A Little Holiday Temptation. Janice Sims

number. I should have the right to choose how I live the rest of my life. After more than eighty years, I’ve earned it!”

      Erik sighed. She had a point. Eighty-two years on earth should allow her certain privileges. He’d have to guilt her into behaving herself.

      “Yes, you’ve earned the right to flip off the Grim Reaper if you want to. But, while you’re tempting fate, what about the rest of us who would like to have you around a bit longer? What about Dad and Belana? What about those great-grandchildren you’re always urging Belana and me to have? And hurry up about it, too? Shouldn’t they get the honor of having you as a cantankerous great-grandma? What do you say to that?”

      “You should’ve been a lawyer,” Drusilla groused. She laughed. “Okay, I’ll use the damn cane from now on.”

      “Language!” Erik heard his dad admonish his grandmother before bursting into laughter himself. His dad must have taken the phone from his grandmother. “Okay, son, whatever you said seems to have worked. She looks dutifully repentant, for now.”

      Erik couldn’t help laughing. Both he and his father knew it was only a matter of time before Drusilla found another outlet for her indefatigable spirit to get her into trouble.

      “By the way, Dad, Ana and I are dating,” Eric said after he’d gotten his laughter under control.

      With his usual aplomb, John said without missing a beat, “Haven’t you always been dating?”

      “Technically, we were just friends.”

      “Seriously?” said John. “For two years you and Ana have been platonic friends?” He sounded so disbelieving that Erik started laughing again.

      “Yes, seriously,” he assured his father.

      “I know you said you were just friends, but I never imagined that two young, healthy people like you and Ana were actually keeping your hands to yourselves. Son, I was just happy you had someone like Ana in your life. Mother, will you stop that!”

      Drusilla said hastily, “It’s about damn time!” Then she was gone.

      John, sounding exasperated, said, “That’s wonderful news. Now I’ve got to go, your grandmother’s has had too much excitement for one day.”

      Erik hung up the phone and listened to the remaining messages on the machine. None were pressing, so he wandered into this bedroom and began changing his clothes. He felt restless and a long jog would go a long way in relaxing him and focusing his mind. His father’s reaction to the news of him and Ana dating made him wonder if the rest of his family believed the two of them had been more than friends all the time.

      Wasn’t it possible for a man and a woman to be just friends? Surely he’d proven they could. Then again, even if his behavior had been above reproach, his thoughts definitely hadn’t been. Not being able to express his feelings for Ana in a sexual way had made him very resourceful. Running helped, as did staying extremely busy. Now that they’d admitted their feelings for each other, and sex was sure to follow, he hoped he’d be able to make love to Ana without scaring the poor girl by howling like a beast or something else equally embarrassing. He was only a man.

      Running clothes and shoes on, he grabbed the apartment key he kept in the foyer table on the way out the door. I hope Ana isn’t overanalyzing everything like I am, he thought as he closed the door behind him.