In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance

by Nathan, Sandy

  “Turn the light off and let me see. They do! They glow! Grammie must have gotten them. She does things like that. They’re so funny. Oh, Leroy.” They laughed together. Everything got easier after that.

  Natural as anything, they were in bed, lying side by side, holding hands.

  Touching him made thrills of pleasure sparkle through her. Maybe …

  “Darlin’, do you trust me?”

  “Yes.” Leroy was breathtakingly beautiful lying so close.

  “Grandfather told me what to do so we can be happy while you grow up.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to take you somewhere. I started going there when I was four years old. It’s safe, just different.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “No, sweetheart. Anything but that.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Do you want to go now?”

  She nodded.

  They were in a strange space, dim and gray-green. Nothing was there. Leroy stood next to her, wearing his crazy PJs, while she wore the gown and robe. She clutched his hand. The wind moaned, but she couldn’t feel it against her skin.

  They moved toward something. Ashley realized it was a wall, a curtain wall the same murky color as the rest of the place. As they moved closer, the wall began to hum. Closer, and it ripped from top to bottom. Brilliant yellow light burst from it, from the other side. The light was like water, flowing into the dingy chamber.

  Leroy pulled her through the opening. Light so bright and gold that it seemed a physical substance surrounded them. Went through them. It was inside her and outside her. It was like the electricity that had shocked her and Leroy when they touched. Shocking, not shocking. Exciting, calming.

  She turned to him. He was illuminated, brilliant. Light shone from inside his mouth and eyes. She pulled away, but he let her know that it was safe. He pulled her farther inside. They fell down something, a tube, a slide. It twisted and turned like a waterslide in a park. It was funny. Leroy threw some gold stuff at her. She threw it back.

  Fight! She laughed. They threw a brilliant substance at each other. He grabbed her and they rolled in it, gold spangles sticking to them. When they touched, bliss exploded. They were the center of the explosion, everything moving around them. Threads of bliss. Threads of meaning. Threads of love. Bound them, pulled them together.

  Together—they shot together like mighty magnets grabbed them. Ashley couldn’t think. Time seemed to stop. She saw Leroy, next to her, his tummy pressed against her tummy. A moaning sound, the air in a cavern, surrounded them. The light pressed them together.

  Ashley felt herself enlarge, open up. Her body expanded until it was huge, then larger than that. She filled the enormous grotto. She touched its sides, and then moved past them; nothing could contain her. Chimes sounded, and bells.

  Leroy pulled her to him. Then he disappeared. Where he had been was an outline in nothing, and then nothingness itself. She looked at her arm. Transparent, just moving light. She separated more, expanding, until she saw herself floating in the bliss. Vast distances in space, and a tiny nugget here and there. A hard kernel suspended in infinity floated by.

  Everything was like that, nothingness, emptiness, tiny elements of … What? And then she understood. Those were molecules, her molecules, and the space was how she really was. Her science teacher had told them that their bodies were mostly water, in compounds, but if you went deeper than that, all they were was nothingness and molecules. Atoms. Bits of existence. They were mostly nothing and could walk through walls or anything, if they got separated out enough.

  Leroy was entering her. She could feel his bright dark soul, his nothingness. The joyous void. Kernels drifted by, so like her own. He was entering her, but not her body. Leroy joined with her spirit.

  How long can an ocean of bliss last? How far is the universe from side to side? They lingered in paradise, mostly space with a few bits of matter. No one could be joined like a shaman and his mate.

  Leroy was her, and she was him. Molecules of one were interspersed in the nothingness of each other. Up didn’t exist, nor down, nor space or time.

  He filled her with himself and she gave back her soul.

  He was lying next to her, one leg over hers, still in his pajamas. She had never seen such a beautiful man. She hadn’t seen any men, but even movie stars weren’t like him. They were married. They were really married. People could be wed for twenty years and have every kind of sex, and they wouldn’t be as joined as she and Leroy.

