My Christmas Star

"You might as well stop. I'm not going to allow you to purchase anything here."

Stopping in my tracks, I turned to see the store's junior manager, Gary Vincent, standing a few feet away. The disgusted look on his face was enough to have set me off without the comment that preceded. A longtime friend of my brother Tyler's, Gary was a very familiar face.

"Do what?" I asked, a cold fire in me belly.

"This store doesn't sell to an arsonist." He looked like he was about to spit in my face. "Please leave before I call the Sheriff to remove you."

That was it. That's all it took on a day like this, after a week like I had had. I wanted to rage. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something or someone. And here this fucker, who had come over to my parent's house and eaten at my mother's table so many times, had the goddamn nerve to fucking talk to me like that. How fucking dare he?

How fucking dare he?

"Arsonist? What the fuck do you know about arson?"

I shoved the cart I had been pushing away from me where it crashed into a display of Campbell's soup sending it spilling small red cans all over the place. That, plus my level of voice, drew every eye to us.

"Let me fucking tell you about arson! Arson is what happened to my parents. Arson is what happened to every single scrap of my life, my sister's lives, my brother's life that we didn't happen have in our pockets at the time of the fire. It's a miracle under God that my sisters were staying over at over grandmother's or they too would have been charred corpses pull out from the ashes, just like our parents were. That's what fucking arson is, and don't you fucking dare come at me accusing me of setting a fire! I've fucking seen what fire can do! I've seen the ashes of three generations of my family's memories and heritage! I've seen the burned bodies of my parents! That's what fucking arson is, you asshole. Not some goddamn hotel -- under construction for fuck sake -- catching fire."

"Get out of my store, you over-privileged snot."

That stopped me cold.

"Over-privileged? What fucking life do you think I've lived there, Gary? I went to the same schools you went to. I grew up in the same fucking places. All my clothes come from Walmart, just like yours. What fucking privilege are you seeing? I have nothing I haven't worked my ass off to either get or to hold."

He moved to stand toe-to-toe with me.

"HAH! You've had everything handed to you, Randal. Fucking everything. I'm sorry your Daddy's greed for more money caught up with him and he and your mom died in a firetrap of a house he could have sold months earlier if he hadn't been so greedy. Damn fucking shame, your Mom was good people. But you? You're a trust-fund-living-shit that thinks life is hard and wants to do nothing but shit on people with less trying to struggle their way through this life." Spit was flying out his mouth with almost every word. "Do you have any idea how many people in this town you fucked over when you set that fire at the hotel? Everyone. That place was going to open up paths for so many people around here to finally live a life that didn't have to be a paycheck to paycheck struggle. You're a...."

"I didn't set the fucking fire at the hotel!" Oh, I wanted to punch this shithead. "I was on my boat, miles away, asleep when it was set! I didn't even know it was burning till after I had the handcuffs on."

He jabbed me in the chest. "Bullshit! You're the only one in the town that didn't want that hotel to prosper. It was fucking you. You and that fucking cunt that lied for you and ----"

All my rage found its so badly needed outlet. With that one word against Victoria, it found the spark.

Crashing into Gary, we tumbled into an end cap of half-off Stovetop stuffing boxes. With a storm of cardboard raining down on us, we hit the floor both of us throwing body punches. We were like two dogs that had been snarling at each other that were suddenly turned loose. We couldn't find enough places to hit in the seconds we had to swing. We might have managed to do each other real damage but the floor was too slick to get purchase for our feet, so we couldn't put our full body behind those jabs.

Rolling over and over, locked together in a mutual hatred that was viral, we crashed into a display of Christmas cookies, sending them down into the mix of stuff on the floor.

"Hey come on! Guys, stop it already."

Hands were on us trying to separate the two of us. We fought that, each of us trying to get at least one more swing in. To make the fucker in front of us feel at least one more hint of the pain we felt tearing at us. Anger had us both burning inside.

But we were pulled apart. Me by a town landscaper, Gary by two of the grocery store's stock boys.

There was blood in my mouth. My lip was busted, my ribs hurt. I could see that I had landed at least one good shot to Gary's right eye, it was swelling shut. His noes was bleeding.

