Her Naughty Holiday(34)

“I was thinking... I’m going to give that girl a raise.”

“Unless you sell the company.”

“Oh, yeah.” She sighed. “I’ll figure that out tomorrow. Today I just want to think about you. And turkey.”

“We did forget to eat, didn’t we? Sex first and food after?”

“Okay,” she said. “But hurry. I’m starving. Fuck me fast so we can go eat all the meat and pie in the house.”

Erick dropped his head to his chest and playfully wiped a tear from his eye.

“What?” Clover asked.

“‘Fuck me fast so we can go eat all the meat and pie in the house’? Clover, I’ve waited all my life to hear those words from a woman.”

* * *

ERICK WOKE UP alone in the bed. He’d done as Clover had instructed and fucked her hard and fast, but as usual he’d succumbed to a nap afterward. He strained his ears, curious where she’d gone. Bathroom? Kitchen? She had better not be eating without him. He found his khakis and pulled them on.

When he found Clover he thought she was crying. She sat on the edge of the guest bed with her back to him. She had her big yellow bathrobe on and her head was bowed. But then he heard her speaking.

“Mom, it’s okay, really. Please don’t cry. I’m not angry anymore. I just want our relationship to change, for the better. It has to because it can’t go on like this. The way you treat me is unacceptable.”

Clover paused and Erick went into the bedroom, sat down at her side. Clover leaned her head against his shoulder and it felt so good to be leaned on by this woman he loved he could have stayed there forever.

“I feel like I’ve been trying for nine years to get you all to listen to me, and when talking didn’t get the message across, I yelled. No, I don’t hate you all, not at all. I love you all. I love you and Dad. But today has to be the last day you bring up that I dropped out of college. The very last day. And you are never to call me your ‘little dropout’ again. Never and I mean it. It also has to be the last day you tell me who I should date or what I should do with my money. I’m not going to put up with it anymore, okay? You all raised me and you did a good job. Trust that you did such a good job that I can make my own decisions about my life.”

Clover paused again and listened for a long time. He felt her swallowing hard.

“Thank you, Mom. I needed to hear that. I’m proud of you, too. Where do you think I learned how to work so hard? It was from you.”

Clover wept softly against his shoulder and he kissed her on the forehead, rubbed her back, which was shaking under the strain of having this long-overdue conversation with her parents.

“Yeah,” Clover said. “Erick’s something. Better get used to him, though. He’s going to be around for a long time.”

Erick grinned but he couldn’t help but wonder what her mother was saying to that bit of news.

“I like that he stood up for me, too. I promise, Ruthie is the best. She wants to be a college professor someday. You two will have a lot to talk about.”

He left her alone in the guest room but only for a minute. When he came back she was finishing up her phone call.

“I love you, too, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving.”

Clover ended the call and dropped the phone on the bed. After a long shuddering breath, she looked up at Erick standing in front of her.

“Told you they’d come around,” he said.

“They are. Slowly.”

“You ready to eat?”

“I am. First, I just need a—”

“Lavender wipe?” He held one out to her and she smiled and took it from his hand.

“You are the best fake boyfriend ever.”

“Better than Sven?”

She stood up and tossed the lavender wipe over her shoulder. Who needed aromatherapy when she had Erick’s sex therapy?

“Sven who?”





15

IF BEING ERICK’S girlfriend didn’t feel official before, it certainly did now. Clover stood at the Portland International Airport security exit as she waited for Ruthie to appear. Erick was in the car in short-term parking so Clover and Ruthie would have a few minutes alone to talk.

Funny. Clover had one day left to decide if she wanted to sell to PNW Garden Supply and yet the only thing that made her nervous was facing Ruthie. Erick had said Ruthie was happy for them, “stupid happy” even, but that was a few days ago and while Ruthie was in LA. When Ruthie saw her dad and Clover together it might be more uncomfortable than Ruthie had realized at the time. Clover couldn’t stomach the thought of being happy at the expense of Ruthie’s feelings. She could only hope that Ruthie could handle her father dating her boss, because the only thing that would suck more than losing Erick’s love would be losing Ruthie’s. Clover crossed her fingers, and if she could have, she would have crossed her toes, too. She had on rain boots, however, and they didn’t have enough wiggle room in the toes.

