Jingle Spells (22 page)

Recovering first, she threw on a robe and padded over.

The elf waiting on the other side shifted nervously from foot to foot as he wrung his hands. Horror and dread filled his eyes as he blurted out, “Kris and Merry are gone!”

* * * * *

Silver Belle

Andrea Laurence

ANDREA LAURENCE
is an award-winning contemporary romance author who has been a lover of books and writing stories since she learned to read. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she's working on her own happily-ever-after with her boyfriend and five fur babies. You can contact Andrea at her website,
www.andrealaurence.com
.

To Vicki, Rhonda and Kira, the ladies I shared this awesome experience with—Working on
Jingle Spells
with you guys was great. Probably the most fun I've ever had plotting and writing a story.
Thank you.

Seven Days until Christmas Eve

B
elle hated cocoa. Even when it had fluffy homemade marshmallows or fresh whipped cream on top.

It was a dark secret she would take to her grave or else risk being ostracized by her family and friends. At Evergreen Industries, the witches, wizards and elves that made Christmas magick all drank cocoa. That's just how it had always been. There were no coffeepots in the building, at least none that anyone knew about. There was an emergency Keurig and a stash of pods hidden away in Belle's bottom file drawer. But that was it.

As far as Belle was concerned, their casual dismissal of coffee was a crime, and one that forced her out of the building every day to visit the local coffee shop, A Cup of Cheer. Her emergency brew couldn't hold up to the deep, rich flavors of the coffee she could get at the shop. It was only a few blocks away from the Evergreen corporate offices and worth it for her much-needed jolt of daily caffeine. This close to Christmas it was the only thing that helped her maintain her holiday cheer. Not even Ethan's sparkly, enchanted ornaments worked on her anymore.

Rolling over in bed, she spied the broad, bare shoulders of Nick lying beside her. But it wasn't all bad. She supposed she should really thank her cocoa-imbibing brethren for driving her out of the office each day. It was during those daily visits to the coffee shop that she met local contractor Nick St. John. The successful businessman was tall, dark and undeniably sexy. What had started as a casual flirtation each day turned into more, and before Belle knew it, they were getting their coffee to go and heading to Nick's place.

It wasn't easy being the youngest Evergreen and the only girl, to boot. Her older brothers were nosy, overprotective and could make her life miserable if they wanted to. Dating was impossible. She had her own apartment at the lodge, but it was on the same floor as her parents and her brothers. There would be no comings or goings from her place that someone in her family didn't observe and report.

Belle wasn't supposed to date a human, but they'd made it all but impossible to date a wizard. Besides, two of her three brothers were dating outside the Winter Clan, so she didn't want to hear a word about it.

It wasn't like she and Nick were dating, anyway. It was more of a mutually beneficial arrangement with no strings. Judging by the sore heat between her thighs, the dull throb of her belly and the raw scratchiness in her throat, today was one of their more adventurous mornings.

She watched Nick's shoulders move gently with his soft breathing. The poor guy had worn himself out working so hard to please her, and she appreciated his effort. He was by far the best lover she'd had, and that was saying a lot considering many wizards used magickal trickery in the bedroom. Nick didn't have a crutch like that to lean on, so he had to work hard for every gasp of pleasure that came from her lips.

Belle wanted to reach out and run her palm across his bare back. She wanted to weave her fingers through the dark curls of hair at his neck. With each passing day she was tempted to stay longer. To learn more about the man that ruled her mornings. But she couldn't do any of those things.

Instead, she flung back the sheets and swung her legs out of bed. She moved around his bedroom collecting her clothes from where they had been hastily discarded. Belle had only managed to slip on her red lace panties when Nick rolled over and frowned at her.

“Leaving already?”

“You know I have to go.” She tugged her tweed slacks up over her hips and reached for the matching lace bra she'd worn today for Nick's sole benefit. He was very appreciative of her fine lingerie. “I'm already infamous around the office for taking the longest coffee breaks in history.”

Nick sighed and sat up, letting the sheets pool low around his waist.
Good gumdrops
, he had a beautiful body. Every inch of Nick's physique was hard, wrought by building homes. Lifting wooden beams and sanding drywall did a body good.

