A Dixie Christmas by Sandra Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

you ask me,” Hank accused, reaching for his dessert, which Aunt Liza shoved out of the way, pushing more salad his way first.”
     
    “Who asked you, mush-for-brains?” Chet snapped.
     
    “All you had to do was tell her you love her,” Roy teased. He waved a forkful of potatoes in the air as he spoke.
     
    “I offered to marry her, didn’t I?”
     
    “ Offered? Sometimes, Chet, you are dumber than pig spit,” Annie remarked. “Have some pickled beets,” she added as an aside to Clay.
     
    Chet’s face, which was solemn to begin with, went rigid with anger, but he said nothing.
     
    “Is this Lilith?” Annie addressed Aunt Liza as she chewed on a bite of pot roast.
     
    “Yep. Nice and tender, ain’t she?” Aunt Liza answered. “Thank God we got rid of the last of Alicia in the stew Friday night. She was tough as cow hide.”
     
    They name the cows they eat? Will they eat those two sheep that were in the Nativity scene, too? Or . . . God forbid . . . the donkey? Bile rose in Clay’s throat, and he discreetly pushed the remainder of his pot roast to the side of the plate.
     
    “Speaking of cows, I noticed this morning that Mirabelle’s vulva is swollen and red,” Johnny interjected. “We better breed her soon.”
     
    “I’ll do it tomorrow night,” Annie said.
     
    Clay choked on the pot roast still remaining in his mouth. A thirteen-year-old kid was discussing vulvae at the dinner table, and no one blinked an eye. Even worse, Annie  . . . his Annie  . . . was going to breed a cow. “Can I watch?”
     
    “Huh? Oh, sure,” she said and resumed eating. Clay liked to watch Annie eat. Her full lips moved sensuously as she relished each morsel, no matter if it was a beet or the chocolate cake. He about lost it when her tongue darted out to lick a speck of chocolate icing off the edge of her bottom lip. “If you’re sure you want to. Some people get kind of squeamish.”
     
    “I can handle it,” he asserted. Heck, he’d probably seen worse in Grand Central Station. But, hot damn, Annie had just-like-that agreed to let him observe her breeding a cow. And she wasn’t even embarrassed.
     
    “Are you rich?” Roy asked.
     
    “Roy!” Annie and Aunt Liza chastised.
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “Yes?” Everyone at the table put down their eating utensils and gaped at him. Except Annie. Her face fell in disappointment. Was she falling in love with him, too? He didn’t have time to ponder for long why his being rich was a disadvantage. He just kicked into damage control. “Well, not rich -rich.”
     
    “How rich?” Annie demanded to know.
     
    Before he could respond, Hank commented, “Betcha draw a bunch of chicks, having heaps of money and all.”
     
    “At least a bunch,” Clay said dryly.
     
    Annie flashed Hank a glower that the kid ignored, smiling widely. “Man, if I had a little extra cash, and a hot car, I would be the biggest chick magnet in the whole U-ni-ted States. I’m already the best in the South.”
     
    His brothers hooted their opinion of his high self-opinion.
     
    “If you’d get your mind off the girls once in a while,” Aunt Liza reprimanded, “maybe you’d pass that Cow-cue-lust.”
     
    Everyone laughed at her mispronunciation of the word calculus, except Annie. “And, by the way, where is your second term report card, Mr. I-Am-The-Stud?”
     
    “Uh-oh,” Johnny and Jerry Lee groaned at the same time. “You had to remind her.”
     
    Clay’s lips twitched with suppressed mirth. Being in a family was kind of fun.
     
    But Jerry Lee was back on his case again. “Do you have a chauffeur?”
     
    Clay felt his face turn red. “Benson  . . . George Benson  . . . doubles as my driver and gardener. His wife Doris is my cook and housekeeper.”
     
    “You have a gardener!” Annie wailed. You’d think he had told her he employed an ax murderer. “And a housekeeper!”
     
    “Do you live in a mansion?” Johnny’s young face was rapt with