Clover put on a bright smile as Ruthie turned the corner. In one week she’d changed her hair from purple to royal blue. Hello Kitty and My Little Pony stickers covered her rolling suitcase, and she wore black-and-white-striped leggings that made her look a little like Beetlejuice. She was impossible to miss.

Ruthie spied Clover and a bright smile crossed her face. Instead of walking, she jogged down the rest of the exit way to Clover and caught her in a huge hug.

“Mommy!” Ruthie said, squeezing the breath out of Clover.

“Oh, my God, the California sun fried your brain,” Clover croaked.

“I’m just so happy to have a new stepmother.” Ruthie sighed, leaning her head on Clover’s shoulder and fake-weeping in her hopefully-not-fake happiness. “And just in time for Yule. We can celebrate the Goddess Rite together—stepmother-goddess and stepdaughter-goddess.”

“I’m not your stepmother yet. Or a goddess.”

“Ha! You said yet.”

“Do we sacrifice people during the Yule Goddess Rite because I already have someone picked out if we do.”

“No sacrificing. You just have to put on a crown of holly and a robe, say some ancient stuff and light the yule log. Then we bake cookies. But not for Yule. Those are for Christmas. Pops is a square. He won’t let me cast a Yule circle unless we can bake Christmas cookies after.”

“That’s a good compromise. Your father is a wise man.”

Ruthie finally released Clover, who took a full breath since she could again.

“He’s dating you so I have to raise my low expectations of him,” Ruthie said. Clover took the large backpack from Ruthie and they headed toward baggage claim.

“I’m glad you’re not freaking out over us dating,” Clover said. “I can’t believe how fast everything happened.”

“Fast?” Ruthie rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You two have been making gaga eyes at each other for a year. I thought I was going to have to cast love spells on you both to get you to admit it to each other.”

“No love spells required. Just you forgetting your phone. Nice trick.”

“I was pretty proud of that one myself. Took an insane amount of self-sacrifice on my part. I was phoneless for thirty-six hours. Now I know what life in the ’80s was like. No wonder people were this close to nuclear Armageddon.”

“Well, we appreciate your sacrifice on behalf of the cause. But I don’t want you to worry. Your dad and I had a serious talk yesterday and there will be no moving in together or anything of the sort until you’re in college. We don’t want to mess with your routine.”

“That’s evil,” Ruthie said. “Pops is evil.”

“How is that evil?” Clover asked as they stood by the baggage claim belt waiting for Ruthie’s other suitcase to appear.

“Pops is rigging the game so I have to go to college or you two won’t move in together. And since I want you two together, I have to go to college.”

“Trust me, gentle manipulation is preferable to parental passive-aggression. I speak from many years of experience.”

“Yeah, how did Thanksgiving go with your family?”

“Your dad didn’t tell you?”

“All he said was it was more a Spanks-giving than a Thanksgiving, but he’d let you give me the details.”

“I told my entire family off and kicked them out of the house.”

“Dammit.” Ruthie sighed. “I always miss the good fights.”

“Don’t swear, dear,” Clover said. “It’s not ladylike.”

“Yes, Mommy Dearest.”

Erick met them in the parking lot and Clover was relieved to see father and daughter immediately fall back into their affectionate bickering and snarking at each other. No awkwardness. No weirdness. Erick complimented her Smurf hair. Ruthie ordered him to trim his beard before someone mistook him for a hipster, the lowest form of life in Ruthie’s opinion.

“I’m thinking of shaving the beard and doing the waxed mustache thing,” Erick said, putting Ruthie’s suitcases into Clover’s car trunk. “Thoughts?”

“No,” Ruthie said. “Clover?”

“I’ve always had a little crush on Poirot. But you’ll have to shave your head, too.”

“Done,” Erick said.

“I rescind my permission for you two to date,” Ruthie said from the backseat.