Walking in a Wiener Wonderland (My Big Fat Kingman Wedding #2)

Chapter 1 Let It Glow

LET IT GLOW

DECLAN

If you’d told me at the start of the season that I’d be spending Thanksgiving with Kelsey Best, the biggest pop star in the world, I would have told you to get checked out by the team doc.

Concussion protocol. No negotiation. And if you’d told me I’d be completely in love with her, and that she’d return those feelings?

Drug test too. The full panel.

But in the last two months, my life got flipped, turned upside down.

Kelsey owned my heart and my soul, and I had never been happier in my life. Which no one else needed to know. I had a reputation to protect. Grr.

We’d been through so much in such a short amount of time, and every bit of it had only made us stronger. I may have been a Denver Mustang, but the most important team I’d ever played on was the one that started the night she walked into my life.

Whether I liked it or not.

I liked it.

Today we were living our very own Thanksgiving miracle on Bear Claw Mountain. Sounded like a Housemark movie. It pretty much was.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, neither the Denver Mustangs nor the Denver State Dragons were playing on Thanksgiving.

That meant the entire Kingman clan had snuck away for a couple of days to celebrate the holiday together.

We hadn’t managed this since Chris and I were in elementary school, which meant the cabin was running at full capacity, every surface occupied by a Kingman with an opinion about something.

I’d always assumed my father got his coaching instincts from Coach, my grandfather, whose record as the winningest high school football coach in Colorado history had all of us grandkids refusing to call him anything else.

Then I watched Nana run her Thanksgiving kitchen for about ten minutes and that theory evaporated completely.

She dealt out tasks the way a real coach calls plays at the Big Bowl, fast, certain, and with a look that made it clear opting out wasn’t a concept she recognized.

It didn’t matter who you were.

Big Bowl ring? Great. You could wear it while you peeled potatoes. Three Grampy awards? Tell your story walking and help get this table set.

No one was safe.

“Kik, I don’t know who raised you and told you that’s how you roll out a pie crust,” my grandmother said, her voice carrying the full weight of a woman who had witnessed many things but could not accept this particular one, “but it certainly wasn’t me.”

“Must have been my other mother, then.” The mountain of sarcasm in Aunt Kik’s voice was teensy. Barely there. You had to be paying attention.

Nana ignored her completely.

Aunt Kik and her partner Pat flew in this year since it was my cousin Levi’s first Thanksgiving as a Mustang. Most of my life she made sure to squeeze in auntie duties between her coaching at Dutchess University and raising Levi to be the star athlete and good man that he was.

“Everett,” Nana called across the room. “You’ve got to fold the cheese into the macaroni. Fold it in.”

“What does that even mean?” Everett stared at the pot like it had personally wronged him, stirring with the breezy confidence of a man who absolutely did not know what he was doing.

Across the room, Kelsey was folding napkins into swans.

Actual swans. She’d arrived into the full chaos of a Kingman Thanksgiving without flinching and immediately started making herself useful, which was impressive enough.

The swan thing was just showing off. I looked away before anyone caught me staring at her like the love-struck idiot I was.

Which I was.

A love-struck idiot.

“Declan, sweetheart.” I braced myself. Nana’s voice had that assignment quality to it.

“Yes, Nana.”

“Your grandfather is insisting on deep frying the turkeys this year.”

“Yes, Nana.”

“There are three fire extinguishers in the trunk of my car. I’m making you personally responsible for making sure he doesn’t burn down this side of the mountain.”

Okay then.

No pressure.

Bear Claw had a way of protecting its own.

My dad had made sure of that years ago, buying up as much local property as he could when out-of-state money started sniffing around the mountain.

They say you inherit your kinks from your parents, and I am pretty sure it’s where Chris got his real estate fetish.

The town returned the favor, heads down, mouths shut, even with Kelsey Best walking around the general store like a regular person. No leaked photos. No paparazzi camped at the trailhead.

I appreciated that more than I could say. Which I did, by not growling at the people in town.

I’d already started making a few quiet upgrades to my mom’s cabin up the mountain. A bed I could actually fit in. Fresh paint. Small things that make it more comfortable while still feeling like hers. The cabin mattered. That was all I was going to say about that.

Tonight it was going to matter a hell of a lot more.

I grabbed the fire extinguishers and headed out to find my father and grandfather already deep in debate over turkey preparation.

