Three Christmas Wishes - Krista Wolf Page 0,19

excitedly.

“No,” I laughed. “Why? Did you want to?”

“Well yeah,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. “If you were staying with us, of course.”

The heat flared again, flowing up from my loins and surging out through my body. I already had some butterfly-inducing ideas of how the night would go. And when it came to the boys, I had definitive plans for them.

“So what are we—”

“We’re taking a ghost-tour,” I cut Valerio off excitedly. “Since they started them I’ve been dying to do one, but Drake always thought the whole idea was silly and ridiculous.”

“Drake?” Brock asked.

“Yeah. My ex-boyfriend.”

“That’s really his name?” Kade scoffed. “Drake?”

“I’m afraid so,” I chuckled.

“Sounds evil,” said Valerio. “Like an 80’s movie arch-villain or something.”

“Totally,” Brock agreed. “Like his parents abandoned him at birth, and he grew up with a vendetta.”

“Drake sounds like a trust-fund child name,” said Kade. “Or a video game character. Someone who’d definitely have a secret lair. Or—”

“Alright, alright,” I conceded. “I only dated the guy, I didn’t name him!”

The guys laughed and I laughed with them. It felt good to laugh. I’d been working double-shifts the entire week; all day at the foundry, and after a brief evening nap, spending my nights back at the foundry as well. Today I’d finally taken the afternoon off, and caught up on some much-needed sleep. I felt rested and recharged. Pumped and excited about our ‘date.’

“I’ve always been afraid to take the tour myself,” I said. “But now I have three strong yard-workers to protect me from the evil spirits.”

“Two strong ones anyway,” Kade smirked. “Valerio needs more time in the gym, if we’re being hones—”

“Oh yeah?” Valerio challenged. “Think so?”

He lifted his shirt and half-turned in his seat, revealing a magnificent 8-pack of hard, ripped abdominals. My eyes shifted and stayed glued to them, the entire time he kept his shirt up. I almost ran off the road.

“Put those things away and let’s do some curls,” Kade grunted. He slid one giant arm over the back of the passenger seat and flexed a potato-sized bicep. “Then we’ll talk.”

It was unbelievable, the amount of raw testosterone surging through the car. I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been entranced. If I wasn’t already imagining the three of them with shirts off, and my hands roaming freely over their naked bodies.

Shit. Maybe I should’ve booked a room…

“You boys done posting up on each other?” I chided them. “Because we’re here.”

I pulled into the newly-paved parking area and killed the engine. It was a little comical, cramming these big guys in the smallish back seat of my pickup’s cab. But they’d let me do it. After all, I was taking them on a date, not the other way around.

“Look, I know this probably isn’t the most exciting way to spend a Friday night,” I said. “But I’m a little bit of a freak for this kind of stuff, and I appreciate you humoring me.”

I pointed upward, to where the giant Gothic towers loomed. From here they looked even more imposing.

“So stick it out with me,” I told them. “Humor my little ghost-hunting antics, just for now. And later on, for the second part of the date…”

Eye to eye I scanned them slowly, flashing each of them my most sultry, promising look.

“I’ll make sure you boys get well rewarded.”

Sixteen

SLOANE

We ended up at their place, which I thought we might. It was a gorgeous craftsman-style house on the east end of town, at the end of a long, historic street. Like most of the houses around it, it was run-down and dilapidated. On the outside, anyway.

On the inside however, it was cozy and beautiful.

“So you’re fixing this place up?”

It was a rhetoric question, because the answer was evident by the sheer amount of construction projects all open at once. Half the floors were covered in tarps. Most of the lathe was broken away from cracked plaster walls, and wires sprouted forth with thick yellow caps where outlets were supposed to be.

“Been fixing it up for half a year now,” said Brock. “All three of us.”

Valerio chuckled. “If you think it’s bad now, you should’ve seen what it looked like back then.”

Despite everything, certain parts of the house were not only livable but actually done. Other than finish work, the kitchen was passable. The cabinets and even the appliances were all installed, even if they weren’t stained or lacquered. There was a wood-paneled living area that looked nearly done also, and I could tell it was the focal point