by Carly Keene
He pulls another guy in a flannel shirt and shearling jacket over, and starts explaining what I need, but my hearing goes fuzzy. I haven’t made a Christmas wish since I was about fourteen and gave up on my parents getting back together, but I have one now: Santa, let him notice me. In a good way.
The brother is absolutely gorgeous. And he’s a big guy, too: taller than me, broader than me, definitely stronger than me. Tousled dark hair, neatly trimmed beard framing soft lips, eyes of a dark smoky blue. C’mon, Santa, please. I leave you homemade pecan cookies every year. Those eyes are roving over my car, and it suddenly occurs to me that bringing the Lexus was a really bad idea.
Right after I have that thought, he says something along those lines, and I hasten to explain that I could go borrow one of my dad’s construction trucks—unless the tree farm delivers?
“We don’t,” he says, dismissively, and then he turns to look at me.
And he’s really looking at me. Those smoky-blue eyes go wide, and the soft-looking mouth opens a little, and he’s noticing me in what might be a good way.
That was fast, Santa.
I hold out my hand in its pink mitten to him. “I’m Angelina.”
He takes my hand in his large one. I can feel how strong it is—big, capable, gentle. “Angelina,” he says, and blinks. “Hi, I’m Dakota. I work here.”
“Well, that’s good,” I say. “Because I definitely need some help.”
“Anything you want, ma’am,” he says, and I get the impression the offer is personal.
There’s heat in my cheeks, and all through my body, centering low in my belly. I feel so warm that I belatedly pull off the ski cap hiding what I think of as my best feature, my hair. It’s long and thick, straight, and the same pale-yellow color it’s been since I was a kid. The girl who cuts my hair calls it “vanilla blonde,” and every time I consider coloring it something more vibrant or beachier, she smacks my hand and says, “Don’t you dare mess with perfection.”
“So,” Dakota says, and clears his throat, “a big tree, right? Do you have a cultivar preference?”
I blink. Cultivar?
“Our trees are pretty much either Fraser firs or white pines. But some of the bigger ones are Canaan firs.” He says “Canaan” like ka-nane.
“Canaan like the Canaan Valley in West Virginia? My dad took me skiing there at the resort a couple of times.”
He smiles for the first time, and becomes, impossibly, even more gorgeous. “Exactly. That’s where the cultivar originated, a cross between the Douglas and the Fraser. They grow really well here. My grandfather planted a few as an experiment, but we didn’t sell many and then they all got too big for most people’s houses. It’s a shame, really, because they’re beautiful. They’ve got that pretty conical shape that most Douglas firs do, and they smell great, but they have needle retention like the Frasers. It’s a win-win. I keep trying to talk Adam into planting some more, now that more people know about them, and—” he stops smiling and looks anxious. “Listen, I’m talking too much and holding us up here.”
“I don’t mind.” I’d listen to him talking for hours, if I could watch him as well.
“I kinda get excited about trees, and I don’t know when to stop. Let’s go look at some before it gets completely dark, okay?” He escorts me over to this beat-up old faded red pickup, and gives me a hand up into the front seat.
I feel small, or at least compared to him. I hug myself in silent glee while he goes around to the driver’s side.
We make some small talk in the truck while we drive out of reach of the lights of the tree farm shop. He’s a forest ranger who spends most of the year in the Smokies. I talk about Busy Bees. He likes working with his brothers, but doesn’t much like selling trees. I tell him I love working with the kids, and even in the dim light I can see his teeth flash in a smile. He says he likes kids too.
“It’s really beautiful out here,” I say, noting the way the trees are dark silhouettes against the indigo sky. “Oh, and the stars! So many of them.”
“Cities produce light pollution,” he says. “We’re far enough away out here to see all those stars.”
“So pretty.”
He turns his head to look at me. “Yep.”
In a few minutes, he stops the truck but leaves the headlights on. “Let me get my big tape measure. I think some of these might do.”