It wasn't enough. I wanted him broken. He felt the same about me

"YOU FUCKING SHIT! I'm going to own your ass! I'm going to charge you with assault, motherfucker!" he struggled against the two men holding him.

I spit blood back at him. "Bring it, shithead! You just fucking bring it."

"Knock it off!" The voice was hard, adult, and used to being in charge. I looked to the side and saw Frank Mitchel, larger than life, the pastor of the local Baptist church. My Grandmother's church. The man who had officiated at my parent's funeral. "There are children present, gentlemen. Act your age, for once, and settle down."

If there was a person in this fucking town I respected, it was him.

I eased my hate back and stuffed it away for another day. The hard, grass-stained hands holding my arms slacked off as I did so.

Pastor Mitchel stepped between us, his bulk putting any thoughts of a rush to continue fighting away. There was no doubt in my mind, or Gary's either I could see, that Frank Mitchel would kick both our butts and then pray over us if we even thought of trying something.

He turned first to Gary. "You called a wonderful woman a terrible name. You deserve to have your butt handed to you. If I hear you do it again, and I promise you, Randal, there won't be the one swinging at you. Do you get me?" At Gary's terse nod he looked at the trashed consumables scattered around our feet. "Get back to doing your job, young man."

Frank turned to me about to say something, but Gary had the nerve to stop him.

"Who's going to pay for all this?" he demanded, looking at me with his one good eye. The other had closed shut.

Reaching behind me, I pulled out my wallet, fished out my last pair of twenties and tossed them at his feet. "Beyond that much is on you."

"You ..." I looked at the pastor. "With me. Now."

Not completely turning my back on Gary, I followed my grandmother's preacher out the store and into the parking lot. He did a beeline for my grandfather's green step-side Silverado and I was obliged to follow.

He turned and pointed at my chest.

"Randal, I want you to listen to me and I want you to listen to me hard. Get your butt out of this town for a bit. I don't care where you go, or what you do there. But the longer you stay here, now, with the way these people are feeling towards you, the more chances of things like this happening you're going to encounter. And I'm here to tell you, son, that one of these times you're going to be looking up at Sheriff Tillman's nightstick and you're going to wake up back in that holding cell in his office. They are not going to cut you any slack and they are people looking for an excuse to put you back in jail around here. That young man in there, well he's not so much a part of it but he is going to aid in the attempt, even if he doesn't know he's doing it."

He hung his head for a second, maybe saying a silent prayer.

"This town is sick. It's a sickness I've got to try and heal. God is testing the people of this town, you included, and let me tell you every time that you let your anger get the better of you ... the way it did in there just now ... you are playing right into the hands of the people that want to see you fall. I promised your grandmother, I would pray for you, and I'm going to do that for you, but I can only pray so much for any one person and have it do any good when that person is going out of his way to make himself a target.

"All I did was stop for some groceries for my Nana."

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what or why Randal. The what and why of this situation went out the door the moment that hotel caught fire."

"I didn't set the fire."

"I know you didn't, boy. It's not in your nature to do something like that, not after what happened to your parents. But what I know doesn't matter a hill of beans at the moment. Not here. Not now. I've got some influences in this town, and I'm going to use it to guide my flock back to the path that God has set for them, but I need you to do your part."

I was still too pissed to see straight.

"You want me to leave? Really? You want me to run away from what's going on? To just up and pull stakes and leave my grandmother and my sisters here to fend for themselves."

His eyes flashed hot. "I've got your grandmother in my hands, boy, don't you doubt that for a second. And everyone in this town had better know that if they ever move against her, or those two little girls, in any way that I'll, will be the hand of God's vengeance upon their heads. Never doubt that."

In the distance, I could hear the sound of a siren. The pastor heard it too.

Opening my truck's driver side door, he gestured me inside. "Now, if you will get out of here before the law arrives, I can deal with smoothing this mess over without anyone going to jail."

I looked the preacher in the eyes. Frank Mitchel had been one of those longtime friends of my father that had advised him to sell and let the hotel take the family land. That knowledge alone stood in the way of me listening to him completely.

"I'm leaving, but I ain't running."

With a slow nod, he acknowledged what I was saying. "You would do well to buy your groceries elsewhere. In fact, buy everything elsewhere for a while. Or let your grandmother buy them. Now get ... while you still can."