Belle was so distracted by the sight, she buttoned her blouse crooked. She didn't notice until Nick arched a dark, amused eyebrow at her, and she looked down to see what he was looking at. “Oh,
snickerdoodle
!” she cursed, unbuttoning and re-buttoning her top.

“You're so sexy when you talk dirty.” Nick slid out from under the covers and walked nude across the room to where she was standing. Judging by his proud, aroused state, he wasn't kidding when he told her that her second-grade swearing vocabulary turned him on.

Nick wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. The press of his firm heat against her belly stirred new pangs of arousal in her. She wanted to strip off all her clothes and waste away the afternoon in his bed, but she couldn't. She had to get back to work. It was a week before Christmas, and things were about to get crazy at the office. Maybe in January she would have enough free time to take off a whole day and indulge in the pleasures Nick had to offer.

Belle lifted the loose strands of her hair between her fingertips and pulled them back into a ponytail. Nick took advantage of her movement, and his lips met with the sensitive skin of her exposed neck. The tingle traveled down her arm and along her spine, tightening her skin into goose bumps and making her tremble slightly in his arms. “Stay,” he whispered into her ear.

His rough hands glided across her skin as he started to convince her to stay a little while longer. And then her phone rang.

“Damn it,” Nick cursed and stepped away.

“I'm sorry.” Belle picked up her phone from the nightstand and frowned. It was her brother, Dash. “Yeah,” she said, bypassing any pleasantries.

“I don't know where you are or what kind of slow roast Sumatra coffee you're waiting on, but you need to get your jingle bells back to the office right now.”

She planted her hand on her hip in irritation. “Since when did you become my boss, Dasher Evergreen?”

“Would you rather Cole be the one to call? He's in a foul mood, but I can ask him to relay the same message if you're going to be stubborn.”

“No, thanks.” Her oldest brother Cole was the CEO of Evergreen Industries, so in fact, her brother
was
the boss of her. But given a choice of being chewed out, she'd take Dash any day. “What's the big emergency?”

“I don't think we should talk about it on the phone.”

“What? Why?”

“Because we've got a Code Red here, and this line may not be secure.”

Dash's words were like a splash of icy water on her libido. A Code Red was the highest alert at the office, reserved only for Santa-related emergencies. Given everything that had happened the last few weeks with Kris and his midlife crisis, she wasn't surprised. But she was concerned. Christmas was only a week away.

“I'll be there in ten minutes.”

“No. You need to
apparate
, now.”

Belle glanced over her shoulder at Nick. He was tugging on his jeans and trying not to listen in on her discussion. “Now is not the best time for that.”

“Then find an alley or go into the ladies' room or something because
Santa is gone
!”

The line went dead, leaving Belle to wonder if she'd heard him right. Santa was gone. That couldn't be right. She'd seen Kris just this morning. Or was that yesterday morning?

“Trouble at work?” Nick asked.

“Yes,” she said with a weary smile. “There's a big emergency I need to get back for. Working with family is always special. And this time of year is so busy for us that everything is a crisis of one sort or another.”

“I understand. We'd both better get back to work. I've got to install all the cabinets at my latest house today. Same time tomorrow?”

“That's my plan. I'll text you if it changes.”

Nick leaned in to kiss her goodbye. The moment his lips met hers, she could feel her head start to swim. He had potent powers over her body. Every nerve lit up at his touch.

Belle pulled away reluctantly and picked her coffee cup up off the nightstand. “I'll see you tomorrow,” she said.

Nick waved at her from the front door wearing nothing but his blue jeans. She had to take a deep breath to force her feet down the street toward her office building. Once he shut the door, she looked around for any humans. The street was pretty quiet, but she couldn't take any chances. She ducked between two houses and with one last look around, she flicked her wrist and disappeared.

 

Nick's truck rumbled over the icy gravel of his latest construction site. He pulled up alongside the van and car of two of his employees. Ben should be inside priming and painting the drywall, and Tom was working on plumbing fixtures. His task today, as he told Belle, was cabinets. He had to get those in so Tom could put in the sinks and faucets.

His heavy boots crunched through the yard until he stepped up over the threshold into the house. There was a large stack of cabinets on the floor, each wrapped with a protective outer layer. Nick had picked them up from the supplier early that morning and dropped them off before going to meet Belle. He pulled a pocket knife out of his belt and set to work unwrapping them all.

