“Merry Christmas!” Zoey cried, jumping out from behind the Christmas tree to startle me. With both hands completely full of tinsel and a somewhat crazed look in her beautiful eyes, Zoey looked like an adorable, deranged, extremely tall Christmas elf in a green dress and Santa hat.

In response to her terribly timed, not at all scary surprise attack, I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her under the mistletoe that had been conveniently positioned next to the mantle. Planting a passionate kiss on her warm, cherry red lips when she stopped giggling, I marveled at Zoey. She was the best Christmas present that anyone could ever receive.

That being said, it was only November twenty-ninth.

“Isn’t it a bit early for the Christmas tree?” I asked in confusion, looking around my transformed apartment. There were Christmas decorations everywhere I looked. Zoey had been very busy. In fact, she must have worked nonstop all day to get this place decorated so quickly. Vaguely, I wondered if the Christmas wonderland was confined to the living room and entry or if it had consumed the entire apartment. “I didn’t even know they sold Christmas trees this early.”

“It’s never too early for Christmas,” she insisted, pouting at my bewilderment as I took in her elaborate handiwork. “As long as it’s after Thanksgiving and before New Year’s, it’s Christmas time. Why? Do you hate it?”

“No…” I said tentatively, looking at the lights that had been strung across my living room from the exposed ceiling beams, and the questionable snowman decals that had been applied to the windows and to block out the nice view of the Philadelphia skyline, “I’m just surprised. It’s all very… merry.”

Zoey grinned. She was obviously thrilled by the arrival of the Christmas season. Yesterday there had been turkeys, pilgrims, and harvest-themed things everywhere. Over the past six months I’d realized that Zoey loved decorating. She was a minimalist in her personal belongings, but the woman loved holidays. Now that she had the space to decorate for them, she did. My formerly Spartan bachelor pad had been transformed under Zoey’s hand. It was her apartment now, I just lived there. Which was completely fine with me as long as I got to keep my office a Zoey-decorations-free zone. So far, our compromise was working beautifully.

We had just gotten back from spending the Thanksgiving holiday with Zoey’s family in Florida. It had been an eventful, fascinating, and very informative trip. Zoey’s parents were about as different from my own family as possible. They were warm, friendly, funny, and welcoming to me. It was also apparent that Zoey had inherited her love of holiday cheer from her mother.

I’d really enjoyed my time with them, which came as something of a surprise to me. I had fully expected her father to hate me for ever touching his daughter, or her mother to blame me for Zoey not returning home to Florida to work for the Picayune. Instead, they both just seemed happy to see that Zoey was happy. I’d never met a girlfriend’s family before and was pleasantly shocked that it was not a painful experience at all. I wished that Zoey’s first interaction with my own family had been as painless.

My parents liked Zoey quite a bit, but their mannerisms were so much more formal and stuffy that she’d cried after meeting them for the first time. She’d been convinced that they hated her, when in reality they were very pleased to meet her and thought highly of her. We’d made some strides over the last few months and were keeping the interactions short and structured while Zoey and my parents figured out how to communicate with one another. That relationship was still very much a work in progress.

“Did you see the verdict today in the Hunt case?” Zoey asked, returning the bulk of her attention to the half-decorated Christmas tree as I flopped down on the couch and opened a beer. “It was the most exciting day in a while.”

“I did,” I admitted, rolling my eyes at the coverage of a melodrama that just wouldn’t die, “she’s going to appeal losing all that money until the end of time. I feel bad for Albert Hunt’s kids.”

“Don’t feel too bad for them,” Zoey replied, carefully picking through a box of brightly colored glass ornaments for just the right one to put on the tree next, “they just became multi-billionaires. I think they’re pretty happy.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded, “but they haven’t seen the end of Angelica. Not by a longshot. She’ll haunt them, and every last cent, until either she dies, or they spend it all. You know how she is.”

“We won’t have to see her at the party tonight, will we?” Zoey asked warily, now visibly torn between the two blue glass icicle ornaments she held in either hand. She ultimately selected the larger one and hung in on a branch before abruptly switching it out for the smaller one. Then she switched it back and smiled in satisfaction. The two looked virtually identical to me, but what did I know?