  She watched him sleep for a while. Sunlight poured through the window. How long had they been in that place? Forever. They would live in bliss forever. That’s what Leroy brought.

  Ashley knew she wasn’t a little girl.

  56

  A Princess

  The smell of bacon and coffee awakened her. Leroy was gone, the PJs lying on the floor. He was cooking breakfast. Ashley looked at her gown and kimono, feeling a bit embarrassed. She couldn’t wear them in front of him in the daylight; they belonged to that golden world.

  The closet contained all sorts of clothes for her. She’d never seen them before and they were all new, but she liked them.

  She selected blue jeans and a white cotton shirt printed with red squares. A little blue flower sat on the Xs where the red squares met. She tucked in the shirt and pulled on brand new boots, then tried to fix her face. She washed her face and arranged her hair.

  Leroy seemed a little scary now. They were married. That was so weird.

  “Hi, sweetheart!” His smile erased any fear. He was Leroy. Her husband. He was in the kitchen standing by the stove, a frying pan in one hand and another with a lid on it on a back burner.

  “You know how to cook?” It seemed an amazing feat. Her father never entered the kitchen.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m the barbecue king of the universe. I do pretty much everything else, too.”

  Her legs seemed to melt and the room spun. Her head fell to one side as she dropped.

  When she came to, he sat on the sofa, cradling her in his arms. Her face was nestled into his shoulder. She pulled back and looked at him. His were wide, terrified.

  “Oh, sweetie. You fainted. I didn’t know what was happenin’. You’ve been through so much.”

  Someone knocked at the door. “Rudi Heimlach here with George Zimmerman.”

  “Come in,” Leroy called. “She’s here.”

  Ashley jumped up, sitting erect. “Who are they?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist and George is in internal medicine. We’re from Dr. Schierman’s hospital,” said the short one with the fat stomach.

  “Oh, no! Doctors!” Ashley leapt to her feet. Her head began to swim again. Leroy grabbed her and held her tight in his lap. She grabbed his arm, beseeching. “Never let a doctor touch me, please, Leroy. Please. Never!” Panic overtook her ability to think. Her eyes rolled back.

  He grabbed her upper arms and held her in front of his face. “Ashley, no one is ever going to hurt you again. No one, and nothing, and no doctors. You’re safe.”

  She started whimpering and then crying, feeling like a stupid baby, but too scared to care.

  “Leroy, we can do an exam with your help. You have the sensitivity. Feel her pulse, right here in her neck.” The internist touched his own neck to demonstrate. “Tell me how it counts out. Start.” He hit a button on his watch. “And then put your hand around her upper arm, tightly, and then release it slowly. Tell me the pressure you feel, and when a weaker beat comes in … Listen to her heart … Feel her tummy. Any lumps?” They gave him more instructions.

  “That’s as much as I could do,” the one called the internist said. He spoke to Leroy, like she wasn’t there. Which was fine. “You’ll have to stay on the estate for a while until we can evaluate what’s going on, physically and mentally. You can see that some of the other is bleeding through.”

  “What should I do?” Leroy looked almost as scared as she felt.

  “Do what you’re doing. Be tender with her. Don’t hav
e inter …”

  “He did not have sex with me.” Ashley sat up. “He’s a very nice person and I’m too young. We’re going to wait until I’m eighteen.”

  “That’s very good, Ashley,” said the fat one. “If you need to talk to me, I’m here.”

  “I will never talk to you. I will talk to my husband.” She raised her head proudly.

  They walked across the lawn toward the barn. She almost danced with excitement.

  “Oh, shit, the dogs!” She cried when their baying reached her.

  “Don’t worry.”

  They gathered around Leroy, wagging their massive hind ends. Their tails had been cut off. He kneeled and petted them. “We’re gonna have to do something about this attitude of yours if I’m around here, boys. Whoever bred you with your faces flat like that ought to have a good thrashing. Come here, sugar, let me fix your nose.”

