The biggest mistake I have ever made in my life, contrary to the beliefs of my family, wasn’t my getting into paranormal investigation when I’m not even a believer myself. And it also wasn’t the time I blew a hundred thousand dollars of Dad’s money in Monaco when I was twenty. It wasn’t even when I let a former partner take one of my inventions as his severance—a patent that turned out to be worth millions.
It was, quite simply, letting the woman of my dreams slip through my fingers.
Andromeda “Andi” Carter really is the whole package. Smart, ambitious, imaginative, hot, pretty, and sweet. At sixteen, I wanted to get into her pants so badly that I couldn’t breathe, but of course, she put me off. At twenty, I finally did get into her pants—and I loved every minute of it. Not that there were ever too many minutes to savor at one time.
But Andi, well, she never seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. Which always frustrated me. At the time, I thought there was something wrong with her when she didn’t like exactly what I liked in bed, when I liked it. But I was the typical selfish twenty-year-old guy back then with my brain mostly located at the end of my dick.
I know better now, but it’s too late. Our problems in bed were just one of many other issues that drove us apart. Eight months after I made love to her for the first time, she packed her bags and left.
We patched things up enough to keep Astraea together as well as our friendship. But I still wonder to this day what would have happened if we’d waited until we both had grown up more. Would it have lasted? Would it last if we tried again now?
“How did you find out that Andrea Case was the one who maced him?” I ask Andi as I look up from her notes.
“They got into a fistfight in the waiting room.” She winces as she speaks, and I stifle an outburst of laughter.
“Oh man, this town.” I rub my face and look back at her notes. “Well, that does it for the written stuff. Let’s have a look at the rest of yesterday’s interviews and then grab some breakfast.”
“Sounds good to me. I’m starving.” She’s sitting next to me brushing her hair out. The rich smell of her hair mixes with the fruity shampoo and tickles my nostrils. As much as I love the smell of her, I have to keep reminding myself that she’s not mine.
Some days, I’m fine with that. Others, it’s like a fucking Greek tragedy that I simply can’t escape, leaving me wondering why I wasn’t prescient enough to see the writing on the wall back then. Right now, being so close to Andi makes me want to slip an arm around her and beg her to take me back.
Ugh, too bad it’s too early for a drink.
“So what’s our amended timeline?” she asks as she pulls up a few interviews.
I bring the timeline file up on my smartphone. “December 23rd at dawn, the mistletoe appears. Nobody sees who put it up or who keeps replacing it when it’s taken down. Mistletoe is everywhere including private houses and the interior of the church. The night of the 25th, a snowstorm hits, damaging outdoor decorations and blacking out half the town. When we dig out the next morning, the mistletoe had stayed up. Either it resisted wind that ripped branches off trees in a few places, or somehow someone put it all back up after the storm without being seen or leaving tracks in the snow.”
It sounds absolutely ridiculous to me, except that I saw that last part with my own eyes. The stuff simply doesn’t stay down for long. The pastor, who keeps clearing his grounds of mistletoe since he doesn’t want people sucking face in the church graveyard, complained about it to me. He also mentioned, once again, that when it’s replaced, no footprints are left in the snow.
That one detail—that one inexplicable thing—is what’s kept me here even though this could be one of our most boring investigations yet. All we do most of the day is push through crowds and plod around chasing down rumors about what’s happening. The mistletoe keeps reappearing over new snow with no footprints.
How bizarre is that?
“Is there any chance that the whole town is in on it? Maybe it’s just a stunt to create this tourism boom?” I ask slowly and thoughtfully. “Or maybe as a little Christmas magic for the kids?”
She shakes her head after a brief, thoughtful silence. “No. It’s created too much disruption. And because of how people react to it: everyone we interviewed seems baffled. If everyone was in on it, then a lot of the townspeople would have to be amazing amateur actors.”
