His Mistletoe Miracle
A Sugar Creek Novel
Jenny B. Jones
Sweet Pea Productions
Contents
Free Ebook Offer
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Engaged in Trouble Preview
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Other Sugar Creek Novels
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2018 by Jenny B. Jones
All rights reserved.
Engaged in Trouble Sample
©Copyright 2017 Jenny B. Jones
Sweet Pea Productions
O Holy Night, Public Domain, Copyright ©1847
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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No part of this book maybe used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Prologue
From his hard bed on the concrete floor, Will Sinclair heard his first sound of hope in four years.
A helicopter.
He raised himself to a sitting position, his eyes trying to make sense of the darkness.
After all this time? Could they finally be coming for him?
His body ached with his wounds, and he hungered for food, water, and freedom.
Yells in the Taliban language of Pashto echoed inside the compound while shots erupted outside. A distant explosion rocked the building, and Will instinctively ducked.
Limping, he shuffled the few feet to the door and stood behind it, ready to fly if opened.
The chopper grew closer, and the sounds of attack ricocheted in his ears. Will didn't know who had come to pounce on his captors, but he wasn't afraid. The screams, the guns, none of it could be any worse than the life he'd been living the last one-thousand, four-hundred and sixty-seven days.
If death was coming for him, he welcomed it. He was ready. He knew Heaven would be his destination.
Because Will had already lived through hell.
Seconds, minutes passed. There were no windows in this prison of a room, no lights. The black of night was all he had, and it had long ago made his ears his best ally.
The thunderous sound of boots running down the hall had him backing up, his scarred body braced for whatever was on the other side of the door.
And then he heard it.
English.
“Left side clear!” a voice yelled.
“Right side clear,” hollered another.
“Overhead clear. Go!”
He heard a grunt, then the door across from him busted open.
“Clear!”
Another door rattled on its hinges.
Will shifted away from the entrance until he was flat against the back wall.
The wooden door opened with a crash. The faint light from the hall seeped inside along with three men bearing guns and a swift urgency.
"Will Sinclair?"
He could've cried at the sound of his name. Instead all he could do was weakly nod as they asked more questions to prove his identity.
“Who are you?” Will finally asked.
"U.S. Special Forces.” One man in black uniform assessed him through his night vision goggles. “Sir, we're here to take you home.”
Chapter 1
A Sinclair man knew how to charm a woman. It was in his smile. In his slow Southern lilt. In his obnoxiously beautiful DNA.
Will Sinclair was no exception.
But the former network reporter no longer had the clean-cut pretty boy face. His wavy blond hair had mysteriously darkened in captivity and was now longer than necessary, falling over his shirt collar. If you looked close enough, you might find a fleck or two of gray. Not that he cared. His face needed the attentions of a sharp razor and shaving cream. Four years in captivity changed a man. It could break you. At the very least, alter the heart.
But did it keep the ladies of Sugar Creek away?
No, it did not.
That was true today more than ever. He’d had a bad night of poker, too little sleep, and one soon-to-be former friend to thank for all of it.
Will had survived torture and imprisonment, but as his doorbell rang for the third time, he didn’t know if he would survive this small Arkansas town. He stomped to the foyer, certain it would be someone of the female persuasion.
Will had barely finished his long-suffering sigh by the time he peeled open the door. “Good morning, Mrs. Beasley,” he said to the woman smiling at his appearance. “You are a vision in that muumuu.”
Shivering against the blistering December wind, the plump widow stood beside a porch post whose paint job had long expired. “My dear, I just stopped by to invite you to Christmas dinner. And to give you a taste of my cooking, I brought this coconut cream pie.” She waved the baked good so close to his face, he nearly got a nose full of meringue. “Homemade crust.”
Pie could make any man cave into temptation. “I bet this is your Blue Ribbon recipe, isn’t it?” She blushed under his praise. “I’ll just put it with . . . the rest.”
“Do you know who else loves my pie?”
He didn’t need a GPS to know where this was headed.
“My Alisha.” Mrs. Beasley winked a brown eye. “You probably remember her from your childhood summers in Sugar Creek. She’s all grown up now.” She patted his bicep and gave an appreciative murmur. “Just like you.”
“You tell her I said hello. And thank you for thinking of me. That’s sure thoughtful of you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work—”
“Alisha would love to see you again. She moved back a few months ago.” The gray-headed woman lowered her voice. “Nasty divorce. But not a bit of it was her fault.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“We’d love to see you at our table. Give you two kids a chance to catch up on old times.”
