The Christmas Proposition

  The Christmas Proposition

  By K.A. Mitchell

  It’s Christmas in Epiphany, Pennsylvania—the busiest time of year for Mel Hallner. But running the family Christmas tree farm has worn down his love for the happiest season of all, and lately Mel’s been wondering what if he’d said yes to a ticket out of town with millionaire Bryce Campion three years ago.

  Bryce isn’t used to people saying no to him, and he can’t forget Mel or their brief but sizzling affair. He might not have been offering forever, but Bryce can’t understand a guy as sexy and smart as Mel choosing to stay rooted on the family farm over enjoying the high life with him. He’s determined to make Mel see what he’s missed out on the first chance he gets.

  27,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  In December 2010 we published our first set of three holiday collections. I hoped at the time it would become a Carina Press tradition, and I’m pleased that we were able to do this again in 2011.

  I invited four authors who have built strong careers in the male/male niche to work with me to create this year’s holiday collection of male/male novellas. Josh Lanyon, K.A. Mitchell, Ava March and Harper Fox each brought their own unique voice and flair for storytelling to the Men Under the Mistletoe collection to create something truly magical.

  As I read Winter Knights by Harper Fox, Lone Star by Josh Lanyon, My True Love Gave to Me by Ava March and The Christmas Proposition by K.A. Mitchell, I found myself falling in love with the strong men in these stories, just as they fell in love with each other. These novellas combine the perfect blend of hot chemistry and raw emotion to transport any reader to that lovely place of good book glow!

  I’m incredibly pleased to make these stories available to you both individually, and as a collection, and I hope you fall in love with them just as I did!

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Dedication

  For Angela

  Thanks for having me.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Bruce Springsteen was asking Clarence Clemmons if he’d been good this year. Decorative snowflakes drifted onto rows of evergreens. Kids laughed and chased each other around a classically constructed snowman. On the tenth of December, Holly’s Tree Farm was enjoying the peak weekend of peak season. And I was counting down the hours until I could escape this Christmas hell for a glorious week in sunny St. Thomas.

  “Sixty hours, twenty-two minutes,” I grunted as my sister and I swung the nine feet of Douglas fir up to balance on three feet of Prius roof.

  “We know, we know.” Allie, my brother’s wife, stepped around me to offer hot chocolate to the new owners of the Douglas fir.

  “So shut up and tie.” My sister threw a length of twine across roof and tree, burning my cheek as the end whipped by.

  “Nice shot,” I told her as I crouched down in half-frozen mud to look for a place to tie off my end.

  We were all pretty good at aiming the twine we used to tie down the trees. Gloves or no, we spent all of January digging fiber slivers out of our skin the way other people combed tinsel icicles out of their carpets.

  By the time we had wrapped off the twine, The Boss was hoarsely winding down his version of “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” The eternally upbeat DJ announced, “And now, a special request from Holly’s Tree Farm.” I looked around in panic. The first few strains of Andy Williams’s “We Three Kings” cued up. I was going to kill my brother. If any of the old timers were here, I’d be stuck reliving the worst part of my childhood.

  I headed for the tractor to see if any of the cut-your-owners needed help lugging their future fire hazard back to their car. If I wasn’t here, no one could—

  Mrs. Carmichael appeared right in my path, two grandchildren in tow. “You’re all here this year. Please. They’ve never seen it.”

  “Yeah, my kids have never seen you guys do your thing.” Her son Mark, wore the same smirk I’d gotten used to in high school.

  We’d managed to avoid the ritual since my brother Bal left home. Twelve years of freedom because it didn’t work with two.

  “C’mon, bro.” Bal hooked his arm around my neck and led me toward the life-sized Nativity scene on the left side of the parking lot.

  I shut my eyes and let him drag me along. It wouldn’t be that bad. One or two pictures, no props or robes.

  “Allie found the costumes upstairs and brought them down.”