  Ashley stared and Leroy pulled the animal’s smashed in snout out to a nice, pointy dog nose.

  “You’ll get used to being that way. Give it an hour. See, you can smell better, and breathe better. OK, boys. My wife and I, do you know Ashley Watches? Isn’t she pretty? We’re going to go over here to the barn, but you be good. Don’t scare good people, just bad ones. You know the difference.”

  Grammie’s barn seemed magical. It also seemed strange. Ashley had come there all her life. Everything looked bigger and wider and higher. So clean. Grammie’s thoroughbred horses were in their stalls and paddocks. She kept the horses, even though she couldn’t ride anymore. There weren’t very many these days.

  “Over here, Ashley. This is what I wanted to show you.”

  She walked to the end of the row of stalls he indicated.

  “Look in there. What do you think?”

  Ashley peered through the slats on the top half of the stall. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my! She’s beautiful. She’s the most beautiful horse I’ve ever seen!” A mare looked back at her, obviously a mare; every hair on her body was feminine. Her coat was almost white, just a few dapples of dark coat indicating that she had been born black. Her eyes were bright as angels’ and her expression, sweeter.

  “Look at her. Her eyes are so big.” The animal saw Ashley and walked toward her, sniffing delicately though the bars. “She’s like a princess.”

  “That’s what she is: a purebred, Section D Welsh Cob. She’s the kind of horse the English queens used to ride. I saw her in England and had to have her for you. She arrived yesterday.

  “Do you want to go in and see her?” Ashley nodded, feeling afraid, the way she always did around horses, even though she didn’t let it show. “This one won’t hurt you.” He picked up a halter and slipped into the stall, quickly haltering the mare. “You can come in now.”

  “Oh, she’s so soft.” Ashley petted the mare’s cheek and then her neck.

  “I’ve got a couple of carrots in my pocket if you’d like to give them to her. She’s not grabby.”

  Sure enough, the grey mare gently took the carrots and ate delicately.

  “I’m not afraid of her, Leroy. She’s nice.”

  “That’s why I got her for you. I knew. There’s a story about her, Ashley, but I’ll tell you in a little while.”

  Ashley spun around and grabbed him. “I love you. You’re the best person in the world. No one is better than you. You make me so happy! Thank you!”

  Leroy laughed. “I don’t know that I’m that good, but I could pick out this horse.”

  A horse on the other side of the barn raised a racket, banging the stall door with its front hooves.

  “Come over here, Ashley. Here’s another horse I found in England.” A much taller, bulkier horse stood in the stall, nodding its head up and down impatiently. His back hung a little and his lips drooped.

  “OK, Lightning, we’ll pay attention to you. I rode him in a polo game. He’s a great horse. Still has years and years of riding in him. Which I intend to give him.” Leroy laughed.

  “Can we ride them?”

  “That’s what they’re for.”

  “Today?”

  “If you feel up to it.”

  “Yes. They’re both grey. We have matched horses! We can ride around on matched horses!”

  A shadow darkened the entrance to the barn. Ashley looked up and saw her father outlined in the arch.

  57

  Reparations

  “Did you bring your checkbook, Will?” Vanessa Schierman sat at her kitchen table with Will. He’d spent the night at the estate, being too shaken to go home, even with a chauffeur driving.

  “Yes, Vanessa.”

  “Good. Be a darling and write me a check for twenty million dollars.” She smiled, looking more like the gargoyles on her walls than she would have liked to admit.

  “Twenty million dollars! Are you out of your mind?”

  “I told you that you would be smiling and saying, ‘Yes, dear’—or Vanessa—for the next few years. And writing checks. So write me one for twenty million, now.”

  “What could possibly cost that much?”

  “Write the check, and then sign here and here, where the tags are.” She indicated a thick document. “Wait until Mrs. Naughton arrives to sign. She’s a notary.

  “Do it, Will, or Ashley will turn into pumpkin and you’ll never see her again.”

  “You wouldn’t do that!?”

