The Emma Wild Mysteries: Complete Holiday Collection Books 1-4 (Cozy Romantic Mysteries with Recipes)

by Lin, Harper

  “Which is why I’m here,” he said. “I’m ready to make a commitment. Come on, Emma. Please give me another chance. I love you.”

  His last words seemed to echo in the little library. I had to take into consideration that he was an actor, and that he can say a line pretty well. But I also knew him well: Nick wasn’t the type to lie.

  “What about those lingerie models?” I asked.

  “The thing with models is that they are, well, for a lack of a better word, easy. They’re pretty and they’re fun, and I dated them when I was younger when I wasn’t looking for something complicated. But now I’m ready. I want to be in a meaningful relationship with a complicated girl. The ring is still for you. What do you say?”

  If Sterling wasn’t in the picture, I would’ve said yes. But I was hung up on Sterling. Most of my songs on my first album was about him. You never forgot your first love.

  When it rained, it poured. Just weeks ago, I thought I was better off single because I couldn’t find a guy to commit, but Sterling also wanted to be in a serious relationship with me. He said so on our last date.

  “You know that I’m dating someone else,” I said finally.

  Nick sighed. “But whoever that guy is, he’s a rebound and you know it.”

  I shook my head. “He’s actually an ex-boyfriend. We’ve known each other since high school.”

  “High school sweethearts, huh?” Nick’s smile fell and there was a harsher note in his voice. “Are you spending New Year’s Eve together?”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry Nick.”

  On New Year’s Eve, my family was throwing a party with close friends, and Sterling was coming over. I couldn’t invite Nick too.

  He looked crestfallen, but he kept his hands over mine.

  “Then I’ll be here,” he said. “I’ll wait right here at this inn until you’re ready.”

  “Why would you assume I’ll be ready?”

  “Because you haven’t said no.”

  He was right. I haven’t said no. He still had a chance, and he knew it.

  “Like I said, Emma. I’m going to fight for you this time. I don’t care who this guy is, and how long you’ve known each other. You love me and I love you. It’s as simple as that.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I never knew love to be so simple, and that belief was evident in my songs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Wild house was pumping with cheesy 80’s music. Dad was dancing to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and trying to get Mom to join in. We’d invited fifteen of our close friends and family over. My very pregnant sister Mirabelle was here with her husband, and our childhood friends Suzy and Leslie and their boyfriends. Most of the other guests were invited by my parents. Sylvia and Rhonda, mom’s closest friends from her knitting group were over as well.

  I was relieved that Martha wasn’t there. Because Sterling was invited, I didn’t want her slipping in the fact that I had been on a “date” with Nick at her inn. Things with Sterling was still new and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. For now, I did want to give Sterling another chance. There was a lot of catching up we needed to do.

  He showed up clean-shaven and smelling like the ocean. He offered me a bowl of mashed potatoes, sheepishly admitting that he’d made it with his daughters earlier that afternoon.

  “This looks great,” I said.

  He beamed and quickly kissed me before anybody behind me noticed he was here.

  “Sterling,” my mom said. “Glad you could make it.

  My parents knew by now that I had broken up with Nick. I didn’t tell them—Dad had stumbled onto an article about our breakup when he was on the New York Times website—and they had a good idea that I was sweet on Sterling.

  Mom took his coat and winked at me when she thought Sterling wasn’t looking. I stifled a groan.

  While there was more than enough food and drink for our guests, everybody brought a dish of their own that the party turned into a potlock. After I introduced Sterling to the other guests, I put his potato salad on the kitchen counter that was crammed with other bowls and plates of an assortment of dishes, appetizers and desserts.

  “Help yourself if you’re hungry.” I pointed to the self-serve plates and utensils.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Sterling grinned at the selection and began loading up his plate.

  “That’s too bad your girls couldn’t come,” I said.

  “They’re with their mom,” he said, “at their grandparents’ house. But they’re with me next weekend. Would you like to come over and meet them on Saturday?”

  “Sure!” I said. “I’d love to.”

  I thought it was sweet that Sterling was so close with his daughters and I did want to meet them. He had divorced a couple of years ago, but seemed to have a civil and practical relationship with his ex-wife. I never knew his wife because he’d met her in college, and in a way I was curious about her.

