A Beatley Christmas

Chapter Seven

    "Okay! Here we go, ladies and gentlemen, dogs and cats!" Ringo said, clapping his hands together loudly. At that moment, Winston looked over at John's cat Jesus and growled. Jesus blinked at him in an uninterested fashion. "Let's get this game in the road!"

    "Um, honey?" Barbara said, raising a hand. "I think it's 'on the road.' "

    "Why don't we do it in the road?" Paul joked with a sideways smirk.

    "We can, we can!" George said, pulling the curtains back, taking a sip of his eggnog. "Look, the snow stopped! We can play the game in the road."

    Olivia jerked the curtain closed in a joking manner, causing George to laugh and kiss her on the nose. Dhani started acting like he was throwing up, which made Julian and James to laugh manically.

    "Who's going to start?" Linda asked, setting her eggnog on the coffee table, looking around. Paul could tell she was getting pumped up, ready to smoke everyone at Christmas edition "Family Feud." She was a religious watcher of the show and knew all the ins and outs. Once she'd even tried to get him and the kids to apply, but Paul had shut the whole thing down, saying he didn't want to get on television and make a fool of himself. Well, now here he was at Christmas preparing to make a fool of himself.

    "Well, how about the Starrs and the McCartneys go against each other because they have the right number of family members?" Olivia suggested. "We've only got Dhani and John and Yoko only have Julian, so it will be fair if we play together."

    "We don't 'play together,' " John said, holding up a finger. "We're opponents, enemies, nemeses. Right, Jules?"

    "Uh, yeah," Julian said, not really appearing to feel it, looking uneasily at Dhani, who fixed him with a dark-eyed stare-down. Like father, like son, Paul thought with amusement.

    "All right!" Linda said excitedly, hauling Stella and Mary up from the sofa with her. "Let's go."

    Paul sighed, looking at Ringo with sympathy, pulling James up with him. He was using eye messages to apologize to Ringo in advance because Linda could be a little competitive. Just a little. Flashes of Friday game night zipped through his mind and his eye may have twitched. Ringo gave him a strange look and pretended he hadn't noticed it.

    "I'll be Steve Harvey," George said, lifting his eyebrows, drinking eggnog.

    "How come he gets to be the host?" John said, pouting slightly.

    "Because he called it first, dear," Yoko said, patting his head like he was the cat sitting on his lap. Jesus was regarding everything with dull interest, every once in a while sending a smug look to Winston, who looked as if he was about to bolt off Dhani's lap and eat the cat alive.

    John sniffed and turned his nose up, causing George to chuckle as he passed him. George moved a table to the center of the living room and put Winston's rubber bone on it. "This will be the what you squeeze to submit your answer for the face-off." He squeaked it in demonstration.

    George cleared his throat and stood up straighter. "Which McCartney wants to — "

    "Me!" Linda said, coming over to the table.

    "Alrighty, then," George said, fighting a smile back. "Um, Starrs?"

    Ringo eyed Linda nervously and glanced at Barbara, who was pretending to study her nails. He looked at his other family members to see that they were pretending to be preoccupied with something else as well. He sighed exasperatedly and stood up from the sofa, muttering something under his breath.