Under the Mistletoe
The middle son of three brothers, Mark Jones stationed himself beneath the mistletoe in the hallway of his parents’ home and used it as an excuse to grab anyone who passed. Latching onto Monica, his youngest brother Patrick’s date, he nuzzled her neck and purred, “Merry Christmas, beautiful.”
She was new enough to the Jones’s family gatherings to think Mark was only being cute, so she giggled as he planted a wet kiss below her ear. But when his hands eased around her waist on a quest to see how low she’d let them go, she slapped him away before he strayed too far. “Stop it.”
From behind them, Jake asked, “You hitting on Pat’s girl?”
At thirty-eight, Jake was the oldest Jones sibling, and like Mark, dateless at their family holiday party. If his mother asked him one
