solved the riddle, and she felt strangely morose and slightly out of sorts.
* * *
Keryn's faintly depressed demeanor was the first thing Mark noticed when he joined her in the kitchen, after changing to jeans and a soft blue sweatshirt that made his eyes of the same color all the more intense.
Those eyes had strayed to the Christmas tree on his way to his wife from their bedroom, but he could not spot any obvious shifting of the gift pile. Perhaps, he thought, she had not arrived home as early as usual on a Monday and had not had time to begin her snooping. Or perhaps Suzanne was mistaken. She might even have intentionally misled him, he thought, and then dismissed the idea as uncharitable and much too suspicious. He also felt a twinge of guilt over the trap he had decided to set for his wife, and he thought about removing the presents and putting an end to the test his sister-in-law's revelation had inspired him to set in motion.
Wrapping Up Christmas (Blushing Books 12 Days of Christmas 9) Page 1
