Merry Random Christmas

Merry Random Christmas

Random Series Book 8

by Julia Kent

It’s bad enough I got arrested for prostitution on Christmas Eve.
Alleged
prostitution, mind you. I didn’t do it. Of course I didn’t. The c
ops
say I offered up a certain sex act for a
$5 gasoline
gift card, but honey?

My sex acts are worth way,
way
more.

So when I tried to explain what happened to the person who came and bailed me out
of jail
, she wasn’t exactly impressed.

Because it was my boyfriend’s mother.

Now, I got two boyfriends, so Murphy’s Law said it had to be the
mother
I hate the most. And she hates me right back. Even more now that I lost her son.

That’s right. Where in the hell are Joe and Trevor? It’s Christmas Eve, and I keep getting pictures on
social media
showing Joe and Trevor all oiled up in g-strings that look like candy canes, dancing with a bunch of
well-coiffed older
women.

I, on the other hand, am wearing Santa pants, flip flops, and smell like jail cell pee.

That game of Truth or Dare turns out to be way more dangerous than anyone expected.

And our savior? It ain’t the baby Jesus. Not the three wise men. No little drummer boy. Not even the
donkey
that
carried the Virgin Mary on its back while she howled for an epidural.

Nope. Can you guess?

That’s right.

Mavis the Chicken.

Can she help us out of this clustercluck?

* * *

Merry Random Christmas
is the eighth book in the New York Times bestselling Random series. Join the gang on Christmas Eve as Darla
i
s unfairly arrested, Trevor and Joe are forced to become strippers, and candy canes appear in places where sugar is a bad, bad idea in this crazy, rollicking romp.

Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

* * *

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http://www.jkentauthor.com
 

Darla

“It all started with a game of Truth or Dare,” I said with a heavy sigh as I stared into the eyes of Joanne Ross through the jail cell bars.
Joanne is my boyfriend’s mother. I’m sure there are plenty of fates worse than having your boyfriend’s mama dig you out of jail on Christmas Eve, but right then, I couldn’t think of any.
 

“I don’t want to know.”

No, lady
, I thought.
You don’t. You really don’t.
 

“Where’s Joe?” I asked, wondering why he sent his mom to do his dirty work.

“I have no idea.” She looked at me like I was a cockroach and she wished she had a seven-pound can of Raid to kill me with.

By dropping it on my head.

Not that she could lift a seven-pound can of
anything
. That was more than this bitty little woman weighed. She was the size of a teacup
C
hihuahua and about as annoying.

“Then why are you here?”
I asked. Groaned. Complained.
Whatever.
 

“Because I’m a masochist.”

“I didn’t ask you about your bedroom antics with Gene and Herb,” I snapped back. “I asked why you’re here and Joe’s not.”

She recoiled.

Good.

The only way to take on a
n attacking
snake is to put them on the defensive.

“You know, Darla, I realize you didn’t learn proper manners back in Iowa—“

“Ohio.”
Jesus. Do these people in Massachusetts not know their geography?
 

She waved her hand dismissively, the perfect French manicure like a work of art. “Whatever. It’s all corn
in flyover country
. Anyhow, I know you weren’t taught proper manners
back in
Ohio
,” Joanne Ross said with a sniff.

A sniff that made me realize the only thing keeping me from a homicide charge was those jail cell bars.

“I got plenty of manners.
Buckets of them. I got more manners in my pinkie finger than you got in your—
”

She snorted. “Case in point.”

I narrowed my eyes and said nothing. Saying nothing is not part of my nature. In fact, the words cluttered at the base of my throat like people in my hometown of Peters, Ohio rushing the nearest Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

But I held them back. Studied her.

And then I realized why she was here.

“You monitor Joe’s phone, don’t you? That’s the only way you’d know where I am.”

Now, I expected lots of responses
out of Joe’s mom
. She could have denied it. She could have been offended. She could have admitted it. She could have pretended she didn’t hear me.

I sure as fuck didn’t expect her to ask
me
, “Were you really blowing Santa Claus behind the vegan restaurant for a $5 gas card?”

I
f I’da known she was gonna say that, I’da stepped back from those jail cell bars.

’
Cause when my hand reached out and grabbed the
pearl
necklace around her throat and twisted so tight she started to sound like a balloon poodle with a puncture in it, I realized my mistake.

I’m pretty sure she realized hers, too.

Two cops rushed to her aid, pulling
her
back. The pearls snapped and scattered, the sound like rat’s claws on the concrete floor, skittering to and fro.

Ask me how I knew that sound.

Yeah. A few hours in
this jail
and I was
more than
ready to go home.

“We’ll add assault to the charges,” one of the cops growled. Officer Kuli. He was bald, with a ridge of fat in his forehead that made him look like something out of a Star Trek episode,
like a hybrid Klingon-Human
. Sweat covered his neck and face, and half his mouth pulled up in a permanent sneer,
cold, dark eyes perfectly fine with putting me in a women’s prison forever.
 

“No,” Joanne snapped, straightening herself. She looked me right in the eye. “No additional charges. We need to get her out.
Now.
”

Blood pumped through me harder than Joe’s jizz after we’d been sexting for three days from a distance then finally been able to fuck like bunnies. It raced through me like this was a competition.