He had the base cabinets screwed into place when Ben came into the room behind him. “Hey, Nick. How are the cabinets going?”

“Good so far. Where are we with priming?”

“The downstairs is all done. I've got one bedroom left upstairs. Then I can start the base coat. I painted two coats on the kitchen and bathroom walls yesterday so you could get the cabinets in. I'm expecting to have everything painted with trim and crown molding by Christmas Eve. I thought that was a good stopping point before the holiday.”

Nick frowned. Was Christmas really that close? He tried not to pay that much attention, despite the fact that Gingerbread was destination Christmastown, USA. Being surrounded by Christmas all year actually seemed to dull the impact of the real holiday. At least in Denver, he knew when the lights and decorations went up that it was getting to be that time. “How long until Christmas?” he asked.

“A week,” Ben said. “Time just flies, man. I've still got to go get a gift for my wife at Baubles. She wants some fancy charm bracelet she saw on television. And of course my kid wants an impossible to get toy from Santa, so I've got to start haunting the internet for that. You got any fun plans this year?”

The answer to that was a resounding no, but Nick didn't tell people that. If folks thought he would spend Christmas alone eating a frozen dinner, they would feel bad and want to invite him to their family dinners and parties. He wasn't interested. He didn't dislike Christmas. Nick just didn't care for the commercial hype that went with it.

This, of course, as he custom-built Christmas-themed bungalows for wealthy snow bunnies. The irony was not lost on him. But that didn't mean he wanted to get all wrapped up in it, either. “Yeah,” Nick said. “I'm going to drive up to see my folks in Denver.”

“That's great.” Ben smiled. “I'm going to haul in the last of my primer and get that bedroom knocked out.”

Nick watched his employee disappear into the yard and focused his attention back on the cabinets. He snorted quietly to himself as he thought about the idea of actually spending Christmas with his parents. He couldn't imagine a more stressful, awkward holiday experience.

About six years ago, when he'd first started his business, he'd been too busy to go home for Christmas. The next year, it seemed like a good excuse to use again. Then he moved to Gingerbread, and the lie perpetuated itself year after year. No one seemed to miss him. They just sent a generic fruit basket like he was one of his father's clients. He was pretty sure they got the same cellophane-wrapped dome of apples and oranges he did.

Christmas had become just another day, and one where he couldn't even get food from a drive-thru at that.

Nick did wonder what Belle would be doing for Christmas. She hadn't mentioned anything, although he was certain the holiday was a big deal in the Evergreen household. Her family was famous for their Christmas ornaments, and her brother Ethan was a holiday fixture on television. They donated a small fortune to the community and other charities. But aside from that, no one really knew much about them or their company. You could sit outside the building for hours and not see a single soul go in or out. And aside from Belle and her brothers, Nick didn't know another person in town that actually worked there. It was a factory. There should be hundreds of community residents working for Evergreen Industries.

The Christmas cynic in him wondered if they secretly shipped in all their ornaments from a plant in India or Mexico and just claimed to make them here. Anything was possible when nothing was really known about them.

Despite the fact that he'd spent every morning with Belle for the last six months, he didn't have much more insight than anyone else.

At first, Belle's silence was refreshing. They were both very busy professionals. Their time together was fun and easy. She never lay in bed and bored him to tears with
stories about the banalities of her day or how she broke a nail opening a pickle jar.

She also didn't demand quality time with him outside of their daily interludes. They hadn't been on a single date by his recollection. They'd never even shared a meal aside from the occasional scone with their coffee. Belle never called and rarely texted. It was the perfect relationship for him as he poured every ounce of energy into his company. Most women he'd dated hadn't understood how much time and effort it took to be successful, and they eventually gave up on him. Usually, that was just fine by Nick.

And yet…he'd found himself wondering about Belle. At first, he thought he'd hit the woman jackpot. She showed up daily for hot sex and was out the door before he could make up some excuse for her to leave. But over time, he found himself wishing she would stay even as she disappeared. She was the first woman he dated that left him wanting more, but he was too respectful of their arrangement to push for anything more substantial than what they had. He didn't want to be like the women that had always pressured him to give more than he could.