CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 53
When it looked like he’d stay on his side of the bed, she grabbed his arm and urged him closer. “I want you here, not way over there.”
“Yes, ma’am. Remember, I left the door open so no funny business. I’d hate to have Charles pull a shotgun on me.”
She adjusted her position, winced with the effort. “I can assure you that nothing could be farther from my mind right now than funny business. Besides, I’m exhausted.” She yawned.
He inched closer to her and reached his arm around her shoulders.
She laid her head on his chest, releasing a long, satisfied sigh. “Mm, this feels good.”
He tightened his arm around her shoulders. “I know I could sure as hell get used to this.”
Cori splayed the fingers of her left hand over Luke’s belly. She started to speak, but stopped herself.
He kissed the top of her head. “What is it?”
“I’m just wondering if it’s really over.”
“I’m thinking the bad part is. But something tells me the really good stuff is just beginning.”
Epilogue
June 24 - Cozumel, Mexico
“Hey beautiful. Could I interest you in a drink?”
Cori lifted her head from the beach chair, adjusted her sunglasses to peer up at the tall hunk of man before her. “What kind of drink do you have in mind?”
“Oh, something garnished with a juicy slice of pineapple and topped with a little umbrella, maybe—preferably with double shots of coconut rum so you’ll lose all your inhibitions.” He stared at her over the top of his aviator style shades. “I’m dying to get you into my bed.”
She repositioned her sunglasses and let her head fall back against the canvas lounger. “I think my husband may have something to say about that. He’s a big guy, too—a real stud—ex-Marine and all. He can kill a man with his bare hands if he has to.”
“I’ve always heard there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere before, too. The thing is, he wears so many hats these days, sometimes it’s difficult to think of him as a tough Marine. He literally saved my life on two separate occasions as a 911 dispatcher. Now, he’s a loving husband, adoring father to our son, college graduate, and about to start his own contracting company.”
“Wow, guy sounds whipped, if you ask me.”
She laughed. “Let’s ask him, shall we? Babe, are you whipped?” She lifted her glasses and looked up at the man.
He gave her that sexy as hell one-sided smile again. “Why, yes. Yes, I believe I am, and proud of it, too.” He leaned over her chair and gave her a kiss. “Here’s your beer, you relentless little ball-buster.”
“Whipped and a ball-buster . . . we’re a perfect pair.”
“Mmm, a match made in heaven.” He settled down in the lounger beside her. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the evening, Mrs. Oliver?”
She sipped her beer and pursed her lips. “Oh, I’m thinking a light supper, then a Face Time chat with our beautiful little boy, and then go back to our room and make love to my new husband all night long.” Cori gave him an adoring grin. “How does that sound?”
“It sounds a hell of a lot better than what I would have been doing on this trip back in December had I not cancelled my reservations.”
“But you may have met the woman of your dreams here if you’d kept them. You never know.”
“I knew back then I’d made the right decision, and every time I come home to you, it’s confirmed.”
She reached over to place a gentle touch to his face. “Good answer.”
“You like that?”
“I certainly do.” Cori winked at him. “Maybe we could play a little game tonight?”
He frowned. “I think I should warn you. I’m easily bored with board games.”
She quirked one eyebrow. “I was thinking more along the lines of role playing. I could be a woman in serious need of some sexual attention.” She traced his lips with her index finger. “And you could be a dispatcher at an emergency call center. Think you could get into that?”
“I could give it a damn good try.” He rolled on his side and leaned over her lounger so that his lips hovered over hers. “Nine.” He kissed her. “One.” He kissed her again. “One.” And one more that had her shivering from head to toe. “What’s your emergency, beautiful?”
THE END
Other Work by Lori Leger
La Fleur de Love Series
Where love is as prevalent as cypress trees in a Louisiana bayou . . .
Book 1: Some Day Somebody
Book 2: Last First Kiss
Book 2.5: Hart’s Desire - A Novella
Book 3: Brown Eyed Girl
Book 4: Heaven in Your Eyes
And its spin-off series
Halos & Horns Series
Where residents of Louisiana and Texas cross state lines to find romance. . .
Book 1: Green Eyed Temptation
Book 2: Sarah Smile
Book 3: Meagan’s Marine
Book 4: One Year to Forever (2015 R.O.N.E. Winner)
Seasons of Love Series
Multi-authored Seasonal series by Cajunflair Publishing
Book 1: Hearts, Hearths, & Holidays
(“Bells Will be Ringing” by Lori Leger)
A short story about Bill and Gwen Broussard
(Jackson’s Uncle Bill)
Full Circle Love
4 Cat and Zach stories from Seasons Of Love series (Books 2-5),
(You’ll see more of them in Running Out Of Rain and Hanging On To Hope)
Prime of Love Series
Mature characters finding love and laughter through the everyday twists and turns of growing older
Book 1: Running Out Of Rain
Book 2: Hanging On To Hope
Book 3: (Predicted Spring 2016)
Non-Fiction Article in Writing After Retirement
Publishers: Rowman & Littlefield
About the Author
Lori Leger is a wife, mother, doting grandmother, and Mistress of Procrastination. She lives in Louisiana with the love of her life, her very own Studly-do-Right. He’s earned his spot in the Keeper Husband’s Hall of Fame by allowing her to walk away from an eighteen plus year career as an Engineering Technician in Road Design to stay home and write.