  My eyes popped open. What had looked like a bolt of cloth propped up against the wall of the roofed platform resolved into three colors purple, blue, red. Three shining plastic crowns, the frankincense, myrrh, and gold. One for each of the name-cursed Halner children, brother Balthasar, sister Caspar, and me, Melchior.

  Cas shrugged into her red robe and slapped a crown on me. “Play nice, Mel. Sixty hours and nineteen minutes.”

  “Sixteen.” I knew to the minute exactly how long every damned Christmas song in recorded history was. I kept track of time with them since I heard them a thousand times between Thanksgiving and January 7.

  “Right. So behave.”

  It was easy for Cas. She’d never had to hear Mark Carmichael sneering, “Shouldn’t his robes be pink? He’s a natural in a dress.”

  Somehow Bal had never had that problem. Tall, broad-shouldered and blond, the blue satin only made him look like a king. As Andy crooned his way through the verses, each of us moved from position to offer up our gifts to the plastic baby Jesus in the wooden manger.

  Cameras clicked and flashed. Humiliation enough for one year, then the News Nine Williamsport truck rolled into the parking lot, and I wondered if you could actually die from embarrassment.

  It must have been a slow news day, as the reporter told me they were going to air today’s video with one they’d shot twenty years ago, when the three of us still had single-digit ages, a saccharine segment punnily entitled, “Wee Three Kings.”

  “Can’t beat the free advertising.” Bal nudged me hard enough to make my crown tip over my forehead.

  I clenched my teeth and thanked plastic baby Jesus that Bryce Campion was miles away from Epiphany, Pennsylvania, probably already on his way to St. Thomas for the wedding. At least when I saw him again, I’d be barefoot and relaxed by a couple of rum runners and not suffering eternal shame under five yards of mildewed, billowing satin.

  No matter how many times I tried to make my escape, Bal assured me that his wife had things under control. We were in our basic pose when Cas, who was bent in a bow of reverence behind me said, “Five Finger Death Punch is playing in your ass.”

  Bal wobbled and almost fell from where he bowed with one foot on the raised platform. “Huh?”

  “My phone.” I shoved my box of myrrh, my crown and my robe at my sister. “Gotta take this. Could be Tiff.” I fished the phone out of my pocket.

  Ignoring Bal’s opinion on the appropriateness of heavy metal as a ring tone on a Christmas tree farm, I sprinted away from the site of my newsworthy humiliation.

  �
�Hey, Tiff.”

  As soon as I heard my best friend’s voice, I knew with a bone deep chill that had nothing to do with the swirling wind sending a fluffy flake up my nose that I wasn’t going to St. Thomas.

  “What happened? Did Kurt—?”

  “No. He’s great.” Tiffany sobbed at me. “He’s here. Holding me.”

  Not cold feet then.

  “You’re going to see it on the news, but…but…

  Despite having listened to her cry through more than one high school break up, I couldn’t understand her through the hysteria.

  “Mel?” Either Tiff’s breakdown had given her larynx a sex change or her fiancé Kurt was on the phone now. I’d only met him a few times, but he had a thick Boston accent I’d place anywhere.

  “The wedding planner turned out to be a bastard. Took the deposits and disappeared. The resort in St. Thomas never heard of us. Fifteen other couples lost out too.”

  Just in case I’d considered escaping solo to St. Thomas, my deposit had also been entrusted to the bastard. He’d run off with my dreams of sand between my toes, an umbrellaed drink in my hand and stars on the ocean. Left me with sticky sap, cloying hot chocolate and life-sized plastic Nativity sets.

  “So what are you guys going to do?”

  Boston, my desperate imagination supplied. It wasn’t exactly warm but it was on the ocean. And more importantly, not here.

  “Mel?”

  Tiff again. I bit back a sarcastic Still here. It wasn’t her fault, and she was the one suffering the most.

  “Everyone was all ready to travel. I know you guys are busy, but is there any way…please, Mel. Can we do the wedding at the farm?”

