Page 21 of A Raging Merry Christmas
Silence fell, and I began planning Christian’s funeral.
Phoe’s narrowed gaze remained on him, and he crouched down and looked for the critters. Cody smirked and swapped an amused glance with Harley. They both seemed relieved it wasn’t them in Phoe’s bad books.
“Such a brave, idiotic prospect,” I muttered and flinched when Phoe’s glare swapped to me. I instantly got busy looking for the culprits of this mayhem.
“It was nice knowing you, Christian,” Aurora Victoria chipped in.
“There!” Gauntlet cried and dived at a running chipmunk. The chipmunk skidded on the wooden floor, its paws frantically scrabbling as Gauntlet flew past and slammed into one of the sofas, tipping Carly off.
Carly landed on Gauntlet, who grunted and wheezed for air. The chipmunk had a fuckin’ suicide wish because it reared up and hissed at Carly. She screamed, and Gauntlet winced and lost his breath again as she kneed him straight in the groin in her rush to get away from it.
“Fuck!” Klutz groaned as he went to help Gauntlet and ended up with an armful of Carly. She scrambled up Klutz like it was Artemis climbing Ace for monkey sex, and somehow Carly managed to get on his shoulders.
Klutz reached out and gripped Carly’s butt and then yelped. He moved his hands to her thighs and winced again and clutched the calves of her legs in the end.
“Good move, husband,” Aurora Victoria commented, looking amused.
“Don’t anyone tell Rock I grabbed his wife’s ass and thighs,” Klutz warned, glaring at everyone. The threat might have been more effective if Carly wasn’t shaking his head one way and another in her panic.
“Creepy little shits,” she muttered as the chipmunk staring at her hissed.
Grey helped Gauntlet into a kneeling position, but the moment he let go, Gauntlet keeled over on his side, still holding his groin.
“Go get him an ice pack,” I ordered Harley, who nodded and disappeared.
“Okay, let’s tackle this logically. Cody, go get some cheese and fresh fruit. Then lay two trails around the floor leading to cages,” I said.
Cody left and returned quickly, and we laid trails. The chipmunks were clearly hungry as they gobbled up our offerings and were soon inside the provided cage and locked up securely.
Everybody breathed a sigh of relief, although Gauntlet was still trying to breathe through his pain.
The women climbed down off the furniture and were starting to relax when Phoe looked horrified and knocked Penny down as she jumped on the sofa.
“There’s another one! It’s an invasion,” she screamed.
I sighed along with everyone who owned a dick while Aurora Victoria cackled loudly in her armchair as all the old ladies leapt back up onto their higher platforms.
???
Twenty minutes later, we had removed a family of four chipmunks. The fourth we’d found when Christian had stupidly shoved his head into the tree to find their nest. The last one had attacked Christian with all the fury of a possessed kitten and plastered itself to his face. He now sported scratches down either side of his cheeks.
After I called Rosie to come and check them over before releasing them, she suggested they’d probably been scrounging for food when the guys chopped the tree down. And then, frightened, they had stayed hidden within the thick branches.
An hour later, we were back in the snow, hanging lights. What a brilliant idea this had been of Drake’s… not. Christmas was going to be a disaster. It would take us weeks to get all these lights finished, and we weren’t even a quarter of the way through the list.
Finally, we’d done the trees on the drive and those leading up to the Hall. It was dark, and all we needed to do was flip the circuit breaker, and the area would be lit up.
“We need help,” Klutz admitted.
“Yeah,” Gauntlet agreed.
“So why didn’t you book the decorators that Mum uses every year? They manage it in a weekend,” Christian asked.
“What?” Klutz demanded, turning to the prospects.
“Mom has a team for the inside and one for the outside,” Cody informed us.
“Are you kidding? We could have paid someone to do this?” Gauntlet snarled.