Christmas With the Cooper Twins Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Christmas With

  the Cooper Twins

  Copyright © Christmas With the Cooper Twins

  by Alexandria Hunt

  (originally published as A Christmas to Remember and

  An Easter to Remember under the pen name Olivia Hawthorne)

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  [email protected]

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  Chapter One

  I couldn’t believe the old truck made it, but it did. I rattled into the bus station parking lot as it sputtered and backfired.

  “Come on, you piece of shit,” I said, tapping the steering wheel as we coasted into the last parking spot left in the lot.

  “God dammit,” I exhaled and realized the truck was done for, at least until I could get it looked at.

  I had been sent to pick up my twin stepbrothers, Jordan and Jesse, from the Greyhound. They were back from active duty overseas and were home for the holidays.

  I hadn’t seen them in a few years. When they were home, I’d been at college and when I was home they’d been sent away.

  This was the first time in four years we’d all be together and I was dreading every minute of it.

  Our parents had married when I was eight and they were ten. They’d been identical bundles of energy and mischief, and unfortunately a lot of that had been directed at me.

  They were tall and lanky and suffered awful acne as teens, and had tormented me from the get go.

  My dad took them under his wing on the ranch though, and I’d been forced to hang out with their mom Tina in the kitchen, learning to be a proper lady and all that.

  Lucky for me, it hadn’t stuck and I was now twenty-three and had just finished veterinary college.

  My dad begged me to come home, to help on the farm and set up a practice in our little hometown.

  The state of the truck might give an indication of how that was going. I couldn’t manage the ranch and go on calls for other people, so my vet practice was sputtering along and the ranch was floundering.

  I didn’t earn enough to fix my damn truck, but I couldn’t turn my back on Dad. I was between the proverbial rock and hard place.

  I got out and lifted the hood of the truck. Steam came gushing out and it made a knocking pinging noise. My dad had driven this same truck for years, and now it was mine. It hadn’t even run right back then, what hope did I have? I knew nothing about fixing engines.

  I leaned over, reached for the oil dipstick, stumbled as my cowboy boot slipped off the bumper, and felt two strong hands on my hips.

  “Easy there, sweetheart,” a male voice said. It was full of humor and sounded like melted chocolate. But it irritated a tomboy like me. How dare he presume that I needed help?

  “Who are you calling sweetheart?” I snarled and jumped off the truck, whipping around to stare up at the man who had touched me.

  “You,” he grinned and winked at me.

  I was immediately overwhelmed by his good looks; his short dark hair only enhanced his bright green eyes. He was broad shouldered, had chiseled features and dark stubble that made his cheeks angular and sexy.

  He had a body to kill for, and he was about a foot taller than me, like a wall of muscle. I could even see tattoos peeking out of the top of his army green tee shirt.

  Army green. Shit, I almost forgot about the Cooper boys I was here to pick up. This dude had momentarily distracted me.

  “I don’t appreciate it,” I bristled and looked around him at the parked bus, watching all the people getting off.

  A moment later, another tall, hot piece of man meat identical to the first walked through the crowd carrying two duffel bags. Walking right towards me.

  “Nice of you to expect me to pack your shit,” the second guy said with a chuckle. He tossed one of the duffel bags to the first guy who caught it with lightning fast reflexes.

  “I had to help Natasha here, looks like this old piece of shit truck is still acting up,” the first guy said.

  “Wait, I didn’t tell you my name,” I sputtered at the guy who’d grabbed me.

  “Shit, Natty, nobody needs to introduce themselves when they’re family,” the first guy said. “But I have to admit, if it weren’t for this old truck I might not have recognized you. You went away and got hot!”

  I felt stupid for not clueing in earlier.

  I felt really, really stupid in fact.

  I hadn’t added two and two together and now the cold hard reality stared me in the face.

  My twin stepbrothers were back all right, and they were unbelievably hot.

  I don’t know why it made me cranky. I suppose I had hoped they’d still be string bean losers and I could finally lord it over them that I was a grown up, good-looking veterinarian.

  “I…wow,” I said and I cringed inside, hating how out of words I suddenly was. “I didn’t recognize you guys.”

  “No shit,” the man who had grabbed me chuckled. I now recognized him as Jordan. Gawky, zitty Jordan who had grown up to be absolute perfection.

  “I can’t blame you,” Jesse said as he tossed the duffel bags into the back of the truck. “We were such fucking nerds back then, no wonder you didn’t know it was us.”

  “So you’re not nerds now?” I asked, raising a single eyebrow, staring them down.

  They looked at each other and laughed loudly. “This is what we missed, Natty,” Jordan chortled. “Your sunny disposition.”

