Chapter Thirty-Four

Nash

Christmas Morning…

The moment of truth had arrived.

Nash had woken up before the sun. Had there been a noise? Had Sir Hiss pounced on him in his sleep again? Who knew, but he was 100 percent awake without the aid of coffee or an alarm clock, watching the sky outside his old bedroom window at Gable House go from pitch black to soft pastels to the bright winter blue that promised snow later in the day. Tucked in against his chest, Chelle snored quietly. However, from their spot at the foot of the bed, Mary Puppins and Groucho Barks sawed logs loud enough to wake the dead.

Of course, those snores turned to ferocious barking when some dumbass pounded on the bedroom door.

“Get your ass up,” Dixon hollered through the door. “It’s time to open presents.”

Nash had flung the comforter aside and was halfway across the room while Chelle was still trying to blink herself awake—the woman needed a vat of coffee every morning just to function. He yanked open the door to find Fiona and Dixon standing in the hall. Fiona looked just slightly more awake than Chelle.

“I kept him in our room as long as humanly possible,” Fiona said, her voice still rough from sleep. “I’m sorry.”

Dixon didn’t look sorry in the least little bit. Instead, he just smiled his shit-eating, I’m-gonna-win grin and let out a sharp whistle.

“Who wants breakfast?” he asked as he headed for the stairs, the pugs hot on his heels. “I can already smell the bacon Griff’s making.”

Fiona let out a tired sigh and shook her head before shuffling down the hall, tailed by Sir Hiss, who stayed a respectful stalking distance of three feet behind her.

“I’m gonna murder your cousin in a book,” Chelle said as she got up from the bed, adjusting her sleep shorts and cropped tank top as she did.

“I’ll buy a hundred copies,” he promised.

Chelle chuckled and started to go through her morning series of stretches that gave Nash tantalizing glimpses of her thighs, stomach, and phenomenal tits when she moved.

“I guess we better get down there,” she said as she rolled her head from side to side.

It took Nash a second to remember they had obligations outside of their bedroom, when all he wanted to do was toss Chelle back onto the bed and strip her down. That, however, he was going to have to wait for—his cousins would make sure of that.

“Yeah, he’s definitely not going to stop being annoying until someone opens up Grandma Betty’s present.” He plucked the sprig of mistletoe up from the top of the dresser and walked over to Chelle, holding it over her head. “But first thing first.”

He bent down and kissed her until they were both breathless. He really was going to have to kill Dixon for forcing them all to leave their rooms so early.

“Merry Christmas to me,” she said, bringing her fingers to her kiss-swollen lips. “Now let’s get down there. I can’t wait to see you open your presents.”

A plate of biscuits and gravy later (thank you, Kinsey’s family recipe), Nash was sitting on the couch in the living room, holding a steaming mug of coffee strong enough that a spoon would stand straight up in it. Wrapping paper and colored tissue paper were littered on the floor and everyone had a small pile of gifts near where they sat. The dogs were asleep in front of the fireplace, Chelle was tucked up against his side with Sir Hiss asleep on her lap, and his numbnut cousins were arguing over how to pick who got to open Grandma Betty’s present now that they’d all lost the Last Man Standing bet.

“Oh. My. God,” Morgan said as she snagged two snickerdoodles from the tray of Christmas cookies on the coffee table. “Three-way rock, paper, scissors.”

Dixon looked at Griff, who grunted his agreement and then shifted his gaze to Nash, who nodded.

They’d developed their version of the game over the summers they’d spent at Gable House as kids. The rules were simple. They each closed their eyes and tapped their closed fists on their palm three times. On the fourth tap, they opened their eyes and made either a closed fist for rock, a flat hand for paper, or two fingers outstretched for scissors. Paper beat rock. Rock beat scissors. Scissors beat paper.

One of each, they all lost, and therefore played another round.

One rock and two papers, the rock was out and the rocks played another round.

One rock and two scissors, both scissors were out. They went through as many lightning rounds of that until there was only one Beckett left.

