by LB Gregg
Mistletoe at Midnight
By LB Gregg
Owen McKenzie has traveled to Vermont to spend an old-fashioned Christmas with his family when he finds himself staying at the same inn as his first love. Owen is disconcerted to realize he’s still attracted to Caleb Black but refuses to pursue him. Caleb left him once, and Owen’s not going down that road again.
Caleb is ready for a second chance with Owen and gets it when fate and the matchmaking McKenzies conspire to strand the two men in a rustic cabin during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve. Can Caleb convince Owen to rekindle their romance so they can stop spending their holidays apart?
Dear Reader,
There’s something magical about the holiday season, whether you celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Diwali. The energy and excitement surrounding these holidays charges the air and our emotions, providing a perfect platform for romance and love. So I knew we couldn’t let Carina Press’s first holiday season pass without celebrating it with a collection of special novella releases.
This holiday season, celebrate with our first collection of invitation-only novellas. We’ve pulled together eleven talented authors and author duos, all of whom have made their mark in their respective niches, and invited them to transport our readers with holiday delights. In Naughty and Nice, join Jaci Burton, Lauren Dane, Megan Hart and Shannon Stacey as they show you both the sensual and sweet sides of the holidays. Visit post-apocalyptic worlds and paranormal beings in an enchanted journey with authors Vivi Andrews, Moira Rogers and Vivian Arend in Winter Wishes. And celebrate the beauty of the season in His for the Holidays with m/m authors Josh Lanyon, Z.A. Maxfield, Harper Fox and LB Gregg.
Through the talent of their writing and their captivating storytelling, I believe you’ll find something in each of these special novellas to put you in the magic of the holiday moment.
Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.
~Angela
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
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To My Darling Girl—the incomparable KA Mitchell.
You’ll always be Vegetarian Meal Ticket to me.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
About the Author
Chapter One
Evergreen looked exactly as it had online. From across the river it was picture-postcard perfect, almost as if some Christmas miracle had brought my mother’s favorite Currier & Ives cookie tin to life. A smoky gray tendril rose from the chimney of the sprawling white farmhouse. The snow-laden fields were sectioned by hundred-year-old stone walls, the Green Mountains framed the horizon, and any second now, my truck would fall through the warped boards of the dilapidated covered bridge.
The truck dipped into a pothole and Jake grunted from the passenger seat. He tilted his head as only a beagle can and gave me his are-we-there-yet look.
“Almost.”
In reality, I had no clue. My family was coming for Christmas to see my new hometown, but I wasn’t familiar with the area yet. I’d let my brother pick our holiday spot, and apparently Ryan had chosen a place on the North Pole. We were at least fifteen minutes from St. James’s center and there hadn’t been a house for miles, never mind another car. The dirt road was plowed, at least, and the fields on either side of the river were laced with snowmobile trails. Just a few minutes ago, I’d maneuvered around an unmoving moose.
I’d get used to this. As St. James’s newest veterinarian, I’d be meeting all kinds of interesting wildlife.
I just needed to survive Christmas with my meddlesome family first.
The last time I was home, I’d put my foot down with my well-meaning mother—no more surprises. No dates. No set-ups. No mysterious guests. No kindly actuaries waiting in the parlor to have an impromptu dinner. I had been ambushed at every event since Keith Turner walked away months ago and, frankly, I was done. How could anyone, specifically my mother, presume to know what I wanted when I didn’t know that myself?
The thin road entered another shadowy tunnel, this one formed by the gentle arching bows of the towering pines that lent the inn its name. We came around the lazy bend and there it was. Evergreen.
I pulled to a halt on the snow-crusted driveway, parking at the very end of the line of cars, and shut the engine off. I had to be the last. It was the unwritten rule. Late to my own funeral, Mom always said.
