In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance

by Nathan, Sandy

  Ashley walked up to a dark horse in the nearest paddock. “Come on, Bailey, come to me.” Bailey did. She petted the horse’s face. “This is my horse. I keep him here because Daddy didn’t like him at home.” He could see sadness wash over her.

  “Why not? He looks like a nice horse.” Leroy stroked the horse’s dark bay neck. He wondered what had happened to the mare Kathryn Duane had given Ashley. And old Lightning. Probably stuck in quarantine, if they had even left England.

  “Because he’s not a show horse. He’s just a nice horse. Daddy has to win in everything he does and be the best. He wants me to ride jumping horses in shows. I’ve done it, but it scares me. Daddy says, ‘If I gave in to fear, Ashley, I’d never have gotten anywhere. You have to face fear or you’ll be nothing.’ The show horses live at our house. My jumpers and Mommy’s Andalusians. She shows those, or the trainers do. It’s like always … Mommy …” She stopped speaking. Ashley’s face contorted. She turned away from him, and took off, running.

  She ran along a path toward a stand of tall evergreen trees. He caught up with her easily. “What’s the matter, Ashley?” Her cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “I’m such a baby. I didn’t want you to see me cry.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I’m almost fourteen years old and I’m crying in front of you. I don’t even know you.”

  She looked like she wanted to bolt again, so he said, “Stay, Ashley.” He put some power in his voice and she did what he wanted. “Let’s walk over here and sit on that bench. You can tell me all about it. Pretend I’m your cousin. Cousin Leroy.”

  She smiled, a quick little smile. “You seem like a cousin already. I don’t have any real cousins. Daddy had two sisters, but they died. Mommy was like me, alone.”

  “I’m alone too. My parents just had me. Then my mom died.”

  “Oh, that’s sad. How old were you?”

  “Six. Things got worse after my mom died. My father started drinking. And then he beat me.”

  “He beat you! That’s terrible!”

  “He only beat me the once. My grandpa came with some men from the reservation and took me. I didn’t see my dad for fourteen years. Now tell me why you were crying.” Another little jolt of power and she spoke freely.

  Ashley sat upright, working her hands in her lap. “It’s everything. Daddy has to have his way all the time. He doesn’t listen when I say I don’t want to be in horse shows. Or lots of things. I don’t want to go to boarding school. They’re sending me to one next year for high school. Why do I have to go to a boarding school that’s twenty minutes from our house?” Tears tracked down her cheeks. She wiped at them furiously. “I know why they want to send me away. They don’t like me.” Her chest heaved.

  Leroy resisted holding her. But he felt for her. She was a sad, lonely little girl, even before all of Donatore’s abuse.

  “My daddy has affairs. Do you know what that means?” Leroy nodded. “Daddy does that all the time. He comes home every three days. He has condos everywhere where he can go with women. He pretends that Mommy and I don’t know, but we do.

  “I’m never going to have sex.” Those lightning bolt eyes hitting him again. “Have you had sex?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “That’s good. If you don’t have sex, you can’t have an affair and hurt your family.” Her voice rose. “Do you know that people in my class have sex? Girls my age. With boys that they don’t even love. They told me all about it. It’s disgusting.

  He wanted to touch her, but his better sense told him, no.

  “And my mommy. I’m so worried about her. I didn’t want her to go to Spain.” Ashley peered into his face as though searching for permission. “Can I talk to you about something really bad? Worse than what I’ve said?”

  “Yes, you can. Anything. I won’t tell anyone.”

  The tears burst out this time. “Mommy’s going to Spain to have an affair. She’s never had one. There’s a man there who has a castle. He has parties all the time and is very good looking. Mommy showed me his picture. He talked to me on the phone. He wanted me to come too. Very much. He’s a bad man. I can tell. I don’t know what would have happened to me, but Grammie got me and brought me here, where I’m safe. But Mommy’s not.” The last sentence was a wail.

  “I’m so worried about my mommy that I could die. Something really bad is going to happen.” She held her arms out and leaned toward him.

  They grabbed each other at the same time. When they touched, the tall trees around them shook. He felt the world spin. Electricity shot through him. She clung to him, eyes wide. A blue vapor whirled around them, shot with white and blue sparkles. The pleasure couldn’t be described.

  “What was that?” Ashley looked surprised, but not terrified.

  “I’m a shaman. Sometimes that happens when I touch people.” It had happened when he touched Cass, first in the closet and then in the plane.

  “What’s a shaman?”

  48

  Pay the Piper

  “Is she alive?”

  “Yes, she’s alive, Will.” Vanessa said.

  “When can I see her?”

  “You can’t see her. She’s not ready. You’re not her legal guardian any more, Will. I am. I got my attorneys working on it when you wouldn’t heed my advice about where to hospitalize her. Your stupidity in involuntarily committing her to Havertin sealed the deal. A judge signed off on it today. Perfect timing.”

  “What?! I’m her father. You have no right.”

  “I have every right. Did you do more than look at a brochure before sending Cass to that place?”

  “Look here, Vanessa, I feel rotten enough without you rubbing it in.”

