Bouquets and Buckles (Crimson Ridge)

by Elliott Rose

For those who don’t want a lot for Christmas… Other than a hot cowboy, and multiple orgasms.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Yeah… when you don’t work in retail, events, or hospitality, it’s fucking peachy. However, when you’ve been run off your feet for the past few weeks making sure that everyone else has a magical, glittering Christmas, your own plans for nothing more than curling up in front of the fire and spending most of the time naked with nowhere to go and no one to talk to sounds mighty appealing. So that’s why I currently have my go-to nineties grunge playlist on blast, and my very special hot as fuck outfit on, after high-tailing it out of town at the first opportunity to escape.

Checking my hair in the rearview, I cruise along the empty main boulevard of Crimson Ridge. The place is all twinkling lights and small-town charm, with a giant outdoor Christmas tree erected in the square. Festive cheer of grandiose proportions proudly greets me as I make my return for the first time in twelve months. My hometown. The sweetest little middle-of-nowhere-Montana winter destination, where nothing much happens, and the population is pretty much exclusively ranchers and cowboys.

Even stranger is the realization that I don’t have a reason to come back here anymore, now that my parents have left town, selling up everything to buy an RV and begin living the gray nomad life. Love that for them; it’s utterly stinking adorable. They’re currently sending me daily photos and awkward but cute selfies from the other end of the country, chasing the sunshine and warmth of a non-winter in California while the rest of us here are buried up to our necks in snow.

I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it over here on Christmas Eve, but the weather gods have played nice and given me the perfect window of opportunity to surprise Jeremy. He’s here house-sitting for his parents, and the drive to the Smith family home is as familiar as the back of my hand.

I mean, my boyfriend thinks I’m currently picking up Christmas Eve takeout before heading back to my apartment, where I told him I’d be getting ready to facemask and video chat once I’ve curled up on my couch with a glass of wine in hand. Not that I’m actually here in town, about to surprise him.

I grin to myself, pulling out my favorite magenta lipstick and twist the rearview mirror in order to paint my lips. The shade goes perfectly with the waves framing my face of my pastel pink bob. The thought of turning up to surprise Jere when we didn’t think either of us would be able to see the other for the holiday season—with how busy I had been at the shop, not to mention the snow often being too heavy to get to Crimson Ridge—sends a curl of excitement through my stomach. This will be our first proper Christmas as a couple, after dating for the past three months, and to be able to burst through that door and hug him has been the only fucking thing getting me through all the insanely long hours I’ve worked this past week.

I bundle myself up and figure I’ll do the surprise part with his gift first. I can come back, get my bag, and move my car into the driveway later.

So I cradle the jar of his favorite peanut butter cookies against my chest, duck my chin into my collar, and scuttle my ass and cute boots down the sidewalk. Jere’s house has the curtains shut out front, but I can see lights on. As I slip around the side towards the back door, there’s music playing, the closer I get the more the anticipation builds. I’ve always been the ‘single one’ over the holidays, and this year, it settles something inside me to know that for the first time, I won’t be alone.

I roll my lips together with eager excitement when I see Jere standing on the far side of the room. He’s looking down, his gaze fixed on something I can’t see. Light brown hair flops over his forehead, those metal rim glasses giving him that scholarly hottie vibe, but there is an unusualness in his expression. Enough so, that it makes me pause before I reach out to grab the door handle. I see the way his hand moves, partially obscured by the countertop. Something about this scene isn’t right. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, not because of the winter’s air, but because if I didn’t know any better, he’s mouthing words. If I didn’t know any better… Oh god. That’s when the entire damn script flips right before my disbelieving eyes. The reason his hand is doing something becomes apparent. Dumping realization on me, cold and brutally sudden, like a slab of snow falling off the roof. It’s fisted in some bitch’s hair. Her glossy blonde head comes into view as he drags her to stand up. She’s been down there on her knees.

My toes and the balls of my feet don’t have any sensation left in them. Neither do my fingers. Neither does the cavity left hollowed out inside my chest. Fumbling in my jacket pocket for my keys, I’m like a shadow in the night, disappearing back toward my car as fast as I can fucking move. Humiliation has kicked my heart out into the snow, leaving it to freeze amongst the rows of illuminated reindeer and gaudy candy canes.

What a piece of shit. Is there a worse way to spend your Christmas than discovering by accident that your boyfriend has been fucking around behind your back? As I dash across the curb to reach the driver’s door and get myself the hell out of here, I nearly collapse at the sight before me. Oh my fucking god. Not right now. No, please, no. The front tire on my car is as deflated as my stomped-on little heart. Sitting flaccid and drooped, helpfully lit up for me to see that I cannot possibly drive away from here by the array of red flashing Christmas lights on the fence of the house I parked in front of. That’s the moment the waterworks erupt. Fuck this. Fuck it all. Fuck Jere and whatever slut he’s been secretly banging down here in Crimson Ridge every time he needed to come and ‘house sit,’ … which, now that I think about it, was a lot.

