An Underestimated Christmas (Underestimated 3) (36 page)

I swear I woke to ringing bells. I raised up and looked to my sleeping wife and then to the clock.

“Morgan,” I whispered.

“Hmmm?” she mumbled, pushing my face away.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Go away,” she whined, rolling away from me.

“No. It’s Christmas. I want to be downstairs when the boys wake up. I want to see their faces.”

“Fine, go make coffee,” she groggily agreed. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door. Morgan shushed me, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t been this happy in a long time and I wanted to savor every second of it. I needed Morgan more than I cared to admit. Time was still needed, but at least I was getting it. I guess we had to go through what we did to get where we are. I hate to think where we would have been had we stayed in LA. Morgan could score anything she wanted off the streets there and I don’t know that she would have bounced back from it.

“That’s not coffee,” Morgan complained.

“I know, I forgot what I was doing. I’ll make coffee,” I offered.

“No, this is fine. I can’t believe we’re down here at seven o’clock in the morning. We might as well just do it.”

“Do what?”

“Get it in,” Morgan sang with some sort of silly dance move.

“Or we could YELL REAL LOUD!” I called toward the steps. The next thing I knew, I was wrestling my wife off me and to the floor. We spent the next twenty minutes getting it in on the cold tile.

I think Morgan was starting to doze when we heard both of them, running, not walking, to the family room. Tadpole jumped the step and screamed.

“Santa came!” he yelled with Nicky and Dasher right on his trail.

I spent the next two hours passing out presents. Morgan got me the normal wife buying gifts, socks, a new pair of gloves, a new wallet, and the best one of all, a genuine black polished sea glass necklace. One little tag hung to the side of it, reading…

Always remember how we got here.

I watched Drew wrap the black leather around his neck as I thought back to that day. Who would have thought a simple piece of tarnished glass would have made him so happy.

Our eyes smiled at each other while we both reflected on that day. One that I would never forget. Thinking about Drew coming for me that day, knowing I was with Dawson made me realize Drew had been fighting for me all along. I was just too blind to see it. I thought about that day, watching my sexy Santa entertain his prides, Nicky and Tadpole with presents.

“Did I find something?” he asked, holding up the sea glass.

I feigned ignorance and took it from his hand. “Yes. Do you have any idea what you just found?” I asked. Drew stood from the sand, curious as I held it to the sun.

“What is it?” he asked.

I handed it back. “Hold it to the sun and you will see that it’s not actually black at all.”

“It’s purple,” he realized. “Do you know what it’s from?”

“My guess is an old medicine bottle, at least a hundred years old.” I explained how they were made with iron slag. Because of no refrigeration back then, they made the bottles stronger and more resistant to shattering. The years of harsh conditions kept its contents from going bad.

“I found a rare piece?” he asked with a boyish grin and ten-year-old excitement.

“The rarest,” I assured him. “That piece may have even come all the way from Italy.”

“Wow. Really?” he asked, looking at his treasure through the sun again.

“Yup,” I assured him.

“I’m going to have a necklace made out of it.”

“Are we done hunting sea glass?” I asked. We had been there for almost three hours. I was hot and needed something to drink.

“Yeah, but I kind of wanted to climb that rock,” he said, pointing to the peak where the sea only let you cross at a certain time of the day.

“You’re joking,” I said, hoping that he was.

“No. Come on,” he urged, placing his new treasure safely in his pocket, pulling my hand.

“Drew, we can’t climb that rock. One of us is going to get hurt.”

“I’m a doctor,” he said, ignoring me.

I didn’t laugh. This was not just a little rock. This was a cliff. There was no way we were going to make it to the top without breaking our necks.

I complained the whole walk back, protesting his mission. He won.

Drew made me go first, and I slowly and carefully chose where to put my fingers and toes. This was ridiculous. This was the type of rock that you wore harnesses and had security ropes for when you fell. We were going to fall. There was no doubt in my mind. Maybe that was the plan. If I fell to my death rock climbing with my husband, he would inherit all of my fortunes. I remembered panicking, wondering if I was climbing my way to my death.