Why was Joanne here? Why was she being
nice
?

Yeah. This was nice by her standards. You really don’t want to see Joanne Ross’s version of
mean
.
 

Kuli the Kop opened his mouth to question her, but he shut i
t
damn fast when she made eye contact with him. Looking into the Soul of Hell will do that.

Catcalls and offers of various sex acts (one of which involved a chicken and a popsicle) greeted me as the cop followed us out. Depending what Joanne had in store for me, the popsicle thing might be a better option.

Ten minutes later I was outside, woefully under-dressed in my white silk long-johns, oversi
z
ed Santa pants, and cheap flip-flops the cops gave me to wear.

She looked me up and down, then sighed. “Where are your clothes?”

“These are it.”

She pulled her manicured fingers up to her mouth, parting the perfectly-lipsticked lips. Joanne tapped on her front teeth with the ends of her nails, then declared:

“We need to talk.”

With that, she turned on one heel and stomped down the street, determined. For a tiny little woman, she could walk. She took two steps for every one of mine.

“If we need to talk, why are you running away from me?”

Her silence scared me. Joanne Ross was the kind of woman who had seventeen versions of “seethe,” none of them good.
I supposed I should have thanked her for bailing me out. Manners would, in fact, dictate I do just that. With a mind that felt like a shattered candy cane and blood that felt like sludge, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.
 

“Why are you dressed like something out of a Key West Christmas Pride parade?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to argue, but then I looked down.

Huh.

She had a point.

“
And what’s this about a game of Truth or Dare landing you in jail?” She gave me a hard glare. “And technically, that wasn’t jail. You would be in Billlerica if they’d processed you. Luckily, you were just in an overcrowded holding cell, so quit calling it ‘jail.’”
 

S
he sounded like that teacher on those old Charlie Brown cartoons. Whatever.

“You said you didn’t want to know.”

“I do now,” she snapped. She had a way with words. Like getting barbed wire caught in your short and curlies, being interrogated by her was painful and made your eyes water.

I sighed. “Joe started it. Mama won me a bunch of sweepstakes prizes and I think these companies ship stuff out fast at the end of the year for some godawful reason—”

“Probably to get the marketing deductions before the end of the reporting quarter,” she said, cutting me off.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” she said with a curt shake of the head. “Go on. Sweepstakes? Your mother is a professional sweepstakes marketing coordinator?”

My turn to look at her funny. “What?”
Marketing coordinator
and
Mama
go together about as well as
Darla
and
celiba
te
.
 

“Why else would your mother send you so many sweepstakes prizes?”

“Because she
wins
them,” I said slowly. We were talking at cross purposes. Hell, every time I spoke with Joanne Ross it was like talking underwater. In Croatian. With baby sharks in the
tank
.

And the full expectation that I would understand every word out of her mouth.

“Anyhow,” I said pointedly, “Joe watched me pull out the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer nipple clam
p
s Mama won from a—”

“
Excuse me
?”
Too bad I broke Joanne’s pearls back at the jail cell, because she’d be clutching them so hard right now she’s garrote herself.
 

W
hich would pretty much solve half my problems.

My temper was already at a slow boil. Her constant interruptions made my lid start to warble. “
I
f you’d quit interrupting me, I could explain.”

“If your words made any sense, I’d stop interrupting you.”

“Jesus,
l
ady, the egg didn’t fall far from the chicken’s asshole, did it?”

She threw up her hands, her expensive purse dangling from her wrist like a loose handcuff. “If you spoke like a normal person, Darla, maybe I—”

“Don’t you make fun of my Ohio accent!” I thundered.

“What in the hell does your accent have to do with eggs and chicken assholes?”

We were both breathing hard, either from the rush of adrenaline that spurted like
a professional squirter porn actress through our veins, or from the cold, December air that chilled the nearly-vacant Cambridge streets.
 

“What are you talking about?” we said simultaneously.

“My mama enters sweepstakes,” I said, staring her down, giving her a death glare. “She sends me the winnings. She won a set of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer nipple clamps.”

Joanne shuddered. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and then she winced, finally asking, “I know I’ll regret this, but my curiosity is getting the best of me. Do they light up?”

I pulled the neck of my shirt out and looked down. “Good question,” I said, reaching down for one of my boobs. “Let me check.”

“NO!”
Her hand went right over mine, pressing my palm into my ample breast. “Please. I don’t require proof.” She looked like I had just informed her she had a leech stuck to her lower lip.
 

I smiled nice and wide. “You sure?”

“Positive.” I could feel the vibration from her throat as she swallowed hard. Slowly, she pulled back her hand, looking away. “But I still don’t understand how a Truth or Dare game led to jail.”

“When you’re playing it with Joe, it ain’t exactly hard to piece together.”

“What does that mean?” she demanded.

“Joe likes to up the ante. Keep things interesting.”

Her eyebrows met. Whoa. Eighth wonder of the world. Someone created flexible Botox. Joanne shot me a look like I was expected to explain.

“I was giving away a bunch of candy-cane flavored sleeping bags my mama won in a contest and—”