“I’m not actually sure,” I told her after a moment, remembering she’d asked a question, “but she probably will be there if I had to guess. She’s still the senator’s daughter.”

Zoey made a comically scrunched up, disgusted face. We’d managed to avoid seeing Angelica for months, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Despite the fact that The Philadelphia Monitor hadn’t run the Albert murder story, Angelica was much too clever to believe that Zoey hadn’t been involved at all. According to her sister Clara, Angelica placed all the blame for her fall from grace firmly on Tara, but I was dreading the inevitable confrontation between Zoey and Angelica.

“Well in that case,” she said, “I might need to do some work tonight instead of going over to the Ellis house party. You know, edit some stuff, write some stuff, important news work. Urgent too.”

“Clara and Jack will be there,” I offered, trying to convince her. Mostly I was selfishly just trying to avoid going to the party alone. “And Alexander, Madison, and the baby too.”

Zoey sighed dramatically.

“Ok,” she conceded, “I’ll go. But only because I want to see baby Alexander. He’s already getting so big.”

Alexander Durant IV had been born in a Haitian hospital two months ago, and was probably the ugliest, loudest, most obnoxious infant I’d ever encountered. Zoey absolutely loved him, and insisted he was in fact beautiful and sweet. She also got along swimmingly with my cousin-in-law Madison Durant. Zoey was still warming up to my cousin Alexander III, which was only fair; I was still warming up to Alexander III, and I’d known him for thirty-four years.

“Should we put a star or this little Santa thing at the top of the tree?” Zoey asked, brandishing two tree toppers at me. One was a traditional silver star tree topper and the other was a hideous, huge Santa-head that would turn our entire tree into a limbless Santa.

“Star,” I replied firmly, “most definitely the star.”

She handed it to me and I got on my tiptoes to put it atop the massive tree Zoey had somehow procured in less than twenty-four hours. Zoey cheered and clapped when I got it in place.

“Good job!” She told me unnecessarily, but I still basked in her praise. She seemed just as pleased that I had put a star on top of a Christmas tree as she had been when my mission to dock the Starflier with the International Space Station last month had been successful.

“What about your brother?” Zoey asked a moment later, when she had returned to the important business of ornament selection, “Will he be at the party tonight? It’s awful that he had to miss Thanksgiving with your mom and dad.”

I shook my head.

“No,” I replied, “he’s still out in Los Angeles.”

Poor David’s show had been in development hell for the last six months. He was fighting hard to be able to actually cook now and then on his show, but the producers seemed fixated on it being a pure talk show format. As far as I could tell, he was losing the fight.

Despite my attempts to convince him to scrap the idea entirely, David thought the opportunity to transition his wild success as a restaurateur and chef into a media empire was too good to pass up. I loved my brother and believed he could do pretty much anything he put his mind to, but I also recognized that the stress of the past year was taking a serious toll on him. He should have just stuck to cooking. He enjoyed that. He clearly didn’t enjoy the TV business.

Zoey, oblivious to my worries about David, was now happily adding a bunch of little red balls in strategic positions on the tree. She was a very efficient tree-decorator.

“What time do we have to be at the party tonight?” She asked absently as she circled the tree.

“Not until seven,” I said, glancing at my watch to confirm that it was still several hours away, “we have some time.”

“Hmm,” Zoey replied, cocking an eyebrow at me as she rustled through her boxes of Christmas decorations, “do you think we have enough time to take a nap together?”

“I think we might,” I said, smirking and knowing she had no intention of napping, “are you tired from all your decorating?”

“Yes, I am,” she answered, faking a yawn dramatically, “you have no idea how difficult it is to deck these halls properly.”

Zoey was still poking around in her boxes of decorations, and I swept up behind her to hug her close to me. Her body melted against mine, instantly relaxing any tension left over from my workday. Holding her was like picking up a piece of me that had been missing all day. She sighed contentedly, and I wondered if she felt the same way.

“It’s very important to be properly rested,” I murmured playfully into her neck, kissing her over her pulse point until she shivered and turned in my arms to kiss me. Our tongues wrestled for a long moment.

“Besides,” she said with a smile, “if I have to slap Angelica into next week tonight, I want to have all my strength.”