A Very Merry Christmas

by Lori Foster, Gemma Bruce

In order to get a handle on things, he had to get a handle on her. He had to convince Beth to admit to her feelings.

  He needed time and space to accomplish that.

  Thanks to Ben’s directions, Levi carried her through the kitchen toward the back storage unit, where interruptions were less likely to occur.

  The moment he reached the dark private area, Levi paused. Time to give Beth a piece of his mind. Time to be firm, to insist that she stop denying the truth.

  Time to set her straight.

  But then he looked at her and he forgot about his important intentions. He forgot everything because of his need for this one particular woman.

  God, she took him apart without even trying.

  Among the shelves of pots and pans, canned goods and bags of foodstuff, Levi slowly lowered Beth to her feet.

  He couldn’t seem to do more than stare at her.

  Worse, she stared back, all big dark eyes, damp lips, and barely banked desire. Denial might come from her mouth, but the truth was there in her expression.

  When she let out a shuddering little breath, Levi lost the battle, the war…he lost his heart all over again.

  Crushing her close, he freed all the restraints he’d imposed while she was his best friend’s fiancée. He gave free rein to his need to consume her. Physically. Emotionally. Forever and always.

  Moving his hands over her, absorbing the feel of her, he tucked her closer still and took her mouth. How could he have forgotten how perfectly she tasted? How delicious she smelled and how indescribable it felt to hold her?

  Even after their long weekend together, he hadn’t been sated. He’d never be sated.

  Levi knew if he lived to be a hundred and ten, he’d still be madly in love with Beth Monroe.

  The fates had done him in the moment he’d first met her. She smiled and his world lit up. She laughed and he felt like Zeus, mythical and powerful. She talked about marrying Brandon and the pain was more than anything he’d ever experienced in his twenty-nine years.

  Helpless, that’s what he’d been.

  So helpless that it ate at him day and night.

  Then, by being unfaithful, Brandon had proven that he didn’t really love Beth after all—and all bets were off.

  When Beth came to him that night, hurt and angry, and looking to him for help, Levi threw caution to the wind and gave her all she requested, and all she didn’t know to ask for.

  He gave her everything he could, and prayed she’d recognize it for the deep unshakable love he offered, not just a sexual fling meant for retaliation.

  But…she hadn’t.

  She’d been too shaken by her own free response, a response she gave every time he touched her.

  A response she gave right now.

  They thumped into the wall, and Levi recovered from his tortured memories, brought back to the here and now.

  He had Beth.

  She wanted him.

  ALL SHE WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS IS…

  If Amber Taylor doesn’t find a way home for Christmas, her mother is definitely going to disown her. Unfortunately, there’s no way she can afford to buy a plane ticket on her paltry salary. Luckily the universe obviously has her back. Why else would a single, drop-dead gorgeous actor suddenly show up on her doorstep and offer to drive her cross-country for the holidays?

  A HAPPILY EVER AFTER…

  Hunky Scott Cardoza was everything Amber desired in a boyfriend—except that he definitely had heartbreaker written all over him, which is why Amber promised herself that their road trip was going to be anything but romantic. Yet being cooped up in a tiny car for three days with the man of her dreams was turning out to be quite a challenge. Good thing rules were meant to be broken…

  “Alan again offers readers a story filled with humor

  and heart.”

  —Romantic Times

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at Theresa Alan’s

  THE DANGERS OF MISTLETOE

  now on sale at bookstores everywhere!

  Twenty-eight days before Christmas

  The night began with a simple philosophical question—is it possible to eat yourself into a cheese popcorn coma?—and ended with reindeer-print boxer shorts draped over the lamp and a total stranger passed out and coiled up like a conch shell on my couch.