I open my door, and he’s there in a second. “No, ma’am, you don’t go around leaping out of pickup trucks without help. It makes me look unmanly.”
I giggle inwardly over the idea of this guy being unmanly, but I let him take my hand and help me down. Santa, you might get double cookies this year.
Together we choose a beautiful tree. It’s somewhere between fifteen and sixteen feet tall, and it’s a perfect shape. It smells heavenly, too. I express a worry that the tree might be too big, but he shakes his head. “Nope. It’ll be perfect. I can trim it if I need to.”
“What about getting my dad’s truck to come pick it up?” I ask.
He shakes his head again. “No need. I’ll deliver it.”
“How are you even going to get something this big in the truck?”
“Winch. I insisted on it this year. I was tired of manhandling trees all day.”
You can manhandle me, I think, and then feel heat racing all over my body again.
With the big tree in the bed of the pickup, we get back in the truck. “So,” Dakota says, and clears his throat, “would you, um, like to go out to dinner with me this evening?”
He is actually asking me out.
Triple cookies, Santa. Heck, back up the the sleigh. I’ll load you up with cookies and fruitcake and eggnog, Harry and David gift boxes, a case of whiskey, anything you want.
“Any time.”
“Well, what about tonight then? After we deliver this tree?”
I can hardly catch my breath. “Sure.”
I’ve got chills, and the warm heat pooling between my thighs is making my underwear damp. I haven’t felt like this in a long time. And then I remember that I’m a fat girl, and I shouldn’t expect anything to come of this. That just like in the past, any guy asking me out is bound to change his mind, once he gets a look at me without clothes.
Santa? Am I asking for too much?
4
Ring Around the Moon
Dakota
This is the most gorgeous girl I have ever seen. An armful of luscious curves to hold and kiss, and all of it so soft. Her voice, her eyes, her pink mouth, those bouncy breasts. And she’s clearly sweet. Thoughtful and shy, and she even smells sweet, like marshmallows and cotton candy. I’m starting to think of her as a life-size angel — my angel.
Blood flows to my groin when I think about smelling her up close. I have to adjust myself in my jeans.
Now I’m pretty excited about delivering this tree, and spending some time with her afterward. She said yes to dinner, and now I’m trying to think where I could take her to eat that wouldn’t be too fancy, or too casual, or too cheap or too expensive or too weird. And every time I try to focus on where we could go, what might be open, I start thinking of her sweet earnest face and get all sidetracked and forget to make plans for dinner.
Back at the farm shop, I go in and practically collapse in a chair, feeling totally gobsmacked. This is The One.
My sister-in-law Holly and my soon-to-be other sister-in-law Noelle are sitting in there talking to each other, and they keep staring at me like I’ve got three heads or something. They keep asking me if I’m okay.
I am, and I’m not. The world has just tilted two degrees off center, and I can’t possibly explain.
And then my sweet Angel comes in to pay for the tree and there’s almost an argument about my delivering it, and I do not care if we don’t offer delivery, I’m doing it for my girl. And I don’t care if I miss the last two hours of work, because there is no way in hell I’m letting my Angel get away.
Then she looks at me, and I can see she
doesn’t want to get away from me. It feels like we’re falling into each other’s eyes.
We’re outside ready to leave and I ask her to text me the delivery address. She does, and I immediately save her contact info under Angel.
“It’s Angelina,” she says in that soft whipped-cream voice.
“You’re Angel to me,” I tell her.
She looks down, blushing and trying to hide a smile. It’s adorable.
The house we finally pull up in front of, in solidly middle-class, suburban Farragut, is a mansion. No other word for it. It’s a very traditional, imposing house, so gigantic that it is out of place in a neighborhood. It should be located at the end of a long drive somewhere in Kentucky horse country.
