The tree they had chosen for the parlor in their bedroom suite was set on a round table that was covered with a dark green velvet cloth. The table was placed near the fireplace. The tree was decorated with painted glass balls that depicted the various activities in Santa's workshop, and little red velvet bows. Its lights were multicolored.

"This is where we will put our gifts for us," Ashley said softly. "I have a very special gift for you on our first Christmas together, Ryan." And she smiled mischievously at him. "And I've found some boy toys that you'll like too," she teased.

"What do I buy the woman who has everything?" he asked candidly.

"I like beautiful and unusual things. And soft things. And you can always add to my Santa collection," she told him.

"The one in the dining room on the sideboard?" he asked her. "That's one fantastic accumulation of Saint Nicks."

Ashley laughed. "My grandmother started it for my father when he was a little boy. My mother added several pieces in the years that they were married. I began adding to it after my brother was killed," she told him. "I'm always looking. Ohh, Ryan! It's going to be the best Christmas ever! The house hasn't been so full in ages, and Christmas is when a house should be filled with family and laughter."

"Did you have to invite them all?" he asked in a pained tone.

"Ryan, Christmas Day will be our four-month anniversary. I know your older sisters are difficult, but surely by now they have accepted the fact that we are married. That what began as a marriage of convenience for us both has by some miracle turned into a love match. They backed off their attempts to sue you, didn't they?"

"Only because Ray and their lawyers told them to forget about it. They didn't have a leg to stand on. Dad's will just said I had to marry by forty, and I did. I won't be forty until spring. And Ma made some pretty dire threats. Remember, she's got a lot of money herself to leave one day, and the harpies are greedy."

"They just need to get to know me better," Ashley said. "Didn't they all accept our invitation for Christmas?"

"You asked them for two nights, Ash. They're dying to see how you live. Frankie has been enjoying torturing them. Having the harpies here is going to be pure hell on wheels." Ryan groaned.

"It will be fine," Ashley assured her husband.

He looked dubious, but there was nothing he could do to prevent his older sisters and their husbands from descending on them en masse for the holiday. For one thing, Mrs. Byrnes had been cooking up a storm. And Byrnes had been polishing more silver than Ryan had ever imagined even existed. And the daily housekeeper had, with Ashley's permission, been bringing two other women with her for ten days now. All the bedrooms were turned out: rugs, draperies, and hangings vacuumed, furniture dusted, the beds made with lavender-scented linens, feather beds, and lovely, puffy goose-down comforters. On the day their guests were arriving, small vases of red carnations and green pine were put in each of the bedrooms. By the time the extra-long limousine pulled up to disgorge his relations, Ryan was almost resigned. It was Christmas Eve, and the house smellcd ‹›t pine and cinnamon. He was in love with his wife, and lie-couldn't have imagined a year ago at this time how happy he would be. "Welcome to Kimbrough Hall!" he boomed jovially, standing on the portico. He embraced his mother.

They came up to him in birth order, as they had always done. Bride and Peter Franklin; Elisabetta and Paul Sweeney; Kathleen and Kevin McGuire; Magdalena and Frank Butler; Deirdre and Robert Napoli; Frankie and her son, Michael O'Connor. He greeted them each, and they moved on to Ashley, who stood next to her husband.

"Quite the lord of the manor, aren't we?" Bride said sharply.

"As a matter of fact, he is now," Ashley replied, smiling. "I'm so glad you could all come. Let's go in. It's cold. Byrnes will take your coats." She turned to speak to their own chauffeur, who was standing nearby. "Bill, will you help the limo driver with the luggage, please? Thank you." She led her guests inside, where Byrnes was waiting.

"Boy, you sure fell into it, didn't you?" the limo driver who knew Bill said.

Bill grinned. "It's like the old days my granddad used to tell me about, when he worked for a family. I even got my own digs above the garage."

The limo driver whistled. Then he said, "Let's get these bags inside. I got a long trip back to town, and the wife will have my head if I'm not back in time for church tonight." He opened the trunk of the car, and together the two men began getting the bags into the house, where Byrnes was waiting for them. Helping them, he led them upstairs, showing them the bedrooms where the bags were to be deposited. Then, coming back down, he handed the limo driver a plain white envelope.


"Merry Christmas from Mr. and Mrs. Mulcahy," he said. "There'll be another envelope when you come to pick them up on the twenty-sixth. Drive carefully." Byrnes opened the front door and ushered the driver out.

To Ryan's surprise the evening went smoothly. They sat down to a supper of shrimp cocktail, followed by small plates of pasta with a simple marinara sauce, followed by Dover sole broiled in butter with lemon, a marvelous casserole of carrots made with cheese and cream, tiny potato puffs, and a green salad. Dessert was a plain caramel custard in individual cups topped with raspberries.

Angelina Mulcahy smiled, well pleased. Her new daughter-in-law, while not a Roman Catholic, had known that December twenty-fourth was a fast day, although she hardly thought the lovely feast placed before them would qualify as a fast. She noted that her daughters and their spouses were eating to the point of silence. "Is there a church we may attend tonight?" Lina asked Ashley.

"St. Anne's," Ashley told her. "Ryan can take five in his car, and Bill will take the rest in the limo I rented for the weekend. The mass begins at eleven. That's why we've eaten early. I thought you all might like a little nap before church."

"Will you be going with us?" Kathleen asked pointedly.