Nash got up and stood with his cousins by the fireplace. Griff was out on the first round—never go paper first. The second round was a tie of double scissors. Dixon won the third round with a rock.

Everyone but Dixon and Fiona let out a groan.

Nash sat down on the couch next to Chelle, who gave him a sympathetic look.

“Sorry you lost,” she said.

He shrugged, not caring in the least. “As long as I have you, I already have everything I could ever want,” Nash said, brushing a kiss across her temple.

Cheesy? Abso-fucking-lutely. A hundred percent true? Without a single doubt.

Anyway, no matter what was inside the present, Nash knew that Grandma Betty had already outmaneuvered and outplayed him at his own game of manipulating people for their own good. He couldn’t be happier about it.

Also extremely happy at the moment? Dixon, who was doing a victory lap around the living room.

Smug as ever, his cousin shot the room a self-satisfied grin and held out his hand for Grandma’s present. “I’ll take that, thank you very much.”

…

Dixon

There was nothing in the world like a come-from-behind win—not even the best high in the world came close.

The only thing that rivaled sweet, sweet victory was any single thing that had to do with Fiona. Even the stuff that drove him nuts about her, like the fact that she was pretty much always right. For a man with an ego the size of the Northwest Territories (yeah, he was man enough to admit it), that hurt—almost as much as the fact that she kicked his ass every time they played Onze. He’d figure out a way to beat her. Eventually. They did have a whole lifetime together for him to find a way.

In the meantime, he had today’s triumph to hold over his cousins’ heads. Yeah, life was about as close to perfect at this moment as possible.

Morgan—who had taken possession of the present before any of the older cousins could snag it this morning—gave it to him. As everyone watched, Dixon made a big production of shaking the box next to his ear (it didn’t make any noise) and holding it in his palm as if weighing it (mysteriously light). Then he lifted the rectangle wrapped in evergreen paper up to the light coming from the lamp by the oversize chair, where Fiona had folded herself up like a human pretzel. He squinted at the bottom of the package as if he could see through it.

Was he dragging this out?

Hell yes. He never said he wasn’t an asshole.

“Dixon Beckett,” Fiona said with a dramatic sigh. “I’m gonna tell everyone about your addiction to trashy reality TV if you don’t put everyone out of their misery and open that present.”

“You just told everyone,” he said, clutching the gift to his chest in mock outrage like some Regency Era romance heroine she’d accused him of being when they first met.

“Not the names of the shows, like Ma—”

“Okay,” he interrupted before she could spill the name of his favorite show—his cousins would never let him hear the end of it. “I’m opening it.”

Everyone in the room started clapping and grumbling things like “finally” and “pain in the ass.”

He sat down on the massive ottoman positioned at the end of Fiona’s chair. He sat the present down on his lap and smoothed his palms over the crinkly wrapping paper. Yes, he was still drawing this out—he was an asshole, remember—but he was also processing the fact that this really was the last gift from their grandmother that any of them would get. There was no way he could do this without taking at least a few seconds to say thank you to Grandma Betty.

The air shifted behind him as Fiona scooted forward, wrapping her arms and legs around him from behind before she laid her cheek against his back. She knew. Everyone in the room knew, which was why they’d stopped giving him shit and telling him to hurry up and open it already.

He slid his fingertips under one fold of the wrapping paper, unsticking the tape, and repeated the process until the paper fell away in his lap, revealing a plain white box. He lifted the lid, pushed the bright green tissue paper aside to reveal the mystery present, and started laughing.

…

Griff

Dixon’s face was all soft and squishy and fucking smiley when he stopped doing the hyena giggle and looked down at the present. It was a look that in all their time growing up together, Griff had never seen on his cousin’s face—especially not when he was about to bask in his winnings. Something was up.

“What is it?” Griff asked, craning to get a look at what was inside the open box.