She adores writing stories set in her beloved southwest Louisiana, where good Cajun cooking, helping your neighbors, and saying y’all is as normal as hurricanes, heat, and humidity. She figures as long as she’s not tunneling through ten feet of snow to get to her car, it’s a perfectly acceptable trade-off.
Lori has ten full-length novels, and two novellas published in three series: La Fleur de Love, its spin-off, Halos & Horns, and her latest, the Prime of Love series. She has also contributed to, as well as published, short stories in each of the five Seasons of Love anthologies, an author collaboration series. She’s compiled four of the short stories about one particular couple, Cathryn and Zachary, into a single book called Full Circle Love. It acts as a prequel to the Prime of Love series.
She’s contributed to the Sweet & Savory Cookbook of Authors, published by Top Ten Press. Lori also has an article published in the non-fiction book Writing After Retirement: Tips From Retired Writers, published by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, and edited and compiled by Carol Smallwood and Christine Redman-Waldeyer.
Her novel “One Year to Forever” won the 2015 Romance Novel Of Excellence award, presented by InD’tale Review Magazine.
LORI’S WEBSITE
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Book
7 - THE TWELFTH DAY
Alicia Dean
The Twelfth Day
copyright © 2015 by Alicia Dean
All Rights Reserved
http://AliciaDean.com
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Alicia Dean
Published in the United States of America
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank my son, Presley, and my ex-husband, Terry, for their assistance in answering my research questions. The murder and mayhem couldn’t have been accomplished without you. And, as always, thank you to my critique partners, friends, fellow writers, and family. You make my world a better place.
About The Twelfth Day:
As a teen, party girl Sabrina Spencer was the lone survivor of a serial killer’s attack on her family. Her testimony put the killer behind bars, and she spent the following decade carving out a new life and trying to forget. But someone hasn’t forgotten. Two weeks before Christmas, she begins receiving bizarre messages with demented references to the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Handyman Josh Cravens is remodeling the lake house she rents each year to escape the painful reminders Christmas brings. While his dimples and blue eyes are hard to resist, he’s the exact kind of player she’s been avoiding since she outgrew her wild days. But the isolated cabin and threatening messages boost her paranoia to fever pitch.
As Christmas draws closer, she’s torn between finding comfort in Josh’s arms, and fear that he might be behind the twisted countdown to the twelfth day.
ONE
Sabrina Spencer relaxed her stranglehold on the steering wheel as she rolled her Ford Infiniti to a stop in the cabin’s driveway. Between the snow-packed roads and holiday traffic, the eighty-mile trip from Sturgeon Bay to Lily Lake had taken two hours.
She shut the engine off and reached for the door handle. Her cell pinged with an alert. The song “Twelve Days of Christmas” played and the words, On the first day of Christmas... popped onto the display. A grainy image of a strip of duct tape waved across the screen. She frowned. What the hell?
She hated Christmas music, that song in particular. Her hands shook as memories surfaced, and she drew in a deep breath to calm herself. She didn’t know what the image meant, or how it had come up on her phone, but it had nothing to do with her past. It was just some crazy fluke.
Determinedly, she pushed it out of her mind. She was here at the lake, where it was peaceful, with no holiday reminders. She wouldn’t let some annoying technological glitch ruin that.
The lake house was a two-story wooden structure with a second floor balcony that stretched around the entire house. The first level’s façade was stone, the second story logs, giving it a mismatched look that was oddly appealing. Behind it, the blue lake shimmered in the late afternoon sun that glinted off the small islands of snow floating on the water.
She climbed from the car. Her UGG boots crunched over icy snow as she hauled in her suitcase and laptop and closed the door, shivering at the bite of the cold wind.
She was stomping snow off her boots when her phone rang. She looked at the display. Great. Mitch. She cringed, debating whether to ignore his call. Guilt prodded her to answer.
His chipper voice came over the line. “Hey, did you make it okay?”
“Yeah, finally. Just got here, getting my stuff out of the car.”
“I really wish you would reconsider and let me come down there and stay with you. I don’t like the idea of going through the holidays without you.”