  “Now let’s see what’s going on with this old truck,” Jesse said and stepped around me to poke around under the hood.

  Jordan joined him and I stood back, a blush creeping up my face as I thoroughly enjoyed the view of those gorgeous asses tucked into their tight jeans.

  If only they weren’t my annoying stepbrothers, I might have had a pretty fun Christmas.

  Chapter Two

  “Where’s the tree?” Jordan asked after the two of them settled back into their rooms upstairs.

  “Don’t have one,” my dad grumbled at the kitchen table.

  Their mom, Tina, looked embarrassed. “We didn’t think you two would make it home in time for the holidays, so we didn’t bother.”
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  “You mean every Christmas that we’ve been gone, you haven’t gotten a tree? That’s illegal or something, isn’t it?” Jesse asked from behind Jordan.

  “We’ll go get one, I’ll fire up the quad and we’ll hook up the trailer and cut our own tree in the back field,” Jordan said and turned to look at me. “You coming along, sis? Christmas is a time for family, after all.”

  “I’ve got a call out to the Wilson farm later on, I should head to the clinic first and get ready,” I replied.

  “Come on, it will take forty minutes at the most. We missed you while we were gone, you never emailed us or wrote us or accepted our friend requests on Facebook, you owe us a Christmas tree trip,” Jesse said forcefully.

  I thought about it, looked at Dad and Tina’s eager faces and decided I’d give up forty minutes of my life to make the family happy.

  What the twins didn’t know was that Tina had been pretty sick recently. They hadn’t been able to diagnose her yet, but Dad had been spending a lot of time in the city taking her to doctor’s appointments and tests. That was the main reason I’d moved back, to help out with the ranch.

  The problem was that I worked full time — more than full time if you counted the number of late night emergency calls I attended — and I couldn’t stay on top of things around the place.

  I saw recognition on their faces when we walked to the barn to get the quad. They glanced at each other and towards me as they saw the fallen fence posts and the barn door hanging open at an awkward angle because I hadn’t been able to fix it. They realized then how much the ranch was in shambles.

  I blushed furious red with shame that I hadn’t been able to handle it all on my own. I’d always been wildly independent and had a hard time asking for help and it irked me like crazy that everything was slowly slipping out of my grasp. I wasn’t super woman, and that was a tough pill to swallow.

  Even now under the few inches of snow, I was sure they could see how messy the yard had become and how the cow manure was piled haphazardly near the cattle chutes.

  It became really apparent when I saw the ranch through their eyes… I could save a calf in distress, or fix an injured horse, but I couldn’t manage a ranch this size.

  Not on my own at least.

  I would probably have to talk to Dad about selling the place some time soon, before I ran it into the ground and it lost any residual value that it had. I didn’t want to though; I’d been putting off that talk for a long time now. I didn’t want to walk away from the land I loved so much.

  We found the quad, hitched up the trailer and I watched as Jesse started it up.

  Thank god it roared to life with no trouble, it was bad enough seeing the looks of disgust on their faces as they looked around at the crumbling ranch, I couldn’t imagine how embarrassed I’d feel if the quad didn’t work too.

  “I’ll ride in the trailer,” Jordan said, hopping on.

  “Sounds good, Natty can ride behind me,” Jesse said, motioning for me to get on the seat behind him.

  I was suddenly overcome with a bashful feeling and didn’t know if I could handle being that close to him. We both wore thick winter jackets, but it still seemed a little too intimate to hang onto somebody that looked like him. Somebody who was so off limits and so attractive.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get you back in time,” Jordan said, revving the engine on the quad.

  “Fine,” I replied, half under my breath, and blew a strand of blonde hair off my forehead.

  I climbed over and straddled the seat of the quad, wrapping my arms around Jesse’s muscular body, and clung to him as he drove out of the barn and into the fields.

  “Let’s see if we can make him bounce,” Jesse said in a low voice.

  I didn’t know what he meant until he gunned it and started racing the quad across the fields.

  I had to double down on my grip, really hang onto him so I didn’t go pitching over backwards.

  Behind me I could hear the trailer rattling and Jordan swearing and calling Jesse every foul name in the book. I clung tighter and started to giggle, I couldn’t help myself, I was in such a heightened state from hanging onto Jesse, and then Jordan’s cursing, it sent me over the edge.

  By the time we got to the little forest at the edge of the back pasture, I had tears streaming down my face and my cheeks hurt from laughing so hard.

  I tumbled off the back of the quad as Jordan leapt from the trailer holding the axe.

  “You could have killed me, asshole,” he growled and threw the axe to the ground. He jumped at Jesse, knocking him off the quad and into the snow. “Imagine if I survived two tours overseas just to get killed by my idiot brother in a Christmas tree accident.”