  “I will rub it in, Will, until the dipshit in you breaks.”

  “Dipshit? I’ll sue you, Vanessa, and get Cass back.”

  “Oh, Will. Sue me! Please sue me! It will be the legal battle of the century. My lawyers are as good as yours. I will fight until you are dead.

  “Have you looked at the news, dear? I won’t even mention the uproar that’s going on in New York. There’s a judge who’s raising holy hell about the hospital. The FBI found the patients were denied their Constitutional rights, tortured, and killed. If the FBI found you negligent for putting her there, despite my stern warnings and my Chief Psychiatrist’s strong reservations, you’d be up shit’s creek. So, please sue me, Will.” Her laugh was a cackle. The woman seemed more witch than physicist.

  He wanted to hang up, but feared he would never see Cass again. “What can I do?”

  “What you are going to do for the next few years is say, ‘Yes, dear,’ and sign checks. You’re going to be signing some big ones very soon. You are no longer in control. You’ve lost the right to say what happens to your daughter.”

  “Will I ever get to see her again?”

  “What’s today, Will?”

  He looked on his watch. “It’s Tuesday, December 23rd.”

  “Christmas is in two days. You are aware of that, aren’t you? Time flies when you’re having fun, and all that … If all goes well, you’re still invited for Christmas dinner. And don’t start mooning around my gates thinking I’ll let you in early. Enzo Donatore knows where Cass is. He’s watching the gate.”

  “How!? I thought that second plane went down with no survivors.”

  “No human survivors. Enzo’s brother Diego was on that plane. George Yeoman saw tracks along Skyline in front of my property. Demons have three toes, you know. Hard to miss.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Cass will live on my estate when she’s well. My estate is similar to the Mogollon Bowl where you went to the retreat. It’s a sacred place, a protected place. Demons can’t get in …”

  “But they got into the Mogollon Bowl.”

  “Yes, but this land has more power. We are protected, Will. If Cass were at your place, she’d have no protection at all. If you’re a good boy, you’ll get to come to Christmas dinner. Goodnight, Will.”


  He sat the receiver down and fell back in his chair. He’d never had an argument like that. He lost hands down. She was right about everything. And he was no longer in control.

  It felt really good. He hoped he could keep things like that.

  49

  Leroy Tells All

  “A shaman is a special kind of healer. The shaman goes,” to the other side, he wanted to say, but how to say it to her? “to a different place inside than where most people live. A better world. It’s beautiful.”

  “What does that mean?” Ashley’s expression was so serious and intense that he could easily have forgotten she was a little girl.

  “Have you ever had a dream that seemed real? Where you seemed like you were in two worlds? Not really here, but touching something wonderful? Have you felt like you knew what was going to happen before it seemed possible? Have you ever known exactly what to say to a person to make her feel better?”

  “Yes. Sometimes my dreams seem like they’re real. And I feel like I know what’s going to happen.”

  “That’s some of what I feel, Ashley. I feel like I go into a different world, ‘the other side,’ I call it. There, I can meet people and things that help me and show me what’s going to happen and what to do. They come to me and take over my body. I can heal people and animals. Plants. Anything. I can ask them to help me, and they do.”

  Ashley furrowed her brow. “What were all those sparkles when we touched? Was that part of ‘the other side’?”

  “They’re energy, like electricity. It comes from the other place, through me.”

  She looked extremely interested, but perplexed. “How did you get like that?”

  “I was born the way I am. I started healing when I was four. My mother was a great healer and her father was the greatest shaman ever. We come from a lineage of shamans that go back to the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  “Yes, of life. My lineage goes all the way back to when time began. My grandfather is the greatest of all of us. Was. He died at the Meeting that your father just went to.”

  “My father?”

  Leroy realized he’d made a mistake. “Yes, your father and a bunch of his people from Numenon went to the retreat and met my grandfather and all the spirit warriors.”

  “My father went to a retreat?”

  “Yes. I met him there. I liked him.” Will Duane was so different than the man Ashley described that it was hard to fathom. Different at the Meeting. But Leroy had seen his darker sides.

  “You liked him?”

  “Yes. He’s a warrior and he’s learning how to be who he really is.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a good man, Ashley. He’s changed.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “Right.”

  Better change the subject. “Do you want to know what a spirit warrior is? I’m a spirit warrior. Many ways of thinking and schools of thought have spirit warriors. They call them different things, but it means the same. I’m dedicated to the Great One. That’s what my grandfather calls God. I belong to God. And God belongs to me. The One comes to me and I have visions and ecstasies.

  “Because of those and things I do—practices, like exercises for your soul—the One comes to me and helps me. It tells me what to say and acts through me, so I heal others and make people feel better. I can do more things. To earn those gifts, I have to live a certain way. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t do drugs, or gamble, or do anything that will take me away from the other side and God. I don’t lie or cheat. I pray and chant, the way my grandfather taught me. I help people. It’s who I am. I can’t do otherwise.

  “Um, there’s more to it …” He blushed as he opened the next topic. “My grandfather has hundreds of spirit warriors who help him with his work. We follow the same rules. We don’t have sex if we’re not married. If we’re married, we only have sex with the person we’re married to. None of my grandfather’s warriors, or any of the people that he’s married, has ever gotten a divorce.”