  I didn’t mind that Sterling was divorced. It was so commonplace to have starter marriages now, especially when people married young. I thought it was great that Sterling became a dad. I’d always thought that he would make a great dad.

  Maybe I was getting too ahead of myself, but I considered the possibility of becoming a stepmom. Would his daughters like me? Or would they resent me? What if I wasn’t good with kids?

  I told myself to relax. So far I’d only been on two official dates with Sterling.

  Suzy and Leslie’s boyfriends came by the table and began to chat Sterling up. There was a shortage of men at the party, so they stuck together. They talked about hockey, beer and whatever else it was that men bonded over.

  I quickly listening to the boys and wandered over to Mom and her knitting friends. When Mom got pulled into another conversation by one of Dad’s golf friends, Sylvia and Rhonda teased me about my date.

  “He’s certainly a handsome fellow,” said Sylvia.

  At seventy, she was the oldest member of mom’s knitting group. With her white hair, friendly face and cheerful demeanour, she reminded me of Betty White.

  “If I were only forty years younger,” Rhonda said. She was tall, big-boned and had shoulder-length gray hair.

  Sterling was certainly handsome of the tall, dark variety. His stormy grey eyes were my favorite feature. How different he was from Nick, Hollywood’s golden boy. While Nick was outgoing and charming, Sterling was brooding and thoughtful. Nick was a popular celebrity, while Sterling stayed in the shadows to dig up the cold hard truth for his line of work.

  Trying to choose between them was like picking between apples and oranges, but both had enough hold on me to break my heart. What they had in common was that they both did at one point. I’d written enough songs about those heartbreaks. But it was almost the new year. I would start afresh and leave the past pain behind. The question was, who would I choose to spent my future with?

  Sylvia giggled. “He looks just like this boyfriend I had when I was in my twenties and living in Rome for the summer. Is he Italian?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  I was amused that they were giggling over Sterling like schoolgirls that I got pulled into it too. For a while, I gushed about what Sterling did and how great he was. Then I asked them about how their knitting group was going.

  The knitting gang met every Tuesday and Thursday at Martha’s inn and Sylvia wasn’t happy about the location.

  “I keep telling Martha that we should change venues,” she said. “I don’t like that inn of hers.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It’s haunted,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, don’t mind her,” Rhonda said. “Sylvia thinks a lot of places are haunted.”

  “It’s true,” Sylvia protested. “This town was built on an Indian burial ground.”

  “Have you seen a ghost?” I asked. While I didn’t know if I believed in ghosts, I was intrigued by the whole thing.

  Sylvia nodded. “When I went into the bathroom o
nce at Martha’s, I was washing my hands and saw a white figure reflected in the medicine cabinet mirror, but when I turned around, there was no one there.”

  “Maybe because there was no one,” Rhonda said. “It could’ve been your overly active imagination.”

  “I saw it,” Sylvia insisted. “You wouldn’t pay me to sleep in that house. No wonder the place hardly ever has guests. They would rather stay on someone’s couch than that creepy place. I just get a really bad feeling every time I go there.”

  “Who do you think is haunting the place?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sylvia. “But whoever is there is bringing a very heavy energy.”

  “We began holding meetings there when I couldn’t host at my daughter’s house anymore,” said Rhonda. “My daughter had kids and the house became too chaotic for so many old ladies. Plus, I thought that since Martha had so much space, we would open the group up to new members, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

  “I voted to let in new members too,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Knitting has become popular with the younger women in town and some of them had expressed interest in joining. I thought it would be nice to have some young blood in the group, but Martha simply refuses.”

  “It’s like she’s in charge now!” Rhonda huffed. “Just because she’s hosting doesn’t mean she calls the shots. Sylvia and I are the founding members. It’s completely unfair, so in the next meeting, we’re going to insist on having a vote about this matter. And if Martha doesn’t like it, well, we’ll just have to find a new venue.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “I wonder if Mirabelle’s cafe can be a potential venue. It’s just so busy most of the time, but otherwise, I’m sure she would love to host you.”

  “We’ll see dear,” Sylvia said, smiling. “It’s just that there’s so many of us that most establishments don’t allow it. Your mom offered your home, which is very nice of her. We might take her up on it. We would fill the whole living room, but if worse comes to worse, at least we have a backup plan.”