With fat tears rolling down my cheeks, I slide into the driver’s seat and grab my cell. Stabbing at my contacts list, I know Brad will save my ass. He’ll come rescue me, cuddle me, and let me watch a rom-com marathon while bundled under a blanket on his sofa. If there is any man I can count on to have enough booze and ice cream to drown my every last sorrow through the duration of the holidays, it’s him. Bradford Rhodes will also know how to change a tire because he was raised on a ranch, and as much as I’d love to claim to be Miss Independent, I simply do not.

I don’t even wait, launching straight into full melt-down mode, blurting out everything through sniffles and hiccups. “Brad… he’s such a douchebag… cheated on me… you were right all along… I can’t believe I was so fucking blind… and now, I’m stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire, and it’s about to snow like crazy leaving me stuck here on Christmas Eve, and god help me, I will die if he realizes I’m out here… please, please say you can rescue me from this living hell?”

“Skylar?” The gritty-sounding voice in my ear makes me do a double take. “Brad?” “Skylar, is everything ok?” The voice on the other end of the line is most definitely not Brad. It doesn’t sound like Flinn, his boyfriend, either.

Brad’s Dad. Oh shit. Oh shit. I just accidentally sobbing-dialed my life long, cannot ever stop swooning over, hottest man in existence, cowboy crush. My best friend’s father. “Skylar, what’s going on?” His voice echoes through the quiet of my car. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Rhodes. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I meant to call Brad.” “You’re upset.” He ignores my feeble words. “Uhhh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry. I’m hanging up now. Hope you have a lovely Christmas.”

“Don’t even think about it. Where are you?” His voice sounds a little rough, like he’d maybe been sleeping, and that makes me wince harder. My damp cheeks grow hot with the embarrassment of everything colliding together in the worst possible sequence of events. “I’m over on Jones Avenue, but honestly, please erase this from your memory, forget this call even happened. I’m so sorry my thumb must have slipped and hit your contact.”

“Are you inside your car?” “Yes. Honestly, I’ll be fine, I—” The line scuffles a little and he cuts me off. “Turn your ignition on and keep the heating running, otherwise you’ll freeze. Give me ten minutes.” That makes my eyes pop open. What? “Oh, no… no, you really don’t have to—” The man doesn’t allow me to finish speaking. “Skylar, I’m already in my truck and on my way. Stay put.” With that, he hangs up on me.

What the hell am I doing? It’s nine at night on Christmas Eve, and I’m driving through empty streets to offer a helping hand to my son’s best friend—to assist with whatever emergency situation she’s gotten herself into. A girl who I haven’t seen in a year. Not since she was back in Crimson Ridge last holiday season, and certainly the last person on this planet who I expected would be calling me. Adding to all that, she’s in tears.

Doesn’t matter. I don’t need the hows or whys; the girl is clearly in some kind of distress, and sitting on the side of the road when snow’s about to roll through at any moment and cut off the town… well, she couldn’t have picked a worse time to have a flat. Worst timing? Or best timing? Holy fuck. No. I scrub one hand over my mouth. Don’t even fucking think like that for one second. She’s Brad’s best friend, his same age, and spent half her teenage years round the ranch while the two of them grew up together. That puts her in the don’t even goddamn think about it, you old perv category.

It was impossible not to notice how much she’d matured and grown into herself. How animated she was talking about her new business. Brad had invited her, after taking it upon himself to organize a New Year’s Eve party. Which, to no one’s surprise, he’s doing again these holidays. Supposedly, he tells me with that smile of his that asks for forgiveness rather than permission, it’s great promotion for the ranch.

Thinking back to almost a year ago, I wish I could blame liquor for the fact I noticed her when I shouldn’t have, but I’d offered to be a sober driver for folks coming along that night. There wasn’t a drop of drink in me, so I couldn't put it down to anything other than being out of my damn mind. As if being twice her age wasn’t reason enough to stop seeking her out wherever she floated around the room, the stone-cold reality is I should know better than to be staring at my son’s best friend.

We barely exchanged two words, and all I remember is white-knuckling the steering wheel the entire way in an effort to prevent me from making a goddamn fool of myself. When we pulled up outside her parent’s old house on Oakwood, however, I could have sworn she hovered in the truck, painted fingernails resting on the handle. Coulda sworn she opened her mouth as if to say something, but then thought better of it and bolted out the door into the darkness, and back out of my life.

It dawns on me as I pull into the cul-de-sac where she’s stranded that her folks don’t live in town anymore. Last I heard, they sold up everything and went traveling. Fuck. Annnnd, I’m guessing she doesn’t know, or has forgotten maybe, that Brad isn’t here either. He’s gone to spend Christmas with Flinn’s family. Double fuck.

