Knot what I want for Christmas (The Rockview Omegaverse #8)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Hollie

I push the rickety luggage trolley through the airport arrivals, dodging tourists, swerving small children, and struggling to keep the sucker on the straight and narrow.

Why do I always pick the trolley with the freaky wheel? I mean, this time I even inspected all four, and they looked absolutely fine until I started pushing. The thing keeps veering to the left no matter how hard I push it in the opposite direction.

Finally, I make it through the big airport exit doors, out into the Rocky Mountain air and…

It’s snowing!

It’s actually snowing!

Snowflakes swirling in the air, everything covered in a thick icing of white, powdery dust. It’s like I’ve just stepped straight into a snow globe. And it whips my breath right away.

Snow. I haven’t seen snow since… When was it? Some vacation with Mom when I was a kid, probably seven or eight, and that snow was sludgy and wet and dirty. Now this is real snow. Pretty, sparkling Christmas snow.

I can’t help but laugh, reaching out my hand to let the snowflakes land in my palm. When I left Rockview five hours ago, it was in the 70s and blazing hot sunshine. Now I’m here in the Rockies and it’s snowing.

I fling my arms out wide, spin around, and then I do what any other sensible 30-year-old woman would do who hasn’t seen snow since she was seven years old. I stick out my tongue and try to catch one of those flakes in my mouth.

“Hey!” a deep, growly voice says from beside me, making me jump out of my skin, and nearly bite my tongue in half.

I stuff my tongue straight back in my mouth, flip my head to the side, and try my best to suppress the groan I’m feeling.

Please let it be a stranger. Please let it be someone random looking for directions, or thinking I’m their Uber ride.

It isn’t.

Because of course it had to be.

Clay.

My best friend Annie’s big brother.

An alpha – unlike his sister and their parents – all betas.

If I thought I had a thing about wonky wheels on trolleys and bad luck, I have an even bigger thing when it comes to Clay and embarrassing situations.

He’s just seen me with my tongue sticking out trying to catch snowflakes.

This is not the most embarrassing interaction we’ve ever had.

The first time I met him was when Annie and I were sharing a dorm room in the first year of college.

He arrived when I had the world’s worst cold.

Think swollen nose, streaming eyes, and snot.

Snot everywhere. I opened the door to him, thinking it was one of the other girls that lived on our hallway, dressed in my ancient hoodie and sweats, hair scraped back that hadn’t been washed for, I confess, probably four days, and instead found not only a man standing the other side of the door, a hot man, a hot alpha.

I proceeded to sneeze all over him. Yep.

Great big globs of snot flying right at him.

The second time I met him, I was so embarrassed about the first time that I fumbled my desk drawer and sent my bright neon pink vibrator buzzing across the dorm room floor. And the final time we met, several years ago now, at our college graduation, I nearly took his eye out with my graduation cap.

On all three of these occasions, the alpha with the stick shoved up his backside had just stood in silence, staring me down with a withering look, making it clear how silly and pathetic he considered me to be.

Yep, me and Clay have history, but it’s not the kind of history that alphas and omegas usually have. It’s the kind of history that creeps up on you in the middle of the night, drowning you in embarrassment and reminding you just how cringingly awful your life is.

“Hey, Clay,” I say.

We stand there, staring at each other.

Of course, he looks as gorgeous as he always has done. Tall. Broad. Solid. A jawline so sharp it could chisel marble. Lips unsuitable soft on such a manly-looking man. A full-head of richly dark hair and eyes clear blue like the morning sky.

He has one or two more lines drawn around those eyes than he did that first time we met, and he’s even more well-built than he was back then, but he is definitely still hot. Hot Clay. Particularly today, dressed in a pair of faded jeans, an old padded jacket and a cowboy hat.

“Annie went inside looking for you,” he says, pointing his thumb in the direction I’ve just come. “She was – ”

He doesn’t finish his sentence because he’s interrupted by the biggest, most high-pitched squeal I’ve heard in a long time.

And then my best friend, Annie, is sprinting toward me and flinging her arms around me, squeezing me as tightly as she can and even lifting me right off my feet.

Annie is about a foot shorter than her ginormous brother, but she’s still a good two or three inches taller than I am.

She also has flaming red hair and the same blue eyes as her brother.

“Hollie!” she says, dropping me back down to my feet. “You’re here! You’re really actually here!”

“Of course I’m here!” I say, grinning so widely my cheeks might actually be splitting.

I can’t help it when I’m around Annie. Her energy and enthusiasm are infectious, and it’s impossible to be in a bad mood when you’re with her.

Well, it’s impossible for me anyway. Her big brother Clay seems immune to his sister’s high spirits; you couldn’t get two people who are more polar opposites.

Clay rarely smiles, rarely seems happy and rarely gets excited about anything.

In fact, most of the time he looks unamused and unimpressed.

Especially when small, snotty little omegas sneeze all over his face.

“I was beginning to panic,” she says. “I was right by the exit gate watching for you. I even had a welcome sign and everything.” She unravels a long sign, hand-drawn in an array of felt-tip colors.

I shrug. “I must have snuck right past.” I hug her again, whispering in her ear, “You probably got distracted by that football team that was on my flight.”

“Oh my goodness,” Annie whispers back. “I’ve never seen so many hot men in one place.”

