Sweet Christmas Kisses (53 page)

Mr. Allard lifted his hands in one deliberate move and started to clap. His wife joined him, then Sally and Bernice, and soon the whole barn was clapping and cheering.

Hugh turned white with rage.

“I suggest you leave the party now.” Joanna's father moved forward. “It is time for you to go, yes, and not return. Ever.”

“Jo.” Conran's voice was close to her ear. “You haven't said a word.”

She turned her face to him.

Dimitri squiggled forward and licked her cheek.

Conran sighed and placed him on the floor. “Sit on my feet, little boy. I can't have you meddling in this.” He straightened. “Jo? Can you forgive me?”

“Yes.” The word came out as a croak. She threw herself into Conran's arms and hugged him with all her strength, hiding her face in his shoulder. She didn't want the crowd to see her tears of relief.

Sally said with satisfaction in her voice, “I'll design a music room to add to the house.”

THE END

Beate Boeker has been a traditionally published author since 2008 with a passion for books that brim over with mischief & humor. Several of her romance and cozy mystery novels were shortlisted for the Golden Quill Contest, the National Readers' Choice Award, the 'Best Indie Books' contest, and the RONE Award. 

By day, Beate is a marketing manager with a degree in International Business Administration, and her daily experience in marketing continuously provides her with a wide range of fodder for her novels, be it hilarious or cynical.

Widely traveled, she speaks German (her mother language), English, French and Italian and lives in the North of Germany together with her husband and daughter.

While 'Boeker' means 'books' in a German dialect, her first name Beate can be translated as ‘Happy’ . . . and with a name that reads ‘Happy Books’, what else could she do but write novels with a happy end?

You can contact Beate via her website
www.happybooks.de
 or on Facebook and Twitter.

Melinda Curtis

Copyright © 2014 by:

Melinda Curtis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief
quotes used in reviews.

This book built at IndieWrites.com

It was raining.  Again.

Tiffany Bonander tried humming a few bars of White Christmas.  It was, after all, December 23.  Cheer was called for.

But the incessant beat of fat raindrops on the tangled foliage of the Ecuadorian rainforest and on her pink rain slicker, drowned out her cheer.

Or maybe she was just drowning under the pressure of heavy responsibilities.

Ankle-deep water rushed down the steep, muddy road toward Tiff and her precious cargo–thirty pounds of cocoa beans.  She couldn’t lose the beans.  They were the answer to all her troubles. 

Thunder boomed.  And boomed again.  The downpour increased to a deluge.

Tightening her grip on the wheelbarrow handles, Tiff tried to find purchase with her rain boots, tried to make it to the next rise before the road turned into a river.  Tried…and failed.   Somewhere above her the river had risen high enough to crest a bank.  Water surged toward her.

Tiff’s father claimed they’d abandoned this cocoa plantation years ago for drainage reasons.  He should have used the F-word:
flood
.

Tiff stumbled to her knees, and water rushed into her boots–cute, pink-flowered plastic ones which quickly filled with water and felt as heavy as cement shoes.  If not for her grip on the wheelbarrow, she might have been swept downhill.  Just last week, she’d heard about a woman who’d been carried away by the cresting river and smashed into a tree.  Smashed as in:
to pieces
. 
Dead
.

That would be worse than being broke and the laughing-stock of the civilized world.

This was karma, plain and simple.  She shouldn’t have jilted Chad at their engagement party or left Malcolm at the altar. 

Get a grip, Tiff.

Her father’s angry voice crested above the approaching thunder. 
“You have an idea to save this company?  You’ve had five fiancés in four years, Tiffany – and no marriages!  No one takes you seriously, including me.  Get a grip.”

She’d like to get a handle on things.  A do-over for starters.  She would’ve avoided New York’s social circus and gossip columns, would’ve been more careful about how she qualified love, and been less trusting that her father could successfully run their family’s chocolate business.  If Daddy had made a few more sound management decisions and squandered less money, she wouldn’t have had to come to Ecuador at all.

