Gavin Lancaster hated Christmas.
It wasn't just a mild distaste for the season, or even something similar to ambivalence or disinterest about the December holiday. Nope. It was a total and complete aversion, an absolute loathing for all things green and red, anything associated with the period between Thanksgiving and New Years, the time when everyone was full of artificial good cheer and nauseatingly jolly.
Thank God, everything will go right back to normal after January 1st! Everyone will revert back to being greedy, self-serving, calculating and rude...
His two brothers called Gavin The Grinch . Really, it wasn't like he was trying to steal Christmas, he just wanted it to be fucking - over!
Unfortunately, it was only the end of November, the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday, the day when all of those supposedly happy people full of the holiday spirit trampled each other just to save a few bucks. What in the hell was so joyful about this peculiar custom he would never understand.
Merry Fucking Christmas...Now get the hell out of my way before I break your fingers for touching the item I want that's on sale. Ho Ho Ho!
So why was he here at the mall, at eight o'clock in the evening, on the busiest damn shopping day of the year? It certainly wasn't because he was looking for bargains or got a kick out of finding good deals. Fuck! He was a millionaire, able to buy anything he wanted at a regular, reasonable price. In his opinion, Black Friday was for masochists, people who enjoyed torturing themselves.
He was here for one reason and one reason only. Zoey, his twin brother Rafe’s mate, had called him because he just happened to be in the city tonight on business and she had used that calculating, sweet voice of hers to manipulate him into stopping at the mall to pick her up a new laptop computer.
Please, Gavin. I really want this computer and they'll run out of them if I don't get one now.
If it had been Rafe who had asked, Gavin would have had no problem telling his brother to go straight to hell. But the bastard had gotten Zoey to call, Zoey to ask, and Gavin hadn't been able to say no.
Really, he needed to get more of a backbone when it came to his sisters-in-law. Zoey and Grace could get him to do almost anything for them. All they had to do was call him up, ask sweetly, and he was jumping through hoops to get them anything they wanted, doing whatever they requested, regardless of how inconvenient it might be for him.
He felt sorry for Rafe and Noah. At least he only got an occasional call from Grace or Zoey, and usually their requests were fairly reasonable. Except tonight! His two brothers actually had to live with Grace and Zoey, were mated to them, at their females' beck and call every waking moment of every damn day. Sure, Rafe and Noah both had a live-in sex partner, available and convenient, but at what cost?
Gavin jockeyed through the masses of bodies around him, trying to plow his way through the crowd to get to the computers in the filled-to-capacity, popular electronics store. He cursed as he took an elbow to the gut and was propelled forward with a vicious slam of a shopping cart to his ass.
Christ! What the hell was he doing here? It wasn't like Rafe couldn't afford to pay full price for the damn computer. Both of his brothers were as wealthy as Gavin. Unfortunately, Zoey knew exactly how to get to him, pleading that she needed the computer right away, that she really wanted it, really needed it.
Sucker...it's your own fault for answering your cell phone. You could be home right now, out of the city, relaxing with an excellent glass of wine and reclining in your hot tub.
Instead, he was surrounded by glassy-eyed people in a bargain-hunting frenzy. What the hell was it about Black Friday that sent a perfectly normal community into temporary insanity?
A low snarl escaped his throat as he reached for a box that contained the computer that Zoey had requested, his patience wearing thin. His wolf