  When I got home from work, I found a package waiting for me in the entranceway of my brownstone walkup apartment building. It was a present from Aunt Lu. Every year around Thanksgiving she sent a giant vat of popcorn in a decorative tin. In theory this was a nice gesture, but as a single woman who had no self-discipline whatsoever, this was actually a very dangerous gift. Brimming with excitement (I loved presents! Even ones that would make my thighs bloat up like the cheeks of a chipmunk at a nut convention!), I took my booty, raced up the rickety green stairs to my apartment, tore off my many layers of winter outerwear, and opened the box to reveal a tin that was bisected with a sheet of spongy cardboard to separate the two flavors: cheese and caramel. I sat on the couch, turned on the television, and began shoveling cheese popcorn down my throat from my popcorn trough. The first few bites were ecstasy—the decidedly unwholesome neon-orange cheese powder melted on my tongue in a manner that was thoroughly delightful. Soon, however, I was no longer actually tasting anything; I was merely shoveling food down my throat as if my snack was a timed event and the buzzer would go off at any moment. I was riding a giddy wave of excess and loving it. At some point I realized my stomach was rumbling and I felt slightly ill but there was more cheese popcorn to consume and I was powerless to stop myself from bringing yet another bite to my mouth. It was only when my doorbell zapped that I put a lid on the tin, dashed to the sink to wash off the radioactive orange powder from my fingertips, and temporarily concluded my popcorn orgy. I peeked out the window to see my girlfriend Chrissie standing on the steps below with an entourage of cute guys.

  Wasn’t it every single girl’s fantasy to have cute guys simply show up at her doorstep? It was up there with winning the lottery without having to buy a ticket. And the crazy thing was, it was something I fantasized about a lot. Every time I got home from work, I would have a small flutter of hope that my life might have changed while I was gone—I’d have a message from a new client who would end up becoming my husband or I’d get a steady gig at a salon so I didn’t have to make money exclusively with clients I found on my own. Or maybe there would be a message from that guy I met at the coffee house last week and suddenly I wouldn’t be a romanceless, sexless schmuck anymore. Or I’d come home to a letter with a giant check in it from some mysterious tax rebate or something. The fact that none of these things ever happened did nothing to diminish my hope that something exciting was just around the corner. And look, here I was, with a bevy of cute guys suddenly on my doorstep.

  I took stock of my appearance: I was wearing my hair back in a ponytail, which was somewhat unfortunate. It could look cute in a ponytail, but lots of guys told me my hair was my best asset—it was long, wavy, and butterscotch-colored—so I usually wore it free when trying to impress. But if I pulled it out of the elastic band now there would be an unfortunate telltale crimp, so the ponytail stayed. Other than that I didn’t look too awful except for the bright orange powder glittering across my chest. I quickly brushed it off and bounded down the stairs to open the door. (My building was too old for fancy advancements like being able to buzz friends inside.)

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Merry fucking Christmas,” Chrissie said cheerfully. She held aloft a fifth of spiced rum. I sensed danger.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Are you going to let us in? It’s freezing out here.”

  “Oh. Sure. Come in. Um, my place isn’t clean since I wasn’t expecting…”

  “Your apartment is never clean. Never fear. We won’t judge you.”

  I stood back and let my guests in. “I’m Scott,” said a good-looking guy in a baseball cap and navy blue Patagonia ski jacket. With
his dark hair and caramel skin he looked like Kelly Ripa’s husband what’s-his-face who used to be on All My Children.

  “Yo. I’m Vince,” said another dark-haired guy.

  “Brian,” the blond guy said.

  No one said anything for a moment. I was trying too hard not to look at Scott again in any obvious or carnivorous way. Finally I realized they were waiting for me in the arctic cold. “Oh…I’m Amber. Amber Taylor. Follow me.”

  “We brought rum for the eggnog,” Chrissie said as she charged up the stairs. Chrissie’s long strawberry-blonde hair curled in Shirley Temple corkscrews. I imagined that when her hair was wet it must have reached her ankles. She had tons of it. She often attempted to push at least part of it out of her face with a headband or a network of barrettes, but tonight she wore it loose and it bounced as she walked.