  “The tree farm?” I asked stupidly, as if there were several other farms Tiff and I could possibly be talking about.

  “Your parents used to do it for people. We could do it before you open on Friday.”

  The day before Christmas Eve. No, that won’t be an absolute madhouse.

  “Mel?”

  It didn’t matter that Bal and his wife had spent two weeks of vacation time so I could get my one chance to spend Christmas somewhere else. Or that I was still worrying about whether Cas would fall off the wagon. Or—and this was the one, ladies and gentlemen, that really put an icy sweat down my flannels and thermals—that I’d still be old stuck-in-Epiphany Mel instead of sun-kissed and sexy the next time I saw Bryce Can’t-Be-Bothered-To-Say-Goodbye-After-Two-Months-of-Fucking-Me Campion.

  None of that mattered when there was only one possible answer. “Of course, Tiff. We’ll make it absolutely perfect.”

  Chapter Two

  Since my life had gone totally to shit, it seemed like a good time to go stand in it. I stomped into the barn and started mucking out our resident reindeer’s pen. Fred—known to the outside world as Blitzen—gave me a soulful look and trotted off to see if he could wheedle any marshmallows out of the crowd.

  I tossed a shovelful of soiled hay into the wheelbarrow, listening to the squeals from the kids as Fred approached the outside pen rails, jingling his belled collar. We used to have six reindeer, back when my grandparents were alive. They pulled a cart full of kids around. My mom and dad never bothered to replace them when they died off—not the reindeer and definitely not my grandparents, which would have been hard, I guess—so now the farm livestock was down to Fred. And me.

  Bal came into the barn and almost got my next load of shit dumped on his boots.

  “Want some help?”

  I turned and unloaded the shovel onto the pile I was making. “I got it.”

  “I didn’t know it was such a big deal.”

  “Huh?”

  Not a big deal? I’d only begged him for a solid month to fly out and help Cas with the farm so I could get this one week away. The only week I was ever likely to get. Then I realized Bal was talking about the stupid Wise Men stuff. He had no idea about the rest of the crap.

  “That? It’s over.” For at least an hour or two. Until it hit the papers and the news. Humiliation was the gift that kept on giving. I forked down a bale of fresh hay.

  “Let me, Scrooge.” Cas put her hand over mine on the handle. It was warm. She shoved a hot mug in my hand. “Have some milk of human kindness.” Always smarter than my brother, she’d come bearing an appeasement.

  “Fuck off.” Did they really think I was this upset about the stupid ritual? I took a long swig of hot chocolate and gasped as liquor burned my throat instead. Minty liquor.

  “Cas! You can’t—what about—”

  My sister rolled her eyes at me. “I was addicted to Vicodin. I’m not going to sabotage my sobriety pouring you peppermint schnapps.” She shuddered in distaste. “I could swim in it and not drink that crap.”

  I took a slower swallow. I did like my hot chocolate laced, but I’d tossed out every bit of drugs and liquor right down to the cough syrup when Cas got out of rehab last March.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Thanks for the trust, bro.” She punched my shoulder.”It was in that gift basket Mrs. Holtzman drops off every year.”

  I did trust her. Was it so terrible to not want to watch my sister turn into a stranger again? I gave her a lighter punch back, and she smiled.

  “So what did Tiff say?” Whether it was because she was a girl or because she hadn’t had her head knocked around on the football field, Cas got it. Knew that I hadn’t stomped off because I was pouting over the show. “Wedding’s off?”

  “Worse. She’s having it here.”

  I wasn’t always the Man Who Hated Christmas. And no, it wasn’t because my shoes were too tight or my heart three sizes too small. Bal had been the one who hated the farm, resented the endless work, even tried to justify it with an adolescent rant on the despicable commercialization of the holiday. Bal was the one who’d had his beat-up truck packed the night before graduation so he could get the hell out of Epiphany—off to California and college.