The setup was impressive, three fryers assembled on a patio a safe distance from the cabin, oil heating, Coach presiding over the whole operation like a general surveying a battlefield he had personally chosen.

“You have to make sure the turkey is completely dry, Dad, or we’ll burn down the whole mountain,” my father was saying as I got closer.

“I made sure they were totally dry, kid. I’m not an idiot,” Coach replied with the disdain of a man being lectured by his adult son.

“They are literally dripping liquid.”

“That’s the butter from the flavor injections.” Coach straightened with pride. “I learned it on The Barefoot Princessa.”

Since retiring, Coach had gotten very into cooking shows. This was everyone’s problem now. I was still recovering from the Julia Children’s warm cucumber salad incident.

“You injected butter into a turkey we are about to deep fry?” my dad asked.

“Yup. Keeps the bird moist.”

“Maybe we can get a bulk discount with a cardiologist,” Dad muttered. He looked up, spotted me, and nodded. “Hey, son.”

“Hey guys. Going good?”

“Your father doesn’t appreciate my culinary prowess. He needs to trust the process,” Coach said.

“Yeah, Dad. Trust the process.” I held up the fire extinguishers. “Nana trusts the process so much she sent me up here with these, just in case.”

“Smart asses,” Coach grumbled. “The whole lot of you.”

My dad laughed and rolled his eyes. I’d heard him say the exact same thing to the eight of us Kingman kids at least a hundred billion times over the years. He tipped his head toward me and spoke softly. “Everything ready?”

“Yeah.” I lowered my voice. “Plan is for Flynn, Isak, and Jules to slip out after dinner and get everything set up.”

“Oh, I heard. Operation Let it Glow.” He smiled.

In typical Jules fashion, my simple request for a little help had been transformed into an elaborate, classified secret mission with a code name, a mission brief, and a level of organizational detail that made me genuinely concerned about what she was going to be like when she had actual authority over something.

I loved my sister more than pretty much anyone else on earth, second only to Kelsey, but her dream of founding the sovereign nation of Juleslandia and declaring herself Queen was not entirely a joke. I was like sixty percent sure about that.

“According to Jules,” I said, “the glow never bothered her anyway.”

“Not nervous?” Dad asked, reading my face the way he always did.

“Not about the asking.” I watched Kelsey through the window, laughing at something Trixie said. “People will think it’s too soon.”

“I thought the same thing when I asked your mom to marry me.” He went quiet for a moment, the way he always did when he talked about her, not sad exactly, just careful with it, like he was carrying something he didn’t want to spill.

“But I knew the first night I met her. No point in wasting time on something you’re already sure of. ”

“I’m well beyond fucking sure.” I paused. “After what she told me about Mom having such an influence on her, sometimes I feel like Mom picked her out and sent her my way.”

“I’d like to think that’s true, Declan.” He looked out at the mountain. “I still talk to her about all of you. And I like to think she’s watching.”

Before things could get too quiet, Coach announced the oil was ready and approached with a turkey dangling from a hook like a trapeze artist preparing for the worst bath of his life.

“Be careful, Dad,” my father said.

“I eat careful for breakfast,” Coach replied.

“It’s true,” Isak said, appearing from somewhere with Hayes right behind him. “It usually involves prunes. I’ve witnessed it firsthand.”

“This is statistically the number one cause of house fires on Thanksgiving,” Hayes noted.

“Way to bring down the mood, Hazey,” Isak said, raising his phone to film.

“Put the phone away,” I barked.

“That’s why you’re my favorite, Isak,” Coach announced, beginning the descent.

“Coach, you said the same thing to me this morning when I handed you the remote,” I pointed out.

“That was this morning, Declan. Times change. Everybody stand back.”

He lowered the turkey into the oil with the care of a man who had, in fact, done this before. A couple of small splatters. No fire brigade required.

Phew.

Once all three turkeys were safely enjoying their hot tub oil baths, we cracked open beers to celebrate, pumpkin ale for everyone but Isak, who worked through a root beer with considerable dignity, right up until Nana opened the back door and spotted us all standing around.

“I see able-bodied Kingmans just standing around when they could be washing dishes,” she said. “I wonder how hungry they are.”

“How does she know?” Isak whispered. “It’s like she has spies everywhere.”

“You have no idea, son,” Coach replied.

Several hours and several thousand calories later, I was curled up on the couch with Kelsey tucked against my side.