  When everyone was in my microscopic apartment, Chrissie began rooting through my cabinets for a pitcher to whip up a deadly concoction of eggnog and rum.

  I went to massage therapy school with Chrissie. Being a massage therapist is my twenty-eighth “career.” I’ve also been a sushi deliverer, the personal assistant to an eccentric writer, and, of course, cliché of clichés, an unemployed actress. I came to New York to pursue acting, but I couldn’t even get parts in unpaid theater roles let alone roles in movies or on TV. As much as I enjoyed rejection and poverty, when the office I was temping at offered me a full-time position in event planning, I pretty much gave up on acting and took it. I’m not a detail-oriented person, and event planning is all about detail, but I managed to do all right on the job for almost two frazzling years. Amazingly, I only messed up at work a few times, and my getting fired wasn’t about my mistakes: half the company got the ax due to a severe budget shortage. Still, when I got laid off I felt like I’d gotten a divorce—betrayed and hurt. It was worse than breaking up with a boyfriend. I’d worked so damn hard for the company, and my reward for my sixty-hour weeks was getting canned without a dime in severance pay and no place to go. I packed all my things into a box and walked out of the office feeling like I’d been cheated on. After reeling from being let go, I simply couldn’t bring myself to get another job doing the same thing. Anyway, being an event planner had never felt like a calling.

  I needed a job that made me feel like I was making a difference. That’s why I went to school to be a massage therapist. If a person was in pain, it affected every other part of his or her life. In this field I could help people feel better physically and spiritually. I enjoyed being a massage therapist, but since I was just starting out, the money wasn’t exactly rolling in. Plus, I was still paying off my student loans from getting a bachelor’s degree in theater (What was I thinking? A degree in button making would have been more lucrative), culinary school (which I sort of flunked out of due to the fact that cooking school teaches you not only how to cook, but how to calculate how much food to buy and how to run a successful restaurant—no one told me there would be math involved in cooking school!), and massage school. Despite the fact that I gave the federal government a hefty chunk of my monthly salary, I was on the you-will-die-well-before-you-can-pay-off-your-student-loans payment plan. Though I wasn’t making much money, at least I knew that as my own boss, I could never get fired again.

  As Vince, Scott, and Brian made themselves comfortable in my living room, I said, “Um, so how do you guys know Chrissie?”

  “We met atta bar,” Vince said, shrugging not just with his shoulders but with the entire length of his arms, his palms facing up, as if to say, You know how it goes. “Brian and Scott, these are my guys.”

  I nodded just as the phone rang.

  “Excuse me for just one sec,” I said, walking only a few feet into what passed as my bedroom. “Hello?”

  “Tell me you have your ticket.” It was my sister, Emily.

  “I haven’t exactly bought my ticket yet.”

  “Christmas is a month away. You should have bought your tickets weeks ago. Prices are going to go through the roof.”

  Emily, of course, would have had her tickets back in July even with a wedding to plan and a house to buy. “Well, you know, sometimes if you wait you can get those last-minute bargains.”

  “What are you going to do if you don’t get a last-minute bargain?”

  I exhaled at the same moment Chrissie thrust a cup of eggnog in my hand. The girl was a tornado—an unstoppable force of nature.

  I mouthed the word “thanks” to Chrissie. Aloud I said, “Emily, don’t you think it’s a little silly to spend hundreds of dollars so we can see each other for just a couple of days?” I took a sip of the spiked eggnog, which could better be described as rum with a splash of eggnog. It nearly singed the hair off my head it was so high octane.

  “Of course. It’s ludicrous. Christmas is ridiculous in every way. But if you don’t come, Mom will kill you.”

  I moaned. Emily was right. “You’re right. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Never.”

  “But I just saw all of you at your wedding in August.”

  I had no money in my savings account whatsoever, and I had abused my credit cards so badly I couldn’t even charge a ticket to Denver. Why had I ever left home to move to New York? Everything was so much harder out here. My rent on this five-hundred-square-foot hovel nearly bankrupted me while Emily just moved into her first home. Her place was three times the size of mine, yet she paid two hundred dollars less on her mortgage payment each month than I did on my rent.

