Free Perfectly Kissed by Lacey Silks Page A

those green and red plants in the hallway.
    “You’ve got to stop doing that, April.” I ripped down the mistletoe.
    “But it’s tradition.”
    I shook my head. Being best friends – actually self-adopted sisters – with the baby sister of the man whom you had once loved had its consequences. Sometimes they were too alike. I had come into the Mayers family over a decade ago, and they never made me feel like an outsider. We were all one, and I was grateful for all the love they’d given me. Yes, often, and especially the past few years that Dave and I weren’t together, it would get awkward, but there was no way I’d cast these people aside because of one bad relationship. This family was everything to me. They were all I had.
    “Tradition, my ass. How can you put this up when your brothers are in the house? Do you really want to risk kissing one of them? That’s like… incest. Gross!” I stuck my tongue out in disgust.
    “First of all, I’m putting these up for you,” she looked at me knowingly. “And second of all, blood relatives kiss on cheeks, hug, and make good wishes.”
    If Dave had kissed me on the cheek already, why was he insisting on another one?
    “Can I wish to be elsewhere?” I whined.
    Zen, balance, no whining – or you’ll end up in a pig pen.
    “Come on, Millie. Where’s your Christmas spirit?” Dave pushed past me and slapped me gently on my ass. I should have known that he’d take my comeback – in fact anything I said to him – as an invitation to get closer.
    “Hey!” I said. “I am the Christmas spirit.”
    Would he ever give up? I guessed deep down inside, somewhere near that frozen heart of mine that had to be sealed off from Dave Mayers, it felt nice to be wanted. But it also hurt at the same time, especially when you knew there was nothing you could do about it. Well, technically I could, but that would definitely end in an apocalypse. A big bang-type of a catastrophe, actually. Of course, the big bang wasn’t a catastrophe; it was the beginning – but each beginning had an end, as well. Maybe April was right and I should just slow down with the teachings of Dalai Lama because it just all kept messing with my brain. That’s what happened when someone like me, an uneducated former foster kid, tried to process too much information.
    Having been without a stable family of my own ever since I could remember, each year I was blessed to celebrate the holidays with April, her son Parker, Dave and his twin brother Justin, as well as their father and the patriarch of the family, Christopher Mayers. They took me in and treated me as if I were one of their own. And things had been good for a little while. In fact, they were really good — probably the best years of my life. But now I was older and wiser. Now I understood that my true destiny was to be alone. That way, no one would hurt me — especially the male half of the population. And more importantly, my troubles were less likely to follow others.
    “What you are is all talk, pancake.” Dave winked.
    “What I am is annoyed.” I rolled my eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be helping Justin get the wood.”
    “I’ve got all the wood I need when you’re around.”
    He lowered his hands on his hips and jutted out his crotch. Only from my experience, I knew that the generous bulge there wasn’t even hard. If he were hard, he’d be tearing at the seams.
    “Oh, come on! Gross! I’m still here. Why don’t you two get a room, hump the heck out of each other, let go of the stress, let bygones be bygones and all that crap, and everything will be right with the universe again.”
    Sometimes I wished my widowed friend would find herself a man. That way she’d have someone else to concentrate on.
    “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Dave said with pride.
    “Remember when I asked your opinion? Me neither.” I then turned to April: “You’re a traitor, and karma is a bitch!”
    “Isn’t that what you want,