Mistletoe & Margaritas

Shannon Stacey Mistletoe Margaritas

© 2011

Dear Reader,

In December 2010 we published our first set of three holiday collections. I hoped at the time it would become a Carina Press tradition, and I’m pleased that we were able to do this again in 2011.

This year, I invited four amazing authors to participate in the contemporary holiday collection. Between them, Jaci Burton, HelenKay Dimon, Alison Kent and Shannon Stacey have decades of writing experience and have published books their fans have adored. I knew these four authors would bring together holiday stories that would capture our hearts and take us away from the holiday craziness for a few hours. And did they ever!

I’m thrilled and proud to share the heart-wrenching and wonderful holiday stories of the Holiday Kisses collection with you. I hope you love A Rare Gift by Jaci Burton, It’s Not Christmas Without You by HelenKay Dimon, This Time Next Year by Alison Kent and Mistletoe and Margaritas by Shannon Stacey as much as I did. These are stories and characters that will live on for you, long after you’ve read the last page.

I’m incredibly pleased to make these stories available to you both individually, and as a collection, and I hope you fall in love with them just as I did!

We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

Happy reading!

~Angela James

Executive Editor, Carina Press

www.carinapress.com

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Chapter One

When Justin McCormick was fourteen, a dirt-bike crash had put him in the hospital for two weeks, but even three broken bones and a concussion hadn’t hurt as much as loving his best friend’s widow did now.

And yet, here he was, parking his truck next to her geriatric Volvo and walking up the exterior staircase to the apartment over her landlord’s garage, just like he’d gotten back on that dirt bike. Knowing there was a chance he’d get banged up again, but willing to take the risk.

Unlike with the dirt bike, though, there wasn’t any chance about it. Justin knew he’d get banged up again every time he showed up on Claire’s doorstep. He knew it would hurt, but even if he didn’t have an empty Dunkin’ Donuts bag full of crumpled-up receipts he had to drop off with her, he would have stopped by. He always did. Because they were buddies. Instead of weakening after Brendan’s accident, their friendship had only gotten stronger.

Claire opened her apartment door to him just as he reached for the knob, her pale blue eyes alive with excitement and her long, blond ponytail swinging as he flashed her the friendly smile he’d been perfecting since the day they met. A friendly smile so perfect, in fact, Claire had never guessed-through two years of dating Brendan and three years of marriage and two years of widowhood-how Justin felt about her.

“You brought me doughnuts?”

“Receipts.” He handed her the bag and laughed when she scowled at the contents.

“Work disguised as doughnuts? That’s just mean.” She walked over to the corner of her apartment that served as her office and tossed the bag on her desk. “I should give Moxie your sandwich.”

The massive tortoiseshell cat in question wound between his feet, pausing to headbutt his shin before Justin picked her up and scratched between her ears. “You don’t even like doughnuts that much.”

“I like them more than I like handfuls of filthy, torn receipts you’ve scrounged from under the seat of your truck.”

“Watch it or I’ll start to think bookkeeping’s not your true calling.”

“Of course it is.” She gave him a smile that would have struck him dumb if he didn’t have so much experience resisting it. “There are only so many jobs I can do in sweatpants.”

He set Moxie on the couch and moved toward the kitchen in search of the food Claire had said would be waiting. The only thing she did better than keep books for local small-potato contractors was cook.

Since he’d warned her this would be a quick stop, Claire had thrown together some sandwiches. But they were thin-sliced honey ham with Swiss cheese on homemade whole wheat with butter and spicy mustard, just the way he liked it.

She knew how he liked everything and most of the time knew what he was thinking before he even said it out loud, but she didn’t know how much he loved her. It puzzled him sometimes. He couldn’t see how, unless she was refusing to see it. Maybe she did know, but she’d never feel the same and the pretense preserved their friendship.

While dumping some chips onto her paper plate, Claire looked at him and asked, “How are things going with… Trish, was it?”

“Yeah, Trish. But we broke it off a few days ago.”

“You mean you broke it off.” The look she gave him was a familiar one, full of womanly disgust. “What was wrong with her?”

She wasn’t you. “It wasn’t going anywhere. I did us both a favor.”

When she reached over and touched his arm, it took all of his willpower not to pull away. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll run out of fish in the sea, you know.”

She was a touchy-feely kind of person, always touching his hand or grabbing his arm or resting her hand on his shoulder, with no idea how agonizing it was for him. He felt the warmth of her palm through his shirt and he ached to feel it against his bare skin.

“We still on for Friday?” he asked, even though he’d told himself earlier in the day he was going to tell her he couldn’t make it.

“Yeah. Since my only niece is turning three, I can’t back out.”

“Do you mind if we take my truck so I can stop and have the tires changed? Since we’ll be going through Manchester anyway.”

“That’s fine, but if you’re driving, I’m paying for the gas. Pizza tonight?”

“Yeah.” Tuesday night was always pizza night. Pizza and pool at the local pizza house on the night least likely to have a bunch of kids running around. It had been a tradition forever-just Justin and Brendan in the beginning. “I have to pick up the contract for plowing that new plaza, so I’ll swing in and pick you up.”

Taking a bite of her sandwich, she stretched her legs out under the table. Her ankle brushed his, but she didn’t pull it back. She just rested it there, comfortably and without any clue it was slowly killing him inside.

He had to cut her loose.

Not totally, maybe, but he needed to put some distance between them. He’d been telling himself that for months, as her natural humor and joy for life gradually overwhelmed her grief and she became more like the Claire he’d known-and loved-for years.

No matter how often he told himself to distance himself, though, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The thought of not having Claire in his life anymore hurt. And the question he couldn’t answer was whether living without her or