  “We’re your loving family. It’s not like we can see each other only once a year. And let me reiterate my main point, which is that you’ll never hear the end of it from Mom if you don’t come home for Christmas. You know she’s psychotic about the importance of this holiday. She will torment you every day for the rest of your life if you don’t come.”

  “She will, she will.” My mother really could be a broken record at times. When I lost my job in event planning, she would call day after day and tell me to get a real job. I’d think, Mom, I get it. I’d like to find a real job, too. Then, three minutes later she would say the same thing in a different way. Something like, “You know, you could work in an office and wear pretty suits. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Yes, Mom, if only I could find a job I’d love to wear pretty suits.

  I huffed into the phone. It was so unjust to be thirty-two and still letting my mother tell me what to do. “Why is she so weird about it? We’re not religious. We’re not traditional. I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t know why, but the point is that she’ll make your life a living hell if you don’t get out here. Even if you make it to every Christmas for the next thirty years, Mom will be pestering you about how you broke her heart because you didn’t make it to the first Christmas I’m hosting in my life.”

  “You’re right. You’re right.” I took another sip of my eggnog-flavored rum. I loved my mother, but she could be such a pain. Still, making her happy made my life so much easier. How the hell was I going to miraculously come up with the money for a plane ticket? Maybe I could sell some of my organs off. Did I really need two lungs?

  “Plus,” Emily continued, “Mom said she’s going to make some big announcement.”

  I paused. “What kind of announcement?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you think it could be?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “You think she and Mork are getting a divorce?” (“Mork” was our nickname for our mother’s husband, Jesse Moss. He looked just like Robin Williams in his Mork days, with straggly longish hair. That, combined with his obsession with suspenders, had caused us to call him Mork ever since Mom began dating him way back when Emily was twelve and I was ten. How were we to know Mom was actually going to marry the guy? Mom didn’t know about our secret nickname for him. We loved him, but secretly we were happy he was her second husband and not our dad because we both preferred having the surname Taylor rather than Moss.)

  Emily made a n
oise that roughly equated to, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, she’s too young to retire and anyway she loves her job,” I continued. “Maybe she’s secretly gay. Maybe we’re really adopted. I know! We’re secretly wildly wealthy and Mom and Dad hid the money from us when we were growing up because they didn’t want to spoil us but now we’re going to come into our inheritance!”

  “Yeah, right. Anyway, don’t you want to see Luke’s and my new house?”

  “Why won’t she tell us the secret early?”

  “Because she wants us all there in person.”

  “We’re going to become wealthy, I just know it. I bet she’s won the lottery and is buying a boat and going sailing around the world and taking us with her!”

  Emily sighed in exasperation. “Just get your ass out here.”

  “Fine.” I sniffed. “I’ll keep checking Priceline and hope for a miracle.”

  “Why don’t you just ask Mom for the money?”

  “Because I can’t bear to have her lecture me on how it’s time that I got a husband and a ‘real’ job. I’d thought that with you getting hitched she would lay off, but no, it’s only made her even more determined to get me married off. She acts like I’m beating men away. I’m trying to find someone.”

  Mom did sort of have a point: the truth was, I got asked out a lot. I was the queen of the first dates. The problem wasn’t that the guys didn’t like me but that I didn’t like them. There was never that spark I longed for. It was nice having men take me out to expensive dinners and shower me with gifts, but I wanted to find a guy who made me light up when I saw that he’d left a message on my voice mail or sent me an e-mail. Usually I cringed when I got a call from a guy because I knew I’d have to give him that “I’m not into you” speech.

  “If I don’t find the right guy soon, my eggs will have rotted away and I’ll never have kids. But I can’t just marry the first sperm-carrying male who crosses my path.”

  “Since when have you been all hot and bothered to start having kids?”