“I’m swamped with work, but thank you for the invitation.” He’d been staring at the same chapter on his manuscript for days, but surely that still qualified as achievement. “So nice of you.”
Peace and quiet. That’s all Will wanted. He’d been here three months, and word had finally gotten out, despite his low profile. And regardless what his interfering family in South Carolina thought, he wasn’t living like a mole. He’d shown his face in town maybe two or three times. Hung out at the diner with Noah, the town’s mayor and his childhood friend. He was about to overdose on talking and civilities. Because, as he’d feared, the good folks of Sugar Creek now knew he was living there. And the
y were bent on smothering him with howdy-dos and casseroles.
“Thanks again, ma’am,” Will said.
“I’ll set a place for you at the table! And if you happen to hear of my Alisha coming off a gambling addiction, you do not pay that any mind.”
“I know she’s pure as an angel. Take care now.”
And with that, he shut the door. Again.
After storing the pie in the refrigerator next to the banana pudding and a trifle, Will walked back down the hall to his office, a well-equipped and comfortable room in his vacation rental.
Wearing a gray Sugar Creek High School football t-shirt, dark jeans with his left knee peeking through, and no shoes, Will sat in his chair and propped his elbows on the burled walnut desk. Chapter seven was still just as blank as he’d left it when the doorbell rang the first time this morning. Just as blank as when he’d gone to bed last night. And just as blank as it had been this time last week.
He set his fingers to the keyboard. An old writing professor had once told him to just write, even if the words were nothing but junk. An empty page couldn’t be edited.
Living as a hostage in the Middle East was a nightmare I thought I’d never have to face as a reporter or world traveler. The risk was always there, but you don’t think it could happen to—
The doorbell gonged again, and Will lowered his head to his keyboard. What now?
He descended the stairs again, rubbing an old wound, and wondered if he should just move the desk to the front door.
“Hello, Will.” Rachel Sands stood on his porch in a red dress and black stilettos, a combination that promised things dark and beautiful. “I was just passing through.”
It was two o’clock on a Wednesday. Didn’t anyone have a job in this town?
“What can I help you with, Miss Rachel?” Will forced himself not to take a step back as Rachel moved in, leaning a hip against his door frame. If she were a cat, she’d be purring and rubbing against his ankles.
“Word around town is you don’t have anywhere to go for Christmas dinner.”
This was his fifth invite of the day, and Will knew exactly who to blame for this outpouring of hospitality. His mother and whomever her insiders were. Donna Sinclair might be at her home in Charleston, but she had a network of friends all over the globe, and she’d surely enlisted them like soldiers to look after her wayward son.
“I have plenty of places I could be,” Will said. “I am not a man without a spiral ham.”
She laughed prettily and shook her blonde hair, the highlighted color a contrast to the lengthy, black lashes she batted now. “We all know what you’re gonna do.” She slinked one step closer, her perfume a hammer to his already aching head. “You’re gonna spend every day like the others—locked inside this house, working away.”
“Now that’s not entirely true.” His years reporting the news had never quite scrubbed his Southern drawl clean. “I’ll also be watching sports and catching up on all the movies I’ve missed.” Will attempted an amiable smile. “I do like to stay busy.”
“I could help you with that.”
In another life, he might’ve taken Rachel up on the offer. Now he felt tired even looking at her. “Your hospitality knows no bounds. You are too kind, Rachel.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry, I’ve got a conference call in five minutes. I need to—”
“Mayor Kincaid told me you needed some cheering up.”
Ah, so that’s who Will had to blame for today’s parade of high-pressure sales.
Rachel clasped her hand on his. “My place. Seven o’clock, Christmas Eve.” She gave his fingers a squeeze. “And I promise. . .dessert will be an indulgence you won’t want to miss.”
“I’ll give that some thought. Now, I don’t want to keep you. I know you have all that real estate to sell.”
“Oh, I’ve always got time for—”
“Thanks for stopping by.”
He shut the door right in her beauty pageant face and returned to his dusty office.
The worst part of captivity was the anger of surviving.
Somehow I had lived.
And twenty-three children had not.
The most brutal day of torture could not compare to the thoughts, the visions in my own head.
Another knock from downstairs interrupted the slow clack of Will’s keyboard. He shot from his chair. “For the love of—”
Favoring that right leg, he marched to the foyer like a man with blood on his mind. He wrenched open the door. “Look, sweetheart, if you’re here to offer me a seat at your table for—”
“One night together, and we’re already at the endearment stage?” Noah Kincaid took off his sunglasses and grinned.