Sabrina nearly groaned out loud. Here we go again. She and Mitch were co-workers, fellow high school teachers. They’d gone out once, and he had been pressing her for more ever since. He was nice enough, but she wasn’t interested in him as more than a friend. Perhaps she’d been too kind and hadn’t made her feelings clear enough. Or maybe he was just irritatingly persistent.
Silence and aloneness pressed in around her. Keeping the phone to her ear, she walked around opening shades to bring some light into the room. The spaciousness kept her from feeling like the walls were closing in.
For a moment, she was tempted to take Mitch up on his offer. Anything would be better than being alone.
She opened her mouth to agree, but Mitch spoke before she could. “You can’t keep putting me off like this. You need to decide, are we going to be together or not?”
Annoyance tensed her jaw. “I’ve tried to tell you that we’re not. I like you as a friend, but nothing more.” Ugh…maybe some things were worse than being alone.
“You went out with me. I thought we were getting along great.”
“I can’t have this conversation over and over. We are either friends or we are nothing, but I am not in the place to get involved with anyone, definitely not someone I work with.” The truth was there was zero attraction, zilch. He was a good-looking guy, but there was no chemistry. Not that she had chemistry with anyone, but until she did, she was not going to bother with the hassles of a relationship. “I need to finish unloading the car.”
Mitch let out a long, heavy sigh. For a guy, he was such a drama queen. “Okay, call me if you need anything at all. Maybe I could come down and visit for at least a day or so?”
She didn’t want to hurt him. He was a nice guy. But she didn’t want to lead him on either. Despite her better judgment, she found herself saying, “Yeah, we’ll talk about it in a few days. For now, I need to get settled in so I can start on my black-capped chickadee project.”
“I can’t believe you’re spending your time off working on a project for your students.”
She hated to admit it, but, other than her friend and roommate, Lindsey, her students were pretty much all she had. Besides, there was nothing she loved more than teaching science. “Yeah well, since I won’t be celebrating the holidays, I don’t have a whole lot else to do.” Even speaking the word holiday caused a pang in her chest. She used to love Christmas, but now the very mention sent chills through her body. Losing your entire family on Christmas pretty much sucked the joy out of the holiday. She pushed those thoughts away. While alone wasn’t the time to dwell on the horror from ten years ago.
They ended the call with vague plans about his visit, and she started a fire. “Bless you, Jess,” she murmured aloud. The man she rented the cabin from every year always left her firewood and basic staples. He and his wife had been friends of her parents, and they had looked after her when her family died.
She went out to the car to retrieve her last few items. Snow pelted her, but she didn’t mind. The cold was invigorating, just what she needed after the drive to rejuvenate her.
Once the car was unloaded and the food put away, she bundled up in her North Face jacket and scarf, slung the bag containing the feeder, tools, and seeds over her shoulder, then slid open the patio door and tromped outside.
The icy snow raining down spurred her to make quick work of the feeder. She’d chosen the tube feeder because it seemed to be the most comfortable for the tiny birds. She installed it near a tree so the birds would be more likely to come around. They preferred having a nearby shelter in case they were threatened. It would also give them a place to roost at night, so hopefully they would hang around the area. She finished by filling the tube with sunflower seeds, then hurried back inside.
After putting away her clothes and toiletries, she made a cup of hot cocoa and settled in front of her computer. She really just wanted to plop on the sofa and unwind after her hectic day, but she had promised Halley, one of her students, that she would check in when she arrived and stay in touch with her during the break. Halley was a little too dependent on Sabrina, a little too attached, but Sabrina didn’t have the heart to put distance between them. She was rather attached to Halley, too, and the girl needed someone to care about her. She certainly didn’t get that at home.
Sabrina opened up Skype and, in moments, Halley’s face appeared on the screen. Sabrina smiled at her favorite student. “How is your vacation so far?”
A shadow passed over Halley’s face, and Sabrina immediately regretted the question. Halley had an alcoholic mother and absent father and no siblings, no friends. What the hell kind of vacation could she be having? Guilt pricked Sabrina for abandoning her.
Halley shrugged. “It’s okay. How is yours?”
“So far, so good. I’ve got the feeder set up for the chickadees. I’ll be bringing you guys all kinds of stuff for the new semester. You’d better be ready.”
Her eyes behind the glasses lit up. “I can’t wait til school starts again.”
How many kids actually looked forward to the end of vacation? The poor girl was overweight and had severe acne, and the other kids picked on her unmercifully. It was pretty bad that, even though she was bullied at school, it was preferable to her home life.
“Well, just try to enjoy your time off, and we’ll keep in touch. You can call me or text me any time, you know that, right?”
“I do. Thanks a lot.” She smiled. “I think my aunt is coming for Christmas. That will make things a lot better. Usually, it’s just me and mom.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah.” Her lip trembled, and she glanced down.