  “I hope our house is not haunted,” I joked.

  “It’s not,” said Sylvia. “If it was, I would tell you.”

  “We used to be in the library,” Rhonda said. “But that place is too quiet for a bunch of noisy old ladies like us. Plus the librarians disapprove of us because of our knitting needles. They say it’s dangerous around the kids!”

  “Imagine calling us dangerous,” Sylvia said, chuckling. “But I guess they have a point. It could be dangerous if a child took one of our needles from our bags without any of us noticing and ran around with it.”

  “Well, I hope things work out,” I said.

  “It would be great to include new members and pass down our techniques,” Sylvia said.

  “Knitting secrets.” Rhonda winked. I laughed.

  “It’s just a matter of the members voting and agreeing on some things,” Sylvia. “It’s so silly! All the knitting politics.”

  Rhonda looked at her wristwatch. “My, it’s getting late.”

  “But it’s only ten forty-five,” Sylvia said.

  “I’m sorry ladies. I promised my daughter I’d go home to count down to the new year with the family.”

  Rhonda said farewell to us and the rest of the guests while Sylvia and I continued to chat.

  “I sure hope to get out of that inn,” Sylvia shuddered. “It gives me the creeps. Have you noticed that crows always like to stand on the roof over there? That’s never a good sign.”

  Aside from her ability to see ghosts, Sylvia surprised me by announcing that she could also read palms. She told me that I would have a long full life. I’d marry and have up to four children if I wanted to.

  “Would it be soon?” I asked.

  “It’s up to you,” said Sylvia. “You still have free will of course. This is just a guideline of what’s in store for you. Lines do change however.”

  “Really? Lines can change on a palm?”

  “Why, certainly.”

  I looked over at Sterling, wondering if he was the guy I’d end up with. He already had two children. If we married, I’d only have to give birth twice to have the big family that I wanted. That was, if his first wife didn’t mind me spoiling her daughters.

  But I also wondered how Nick was getting on. Was he still in Hartfield? If he was, he would be spending New Year’s Eve alone. I knew it was silly, but I also worried about whether the inn really was haunted. When I was there last, I did sense a certain Victorian creepiness about the place, but I was there in the daytime. I was sure that it was much spookier at night.

  I checked my phone. Nick did call. I listened to my voicemail. Nick left a message, wishing me a happy new year. He didn’t say where he was. Wherever he was, he sounded lonely.

  When the countdown began, everyone was so drunk and happy. Sterling pulled me in close and gave me a slow, sensual kiss when we reached midnight.. I would’ve been lost in that kiss if I wasn’t aware that my parents were hovering around us somewhere in the living room.

  Was he a better kisser than Nick? I didn’t know. They were just…different.

  But I couldn’t help but think about Nick and what a great time we had last New Year’s Eve in Aruba, partying it up at a hotel party with a group of our friends. Nick was fun, which wasn’t to say that Sterling wasn’t, but I wondered about our lifestyle compatibility. Sterling was rooted in Hartfield, while I needed to travel and tour the world for weeks or months at a time. Either way, I had a schedule lifestyle to work around.

  I decided that my New Year’s resolution would be to not worry so much. For now, I tried to enjoy the moment.

  But I kept itching to call Nick back because of how sad he sounded. I restrained myself.

  On New Year’s Day however, Nick called me, but his news was more bizarre than anything I expected to hear.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I didn’t kill her,” Nick said.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Day. The ringtone of my cell phone woke me up. There was panic in Nick’s voice. I didn’t blame him when I heard what had happened.

  When he went downstairs for breakfast in the morning, he stumbled onto Martha’s dead body and stepped into her pool of blood.

  “Of course you didn’t kill her,” I exclaimed. “I totally believe you.”

  “Can you please come down and tell that to your boyfriend?”

  Oh no. Sterling was there already. I jumped out of bed and pulled out some clothes from my closet.

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can,” I said.

  After gargling down some mouthwash, dressing and twisting my red hair into a messy bun, I ran down the stairs, grabbed my coat and started running to the inn.

  I saw Martha’s body with that big knitting needle still stuck in her chest as soon as I ran in the door. A photographer was snapping away at the body as if this was one of my magazine cover shoots. Sterling stepped away from interrogating Nick to tell the policemen blocking my path that it was okay that I was there.