I park in the center of the driveway loop, near the front door. Angel drives that white Lexus around back, waving out the window at me. I’m untying the tree and preparing to winch it down off the bed of the one-ton truck and onto the dolly I brought with me, when a woman comes out of the house. She’s middle-aged, with a stiff helmet of self-important hair that wouldn’t budge in a hurricane, and she’s so skinny that she could fall through her ass and hang herself.
I start to introduce myself, but she interrupts me. “This is what she picked out? I hope it’s tall enough. Take it through there, please.” She gestures imperiously.
I’d planned to do exactly that, but this woman is getting on my nerves. I clear my throat. “Delivery means to the door, ma’am. It doesn’t include setup.”
Her mouth drops open. “You’re not going to set it up? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Ms. Montgomery indicated that her father owns a construction company. I imagine some of his employees would be happy to put it up for you.” I shouldn’t be enjoying this, but I am.
“I couldn’t get that done until tomorrow! I need it set up tonight!”
Angel comes up from behind me. “Manda, this is Dakota Sledd. He’s part-owner of the tree farm, and he’s gone out of his way to bring us this beautiful Canaan fir.”
“It should fit,” I tell her, pointing to where we can see the two-story foyer through the front windows.
“Will you bring it in and put it in the stand for an extra fifty bucks?” the woman asks, and now she sounds desperate. “Please?”
The please does its job. “Yes, ma’am.” I don’t feel a bit bad about taking her money; she’d either be paying me or her husband’s employees, and it might as well be me. It might cover part of the dinner check when I take Angel out, too.
“The tree stand is in the foyer. Water the tree when it’s set up.” She catches my stern eye and adds, “Please,” belatedly. To my Angel, she says, “You might as well get started with the lights tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow.”
Angelina darts a worried look at me, and I feel myself standing taller. “Ma’am, she has other plans this evening.”
She opens her mouth, and then this Manda woman opens hers, and I forestall both of them. “I understand that you and Angelina made plans to decorate the tree tomorrow, so she was free to make plans for this evening. With me. She’s having dinner with me.”
Angel looks relieved, and the Manda woman looks equal parts horrified and astounded. When nobody says anything else, I nod and haul the tree on its dolly into the house. Doesn’t take long to get it set up, with me doing the labor and Angel making sure the tree is straight. I concentrate on the tree, trying to ignore my body’s reaction to having her close by, but it’s hard—in more ways than one. I can smell her sweet delicious smell, and every time I look at her, I see these beautiful curves I want to cuddle and squeeze and caress.
Finally we’re done. “The tree looks great,” she says, beaming up at it. “You were right, this was the perfect height.” It is, too. There’s enough room for a tree topper and a little open space to make it look uncrowded.
Her witch of a stepmother comes in and looks fairly pleased as well. “Here’s your setup fee,” she says, and hands me a crisp $50 bill. I thank her.
“I’m going to go change really quick,” Angel says, and escapes up the stairs with that gorgeous white-blonde hair flying behind her.
“I’ll be outside in my truck,” I reply, and I escape that perfectly-decorated, chilly-feeling house too. Outside, I look up at the sky and know that the snow they’ve been forecasting is definitely coming. It’s still clear enough to see some stars, but the moon has a halo. Nana used to say, “When there’s a ring around the moon, rain or snow is coming soon.” It’s a dumb old saying and not 100% accurate, but it’s true that the “ring” effect is caused by light reflecting off ice crystals in the atmosphere, which is a good indication of moisture. The wind has picked up, blowing little cirrus curls of cloud across the sky.
When Angel comes out, she’s in a short full skirt, and black knee boots. I immediately have inappropriate thoughts about her thighs, naked and spread apart for me, and I have to adjust myself in my jeans again. I help her up into the truck, and put her overstuffed tote bag on the floorboards at her feet. “You look really pretty,” I tell her. Her eyelashes are long and full, and she smells even more delicious than she did fifteen minutes ago. I don’t mind makeup on her at all, but I know that she would be just as gorgeous without it, because so much of her beauty is her sweetness and gentleness shining through her eyes.