I sit back, tapping my lips with my finger. The motive is plausible, but the execution…
She’s right. It would be impossible or nearly so. One of the Whitmans or someone else must have hired a small team of people who have been sneaking around. Or…something. I’m not crediting anything supernatural. Not yet.
“Okay, we already have the transcripts of Jack’s comments.” She leans forward slightly as she brings his interview recording back up. It’s stopped in the middle, frozen on a single frame of his irritatingly handsome face.
God, I hate this guy. Not just because he flirts with Andi in front of me, not just because he doesn’t really seem to do anything useful with his time and wealth, but because Andi seems…interested. And I’m not handling that well.
Even though I’ve taken some casual lovers over the years, there’s never been anyone else for me besides Andi. I think it might be the same for her—in fact, I don’t think she’s dated since she packed her bags and left our home. Maybe I should feel bad about that. I kind of worry that some of my behavior left her jaded about relationships.
Yeah. It was that big of a screw-up. I’m not proud of it.
There’s part of me that gets stupid romantic sometimes and thinks that maybe Andi’s never dated anyone else because she’s been waiting for me to grow up. That maybe she’ll give me another shot now that she knows I’ve got my shit together.
But that’s probably stupid. I had my shot. I shouldn’t be jealous if she decides to move on.
Except I really, really am jealous. I know it’s a problem. I hope that she doesn’t notice…but I know it’s a slim hope. Andi notices everything.
Sitting side by side, we start playing through the interview with the sound on low, watching Jack Whitman’s expressions and gestures. I never trust a guy that smiles that much, and I hope that Andi doesn’t either. Fortunately, she’s smart, and she doesn’t put up with bad treatment.
She’ll catch on to his bullshit soon enough and brush him off. Not that it’s any of my business. After all, she’s not mine anymore. But I still give a shit about her, and this guy is bad news. I can feel it.
“Hold on a second,” she says, pausing the tape. “That shop window right there that he’s leaning next to.” She points to the window in question.
“That’s the candy store. What am I looking at?”
“By his face.” She taps the screen, and I peer at the image. Jack has leaned over against the storefront window and is blowing on it softly, the mist of his breath making a fern pattern of frost on the glass.
“Weird,” she mumbles.
“What’s weird? It’s freezing, and he breathed on the glass. Of course it fogged up and then frosted over.” I stare at the frost pattern, wondering just what it is that has captivated her. “I used to see them on the old shed at my grandmother’s farmhouse every winter when I was a kid.”
“It’s not the frost itself. It’s the form it’s taking. Windows used to get that fern frond pattern on them in winter back in the days of single glazing, like on your grandmother’s shed. But it shouldn’t happen on a sheet of shop glass.”
I’m not following. Maybe this is an upstate thing—she’s the one who grew up around here. If anyone would know, it’s her. “Why?”
“Almost all of the home and shop windows around here are double and triple glazed. They’re a lot more insulated, so you don’t get the level of heat loss that causes those patterns on the glass.” She’s toying with the end of her braid, looking thoughtful.
“Are you sure? Some of the buildings around here are really old—they could have the or
iginal glass.” I try not to stare at her too obviously, but this is one of countless cute little gestures of hers that make me want to hug her—and drag her off to bed to show her what I’ve learned. I struggle to shift my focus back to the conversation.
She nods once. “Only one way to find out. I want to get a look at that shop window as soon as we have some food in us.”
“Fair enough. Let’s just…not do so much legwork outside today, all right? It’s twelve degrees out.”
She gives me a lopsided smile. “You were the one who was so eager to get going a half hour ago when you were dragging me out of bed. Now come on, we can warm up with cocoa breaks every now and again while we’re out.”
“As long as the cocoa is spiked.” A man has to put his foot down sometime, and if I have to endure another day of pounding the streets of this tiny town in freezing weather, I’m not doing it totally sober.
“The warmth you get from booze is fake. You know that.” She frowns at me worriedly, and I snort.
I shrug. “’Tis the fucking season.” I shut down the laptop and get up to bundle into my outerwear.