The stars shone clear and merry above the distant mountains and barred owls hooted high in the pines as I climbed stiffly from the truck. Icy air frosted my lungs. Jake wobbled sleepily from the front seat, his white tail stiff, and he stared at me for a moment before lumbering down the shoveled walk to sniff the frigid new scenery. I grabbed the bags.
We entered the inn, jostling the strap full of sleigh bells hanging over the door, and music and warmth enveloped us. The smell of something cooking…apples and cinnamon and clove…the pervasive scent of balsam pine. It smelled like Christmas on steroids. Doug Winters had called the place homey and he hadn’t lied.
I set my bag down on the braided rug and, like any good hound, Jake sat his ass on the carpet and scratched lazily at his floppy ear. We both looked around. The front hall was empty. Noise floated from the back. On a narrow table, a bowl of clementines sat beside a closed laptop and a small service bell—which I rang just because it was there. Ding ding ding.
Of course, no one could hear me over the crescendo of my mother’s wavering soprano as it crested through the gigantic house. She banged out “Jingle Bells” in the same walloping manner that I’d rung the service bell.
The owners didn’t appear to stand on formality or they’d have someone working the desk. Leaving my coat on the peg by the door, I went in search of my musically felonious family.
“Jingle Bells” ended with applause and laughter precisely as I entered a sprawling parlor decorated straight from Hallmark. A baby grand piano took up one end of the room, where a blond man in a wheat-colored sweater gathered his music and stood. His back faced me, but I could still see he was young and attractive, if you went for that kind of slender, artist type. There were a dozen other guests lingering—a quick glance counted five of them were McKenzies. My parents, my uncles and my brother. My fair-haired mom hovered by the carefully hung stockings. She had her tiny backside to the fireplace and clutched a cut-crystal tumbler of amber liquid.
Her eyes, robin’s-egg-blue like my own, lit when she saw me towering in the doorway. “Owen! You’re here! We were about to send a search party.”
“You always say that but Jake and I make it anyway.” Of course, my dog had conveniently disappeared.
I took a careful step into the room and my mother rushed over with the inherent grace of a long-time ballerina. Her rounded arms were wide open. “I was so worried! The roads are slick.”
“I’m fine. It was a nice drive and I need to get used to it.”
“I told her you were fine. You’re thirty-three, not sixteen.” My dad clapped me shakily on the shoulder.
“Don’t remind me.”
Jesus. He’d shrunk since Thanksgiving. Dad’s hair was always thin, but now it was more so because the strawberry-blond strands faded into his scalp. His shirt gaped at the collar, hanging limply on once wide shoulders, and his skin was anemically pale. I wanted to put my arms around him. Instead I found a smile and shook his bony hand as worry cramped my heart. I searched the room for my brother. We’d have to dis
cuss this later. Dad was still in remission—had been for fifteen years.
Someone should have called me.
Ryan, who could almost pass as my twin, lounged in the corner chatting with a smiling titian-haired woman. He didn’t look worried in the least. He looked interested. Of course, Ryan always looked interested if there were even a snowball’s chance in hell he’d dip his wick before the holiday was over. He caught my eye and nodded.
My uncles Archie and Duncan sat on the couch playing gin. Before I could wave hello, not that either of them could see me from this distance, Mom chattered, “Owen. You’ll never guess who’s here. This is just extraordinary.” She quickly added, “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Patricia, give him a minute.”
I clued in to the strain in my father’s voice. Ryan grinned and something like anticipation skated across his features. That bastard lifted his glass mockingly and I knew trouble was brewing.
I scanned the room. “Hmmm. Well you didn’t invite anyone, right? Because we discussed that.”
“I had nothing to do with this.”
“Nothing to do with what? And why don’t I believe you?”
I followed Ryan’s gaze to the far end of the great room until I found the pianist again. He leaned comfortably against the baby grand, reading his sheet music. His collar was unzipped and a plain white T-shirt showed at his neck. He didn’t scream “actuary” at least. He was my age, maybe a little younger, and even without a red bow or a gift tag, Ryan’s duplicitous grin warned me that this man was “Owen’s Christmas Present” from our meddlesome mother. Jake, that traitor, sat wagging his tail at the man’s feet, looking for a handout.