“Morgan?” Drew said, grunting from behind me and pulling himself higher up the sea cliff.

“What,” I answered, pulling myself up the complex elevation.

“Thank you for this. This has been the best couple of days of my life.”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t planning on murdering me. I smiled as I continued against my will to make my way to the top.

We finally made it, and my seldom-used muscles quivered. Rock climbing was hard work. I couldn’t believe it when we finally sat on the edge of the cliff. We were high, really high. Our feet dangled over the dangerous edge and it was absolutely breathtaking.

“How are we getting down?” Drew asked with a laugh.

“We’re not going down,” I assured him. “We’re going up.” There was no way I was climbing back down.

He laughed. “Take your shorts off so I can fuck you up here.”

My first thought should have been no way, but it wasn’t. I looked around. There was absolutely no way anyone could see us up there, except maybe a sailboat in the distance, if they had binoculars.

“Drew?” I said in a question.

“What?” he mimicked my tone. “I will do all the work. You just get naked and lay back.”

“You’re serious?” I asked.

He unbuttoned his jeans and removed his half-staff cock. “Take your shorts off, Morgan,” he demanded, stroking himself and letting me know that he was more than serious.

Of course, I did just that. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I slid out of my shorts, hooking my panties with them and laid back. Drew stroked himself up my wet pussy a couple of times before sliding into me.

Fuck…

The sound of the waves below us, the sea salt breeze, and the heat from the sun while Drew made love to me on top of the world was something that I’m sure I’ll never experience again for the rest of my life. Drew took his time and made slow, passionate love to me. He brought me to bliss not once, but twice before he plunged deep into me, releasing himself.

He stayed inside of me for as long as I could stand the rock digging into my lower back.

“I love you, Morgan,” he said, staring down at me.

“I love you, too, Drew.”

“Here, stop daydreaming and open this,” Drew ordered, pulling me from that sunny day back to reality. Nicholas didn’t care about anything under the tree. He had the Tower Bridge from London and he just wanted to go upstairs and put it with his train town. Tadpole couldn’t care less about anything other than the cheap Styrofoam sword. I took the little red box and smiled when Drew kissed my lips, dipping is tongue in for a special kiss for at least ten seconds.

I knew she would like it, but I didn’t think she would cry. Morgan picked at the sparkling red paper with her pink panted nails. I wanted to grab it and rip it off. She picked up the shattered heart and studied it. The heart had been broken into tiny little pieces and you could see small crevices where it had been glued back together.

She flipped it over and read the inscription.

“I’m an imperfect man, and I have made my wife an imperfect woman. We’re just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other. She will forever be my always.”

Morgan was in my arms in a split second. “This means so much, Drew. You don’t even know.”

“Dad, can I go now?” Nicky asked, holding up the only thing that mattered.

“Yes, go,” Morgan answered. “We’ll just open presents for the next week,” she sarcastically replied to his backside already hightailing it out of there. Tadpole sat on the floor and played with his SpongeBob racecar set and Morgan and I watched, happy and in love. His funny chatter could make the devil smile.

“Look, it’s snowing!” I called, seeing the heavy white flakes flow to the ground.

Morgan had the whole day planned for us, but by two in the afternoon, it was shot to hell. The ground was covered and Nicole and Stacy wanted to go play. We spent the afternoon sliding down a hill on inner tubes. That may have been in the top ten best days of my life.

Nicholas and Tadpole loved sled riding as much as I did. We let go of everything we had built up and had fun. Who would have thought sliding down a hill with my wife and boys piled on my lap would have been so much therapy.

This laughter right here was what it was all about. Christmas magic. An Underestimated Christmas.

May this year be your Underestimated Christmas and may you have the magic you deserve.

From the Kelley’s.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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