Dixon shook his head and pulled out a knitted red, green, and white Christmas sweater that was roughly the size of his head. Stitched into the middle of it in green were the words “Great Grandma Loves Me.” Then he turned the sweater around to reveal the words “Beckett Baby Number One.” Griff had already put the clues together before his cousin pulled out a second sweater identical to the first, except it said “Beckett Baby Number Two.” Fiona reached into the box after that and picked up a third sweater with the words—yeah, no shocker—“Beckett Baby Number Three.”

It took all of about three seconds for Griff to put the pieces together. He looked over at his fiancée, Kinsey, who was giving him the you-see-what’s-happening look because, of course, she worked the whole thing out half a second before he had. They had a quick silence go between discussion about it, and then he grunted his agreement with her assessment. Grandma Betty definitely wasn’t done with the oldest Beckett cousins quite yet.

“You know what this means, right?” Dixon asked as his focus ping-ponged between Griff and Nash.

“Another bet,” Griff said as he shook his head, because there was no use fighting the inevitable.

Yes, they were competitive jerks, but it’s who they were, and Grandma Betty had known how to use that to her advantage—turned out the Last Man Standing bet had been to their advantage, too, now that each of them had gone from confirmed bachelor to happily in love in the past year.

Nash picked up one of the sweaters and held it up as if he was judging the size. “A race to produce the next generation of Becketts?”

Kinsey, Fiona, and Chelle all rolled their eyes. Griff couldn’t blame them any more than he could turn down the bet that was about to be agreed to.

Cocky as ever, Dixon shot his cousins a shit-eating grin. “Oh, the sacrifices I have to make just to beat you two again.”

“So you’re both agreed?” Nash held out his hand. “Babies win?”

Griff and Dixon nodded and took turns shaking his hand. It wasn’t until Nash started laughing that Griff realized where he’d gone wrong.

“Asshole,” he grumbled at Nash.

…

Nash

Victory wasn’t just sweet. It was fucking perfect.

“I believe those are mine.” He held out his hand. “I did adopt them, after all.”

Chelle smothered a laugh before adding, “He insisted the lawyer draw up the papers before the holiday.”

Dixon looked over at him in confusion for half a second before his smart-ass grin faded and the realization hit. He looked over at Griff as if searching for an ally, but their cousin just shrugged and grunted. Translation: Nash Beckett had won. While Fiona giggled and Kinsey lifted her teacup in toast, Dixon rolled his eyes and handed over Grandma Betty’s gift.

Nash lifted the three red, white, and green sweaters over his head in triumph. “To the fur baby winners—Sir Hiss Finch-Beckett, Mary Puppins Finch-Beckett, and Groucho Barks Finch-Beckett.”

The animals had no clue what all the fuss was about, but the pugs still yapped as they accepted snickerdoodle crumb bribes while he pulled the sweaters over their heads, and the cat just stayed laying on its side on the floor, meowing pitifully about the humiliation of having to wear a sweater when his turn arrived.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” Chelle asked as she took pictures of him holding up the very unenthusiastic Sir Hiss.

“Absolutely,” he said before putting the cat down and joining his fiancée on the couch. “Somewhere up there, Grandma Betty has to be smiling, because her brilliant ploy had worked exactly as she’d planned.”

It was true—even for him. And he couldn’t be happier. He had the woman he loved, the fur babies he adored, and a life that he hadn’t imagined possible. Plus, now he’d won the latest competition. Did it get better than that? He didn’t think so.

Chelle snuggled into his side as they watched the rest of the Becketts and soon-to-be-Becketts laugh and take pictures of the animals in their new sweaters. “Do you think the younger cousins think they’re free and clear?”

“Yeah,” Nash said. “But they’re wrong.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Because no one loved happily-ever-afters more than Grandma Betty.” He dipped his head down, stopping just short of kissing his now and forever wife. “I know she gave us ours. I love you, Mrs. Chelle Finch-Beckett.”

“I love you, too,” she said before meeting him halfway in a kiss that made the whole rest of the world disappear.