A primal sound escaped Tiff’s throat.  Had she been in New York, she’d have been mortified.  But here?  In the remote Ecuadorian wilderness?  No one was around to see the Bon-Bon Heiress have a meltdown.

Tiff levered herself to her feet, feeling more like Frankenstein plodding along in her water-filled boots than Christopher Robin skipping on a blustery day. 

She inched her wheelbarrow through the sludgefest only to slip into a rut.  Her foot came out of her water-logged boot, and the flood water carried it away.  The wind whipped off her hood.  Rain plastered her hair to her head, and ran down her back.  The right handle of the wheelbarrow broke.

Helpless. Bootless.  Prince Charming-less. 

Tiff would not cry.  She hefted the bag of cocoa beans to her shoulders.  Her machete swung at her hip as if she was a big, bad jungle babe. 
As if…

The water continued to rise, funneling down the road, rising above her ankles. 

I hate the rain.  I hate the rainforest.  I hate the jungle.

It wouldn’t be as wet and muddy beneath the treeline.  But that was where everything in the vicinity would be seeking shelter.  Everything she feared–leopards, spiders, snakes.  Anything could be in there.  Anything.

I miss high heels, designer clothes, and a healthy bank balance.

A rat washed toward her, scrambling to find purchase on her remaining boot.  Tiff shrieked and lumbered for the rainforest, pushing her way through the heavy undergrowth like the token stupid girl in a horror movie.  The one destined to die first.

Don’t panic.  Don’t panic.

A branch hit her in the face.  Tiff stopped.  Reminded herself to breathe.  Tried not to think about leopards and spiders and snakes.  She tugged her machete free and swung it without finesse, hacking a path through shoots, vines, and broad leaves.

She tried not to recall jungle-set movies where
things
erupted from the shadows and
killed
the unsuspecting.  Too late.

Hack-step. 
Jurassic Park
.  Hack-step. 
Predator
.  Hack-step. 
Anaconda
.

She watched too many movies.  But she was an aberration.  She hated anything with zombies.  They gave her the heebie-jeebies.  And B-flicks with spiders and snakes…

Don’t think about spiders.

Hack-step.  Hack-step.

Don’t think about snakes.

Snakes dangled from trees.  Snakes lurked in bushes.  Snakes ruled the foliage.

The sky darkened and rumbled.  Everything around her became murky and shadowed.

Think happy thoughts.

Rainbows, and dandelions, and sales at Nieman’s.

A series of lightning strikes was followed immediately by earth-shaking booms.

Hack-step.

Something large startled behind the bush she’d chopped.

She screamed.

The large something stumbled forward. Man-size and zombie-like.

Her scream turned into a wail of terror.  She backpedaled into a tree trunk, hitting it with a solid thunk that made the world look bright and sparkly, like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  She slung the bag of beans forward into the mud, hoping the zombie would trip over it.

Something tumbled in the branches above her.  And plunged.  And plummeted.  And landed on the other side of the tree. 

Simultaneously, the large something that had startled her originally stumbled within striking distance.

The world was becoming less sparkly.  Tiff held up her machete like a light saber.  “Stay back!”

The rain seemed to let up. 

Hands reached toward her. 

The fallen something behind her hissed.

Zombie or snake?

Another hiss.

Tiff leapt forward into the arms of zombie-man.

Someone was screaming.

Jackson Hardaway hoped to hell it wasn’t him.

He knew he was in a rainforest.  It smelled like the underside of his grandmother’s refrigerator – moist, dank, and decaying.  He’d veered off the road when the rain stopped misting and got serious, immediately regretting not buying a machete when he’d started his trek a week ago. 

As soon as he was under the trees, the gathering storm had unleashed thunder and lightning, triggering his anxiety about the war—about Owen, about blood and fear—until visions of bomb blasts and men’s screams filled his head.