  I kept giggling as they rolled around, wrestling and fighting just like when they were teenagers.

  “You guys haven’t changed a bit,” I finally managed to squeak out. I took a couple deep breaths to calm the giggles down.

  They stopped fighting and looked at me, then glanced at each other before jumping off the ground, brushing themselves off.

  “Well, I guess we should grow up a little now that we’re home,” Jesse said, walking towards the axe in the snow.

  “And now that Natty is so god damned hot! We don’t want to scare her away from us again,” Jordan laughed and followed Jesse.

  Jesse hefted the axe like he knew what he was doing and I trailed behind them, my cheeks burning at Jordan’s compliment.

  He thought I was hot, and in that moment, I forgot that they were my stepbrothers; they were simply the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen.

  And they thought I was hot.

  Chapter Three

  We all took turns hacking away when we found the perfect tree. It was too big for my liking, but the twins had been without a real Christmas for their entire time away, so it felt like this should be their call.

  I knew I barely did a thing when it was my turn with the axe, but I had a feeling they liked watching me swing it.

  At one point I turned around to find them both staring at me, a hungry expression on their faces.

  “Got a little lady lumberjack fetish, boys?” I asked and glared at them. I didn’t like feeling so exposed, and I didn’t want to admit that the looks on their faces did something funny to me on the inside. I felt a little flip flop in my stomach and a hot wave in my panties.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Natty,” Jesse replied and blinked before he looked away, seemingly embarrassed. “It’s been a while since we’ve been around anyone as—”

  “Gorgeous as you,” Jordan finished for him, stepping forward to take the axe from my hand. “Here, let me finish this up so we can get you home in time to make it to your clinic. I’m so danged proud of you, by the way. You’re amazing, did you know that?”

  I handed him the axe and stepped back, a little confused at what was unrolling here. I’d expected my bratty gawky stepbrothers to show up and bug the hell out of me, drive me nuts, and leave right after Christmas.

  These two men were nothing like the boys I knew, and the feelings that were slowly growing inside of me were scrambling my brain and making me question myself.

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing at Jesse.

  “I agree, Natty,” he said. “We ran off to join the Army just to get out of town and party in our free time, but you went away and really made something of yourself. It’s incredible.”

  “It wasn’t that hard,” I said, “besides, you guys are out there defending our country and stuff, that’s more important than what I do. I can’t even imagine the things you’ve seen.”

  Both of them stopped and got a distant look on their faces. The conversation felt like it came to a screeching halt, there was a heaviness in the air now, and I felt like it was my fault.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said quickly.

  “It’s not you,” Jesse replied. “We just went through some shit recently. We’ll get over it, we always do, don’t we Jordan?”


  “That we do,” Jordan responded with a forced grin. “We’ll be just fine. Now stand back and let me finish this.”

  I stood next to Jesse and watched Jordan swing the axe, his gorgeous face grim with memory as he brought the Christmas tree down.

  It crashed to the snow and we hooted and hollered like we’d just won the lottery. I realized then that my brothers needed me to be light hearted more than anything right now. After their military service, they needed to feel like they were home.

  So I vowed to make their short leave as memorable as possible, even if it meant cooking their favorite treats and making Christmas dinner. Hell, it might even be good for all of us to have an old fashioned Christmas with the family.

  The twins dragged the tree back to the quad and fastened it to the trailer. Jordan leapt onto the seat before Jesse had a chance and I climbed on behind, grinning as Jesse protested.

  “I can’t ride in the trailer, there’s barely enough room for the axe and the tree, let alone me,” he said.

  “You’re just a chicken shit,” Jordan laughed. “You’re scared I’ll do the same to you that you did to me.” He revved the quad for emphasis.

  “I’m getting on behind Natasha.” Jesse glowered and slid his leg behind me and pulled himself up.

  “There’s not enough room,” I protested. “I’ll ride in the trailer, then I know you’ll both behave yourselves.”

  “I’m not riding behind my brother,” Jesse said and pushed against me, sliding me tighter against Jordan and sandwiching me between the two hot, hard bodies.

  I gulped and realized once again, when it came to these twins, I had no choice.

  “Hang on, sis,” Jordan laughed and off we went. I could barely stand the heat of their bodies against mine, I felt like I was trapped in a sauna.

  I couldn’t even pull at the collar on my jacket to loosen it up, the heat radiating from them was making me feel faint.

  And then I realized it wasn’t them, it was me. I was overheated being trapped between two muscled hot men and I couldn’t control my body’s reaction.

  I felt even more light headed as all senses left my body, I closed my eyes, and let the vibrations of the quad rumble against my soaking wet panties.