Chapter 1

Trevor Stafford, aka a man with as much Christmas spirit as a holey sock

If a man'shome is his castle, mine has apparently been turned into gingerbread.

And I hate gingerbread.

I stifle a snarl, but I can't stop my face from having a reaction of its own as the smell and the sounds hit me.

Christmas cookies. Christmas music. Christmas candles. Christmas towels? All over my modern kitchen. What the hell?

Right.

Megis what the hell.

Meg O'Connell. My college best friend's dark-haired, blue-eyed little sister. A bundle of starlight perpetually wrapped in red clothing. North Pole Elf in a previous life. And my currently-outstaying-her-welcome temporary housemate who's shaking her hips along to that annoying Mariah Carey Christmas song while wrapped in an apron covered with reindeer and flour, rolling out cookie dough on the black granite countertop of my kitchen island.

And of course she notices that I'm home. And not in control of my face.

"Hi, Trevor! How was physical therapy? Should I get your—oh. Um, hi. Everything okay?"

"Fine," I grunt as I navigate around the disaster she's made of my kitchen.

It's warm in here. Way warmer than the unseasonably cold weather outside in southern Virginia. I drop my jacket on the floor—fuck, that's gonna be coated in flour too—grab the freezer handle of my side-by-side stainless fridge, then yank my hand back when it connects with something slick and not-supposed-to-be-there.

"Oh, sorry." Meg drops her reindeer cookie cutter—side note, why are there reindeer cookie cutters in my kitchen?—and hustles to me, bringing with her the scent of hot chocolate and Christmas trees. She snags a towel and goes to town fisting her hand up and down over the freezer handle. "I must've had something on my hand when I opened it. Sorry. Should've wiped that down already. Here. Let me get your ice pack."

She's jerking off my freezer handle.

She's jerking off my freezer handle with a reindeer towel, and now my dick's taking notice, in the middle of a damn Christmas nightmare in my holiday-free-zone house.

And now she's attacking me too, grabbing my wrist with one of her soft, warm, flour-covered hands while she flips my palm up and efficiently wipes the slime off my skin with a part of the towel that's miraculously still clean.

Also, there's a reindeer staring at me from that towel.

It knows what my dick is doing and it is judging me.

Shut the hell up, reindeer. Nobody asked you, and what are you doing staring at my dick anyway?

Also, I don't need a reindeer judging me for an unexpected and unwelcome hard-on.

I'm judging myself for it enough.

Much like I have been every time I've gotten a hard-on when I've seen Meg in my house the past few weeks.

I blame the painkillers.

Safest that way.

Because I've spent the past too many years since college pretending like this doesn't happen every time I happen to cross paths with my best friend's little sister.

"Are you okay?" Meg, who clearly has zero reasons to care about the action behind my fly, asks. "Seriously? You look like you did that time when Jude hit that home run off of you the first time you faced each other in the majors. Oh. Sorry. Sore topic. Right. You struck him out way more times than he hit home runs off of you, if it helps. Here. Ice pack. Shoulder. Want a cookie? I just finished decorating the first batch. There's something about your house that's total magic. I've never had gingerbread cookies turn out this well."

I snatch my hand back and take the ice pack from her. "Why are you here?"

"The Bergers have so much family in town that I was relieved of duty until after the New Year. Accidental paid time off, but I'm on call just in case. Awesome, right? Although, I'll miss the babies." She winks at me. "Don't tell Zeus and Joey, but I'm totally making these for them as an excuse to give my little sweeties extra hugs and kisses since I'm not scheduled to see them again for so long."

My cheek is twitching in time with the pulsing ache in my pitching arm and in direct opposition to the way my dick is still lifting sleepy eyeballs at Meg like it's once again remembered we have a woman that we've been denying being attracted to for years living in the house with us.

It probably has.

She's not around a lot.

And there are rarely women in my house.

Plus, Meg isn't a woman. She's my best friend's little sister, which makes her not a woman.