  Ashley’s forehead furrowed so much it looked like a washboard. “No divorces?”

  “No. Not in hundreds of couples.”

  “And people don’t have affairs?” Her forehead furrowed more, until the muscles trembled. “Can my parents join?”

  “Your father already has joined. He did at the retreat. Accepting the spirit warrior’s life doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It takes time and you have to want to follow the rules. People make mistakes, even if they’re warriors.”

  “Oh, yeah. My dad’s really changed. He’s got condos and hotels everywhere so he can meet women. He’ll never change.”

  “I think he has.” Leroy sort of thought Will had. But he’d made an end run. But at least she wasn’t talking about …

  “You said spirit warriors don’t have sex before they’re married?” Disbelief coexisted with wonder on her face.

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s why you haven’t had sex. You’re really old. Most people would have had sex by the time they got your age. How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty–five. My birthday was last month.”

  “I can’t believe that. That’s so old.” Her brows bounced up and down. “You won’t have affairs when you get married?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “How do I get to be a spirit warrior?”

  “You already are one, Ashley. That’s why the energy came to us so strongly.”

  “When do I find my soul mate? “

  He rubbed his mouth. “It can happen any time. You’ll know when it happens. Things like what happened to us will happen. That’s how you can tell, when you touch someone and feel like you’re in heaven. Like when we touched.”

  Her mouth fell open. “We’re soul mates? You’re really old. I’m only thirteen. But I’ll be fourteen in two weeks.”

  “I know. I thought my soul mate would be the same age as me, but Grandfather saw it at the Meeting. He said we were soul mates.”

  “How did he know who I was?”

  “Your father brought a photo album of pictures of you.”

  Her brows knit again. “My father went on a retreat last week? He didn’t say anything about it.” She seemed to search her memory. “He wasn’t home, though. That’s not unusual. Why would he go on a retreat and not tell me?”

  “I don’t know, Ashley.” How would he explain what happened to her?

  “I’m your soul mate? Don’t you think you’re too old for me? You’re a grown–up. I’m just a kid.”

  Sadness filled him. “Yes, I think you’re too young for me.”

  Ashley’s scowl deepened. “We can be friends.”

  “Sure. We can do that.” Every inch of his body that had touched her screamed for more contact. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.” Her jaw was tight and her fists clenched. “I want you to stay with me. You can live here.”

  “I don’t know, Ashley. I don’t know if I can.”

  “Why? Grammie won’t mind.”

  “Don’t you feel it?”

  “What?”

  “Where we touched. Don’t you feel it?”

  She seemed to be examining herself. “I feel like I want to touch you more.” She glared at him. I want to touch you everywhere, he heard her think. “What is it? What’s happening?”

  He sighed. “Well, one reason the spirit warriors don’t divorce and are faithful is that what they have together is better than they could have with anyone else.”

  “What do you mean?” Her face said she already knew what he meant. She was so quick. “You mean sex? That’s disgusting!” Ashley jumped up and ran toward the house.

  Leroy chucked pebbles, bouncing them along the cement path. He’d thought the hard part was over.

  What he didn’t tell her was the countdown had begun. They’d touched each other. When soul mates touched each other, it was like a timer being set. The places where t
hey’d touched would burn until they married and consummated their love.

  What would he do if he had to wait four years?

  50

  It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas

  The house was bustling when Ashley let herself in the back door. Mrs. Cook and a crew of village people filled the kitchen, along with wonderful smells. “What’s going on, Grammie?”

  Dr. Schierman jumped. She wasn’t used to Ashley’s young voice. Cass had called her by her first name, Vanessa. “You startled me. Tomorrow’s Christmas, dear. We’re having a feast and everyone we know is invited. We’re having a smaller gathering tonight, for the people in the house. Prime rib roast and all the trimmings tonight; turkeys, ham and everything else tomorrow. George Yeoman and his men are barbecuing the roast and setting up decorations outside. They brought in a Christmas tree while you and Leroy were talking. Where is Leroy?”

  “He wanted to look at the horses some more.” She hoped her lie didn’t show on her face. She also hoped she never saw Leroy again. Her hands tingled where she had touched him.

  Her room was upstairs next to Grammie’s. She looked in the closet. Dresses so beautiful they should belong to a princess hung there. She took them out, marveling. “Oh, Grammie.” She loved her so much. Ashley’s drawers were full of sweaters and nighties. An embarrassing drawer was filled with beautiful underwear. A lacey bra was on top … She didn’t wear a bra. But it was beautiful.

  Her tummy and arms where she’d touched Leroy ached in a good/bad way. She felt like she’d die if she didn’t hold him soon. They were soul mates, that longing said. But what could they do? She was a kid.

  Ashley moved to the desk in her room. A top of the line Numenon Ranger laptop was set up there. It must be a new model, because she hadn’t seen one so sleek. Ashley was used to things like this. Her dad often brought home experimental computers and other things that Numenon was working on. He must have given this one to Grammie.