by Box Set
Christmas Is For Lovers
Six Hot Holiday Romances
Kelly Collins
Sharon Coady
Stacy Eaton
Rachelle Ayala
Jude Ouvrard
Chantel Rhondeau
Contents
Christmas is for Lovers
Kelly Collins
The Trouble with Tinsel
Other Books by Kelly Collins
Get this eBook for free when you join my mailing list.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
An excerpt from Cole for Christmas
About the Author
Also by Kelly Collins
Sharon Coady
Candy Kane Kisses
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About Sharon
Other books by the author
Stacy Eaton
Mistletoe & Cocoa Kisses
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Cocoa recipes courtesy of Cooks.com
Sneak Peek
About the Author
More by Stacy Eaton
Rachelle Ayala
Santa’s Pet
Description
Praises for Santa’s Pet
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Epilogue
Excerpt - Bad Boys for Hire: Nick
Reading List
Many Thanks
Jude Ouvrard
Sweetness
Other Books by Jude Ouvrard
Note from the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
21. Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
WHO IS JUDE?
Chantel Rhondeau
Tempting Trish
Description
Chantel’s Books
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Author’s Note
Loving Lucy Excerpt
Afterword
Christmas is for Lovers
Six Hot Holiday Romances
All hearts come home for Christmas… This Christmas, fall in love with six hot and sassy Christmas lovers. On the ranch or at sea, Christmas is a time for love, homecoming, and family. Six bestselling authors bring you six full-length love stories to keep your toes toasty and your heart fluttering.
Summoned to Bell Mountain by meddling mothers
, Beau and Mandy must revisit their painful past to have a shot at their true destiny.
When two unlikely strangers are brought together will holiday magic sprinkle happiness or melt away like Christmas snow?
It’s like stepping into a fairytale, only Robin has to almost freeze to death first, and Chris has a crazy ex-girlfriend who wants to keep her claws in him. Will they figure it out in time for the holidays?
A brilliant girl genius plays elf to a substitute Santa and turns both their lives upside down when he is charged with a sex crime and she loses her company to hackers.
After being betrayed and humiliated, Iris goes home for Christmas, not expecting to meet a holiday fling that might lead to happily ever after.
Christmas on a singles’ cruise, what could be better? Until Rider and Trish’s shipmates start disappearing. Is love possible while everyone is under suspicion?
The Trouble with Tinsel
Kelly Collins
Copyright © 2016 by Kelly Maestas
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For all the elves in my life. You are the sparkle on my pinecones, and the tinsel on my tree.
Other Books by Kelly Collins
Set Free
Set Aside
Set in Stone
The Dean’s List
The Graduate
Honor Roll
True North
Just Dessert
Brownie Points
Whipped
Tempo
Fated and Furr-oscious
Nailed by Love
Blue Ribbon Summer
Billion Dollar Smile
Lucky in Rio
Cole for Christmas
Meet Me Under the Full Moon
Meet Me On the Dance Floor
Meet Me In the Middle
Meet Me In Secret
Get this eBook for free when you join my mailing list.
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Tilly Shanters has big plans to make this summer a blue ribbon event. She’s heading off to college in the fall and has a few things to check off her list.
~ Win the county fair pie contest
~ Pack for college
~ Lose her virginity
Author Alex Saunders is just passing through. He has a few things to check off his list as well.
~ Clean out the house that was willed to him
~ Sell it
~ Get to Hollywood to see his book turned into a movie
They had their summer set, until fate stepped in to redirect them. One night—one event—everything changed.
Chapter 1
Mandy
Tommy lounged sleepy-eyed in front of the television as I whisper-yelled at my mother. “You lied to me.” Frustration blazed through me like dry kindling set afire. “You said you fell and broke your arm, and here you sit, decorating cookies?”
Unrepentant, Mom gripped the icing bag in her left hand while her bandaged right wrist sat on the table. “I didn’t lie. I slipped on the ice. I thought I’d broken my hand.” She dropped the bag, tugged at the binding, and tightened the clip. “It was a serious sprain, Mandy.”
I’d do anything for my mother, but I was tired of being manipulated—of people stealing my choices—and my mother was the queen of doing that. All my life, she’d cajoled and nudged, pushing me in the direction that benefited her most. Just when I thought she’d changed…
“I dragged Tommy across the country for a sprain?” I stomped to the old percolator. It burped and spit on the counter while I poured a fresh cup. I needed caffeine, and Mom needed to move into the present. The past wasn’t a place I wanted to dwell upon or repeat.
Cloves, and cinnamon, and hope filled the air. Mom sat at the table and dressed the gingerbread men in white icing pants and button down vests, with delicate, precise movements. When I was a little girl, those scents would dare me to dream that my mother would be like everyone else’s mom—that I would walk in the door and she’d want nothing more than to hug me and ask me how I was. But that wasn’t the game my mother played. Every smile, every cookie, was a bargaining chip—a way to get me to bend to her will. Yet, here I was, hoping all over again, like a kid who couldn’t give up on Santa.
In all honesty, she couldn’t help herself. She’d clung to whatever control she could since Daddy died.