I drove out the back of the parking lot even as Sheriff Tillman was pulling into the front of it. When I hit the coastal highway the urge to just keep going was strong. I wanted to turn either north or south and drive away from these stupid people and their problems.

Over-privileged?

That stung. That stung like a wasp in bone marrow. Is that how the people of this place see me? Just because my family did reasonably well and invested in businesses that didn't crash and burn? Just because we didn't spend ourselves broke on the latest doodads and keep what we earned in stable bonds and mutual funds? So because my grandfather and Dad had been reasonably good at managing money I was seen as over-privileged...?

Fuck them.

Fuck every last fucking one of them.

With a bitter taste in my mouth, I turned down the highway and drove sixty miles down the coast to the next town and went there to get the groceries I had wanted to buy, but not be allowed to.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Word of my fight with that fool Gary spread through town and, by Friday night, the exact reason I had swung on him was well known to everyone as well. The rumor mill took that, patched it together with the fact that Victoria had been in my presence in the extremely early morning, and ran with it. The inevitable question began to make the rounds.

"Are Randal Scotts and Victoria Elliot sleeping together?" seemed to be on everyone's lips.

Even her daughter's.

The phone call came out the blue. I was sitting on the padded bench seat of the Star when a familiar ring tone startled me. "I Miss the Misery" Picking up my phone, I couldn't believe I was seeing that number on my screen again. Well....

"Hello?"

Jennifer all but jumped down my throat through the phone. "Are you sleeping with my mom?"

"Nice to hear from you too. You should call more often ... oh, yeah we're not dating anymore so there's nothing for us to talk about, that's why you don't need to call me." I hung up.

She instantly called me back.

I grinned as I hit the button and spoke into my phone "Jennifer, is there some part of being hung up on that you don't understand?"

I hung up again.

Then the phone began to buzz with an incoming texting storm.

* Are you sleeping with my Mom? *

I placed the phone face down on the table and walked into the cabin and came back with a beer. When I picked it up there were three more new texts waiting.

* Are You?*

*Answer me, goddammit *

*You are! You Fucking sick bastard!*

Picking up the phone, I dialed her number, propping my feet up on the aft rail. I had a mouthful of suds when she picked up.

"Randal!"

"Yeah, bitch, what yah want?" I began absently peeling label on the bottle.

"Don't call me a Bitch!"

I uncrossed and recrossed my ankles. "I'm not your boyfriend now, Jenn, I'll call you anything I like. Bitch fits best. Now what part of I'm not answering that fucking question don't you understand?"

"You're sleeping with my mom!"

A long sip of beer. Make her wait.

"Randal?"

Oh, the quiet desperation in her voice. Such anguish. "I'm still here. And I'm still not answering that question."

"You're not answering it, is answering it!"

"Well, then you must have the answer you wanted then, piss off." I moved the phone away from my face enough to see the button. "Bitch."

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Thr...

"God damn it, Randal! Stop that--!"

Click.

It's petty.

It's petty as hell.

Draining down the last of this cold hoppy beer, I looked off into the distance at the ruined remains of what was going to be this towns' future. Already the wheel was turning that was going to send this whole fucking place off the tracks. I could see them. Because of what my father had told me, and what I had seen happening in the last week, I was now sure that Dad had been right. There were warnings that I could give to people, but no one wanted to listen to my father when he tried to give them, so fuck all of them.

Again my phone rang. Glancing at it, I saw it was Jennifer again.

"Yes."

"Randal don't hang up on me. I need an answer, damn it."

I toss the empty beer bottle at the trash can. "I just gave it to you. Yes. I'm sleeping with your mother. We've got a date planned, where I hope I'll get to sleep with her again." I paused for a half second to let her absorb that part completely. "Happy, now?"

"You're one sick--"

That was long enough. "And not one thing about what your mother and I are doing is any of your business, Jennifer. Not a single thing. Now this will be the only time I ever tell you this. Butt. The fuck. Out."

Click.

Tossing the phone aside, I saw it buzz with incoming texts. Ignoring them all, I watched the sun start to set. The sky turning shades of red then purple. I smiled when I saw Victoria's car pull into the marina parking lot. That she was on her phone when she got out of the car wasn't a big surprise. I grinned when I saw her toss her phone back into the car.