  “I certainly would, you deserve it. But she will be the one to reject you, not I. She has bleeding memories of what happened. She may remember the whole thing eventually. We will not talk about the Havertin Institute and your murderous predilection for putting your daughter places where they’ll kill her. We will remember it, and the jet landing on Skyline Boulevard, and what happened afterward. And why she’s alive, the reason for which you will never know. Write the check, Will.”

  He wrote the check.

  Vanessa fanned a fat contract in front of him as Mrs. Naughton entered the room with her notary kit.

  “Sign on the pages with the sticky tags,” Vanessa flipped through the document.

  “What am I buying?”

  “Read the contract.”

  Will scanned the first few pages. “You’re selling Ashley and Leroy some of your property. I’m paying for it.”

  “Brilliant, don’t you think? If Leroy doesn’t protect her from Donatore, the land will. Leroy would never be happy in that smog-infested, over-populated Valley where you live. Silicon Valley is jammed with arrogant, excessively smart, hubris-laden clods. It’s nothing like the old days down there, when people had taste and manners.

  “He’ll love it up here. She’ll be happy and safe. Air rights to the entire estate are grandfathered in. He can commute by helicopter if he works for you. And you’ll never get an inch of my land in your name ever, Will, for any amount. I’m selling it to them.

  “The fact that construction is already underway for the house keeps that despicable, communist Open Space Agency away. It’s a win-win.”

  “Construction?”

  “Yes, the twenty million covers the land, plans for the estate, and early development. You’ll have to cough up for the rest later. Now write me one for five million.”

  “This is extortion, Vanessa.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s also the price of grandchildren. I did do a bit of extraordinary magic yesterday. You owe me.”

  Will cowered and wrote another check to Leroy and Ashley.

  “The five million is a wedding present. Very generous of you, Will. Now, shall we go see them?”

  “Yes! Where are they?”

  “They’re at the barn. Leroy brought Ashley the most beautiful horse in the world home from England. I pulled every string I knew to get her—them, he brought a horse for himself too—through quarantine so they could be here for Christmas. You must see them. She’s ecstatic.”

  He got up, but she put out a hand to caution him. “She fainted today, Will. I would be as nice to her as you can. No confrontation of any sort, and for God’s sake, don’t tel
l her what happened. Leroy can do that later.”

  Ashley stood in the barn, hugging Leroy and looking at her beautiful new horse. “I’m sure she has a registered name, but I’d like to give her own name, one that I choose.” Ashley thought. “I’d like to name her Princess, or Star, or Twinkle.” She frowned. “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She whispered, “They’re not sophisticated names. I should name her Anastasia or Sarasvati.”

  “Name her whatever you want. She’s your horse.”

  If the heavens had opened and the Voice of God had boomed, “It’s your horse, Ashley. Name her whatever you damn well please,” Ashley’s reaction could not have been more profound.

  “I don’t have to be sophisticated.” Her shoulders dropped and her mouth opened in a joyous Whoop! “I can do what I want. I’m free! Her name is Princess!”

  A shadow darkened the entrance of the barn. Her father.

  She shot toward him, fists clenched. “I don’t have to ride jumping horses and go to shows anymore. I hated them. I was scared. I did it for you, but I was scared to death. Every single time!”

  She attacked so fast and hard that she didn’t notice that her father was twenty years older than she remembered and already looked like he’d been hit by a baseball pitched by a major leaguer at one hundred miles an hour.

  “I hated you because you made me show horses. You didn’t really make me. It was, ‘Oh, sweetie pie. I’m so proud of you.’ You were only proud of me when I was doing something that terrified me. Or made me look better than everyone else.

  “I will never show a horse again. Leroy knew about me right away. He brought me a horse that I really love. She’s beautiful, and sweet and not too big.”

  Leroy raised his hand, “Um, Ashley, I just brought Princess, but I found her in a …” He sputtered. This was not the time to tell her about her mother.

  No one paid any attention to him. Will backed out of the barn. Ashley shot after him.