  I’d always loved Christmas. I’m not saying I enjoyed the whole robe thing—especially once the homophobic jokes became my accessory more than the myrrh thanks to my peer group—but as a kid, I’d loved the farm. The decorations, the reindeer, the kitschy-hokey relentless cheer of the biggest tree farm in Christmas-mad Epiphany, Pennsylvania, I loved it all. Until the January 15 when I turned twenty-one and my parents loaded the used RV they’d bought and said, “We’re off. Take care of the farm, Mel. It’s all yours.” Two years later they were killed when a sleeping driver drove them into a cement overpass support.

  At first, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to leave. Six years into running the farm I got it. Man, did I get it. It wasn’t only the crushing expectation of four generations of Halners landing on my shoulders like snow off our steep slate roof, but Epiphany had changed. I’d always liked thinking of Epiphany as the town that time forgot, with its gas-powered street lamps and one row of family-owned shops, not a chain supercenter for miles. Then three years ago, a gas company sank a few test drills around our valley in a not-too-well-kept-secret attempt to see if there was gold in the form of natural gas under our rocky soil.

  There was. A lot.

  Now half the town lived off royalties from their mineral rights and the rest of the town worked to feed, house and entertain the hordes of gas workers who’d invaded. I belonged to the second half. I wouldn’t let them onto the farm to test, caring a hell of a lot more about what it might do to the soil that nourished our trees than for mineral rights, but that hadn’t stopped me from working for them.

  One thing I’d found out in the past six years of running the farm was that the seasonal business just broke even. The property was unmortgaged, but the Christmas tree business only paid the taxes and insurance. If I wanted groceries, clothes or, God forbid, a trip to Williamsport where I wasn’t the only gay man in town, that was all extra.

  I’d been working at Skipper’s Diner since I turned sixteen. He’d added another whole room and expanded the kitchen when the Campion Gas Company
showed up to stay. Even during the season, my shifts started an hour after the farm closed. Skip stayed open until one. He had a license. Couldn’t let the gas men go to bed hungry. Or sober.

  Every minute I wasn’t at the farm for the past three months, I’d signed up for a shift, first to pay for my deposit, then to make sure I had money to spend in St. Thomas. Tonight I worked till closing. Me, Becky and Henry the cook.

  As I picked up two hot turkey sandwiches for the exhausted looking out-of-towners in my section, Henry let loose with a gem he’d probably been saving all night. “Saw you on TV. Looked real pretty in your dress, Melanie.”

  I batted my eyelashes at him. “Thanks for noticing, Henry. It’s my color.”

  Henry forced out a laugh, but his cheeks reddened and he turned away from the window.

  I was on my way from the beverage station when I heard the first rumble of it. The gas workers tended to get a bit rowdy. And suggestive about company late at night.

  Becky was new. Tiff had always known how to handle them. I caught Becky’s eye and raised the carafe mouthing, “Trade?”

  She came over and took the carafe. “Thanks, Mel.”

  I approached the table. Money was already on the check, and we couldn’t serve after midnight, so it was time to urge the five men toward the door.

  “Can I get you gentlemen anything else?”

  “Sure can.” That was the loud one. The one that had been my cue for rescue. “You can get back that pretty girl we was talkin’ to.” Bleary blue eyes looked up at me. “Damn. Not that you ain’t pretty none, but I want that girl.” The gas workers came to us from all over the country. This one sounded as if he’d been plucked directly from the mountains of East Kentucky.

  I caught the appraising stare from another pair of eyes under the filthy brim of a baseball cap, and then I caught my breath.

  Damn.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten that kind of look from one of the workers who passed through town for a week or a month—the truckers, the water guys, the drillers. And it wasn’t the first time the look inspired equal parts dread and excitement. The slow once over, the way he held my gaze for just a second too long said he knew about me, and knew what was on offer. That kind of stare could end out behind the dumpster with either a dick or a fist in my face, depending on how comfortable the guy was about what he wanted.