The guy flipped through the pages of a loose-leaf music book. The way he stood, leaning easily on the baby grand, seemed almost…familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
“What a coincidence to find him here, and on Christmas, no less,” Mom said. “It’s providential.”
A portly gentleman hustled into the parlor and distracted me with his outstretched hand. “Dr. McKenzie?”
“Owen. Please.”
He nodded and his eager hand pumped my arm heartily. “I’m Doug Winters. Katie is in the kitchen—did you bring your bags in? You’re on the third floor—the yellow room.”
“Thanks. I’d like to change and maybe have a drink before dinner.”
My gaze was drawn back to the pianist as a clump of hair fell across his forehead and he absently shoved it back. That tiny motion triggered some deeper memory. I should know him. He had trim, light sideburns and long, graceful fingers. He flipped through a music book with Holiday Sing-a-long written on the cover.
He raised his chin, turning to speak with the red-haired woman, and we both froze as his casual glance collided with my curious one.
No way.
No. Fucking. Way.
I squinted to make sure. In fifteen years and hundreds—thousands—of miles, those distinctively pale, lichen-green irises could only belong to one man.
Caleb Black.
What in the hell was he doing here? His strangely beautiful eyes blinked at me from across the room, and he dropped the book. Papers scattered across the carpet like fallen leaves. Neither of us bothered to look at the mess.
I let go of Doug Winters’s hand and a glass of something that smelled like Johnnie Walker was pressed into my palm.
Part of me functioned. The innkeeper prattled about my accommodations—as if I cared where the hell I was sleeping. I wanted to run, and I had a house in St. James I could hide in—though it wasn’t technically mine until after the twenty-eighth.
Ryan said something, but my attention was riveted on the slim, attractive leaner who apparently was a musician now—an unexpectedly blond and dangerously good-looking musician who truly had no business being here. His jaw was still firm, the broad planes of his face as striking as I remembered, but the bump on the bridge of his nose was new and evidence of an old fracture. It made him more appealing than ever.
Jesus, Owen, do something.
There are times—and you know damn well that you’re going to regret it—when you can’t force yourself to smile or shake hands, murmur hello, blink or even shut your gaping pie-hole and do something. As I gawked at him with the fire crackling beside me, the entire world just fell away.
Chapter Two
Fifteen Years Earlier
Backlit by a shaft of afternoon sunlight, Caleb Black waited in the same spot—right beside the water fountain in the student-packed hall—every afternoon. He leaned as if leaning was a new form of art and he was its undisputed master. Eased against that battered row of metal lockers, waiting for God knows what, he always made me feel too big and awkward for my own dumb feet.
Caleb Black. Just the thought of his name brought a tide of shame to stain my face, and even so, wicked lust poured through my body and flooded my groin.
Since the day he’d first arrived at Mills wearing those banged-up Doc Martens, I’d noticed him. Everyone noticed him. Hell, the sunlight noticed him. With a stud in his ear, a wide silver band on the second knuckle of his middle finger, and a thin Violent Femmes T-shirt under his worn corduroy jacket, Caleb leaned and I couldn’t keep my damn eyes off him.
Every afternoon, right after lunch, I passed him on my way to Mr. Clarke’s Honors Calculus class. A single glance from Caleb Black was all it took to undo me. Head above the crowd, I’d move as unobtrusively as possible staring straight ahead and praying my dick wouldn’t get any harder. I’d hike my backpack high and resolve to pass that slouching leaner unaffected before the fifth-period bell rang. Which was futile, of course, because as Caleb slouched indolently against the lockers with his left knee raised and his bootlace untied—those shining eyes watching me—my blood absolutely boiled. Sometimes he’d stare and bite the side of his thumb, his white teeth worrying the tough skin there, and I’d just die at the flash of his berry-red tongue.