“That,” I say, “is because you live out in the middle of nowhere. If you were back in Rockview–”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, hooking her arm through mine and motioning her head toward the trolley with all the luggage.

Clay gets the hint and strides right toward it, pushing the thing with no effort at all.

In fact, the misbehaving wheel now seems to have mended its bad behavior altogether.

I’m not exactly surprised. There’s something about Clay Jackson, something authoritarian, which means everybody does as he says and everybody behaves well in his presence.

Well, at least most people do. Annie seems immune to her brother’s superpowers just like he’s immune to hers.

Clay and the trolley stride off determinedly in front of us, and Annie and I walk behind.

“How was your flight?” Annie said. “Did you manage to bag a seat next to any of those football players?”

“No,” I say, “they were all in first class. I was stuck between an old lady with a fear of flying and a middle-aged man who thought I wanted to hear about his upcoming divorce.”

“You poor thing. Probably in need of a stiff drink.”

“Oh,” I say, “I may have had one or two of those on the airplane.”

“Good for you,” Annie says as we walk onto the car lot, catching up with Clay, who’s already loading my suitcases into the back of a smart-looking pickup truck.

“Is this yours?” I ask Annie.

She rolls her eyes. “Of course not. This is Clay’s. My baby’s at home.”

“Her baby wouldn’t make it out to the airport and back,” Clay said. “It’s unreliable. She needs to replace it.”

“I most certainly do not,” Annie says. “There’s nothing unreliable about old Dina at all.”

“Hmm,” Clay says, opening the passenger door and letting Annie slide inside. I follow her in, and he shuts the door after us.

“Wow,” I say.

“What?” Annie fastens her seatbelt and shifts round to look at me.

I lean in and whisper to her, “I don’t think a man has opened a car door for me… ever.”

Annie grins at me. “Welcome to Colorado, Hollie, where men – well, most men – have manners.”

“Right,” I say. “Maybe I am going to like it here.”

“You’re gonna love it,” Annie says, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it. “And I’m so pleased you’re here, Hollie. I couldn’t bear the thought of you stuck all alone in your apartment back in Rockview. Not for the holidays.”

Clay opens the driver’s door next and jumps up into the seat in one swift move, slamming the door and revving the engine.

“She’s going to really love it here, isn’t she, Clay?”

Clay’s eyes flick up to the rearview mirror, clear blue rimmed in a curtain of dark lashes. He meets my gaze with his usual indifference. “Depends,” he says. “She might find it too cold.”

“No, she won’t,” Annie says. “That’s the best thing about this time of year. You can snuggle up by the fire, drink hot chocolate and watch the snow fall. Can’t do any of that back in Rockview. Even in the middle of winter, it’s still baking hot.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I quite like the idea of snuggling.”

I’m probably mistaken or befuddled after the flight and the two glasses of wine, but I swear for just the briefest minuscule of seconds Clay Jackson’s eyes seem to flash – that indifference vanishes for one swift moment.

But then his attention is drawn to the front windshield as he pulls away from our parking spot and into the traffic.

“And you like snow too, right?” he says after another minute, his gaze flicking back up to the rearview mirror a second time. Am I imagining it again, or is there a slight tease in his eyes this time? “Like it enough to eat it.”

Crap. He must have seen the whole tongue thing after all.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “I think I’m going to love snow, but as my and snow’s relationship has been short and brief, I can’t make a judgement quite yet.”

“What do you mean by short and brief?” Annie says.

“This is literally only the second time I’ve seen snow in my whole entire life,” I say.

Annie squeals even louder than she did out by the front of the airport, jumping up and down on her seat. “Oh my goodness, Hollie. I had no idea.”

“How can you be called Hollie,” Clay says flatly, “and have only ever seen snow once before?”

“Because,” I say, “my mom really, really loved Christmas.”

The truck falls silent and Annie squeezes my hand again. Then she says, “Hollie, we’re gonna take good care of you.”

I smile back at her, trying not to let that flicker of sadness pull me into something more serious.

Instead, I focus my attention on the window outside the truck.

We’re making our way through the city, and even out here where there’s plenty of traffic and plenty of buildings, there’s still a whole heap of snow everywhere I look.

It makes everything look so pretty, so festive, so Christmassy.

And then we climb out of the city and up into the mountains and everything gets a whole heap more beautiful. It’s as if I’m staring straight at a Christmas card scene. Fir trees dusted with snow, old wooden cabins all lit up with Christmas lights, snow blanketing the mountains and all the fields.

I always considered myself a city girl. I’ve lived in Rockview all my life, and I love the place. But this – this is enough to have the sadness lifting from my heart.

Yes, this was the right thing to do. Okay, it will be strange this year, not spending Christmas with my mom like I always have, not having our own little traditions, not having her, but being with Annie and her family – even if that does include her big, grumpy brother – is going to be a good thing.

It’s better than being home alone with just my goldfish, Ted, for company.

That, I suspect, would have been a bad decision.

Although there’s one problem with this carefully crafted master plan.

The big, grumpy alpha. He smells of home-baked brownies. The kind made with real dark chocolate, the kind that are soft and sticky in the middle, the kind that give you an almost orgasm as soon as you bite into them.

Yeah, I’d forgotten just how heavenly his scent is, which could make Christmas just that little bit more challenging.