“Mom.” The hours of travel had roughened my voice. “You called me in tears telling me to come home, the shop would perish without me.” I waved my hands through the air as I spoke. I didn’t usually act with such flair, but Mom had made it sound like her world would implode without me.
“I can’t run the shop with this on my hand.” She pulled at the elastic bandage again and sighed. “Besides, it was time for you to come home. You hate New York.”
A fact she’d been trying to convince me of since I moved there. “I don’t hate New York, Mom.” I didn’t hate the city; I was indifferent to it. It served its purpose—it was far away from Bell Mountain and it held my job.
In retrospect, being here for two weeks would be a nice respite, but I’d never allow my mother to own that victory.
Mom traded the white icing bag for the red and squeezed out perfect little buttons on the tiny vests. “Bell Mountain is the perfect place to raise my grandson,” she whispered, ignoring what I said. She lifted her gaze in Tommy’s direction and gave him a nod.
The legs of the chair squeaked as I pulled it from the table and flopped onto the cracked, red vinyl cushion. Mom was stuck in the decade she was born with her diner décor, and black and white checkered flooring. Stuck was something I was familiar with. I hadn’t been living my dream. I’d been living in New York and working as a pastry chef for Henry Lefebvre, or as I like to call him, Ornery, and that was no dream. My dreams had died the day a certain man walked out of my life.
Sipping my coffee, I glanced around the kitchen. Nailed to the walls were records by Buddy Holly, Chubby Checkers, and the king himself, Elvis Presley. The chipped jar I painted in fourth grade sat in the corner next to the stove overflowing with utensils. My elementary school pictures were still taped to the side of the refrigerator. No matter how far I strayed, how crazy she drove me, or how long I stayed away, this would always be home. “You’re right, Tommy will love it here, but this isn’t permanent. It’s just to get you through the holidays.” I grabbed the white icing bag from the plate and helped her with the cookies. It was time to let go of my annoyance, and embrace the holiday spirit. Tonight, we were going to decorate the Christmas tree together for the first time since Tommy was born.
“You used to love Bell Mountain too, sweetheart. Everything you could ever want is here.” Mom cupped my cheek with her bandaged hand. Her eyes lit up with love.
Not everything, Mom. Bell Mountain had broken me ten years ago when Beau Tinsel left town with his guitar and my heart.
Whoever said picking out a Christmas tree was fun, never did it in subzero weather. Cloudy puffs of steam escaped my mouth each time I breathed. “What about this one?” My teeth chattered while I yanked down Tommy’s hat to cover his reddened ears.
Mom, Tommy, and I stood in front of the tree and analyzed it from all angles. “Can’t we have a flucked one, Mommy?” Tommy pointed at the tent where a man was glazing a perfect green tree in spongy white material. The fake snow glittered like diamonds under the fluorescent lights.
“It’s called flocked, and no, we can’t. All white trees belong outside.” Surrounded by naturally snow-coated trees, it was overkill to bring a poser into the house. “If you want, we can decorate the pine tree in Grandma’s front yard, too. Then you can have a white and a green tree.”
My little man jumped up and down with the energy only a child can possess and maintain. “This one’s super-duper then.
”
An uncontainable shiver raced from the tip of my head all the way to my boots. I looked toward my mother, praying she would give her seal of approval before any part of me froze and dropped off. “Okay with you, Mom?”
Mom rounded the tree again. Tommy and I watched as she analyzed each full branch and prickly needle. Just when I thought she’d put a kibosh on it, she smiled and said, “super-duper with me, too. I’ll pay.” She turned and walked toward the man at the front of the lot.
“Mandy Sawyer?”
I recognized his voice right away. It was pure warmth. “Greg Anderson, how the heck are you?” I wrapped my arms around the boy who’d been my Godsend the last year of high school. We’d stayed in touch for a time, but eventually, I found it easier to sever as many ties with my past as I could. “You’re still here?”
Stepping back, I looked at him. He was tall, handsome, and totally not into girls. In fact, Greg Anderson came out on prom night. He was my date, and we had arrived to the dance wearing matching pink gowns. It was a testament to our friendship and a show of solidarity. The fact he had looked better in the dress than I did should have pissed me off, but I could never get angry with Greg. He had been the best boy friend a girl could ever have. And, he was the perfect prom date. He paid for his own dinner, and didn’t expect to get lucky in the back seat of his car when the night ended.
He opened his arms with a flourish and looked around him. “I couldn’t leave all this behind.” He kneeled down in front of Tommy. “And who’s this handsome young man?”
Pride radiated from my pores. “This is my son, Tommy.” Tommy stared up at Greg and smiled like he was looking into the face of an angel. Greg had that effect on everyone. Something wonderful and happy arrived each time he did. He was hot chocolate on a frigid day and fuzzy socks on a cold morning. He was one of those feel good people.
“Tommy, this is my friend, Greg.”
Tommy offered his hand, “I’m Tommy Sawyer, it’s nice to meet you.” For a six-year-old, he was already a charmer. I’d have to keep an eye on him. With his devilish good looks and charisma, he was bound to break the hearts of many.