Ashley shook her head. "I'll be at St. Luke's. I'm an Anglican. I'm driving myself. And before you ask, I don't intend to convert to Roman Catholicism. If this were a perfect world there would be no differences in religion to divide us, but it isn't a perfect world, and I prefer my own church." She smiled at Ryan's family.

"Will you ever get married in the Church?" Bride wanted to know.

"Yes," Ashley said, but added nothing more.

"And your children? That is, if you have any," Elisabetta said. "How will you raise them, I'd like to know?"


"I'm sure you would." Ryan stepped into the conversation, which was beginning to lean toward confrontational. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now, girls, I think that is enough questions for tonight." He saw his eldest sister, Bride, smile just ever so slightly, and thought, My God, I think she's actually beginning to warm up.

At ten thirty the cars were ready, and they were transported to St. Anne's. Ashley honked and waved at them as she passed them by, pulling up at the pretty stone church across the street. Both churches let out at approximately the same time, and Ryan asked Frankie to drive his car home while he joined his wife. They led the way back to Kimbrough Hall. There they found whiskeyed eggnog and hot mulled cider, along with very thin slices of an almost black and extremely rich fruitcake awaiting them.

"This is fruitcake?" Angelina was surprised.

"It's how the Irish make it," Ashley told her mother-in-law. "It's my great-great-grandmother's recipe. It's one of the few things I actually make every year."

"It doesn't taste at all like those disgusting light fruitcake bricks we had to sell in Catholic school," Frankie noted. "Remember, we used to kid about using them to build a house." She laughed. "All those yucky candied cherries, and big pieces of nuts."

Everyone departed for bed. The tree in the living room was now surrounded by gifts, as each of the sisters had brought presents. Ashley walked through the house, smiling to herself. She had a really big surprise tomorrow for her husband. She stood for a moment in the living room, darkened now but for the dying fire in the fireplace. It was well after midnight, and there was absolute magic in the air. She could feel it. Going upstairs, she noted it was silent behind all the bedroom doors. She entered their bedroom suite to find Ryan standing naked, a large red bow about his very distended cock.

Ashley giggled. "You're kidding," she said.

"You don't like my present?" he said.

"I want to know how you got it that way without me," she replied.

He grinned. "I've got a talented hand and a great imagination."

"Well, I suppose I should try it on for size," she said as she began to pull off her turtleneck. "It looks like it might be a good fit, darling." She unfastened her lacy bra and tossed it aside. Then she kicked off the slippers she always wore in the house when she wasn't barefooted, unzipped her slacks, pulled them off, pulled down her silk briefs, and stepped out of them. She was quite naked now. Reaching out, she undid the bow adorning his long, thick penis, let it drop, and then, wrapping her hand about him, she led him into their bedroom.

Pushing him down on the bed, she climbed atop him, her butt toward his head, and, leaning down, captured his dick between her two full breasts, moving it up and down.

"Ohh, baby," he murmured as he hardened seriously. His hands reached out to squeeze her cute ass cheeks.

"You like?" she asked him. Her tongue snaked out to lick at the tip of his cock.

"Yesss!" he hissed. "Hike."

She took the tip of him between her lips and rotated her tongue about him. "Mmmm," she said. Then she bent lower and sucked him deep into her mouth and throat, but she was careful with him, because she didn't want him to come in her mouth this time. For a moment or more she sucked him, and then released him, gasping as she did when Ryan pushed a finger deep into her ass. "Ohh, my!" He had never done that before. She squeezed her butt cheeks together hard.

He chuckled and rotated the finger. "You like?" he parroted her query of a few moments before.

"I'm not sure," she admitted.

"We'll get a nice little dildo and play sometime. I think we should expand our horizons, don't you?" he said softly as he withdrew the single finger.

"Oh, God, am I boring you?" Ashley asked, turning around to face him.

"You will never bore me, baby," Ryan told her. Then he rolled her over and thrust himself into her wet pussy. "This is where I belong!"

Ashley wrapped herself around him and let him fuck her until she was weak with pleasure. He took her high, and she scratched and bit and screamed as he groaned and finally, as they climaxed together, shouted. Afterward she giggled as they lay together, replete and satisfied.

"Good thing we're way down the hall from everyone else," she said. "The harpies would sure as hell be jealous."

He chuckled. "Fuck 'em!" he said, and she laughed.

"That was your first Christmas gift," she told him.

"Yours too," he responded, pulling her into his arms, and then yanking the down quilt over them.

They fell asleep, waking several hours later to the smell of coffee in their sitting room. Byrnes had crept quietly in, as he did almost every morning, to bring it. Getting up, they pulled on robes and went out to find the tray decorated with a sprig of holly and containing a plate of cinnamon rolls and butter as well. They fell upon the food, realizing that their exertions several hours previous had given them an appetite.

"Can we open our presents?" Ryan asked boyishly, and she nodded.

Together, like two kids, they took turns pulling off Christmas paper and opening the boxes beneath their small tree. They had decided beforehand to limit their gifts to two each. Ashley's boxes contained a red cashmere turtleneck sweater and a beautiful gold chain, at the end of which was a ruby heart. It was the necklace that caused her to cry. She had gotten Ryan a beautiful antique gold and bejeweled miniature triptych she had found in Venice with Bianca's help, and a leather desk set for his new office. He was delighted with both.

"We hung our stockings for Santa," Ashley reminded him. "I see there's something in yours. You'd better go check it."

"I thought we said two gifts. I forgot about the stocking. Stocking gifts don't figure in the total, do they?" He looked a little distressed.