“Thank you,” she says in that cotton-candy-sweet voice. “I wanted to freshen up a little. Is it too much? I mean, too dressed-up?”
“Whatever you wear is perfect. I’m just sorry I look so casual.”
“I don’t mind,” she says. She squeezes my arm for a second, and I get light-headed from the rush of blood to my dick at the feel of her hand on me. “At all. You look fine.”
I have a thought. “Would it be okay if we went to my place? Maybe we could get takeout and eat it there.”
“I’d love to see your place,” she says in that voice that’s driving me so crazy. “Where is it? Tell me about it.”
So I tell her, and on the way we decide to go pick up some barbecue at Little Pigs. She says she loves pit-cooked, pulled-pork barbecue, but she has to have cole slaw with it, not just macaroni and cheese, and I tell her she is damn right about the cole slaw but I need collards too. We are discussing various types of barbecue and laughing all the way back to the tree farm. By the time we get there, my stomach is growling and my cock would be growling too if it had a voice, because it’s ravenous for her.
5
The Cabin
Angelina
Dakota’s cabin is beautiful. It’s dark outside now, and I can’t see the mountains or the view he talked about loving, but I can see the log cabin itself: rustic, but charming. When he turns the lights on, I can’t think of a more welcoming-looking place in the entire world. Everything glows warm and homey.
The main floor has a great room with a tall ceiling, way cozier than Daddy and Manda’s house, and the kitchen and dining room are only separated by space, not walls. I love it. The furniture, what there is of it, is plain. It feels roomy and spacious, though I’d certainly add a few more chairs, to accommodate guests.
Dakota hangs my jacket and his on the pegs set into the wall by the door. “Hey, would you like a fire?” he asks. “I usually build one in the evening this time of year.”
If there’s something that would make this house even nicer, it would be a wood fire. I nod emphatically.
By now it’s been a long time since lunch, and my stomach growls. I’m embarrassed, but then I hear a rumble from him, and he laughs out loud. “Okay then, we need to eat. Angel, would you maybe go into the kitchen and get out plates and stuff while I get this fire started? Then we can eat.”
I tuck my hair behind my ears, suddenly nervous. He’s just letting me rummage around in his kitchen. “I—I guess I can do that.”
“Of course you can,” he says, and smiles at me. “Plates are in the upper cabinet to the right of the sink, glasses in the cabinet on the other side. Utensils are in the drawer at the island
.”
Then he’s bending over at the stone fireplace, and I’m sneaking peeks at his strong arms and broad back, tapering down to a narrow waist and those muscular hips men have when they are very fit. I imagine putting my hands on them, and shiver. My brain goes another step further, and imagines what it might be like to lie underneath him, to put my hands on those firm butt cheeks and pull him into me, hard. The center of me goes liquid with want and anticipation.
“Find everything?” he asks, still facing away from me as he scrapes ashes out of the fireplace.
“Um. Yes. Thanks.” I’m glad he can’t see my flaming cheeks. I’m glad I can’t see my flaming cheeks, either, because I am thinking these completely inappropriate thoughts and wondering what on earth is wrong with me. Because, see, I’m a virgin. I have no idea what it would actually be like to be pressed down into clean sheets, naked, by as much man as Dakota is. I’ve done some messing around, with boyfriends in college, but somehow we never got as far as all the way.
It occurs to me that I still haven’t collected plates, and I hurriedly turn around to locate them. They are, of course, exactly where he said, and all the other stuff is too. I set the table with utensils; the sound of logs being stacked against each other tells me he’s making progress on the fire. “What do you want to drink?” I ask, willing my voice to be calm.
“Well, I have milk and sweet tea in the fridge, and I think there are some hard ciders in there too. I think I want one of those, please.”
I open the frosty bottle, and pour sweet tea for myself. By the time the fire has started making homey crackling noises, I’ve got all the food set out and ready to go, and Dakota is turning back to me. “Can I have a glass of sweet tea as well as the cider? I’m thirsty.”