Which is a message that my dick still hasn't received, no matter how many times I've told it as much over the years.

I grunt again and turn away. Physical therapy drains me dry these days, and my bedroom, which shares a wall with the kitchen, is too far away. "So long sounds like a good time to look for an apartment."

She doesn't answer.

She doesn't start singing again.

The oven's not beeping.

Nothing's catching on fire and setting off the smoke alarms.

She definitely heard me.

Fuck.

Meg and I have known each other tangentially since Jude and I met playing ball together in college. See her—saw her occasionally whenever our teams faced off once we both hit the big league too.

And it's my fault she's here.

I ran into my buddy Zeus at the grocery store a while back. When he told me he and his wife had lost another nanny for their baby quadruplets, I remembered Jude saying Meg was temporarily without a job after some incident at the preschool where she'd been working.

Bad fit, Jude had said. Meg's a bit unfiltered sometimes, and the preschool was a little uppity.

Zeus is a little unfiltered.

Okay, a lot unfiltered. His wife even more so.

And Meg?

She never sits still. So having her crash here temporarily while she gets her bearings in the city was supposed to be like having an old friend-of-a-friend for dinner once or twice a week. There's always somewhere she has to flit off to or something she has to do, which is also helpful with my mental attitude that she is not a woman in my house.

Until today.

When my defenses are low and I'm pissed and she's desecrating my kitchen and my dick still wants her.

My dick should be glad for what she's doing in here.

Makes her far less attractive.

"Sorry," I mutter. "Arm hurts."

"Trevor! Of course it does. You had major surgery and physical therapy is hard. Did you get any painkillers at the clinic? Can I?—"

"Why do you do that?" I spin, make my shoulder twitch, and barely stifle a grimace of pain as I readjust the ice pack. "Why do you make excuses for people who are assholes to you?"

Her blue eyes widen until they're practically round. Her lips part, and her pink tongue darts out to swipe them before she visibly swallows. "You're not being an asshole to me."

"Yes, I am."

"You're cranky, but I would be too if I were you."

And now I'm swallowing. Hard.

She thinks my attitude is all about my damn shoulder giving out and ending my baseball career. About spending my last year demoted to the minors and spending half of that in rehab. About knowing it was the Fireballs ownership taking pity on me and letting me decide for myself when I was done instead of forcing me out of my contract, and then, when they called me up to give me a ceremonial role in the final World Series games, I completely and totally blew my shoulder out on the very last pitch.

I got my ring.

Barely feel like I earned it.

And I ended my career, no ifs, ands, or buts about it this time.

She's not wrong.

The end of my baseball career has me inside out and upside down and pissy and lost. I don't like being upside down and pissy and lost, but it's where I'm at.

And the worst part?

She's so very, very far from all of what's wrong with me today.

"Christmas sucks." I manage to not snarl it, but just barely. Normal Christmas? Annoying. This Christmas? It's hell.

I have an off-limits woman living in my house, Christmas-ing it up, my career is over, and I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do with the rest of my life. "Clean up when you're done and try to keep it contained when I'm here."

She blinks twice, and this time, there's no patient, make-excuses-for-him Meg coming up with an instant answer.

This time, there's hurt.

Fuck.

I make another grunting noise and turn to head to my room again.

She doesn't speak.

She doesn't follow me.

The oven timer goes off, but I notice she turns down the Christmas music before she shuts off the beeping.

I shove away the guilt building at knowing I've just lobbed a flaming shitball at an otherwise happy and easy houseguest, and I stride as fast as I can go down the hall to my bedroom, which also smells like pine trees and sugar cookies.

It's all tinged with bad childhood memories made worse by the pissy mood I've been in for the past six weeks.

Meg's right.

I need painkillers.

Preferably the kind that'll put me in a stupor until mid-January.

Shouldn't have stopped at the ice pack in the kitchen.

I should've grabbed the whiskey too.