He’d catch me looking, and from across that crowded hallway the entire world disappeared. The smell of warm sneakers and last night’s disinfectant faded, and everything—the voices in the hallway, the metallic squeak of locker doors opening and closing, the cheesy posters and the endless chatter, the dazzling sunlight reflecting off waxed tile—everything on the planet paled in comparison to his green eyes. My stomach would flutter until it flipped to the floor because inside that prolonged second, I couldn’t have felt more bumbling, or unsure, or tall—or turned on.
Caleb rested with a fist shoved deep inside his winter coat, chewing his lip or his thumb or sighing and leaning like a champ—and whatever he did, I wanted him. By the time that stupid fifth-period bell freed me, my palms would be slick and my dick would be noticeably, painfully stiff. I’d hightail it to class almost at a run and waste half an hour swearing that I was never going to class again with a Caleb Black induced boner.
I was failing calculus.
The first time in my life I wasn’t passing a class, and I didn’t care. Because all I wanted in the world was to wrestle Caleb to the floor, like I did Ryan. Only not so brotherly. I’d pin his shoulders flat against the carpet. I’d throw him down. Tackle him in a hold that would align our hips and shoulders. His legs would clench strong and tight around my thighs. He’d smell like salt and chewing gum and he’d struggle. Sweating, wriggling and straining his slim body square underneath me. His skin would be soft on the inside of his wrists as I pinned them down. He’d be whisker-rough along his jaw, and bone-hard against my hips.
His eyelashes would lie like black fringe on the tender skin below his eyes.
Focus. There was a calculus test today. I was ready. I had a history test—facts and dates and names swirling in a fast flowing vortex that I need to memorize by last period. My dad was sick, I had work to do, and I was obsessed over Caleb Black. Leaning.
My heart skipped because there he was, cutting a dark contrast against the battered row of lockers, same as every single day.
Don’t look.
I canned all my weak thoughts about another kid’s fucking eyelashes—I was creeping myself out—and stared at the far window. The sky was gunmetal-gray with the threat of the first real snow of the season and I refused to look left—because I wasn’t queer. I was Owen McKenzie and I wouldn’t cave. I wouldn’t glance, not one time, at the scruffy raven hair, or those intelligent eyes, or his ridiculously thick lashes. And certainly I wouldn’t notice the shocking wedge of unlikely sapphire-blue that draped Caleb’s smooth forehead as he rested with tired nonchalance against locker number 244. My locker.
That meant something, right? But no. I wouldn’t stop because I’d do something stupid, say something I’d regret.
Please look at me.
As if Caleb read my mind, he did look. As he did every single day. He saw me coming, impossible not to, and caught me staring. My stomach did its predictable thing and flipped over like a trained dog. Lust stained me strawberry-red—and I knew he could see it. He knew and I knew and we knew and like a tractor beam, Caleb drew me forward. He could expose me—and at the same time—he was safety, because he was exactly like me. Caleb was a beacon in this terrifying new world where I no longer knew the landscape.
The noise, the smell, the sights—all of it vanished. I wanted to make that connection. To lift a hand and wave hello or comment on the book tucked under his arm, the same book I’d seen him reading in the library the single time we’d actually spoken, but I just couldn’t.
Caleb nodded. A slight smile hovered so fleetingly I didn’t know if it was real before he blinked and looked away.
Lost again, I shoved through the crowd—and fear of being rejected by the one person who knew the truth made me sick to my stomach.
Calculus. Cal-cu-lus.
The bell clanged and kids dashed for the doorways. Mr. Clarke’s class was on the right, stuffy and as silent as the grave. I was pissed when I walked through the door. Pissed that I’d worn a short-sleeved shirt when the forecast called for snow, and pissed that my body betrayed me and I was still, despite my promises, hard as a plank. I took a seat against the far window where the radiator expanded with a steady tick. I organized my thoughts, my papers, found a mechanical pencil, and I got to work.