Her frown dissolves and a twinkle of humor enters her eyes. “All right, fair enough.”
3
Andi
We’re getting closer to the truth. I can feel it. The idea sings in my head as David and I load our plates at the breakfast buffet and take seats across from each other at a small table. “I’m pretty sure we’re headed for a breakthrough,” I say confidently as we settle in.
He looks up at me with dull sarcasm in his eyes that just screams, ‘Are you kidding?’
“Food, coffee,” he mumbles around his first forkful of eggs. “No talk.”
It stops me short, and I let out a little laugh as he scoops more of his scrambled eggs into his mouth. I take a bite of my waffles, and my own appetite wakes up.
We eat in silence for a while. It’s easy and relaxed, not awkward like it was when I first broke up with him. On those mornings, sitting across from each other at my breakfast table in the Boston Tudor I’ve since sold, the silence between us was packed full of tension.
Now, we’re just stuffing our faces with good country fare and a whole lot of coffee. Outside the window, snow is drifting down again. People crowd down the packed streets as if it were midsummer, bundled against the cold, trying to ignore the snow blowing into their faces.
Phoenicia sure is pretty. It’s one of those little towns that you whip past on the highway, with its own sign and exit, but with hills and tall trees concealing large parts of the town. It’s thriving compared to a lot of these isolated highway-side towns, mostly because it caters to tourists with businesses like the old-timey theater and river rafting.
But it’s normally not thriving like this. The breakfast room is crowded. Parking spots are filled everywhere that I can see. And foot traffic is constantly being held up by the ever-present mistletoe with some couples stopping every couple of minutes to participate in the novelty.
It’s pretty cute to watch—people stealing kisses in the cold. But it makes me a little sad, too. I see the way David looks at me when he thinks I don’t notice, and it makes me wistful. I have always wondered what it would be like if I gave him a second chance. It just never seemed…smart. So I never tried it.
But times like this, watching the little scenes of romance and the awkwardness of young love on the snowy street, I’m reminded too much of my cold and lonely bed. Sometimes I miss him, though I tell myself I just miss having someone at my side who cares about me. No matter how frustrated David made me, at least I always knew that he gave a damn. And I know that he always will—even if he sometimes has no idea at all how to express it.
“You know,” he says finally, once he’s caffeinated enough that his eyes aren’t dull, “there’s one thing I haven’t asked you. What exactly is the theory we’re working from in this case?”
“Sorry, what?” I ask distractedly. I just noticed Jack outside. He’s idly gliding along in his boots down a strip of ice that has formed after repeated passes by the plows. His hands are tucked behind his back, his midnight blue coat and dark hair flap in the breeze, and he’s smiling with mischievous amusement.
Of course he grabs my attention easily. Jack has…glamour. That’s the only way I can describe it. I have been in the presence of millionaires, scientific geniuses, industry giants, and movie stars…but Jack manages to outshine them all—without seeming to make much of an effort.
Who is he really? I wonder, and then catch myself and look back at David.
“Are we here because there’s simply another kind of unknown phenomenon going on? If that’s the case, what are we saying that phenomenon is? We have to go beyond a ‘Christmas miracle’ and get at some specifics.” He stabs at one of his sausages as I tear my eyes away from the gorgeous man gliding past…yet again.
His question catches me by surprise. I’m not sure I’ve ever given him a working theory beyond telling him, “This is obviously supernatural. Let’s see what we can catch on tape.” On the other hand, we’ve never spent over a week in the cold, away from our families on the holidays, to chase what could be our first real proof of the supernatural. Nor has it ever been this big, with this many witnesses.
“Give me a moment,” I mutter over the rim of my coffee mug. “This is a little hard to put into words.”
“It always is,” he grumbles, and I feel a stab of worry. He sees my face and just offers a tight smile. “Sorry. I’m just sick of the snow. Can’t we just go ghost hunting in New Orleans for a few months?”