Carrying a basket, the braided wicker bumping her tight blue jean covered hip as she walked. Victoria stopped at the end of the pier and stood looking at me. Slowly a smile began to grace her lips.

"You just had to tell Jennifer?"

"Well, she asked." I shrugged. "How about a beer?"

"Sounds great." She lifted the basket. "KFC chicken and homemade potato salad alright?"

I chuckled and got to my feet to get the drinks. "So long as it's not turkey or ham it sounds wonderful." Holding out my hand to steady her, I made no move to hide that I checked her out from knees to eyebrows. "Can I have you for dessert?"

Laughing, she stepped aboard. Setting down the basket by our feet, she stepped into my arms and our mouths locked like magnets draw together. My hands settled down onto her hips and I pulled her into me and the kiss lingered and the desire for food was ebbed to the side by other desires. She broke the kiss.

"Are you a dessert first, kind of guy?" she asked.

"I could be."

She purred. "Humm, well. What do I get to eat for dessert?"

"Anything you like."

"Well, I think I might want to take a bite out of these." Her hand ran across my abs, then she tugged at the braided leather belt holding up my denim shorts. "But maybe we should eat first, the food will get cold if we don't."

I let her pull me in closer. "I do have a microwave."

"Umm, well that works."

Victoria pushed against my chest and, with our lips locked together, we stumbled backward into the Star's cabin, shedding my shirt and her blouse as we tumbled onto the small bed.

"Oh, good you washed the sheets." She mumbled against my lips.

I filled my hands with both her ass cheeks. "I had to. We soaked them in sex. I couldn't sleep. Just the smell of you was overpowering."

She chuckled and sat up. Taking hold of my wrists she pulled my hands around and placing my hands on her breasts. "You didn't pay these enough attention last time. I want them sore tonight, you hear me."

"Oh, yes ma'am."

Sitting up, I pulled her pink nipple into my mouth lashing and sucking hard on the bud as it hardened in my mouth. She cradled my head and held me in place as I laved the rose pink circle of her areola.

"That's much better."

Moving from nipple to nipple, I enjoyed teasing her and making her guess which one I was going to move to. At times I fought the guidance she tried to give and moved back to a pink tip and sucked hard to make her squeal. Victoria ground her crotch against mine, riding the bulge in my pants. A bulge that was threatening to tear through two layers of cloth and plunder what it wanted.

Plunder?

That's right my cock is a pirate, now hush.

Garrgh.

Sitting back, I looked up into her pretty face. She lifted an eyebrow silently asking why I had stopped.

"There is something I've seen in a porno but never done. Would you be willing to try it?"

Victoria grinned. "Well, that depends on what type of porn you've been watching." She brushed my hair back from my face and rolled her hips on my cock. "What twisted naughty thing do you want me to do?"

"Well, it's not really twisted ... it actually sounds kind of ordinary, but I really get turned on when I see a woman straddling a guy's face."

There was a merry twinkle that appeared at the corner of her eyes. Victoria gently brushed the side of my cheek, then lifted my chin.

"I will happily sit on this handsome face." She lightly tweaked my nose. "But are you sure? You said you've never eaten pussy before; that's a pretty hardcore way to start."

"I'm sure."

Leaning in, she kissed me again. "Good."

Vicky got up from on top of me and began to slip out of her tight jeans. I bit my bottom lip and grinned watching those sexy thighs all but pouring out inch by inch. The panties she wore were a brilliant satin blue that hugged her ass and hips.

"You like?" She asked, pausing for a moment to model them before letting them drop.

"Yes, I do."

Victoria smiled. "Good. I haven't forgotten about the stockings. I'm working on it."

"Excellent."

Victoria laughed at my enthusiasm. She looked at me lying in a sprawl in the small bed, and with a gesture of her fingers urged me to move down. Wigging my shoulders, I slid down the bed, my knees and heels doing half the work.

She crawled her way up onto the bed and I found myself looked up at her across the length of her body. "Now, if you want to stop at any time ... and I hope you don't ... just tap me on the thigh. Okay? Good. Well, here goes, I hope you enjoy doing this." With a swing-over motion of her knees and her palms on my chest, Victoria positioned herself over my face and with a contented purr lowered herself down to meet my mouth.