“Get off my property, Mayor Kincaid.” Will tried to shut the door, but Noah used his shoulder and nudged his way inside, bypassing Will and walking straight for the kitchen, as if he owned the place.
“Still a little sore about losing last night?” Noah reached into the stainless steel fridge and grabbed a water. “Your refrigerator’s a disgrace. Do you eat anything besides peanut butter and hot dogs?”
“Yeah, a whole collection of desserts you’re not welcome to. But after the day I’ve had, you really want to come in in here and disparage my Skippy?”
Noah’s lips quirked, and he had the grace to look away.
“You got something to say?” Will asked.
“I say you need a freaking haircut and shave. You look like an intellectual grunge singer.”
“This face got me three homemade pies by two o’clock. You know anything about that?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.” Noah took a swig of water then smiled.
Will took a spoon to the center of the banana pudding. “Maybe if you can’t handle losing a poker game, you shouldn’t play.”
“You cheated.”
“How about you step closer and say that.”
“You want to show me that deck of cards?”
“So to retaliate you tell every single girl and her mama that I’m desolate and alone for Christmas? This is the big bad revenge you said you were gonna get?”
“You say revenge.” Noah sat down on the leather sofa with a piece of coconut cream pie. “I say it’s just evidence of my caring heart. Plus, that’s the price you pay for finally stepping out of your cave.”
“You’re gonna fix the mess you made, Noah” Will said. “I can’t get a thing done with my door bell and phone ringing.”
“You look like death,” Noah said. “Your parents keep calling me wanting updates. They’re worried sick.”
“You know an upset family is the last thing I want, but I need some space.”
“You should at least get out of the house more, so I can truthfully tell them you’re not living like a hobbit.”
“I did get out. And look where it got me—playing host to every single woman and her momma.”
“Oh, the burden of being rich, famous, and an American hero.”
Will’s stomach burned with a familiar acid. He wasn’t a hero. He was. . .Heck, he didn’t know who he was anymore.
Noah picked at a piece of fuzz on the arm of the chair. “Will . . .sit down. I have some news I think you need to hear.”
Chapter 2
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Will startled at the noise outside, all conversation forgotten. A guy didn’t survive a bomb blast and not have the occasional kickback.
Rising anger fueled his steps as he strode to the living room window and cast a frustrated gaze to the scene. It looked like Santa’s elves had escaped to his lawn.
“What’s all that?” Noah asked as he joined him.
“No idea.” There were people in his yard. Uninvited people.
And, from the looks of it, they had Christmas on their minds.
Flinging open the front door, a shoeless Will crossed the cold yard and approached a burly man toting a ladder. “What’s going on?”
The guy jerked a thumb behind him. “I’m just the hired help. Ta
lk to the boss.”
Will turned and found a honey-haired woman standing in the middle of his yard with her back toward the road, a clipboard in one hand, a coffee cup in the other, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a giant snowman protruding from her top knot.
“More lights, Cecil!” she shouted.
Oh, no. Will was not having this.
He stalked her like a lion after a gazelle and tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”
She turned, a smile on her face and a baby attached to her hip by some mummy-like contraption. “Hello.”
“Hi?” He nearly took a step back as her piercing gaze met his. With her olive skin, chestnut eyes, and pink cotton-candy smile, she was one beautiful interloper. Will reminded himself he needed to get back to work, and he couldn’t tolerate one more interruption. “Hi is all you have to say? You’re disturbing the neighborhood, you’re trespassing on this property, and you and your Bring Your Baby to Work Day are desecrating my space with Christmas junk.”
She tucked the clipboard under her arm and wrapped her free hand around the stocking-capped baby. “Christmas junk?”
Will pinched the bridge of his nose and prayed for patience. “What are you doing, ma’am?”
“My name is Cordelia.” She offered her hand to shake. “Cordelia Daring of Daring Displays.”
“Nice to meet you.” At least she hadn’t recognized him yet and gone all starry-eyed and requested a selfie or a potholder for her casserole. “I repeat, what are you doing?”
“Decorating.”
He tried not to focus on the glittery decoration in her hair or her holiday sweater that flashed red and green in lighted intervals. “Why?”
Cordelia Daring’s smile took on a less hospitable tilt. “I thought I’d start a trend by decorating for the holiday.” She crossed her fingers. “Sure hope it catches on.”
An impertinent trespasser at that. “I mean, why right now, right here?”
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