Now I’ve gotta figure out what I’m going to do with a girl who won’t be able to go anywhere until I help her change that tire this late at night on Christmas Eve. Not to mention that the snow has already started piling up in the time it has taken me to drive over here. Or, more to the point, I’ve got to figure out how to stop my dick from being ready to leap to attention at the mere thought of this girl nearly twenty years younger than me.

I see a big truck pull up, and the headlights cut off. The driver’s door swings open, boots hit the gathered snow, revealing my every cowboy fantasy and teenage girl obsession who strides through the elements toward me.

The man is cut straight from a romance novel, and yet somehow has remained single in all the years I’ve known his son.

painfully awkward wave and grimace. He gestures for me to roll the window down, then leans a forearm on the door as he bends to look in on my misery. “Stay there. Don’t want you catching a cold.” He cuts straight to the point. No smiles, giving me only a display of cheekbones and a short beard to make a girl weep. “Pop your trunk; I’ll get the spare.” Shiiiiit. “Um. You’re standing right beside it.” If I hadn’t already cried my eyes out before, I would be tempted now. How could I forget? I had been meaning to replace it since getting a flat just as winter started, only to wind up endlessly run off my feet with the shop. I never got around to it, and now I want to smack myself in the jaw for sounding like the dumbest bitch alive. “You ain’t carrying a spare?”

“No. I’m so sorry, Mr. Rhodes. I tried calling Brad after you, and he’s not answering, and I’m…” This is the moment. The moment I run out of words. What am I actually going to do? This town shuts up shop for the holidays, nothing is open, and I’ll bet all of the options for accommodation are displaying No Vacancy signs, thanks to the festive season. He pokes his tongue against the inside of his cheek for a moment. No doubt thinking I’m the human equivalent of a dumpster fire. Meanwhile I’m sitting in the front seat, wearing an outfit that is definitely not appropriate for spending time with a man old enough to be my father.

“This your stuff?” He jerks his chin toward the weekender sitting on the backseat. I nod. Feeling numb and helpless. “Lock up. Get in the truck.” Without elaborating, he opens the door, grabs hold of my bag, and then steps back, waiting for me to rediscover how to use my brain.

So when the rugged cowboy of my silly little dreams stoops to peer at me through the open window for a second time, my heart zooms around inside my chest at his next words. “You’re coming home with me.”

What am I supposed to do in a situation like this? If I attempted to offload my son’s best friend to some random motel in Crimson Ridge—right on Christmas—what kind of person would that make me? That’s the kind of shit reserved for heartless fucking bastards. Skylar doesn’t have anywhere to go, and I’m sure as hell not going to abandon her all alone. However, is the prospect of bringing her back to my house, my ranch, with the way the snow is sticking on the ground, going to be the greatest test of my sanity… most likely, yes.

everything changes the moment we pull into the long drive winding toward the house. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her sit up a little straighter and take in the snow-covered trees and the sloping track leading to the stables. In front of us stands my simple property, nothing fancy but it’s home all the same, with a wooden porch wrapped around the outside. Steps run along one side that I can remember her and a group of their friends from high school spending hours sitting on playing music and being kids together during the summers. “I’d forgotten how this place always looks so pretty.” She breathes, taking in the swirling snowflakes reflected in the headlights, and the glow of the house from where I’d left the lights on.

I pull up out front of the porch and cut the engine as Skylar keeps looking around with wide eyes like I’ve driven us into some sort of fairytale or some shit. “Winter looks gorgeous out here.” God, I can’t fucking get my head on straight. She sounds so relieved, so happy to be here, and that’s screwing with my already very messed up thoughts. Something bucks around inside my chest and tries to crow about how good she looks here, too. With that pastel pink hair skimming her jaw, shorter than when she was in that passenger seat a year ago, but it suits her even more at this length. It highlights that pixie, heart-shaped face, perfectly framing those baby blue eyes of hers. “Let’s get inside, get you warm. This snow is gonna keep piling up.”

“Thank you so much again, Mr. Rhodes.” Jesus. I both love and loathe the fact she’s calling me that. It collides inside my head with the force of two bulls charging one another. The fucked up part of my brain enjoys it more than I want to dare examine. The other part of me wants her to call me by my first name, because, at this stage, I’d do damn near anything to erase any lingering evidence of boundaries. “Don’t mention it.” My jaw is almost frozen in place.

From here I get my first proper look at Skylar. I get to really look at her, and there might as well be a bronc’s hoofprint on my chest judging by the way air struggles to reach my lungs. Her cheeks are a little flushed, plump lips painted a stunning shade of pink that, on someone else, might look ridiculous, but on Skylar, it’s perfectly balanced with the sweetness of her pastel hair and hot as fuck silver ring in the center of her nose. A septum piercing, as I was informed by Brad, mid eye-roll, when I fumbled around completely tongue tied seeing her with it for the first time last year.

