Читать книгу A Copper Ridge Christmas - Maisey Yates - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

RYAN KNEW DAMN WELL when he was being emotionally manipulated. It wasn’t an easy thing for a person to do to him, seeing as he had few emotional attachments in this world, and he liked it that way.

But damn it all, Dan and Margie Travers were the two most important people in his life. He knew full well what Holly was talking about when she spoke of all they’d given her. They’d done just the same for him.

He’d come to live with them when he was twelve, with a bad attitude and anger that went deeper than the ocean. But they’d put up with him, refused to give up on him. Kept him with them until after he was eighteen, until he’d gotten his first boat and established himself with restaurants and stores in Copper Ridge as the go-to supplier.

It wasn’t the Christmases that stood out for him. It was the quiet, firm guidance from Dan. The hugs from Margie, even when he’d been twelve and had pretended he didn’t want them. Being touched in a way that didn’t leave bruises behind had been rare in his world before them. Being told he could accomplish anything he worked for? Even more rare.

Yeah, he owed them. More than he could ever repay. They’d given him his first real home, his first job, carrying bags of feed at the Farm and Garden store they owned. They’d taught him that tough love didn’t mean using fists. That hard work did pay off, and that he could make something of himself, regardless of what his old man had told him.

But he would rather shove broken glass under his fingernails than get roped into holiday festivities.

“Well?” Holly asked.

“You’re evil,” he said.

“I’m not evil. I’m like a little Christmas elf.”

“Evil.”

“I want your help planning a party, not burying a body.”

“Depending on the circumstances, I’m a better bet for body burial than I am for decorations and cheer.”

She rolled her eyes and just sat there, looking at once soft and formidable, as she tended to. She took a bite of her burger, chewing thoughtfully. He couldn’t help but follow the motion of her lips as she did. There was no question that she was beautiful. She always had been. Bright red hair, green eyes, a perfect smattering of freckles across her small, upturned nose. And her lips. Full, pink. Yeah, she was pretty. She was also about a million years younger than he was, and several teaspoons of sugar sweeter.

Okay, she was only four years younger, but it might as well have been a lifetime.

She took another bite and his gaze dropped, yet again, to her lips, forcing an unwelcome memory into his mind.

Another night, about nine years ago, when he’d been fixated on her lips. She’d been crying then. It had been her eighteenth birthday and her parents had arranged to visit her at Dan and Margie’s, but they hadn’t come. He’d put his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug, then the air between them had changed. Crackled with electricity.

And he’d pulled away like he’d been burned. Holly Fulton had enough bad things in her life without having him too. That had been true then, and it was true now. No matter how pretty she was.

“They worry about you, you know,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because.” She picked up a French fry and waved it around. “You’re a boat-dwelling weirdo.”

“And?”

“Maybe you could show them that you’re...well-adjusted? Doing fine? Participating in normal, human type things?”

“You’re using Dan and Margie’s emotional distress at my possibly sad life against me?”

She scrunched up her face. “When you put it like that it sounds... unsavory.”

He picked up a French fry and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. “It is unsavory. It’s downright small. Low. Frankly, I’m surprised at you. For someone who looks so sweet, you’re ruthless.”

He could tell that she was very uncomfortable with being called ruthless. It was also the furthest thing from the truth. Still, he couldn’t help but goad her a little bit. Seeing as she was roping him into planning a Christmas party, and attending said Christmas party, both of which sounded about as appealing as getting a root canal while also receiving a vasectomy without anesthetic.

“Oh, cry me a river, Ryan. I’m strong-arming you into taking part in Christmas cheer and I will likely force-feed you gingerbread. It’s for your own good.”

“Like cod liver oil, flu shots and any book Oprah recommends.”

“A Christmas party is comparable to none of those.”

“Maybe not for you.”

“I promise not to get any joy on you. You don’t even have to like it.”

Saying yes to Holly really was the best idea. She wasn’t wrong. His involvement in this would make Dan and Margie less likely to think that he was turning into a seafaring hermit. He was a seafaring hermit, but as long as they saw him as something different, they might not worry so much.

He owed them way more than worry.

“Okay, Holly, you have a deal. I’ll help you plan your Christmas party. But I don’t have to like it.”

She brightened. “Oh, I expect you to hate it.”

“You seem awfully happy about that idea.”

“The more you hate something, the better I know it is. Since you seem to dislike the sorts of things normal people find extremely enjoyable.”

“What exactly are you going to enlist me for?”

She bit her lip, and he did his best not to watch as she worried her teeth over the delicate surface. “Putting up decorations. Helping me procure a tree. Tasting pies. You can taste my pies.”

He felt like he’d just taken a straight shot of whiskey, a trail of fire burning down his throat and settling straight in his gut. It happened so fast he could do nothing to stop it, could do nothing to reason out the fact that she was talking about literal pie, and that even if she wasn’t, it was Holly, and not some random chick in a bar.

He could try to blame it on the fact that, for a bachelor, the promise of fresh baked goods was a turn-on all on its own. But he knew it was more than that.

Holly looked placid and pleased with herself and definitely not like she had any idea she had conjured up an image of him eating her pie. So to speak.

He cleared his throat. “All that, huh? Are you trying to kill me?”

She stood, taking the paper that her cheeseburger had been wrapped in and wadding it up into a ball. “No. But if you die, don’t die before Christmas. Because I need your help.”

“It might be Christmas that kills me.”

She laughed, turning on her heel, her red hair swirling around her. Even her hair was merry and bright. “Joy to the world the Lord is come...” she sang, off-key and too loud, all the way out of his cabin.

As soon as she disappeared from view, he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Two weeks with all that Holly was going to be a whole lot of enforced happiness.

But he was hardly going to let Holly do this on her own, and have it get back to Dan, Margie and Elizabeth that he’d refused to help plan a Christmas party in their honor.

He was not that big of a dick. Well, maybe he was, but he didn’t want them thinking that.

And as long as he didn’t think about Holly’s euphemistic pie again, everything would be fine.