Didn’t matter that he knew he was in Ecuador in the midst of a downpour.  Made no difference that he knew thunder wasn’t a bomb blast and lightning wasn’t the resulting explosion.  Jax saw again flashes of light filling the desert night sky like the finale in a Fourth of July parade.  The roar.  The despair.  The screaming.

“Don’t die.” He tried to staunch the blood pumping from Owen’s chest, heedless of the blood spurting from a wound below his own knee.

Someone slammed into him.  The screaming grew louder.

Still in the throes of memory, Jax assumed Owen smacked into him – wounded, panicked, screaming.  Maybe in this reality, Jax could save his comrade.  He pressed his hands against Owen’s chest.

“What are you doing? 
Don’t!
”  A woman’s voice.  A sweet flowery scent.  A pair of small, yet determined hands shoving his off her chest.

The vestiges of Afghanistan faded, turning his vision into a black screen.  So not helpful.  Jax flinched at another rocket blast/roll of thunder.

“Snake!  Snake!  Snake!”  The woman scuttled behind him.  Her fingers dug into his rain-slickered shoulder near the strap of his backpack.

Jax willed his vision to clear.

“It’s coming.  And it looks hungry.”  Her hysteria was a hot, tangible thing, frosted with a slight New York accent.  It made him hot and cold at the same time.

“Maybe you should run.”  How he wished he could follow her.  But running blind through the jungle was the quickest way to get himself killed.

She tugged him back a step.  “
We
should run.  Come on.”

A splinter of light pierced his vision.  “Come on, come on, come on,” he murmured.  Snake.  Jungle.  Nice smelling damsel in distress.  It’d be great to see about now.

“That’s what I said.  Come on.”  She tugged him back another step.

That step being taken with his bionic leg, he nearly fell and became snake bait.

She tugged on his straps and saved him from falling.  “Here.  If you won’t run, take my machete and kill it.”  She was a bloodthirsty New Yorker.  Sure, she lacked the common sense to retreat, but she got points for keeping him alive.  She pressed a leather grip into his right palm.  “Off with its humongous head!”

Humongous?

The grip was sturdy, giving him something to hold onto.  The splinter of light became several.  His vision kaleidoscoped. 

Be in the here and now, buddy.
  Blink-blink-blink.

“Where’s the snake?” he asked.  Was it too much to hope for that the city girl was having a freak-out over a fallen branch?  

It was.  He sensed movement at his feet. 
Screw this
.  His machete-free hand reached behind him.

“
Seriously?
  Are you blind?  It’s right there—three feet from your boot.”  She capped off this news flash with a loud noise that was half-scream, half-amateur opera note.

Her panic pierced the fog in his brain.  His vision came back with dizzying intensity.  He snapped his weapon free of its holster as the snake came into nightmarish focus.  It was big enough to eat a pre-teen, and slithering toward his real foot!

Jax’s shot echoed through the rainforest.

“You missed.”  The woman released him, taking the scent of civilization with her.  “You shot my cocoa beans.”

“I wasn’t aiming at the snake.”  He’d done enough killing to last a few lifetimes.  “I wanted to scare it off.”

The snake changed direction and moved fast into the shadowy underbrush.

“That’s it.  The cap to my perfect day.  Saved by a gun-toting tree-hugger.”  She elbowed Jax aside, walking too close to the bush the snake had disappeared under with a lopsided gait he was all too familiar with.  Only she walked funny because her footwear didn’t match–one flower-booted foot, one muddy-socked foot.

She was a wisp of a woman.  Barely over five feet.  Soaking wet, like she was now, she’d be lucky to weigh in at a hundred pounds.  Dark brown hair was plastered to her head.  The hood of her pink rain slicker was off.  The continuous downpour made it too murky to make out much about her face, except it was scrunched in disapproval.  She knelt near a shredded bag, right next to Mr. Snake’s bush.