Clusters of puffy white settle on top of her wavy curls as delicate snowflakes, making her look like some sort of winter fairy that I’ve been gifted as a Christmas miracle. Goddamn, why does this girl have to be so insanely attractive?

Her blue eyes drop to my mouth. My fist grips the door to the truck so hard I’m sure the frame is going to buckle. I’m not imagining this. I’m not hallucinating. Skylar’s tongue pokes out to wet her lips, and we both stand there like statues. Neither wanting to make the first move to break whatever unspoken connection this is. Only, the outside world decides to choose that moment to invade our privacy. Her cell phone bursts to life in her coat pocket.

“Oh my god, Sky… are you ok? I’ve got like fifty missed calls and you didn’t leave a single message. Way to freak me out.” Brad’s voice booms down the phone when I answer. Across from me, the cowboy who I’d just been locked in the most intense moment of… I don’t even know what that was… slams his door and strides toward the front porch.

“Hey B, I’m ok now.” With one shoulder, I clamp my phone against my ear, carrying my bags as I follow his bootprints left in the soft powder coating the gravel. “Do I need to send out a search party, or call a lawyer, or post bail, or what?” “Nah, you can stand down. Crisis averted for the moment.”

“Did you make it to Crimson Ridge, ok? The weather turned to shit over here real quick tonight.” “Over here? Where are you?” Walking into the Rhodes home feels as natural as anything. I know every nook and cranny in this house, and there’s something comforting in the fact it hasn’t changed hardly at all that I can see at first glance. “We’re spending Christmas with Flinn’s family this year, remember?” Oh, shit. “Sorry, crown me world’s crappiest friend right now. Totally forgot you guys were heading out of town for the holidays.” “I’ll forgive you. Can’t blame you for forgetting, considering the fact you didn’t sleep and made like five thousand Christmas wreaths in two weeks, Sky. Crazy bitch workaholic that you most certainly are.”

“So why were you blowing up my phone, bestie? Do I need to egg a certain wank face’s house when I get back?” Scrunching my eyes, I brace myself for the inevitable. “Yeah… so… you were right about him. The guy was cheating on me.” I say that last part as hushed as possible, because I don’t know where Brad’s father has disappeared off to inside the house after shutting the door behind me, and I also feel insanely embarrassed at the prospect of having to discuss the truth behind my road-side-rescue. “Bitch, I knew it.” The phone rustles as Brad does something on the other end of the line. “Flinn, babe, I told you,” he hollers in the background. “Ok, ok, you don’t have to alert the entire village.” I hiss.

“Flinn says he wants you to know that ‘he knew it’ too, by the way.” “Well, aren’t you both just a pair of clair-fucking-voyants.” “Our powers extend beyond bi-panic and having excellent style, you know.” He clicks his tongue at me. “Wait… so, if you’re in Crimson Ridge… but you’ve ditched Jere-prick-face…” Shit. Here it comes. “Um, so I might be standing in your house.” “Huh?”

“But, I’m warning you now, Dad’s probably gonna insist on his incredibly lame, old man Christmas routine. Where he plonks his ass in a chair reading by the fire and alternates that with going to sleep, snoring, and just being super boring in general.”

“I fucking heard that.” A gruff voice appears in front of me. “Actually, maybe it’s kinda perfect, you two can both hate Christmas together.”

“Take good care of my girl, won’t ya, Dad?” He says loud enough for him to hear.

Why yes, I would very much like to be taken care of by this slab of cowboy.

We say our goodbyes, and by the time I hang the phone up, I’m squirming beneath the weight of this man’s stare. He’s stripped out of his outdoor gear to reveal a faded denim shirt pushed to his elbows. Those jeans he wears the hell out of are far too easy to appreciate up close. Lucas Rhodes has reached his forties, but is the epitome of a man who could easily pass for much younger than that. It’s only the dusting of gray at his temples, the salt and pepper beard, matched with a sexy white streak that has always curled through the front of his disheveled hair that belies his age.

“Let me take your coat.” His voice comes out husky and I swear to god my knees buckle a little. He steps around to stand behind me, and our height difference is marked at this proximity. I barely reach the man’s chest, even in my heeled boots. I’m a curvy girl with thick thighs, a soft stomach, and tits I wish were bigger to give me more of an hourglass shape. I know how to dress in order to feel myself, yet, no matter what, there’s no disguising the fact I’m short.

God, I’ve got to get my ovaries under control and stop drooling over this cowboy. Only, he keeps making it nearly impossible to do so. Strong fingers hook beneath my coat collar as I undo the buttons. And that’s when I remember. The outfit I’ve got on underneath.