“That’s actually damn tempting,” I admit as the tension breaks, and he lets out a little laugh. “No, seriously. You’re right. We’re probably going to end up presenting on this at the conventions, so I had better have my thoughts organized.”
He nods slowly and waits for me, staring broodingly out the window. I catch the exact moment that he notices Jack: his expression darkens, his eyes narrow slightly. I swallow and look down at the tabletop, trying to gather my thoughts.
In all the years we’ve been doing this—meticulously cataloging supernatural events and testing their validity, publishing books, giving talks at conventions, and interviews for blogs and podcasts—there’s never been one single big discovery like this. No ‘Aha!’ moment where we absolutely knew we had proof that people would have to believe. Plenty of hopeful moments—and a lot of letdowns—but we’ve never found our Holy Grail.
We’ve come close: the haunted house in North Carolina with the constant scrambling sounds in its walls but no signs of infestation; the San Francisco vampire that really did have what looked to be a photo of himself from 1863—even if David swears to this day that the guy in the picture was just a doppelganger.
We’ve come back from our investigations with proof that impresses those in our field, and we’ve managed to make a name for ourselves among American parapsychologists. The problem is that we can never convince everyone to let go of their preconceived beliefs and take in new information. No matter how convincing our evidence, people always want to run it through their cultural, religious, and personal filters—just like David does.
And that’s what makes our job so challenging. It’s also helped us learn how to cover all our tracks and be meticulous about our research and theories.
“The only working theory that I have so far is that whoever is responsible for this, their motives would be the same regardless of whether or not they are using some kind of supernatural ability to pull this off. It’s a boost to the town—its economy, its reputation, its celebration of the holiday…” I’m rambling, I realize. I go quiet, cheeks heating up a little.
He sits forward. “Okay, that part I can get behind. Go on.”
“Our prime suspects are Jack and his father, Dr. Whitman. Do we even know if their familial connection has ever been confirmed?” A lot of the local ‘information’ on people seems to be based on assumptions and rumors.
I’m used to the New York rumor m
ill; it churns 24/7 in small towns and big cities. It is even worse on the Internet: from whispers in boardrooms to breathless social media posts by tween girls, it runs an endless stream of what-ifs, fluff, filler, and bullshit—and sometimes, the occasional gem. Like the collection of local folklore surrounding the Whitmans.
“Very little about Dr. Whitman is confirmed, except for his history of propping up the town every winter with donations, benefits, and parties. As for Jack, he has a confirmed career as a hotshot local skier and playboy with a whole lot of awards and prizes.” He’s reading from the file on his phone.
That makes me feel better about spending so much time getting everything updated last night. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, but it is still nice to know that I spent my bout of insomnia being productive. “Nobody’s entirely sure what kind of doctor Whitman is, though. Some say he has a PhD in folklore, some says he’s a pediatrician, some say he’s a child psychologist. There’s a whole list. Scroll down two pages,” I tell him.
“Oh wait.” He flicks his finger over his phone screen and pauses to swallow down more coffee.
I’m still working on my eggs. I’ve been eating more slowly than usual, my attention all over the place, what with the investigation, the holiday, David, Jack, the sex dreams I’ve been having about both of them since we got here…
I cover my face with my hands, blushing furiously. I’ve been trying not to think about those, especially in David’s presence.
It’s true, though. It’s the reason I couldn’t sleep last night. Better that I lose sleep than wake up feeling that way again—heated but unsatisfied, but mostly frustrated as hell from the images my mind teases me with.
But I can’t help it. My head keeps filling up with images and sensations that have never happened, but that I wish would. If only things were different.
In one dream, I’m wrestling with Jack on an honest to God pile of furs over who gets to be on top. He’s laughing playfully and letting me win…sometimes. There’s snow falling outside the odd little cottage, and the icy draft whistling past the window panes bites any bit of my skin not covered by the furs—or him—but the heat inside of me seems to burn it away.
A Kiss of Winter: A Second Chance Christmas Romance (Dreams Fulfilled Book 3) Page 2
