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 generalinquiries@carinapress.com. 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

www.twitter.com/carinapress

www.facebook.com/carinapress

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 continuing to live as her best friend hurt more.


Nothing made Claire want to bust out the butt-wiggle dance like snowflake graphics dancing across the weather forecast grid portion of the evening news. The snowflakes were a couple of days away and they weren’t going to amount to much, but it was a start.

Snow meant plowing and plowing meant she’d get to see more of Justin. He was a roofer by trade but, like a lot of guys whose work crapped out during the winter months, he plowed snow to make up the difference. Since his house was in the middle of nowhere and most of his client base was in town, he’d crash on her couch for power naps between plow runs. And, if she didn’t have any work backing up on her desk, she’d ride along and keep him company while he cleared driveways and parking lots.

Now that the procrastinators had gotten their last-minute roof fixes and her customers weren’t quite ready to start freaking out about taxes yet, there was a window of several weeks where they could play a little harder than they worked and she intended to take advantage of it. Starting with pizza and pool tonight.

First, she had to get some work done, though. Starting with the new bakery that had managed to make a horror show out of their books in less than two months of business by deluding themselves about their accounting abilities. Shaking her head and muttering under her breath, with frequent breaks to explain to Moxie yet again why she couldn’t lie on top of the papers, kept her busy for several hours and she only stopped because it was almost five o’clock and every Tuesday at five, Penny stopped by.

Penny Danvers’ dad owned a plumbing outfit that employed Penny’s three older brothers, as well as a few other guys. Penny worked in the office, answering the phone and handling most of the paperwork, and she could keep basic books and balance the checkbook, but payroll was beyond her. So every Tuesday she dropped off the information and on Thursday afternoon she picked up the checks.

Right on time, Penny knocked twice and let herself in. She was a very tall brunette who practically crackled with energy and, while Claire had considered her a friend for years, she could be exhausting.

As always, Penny dropped the folder of timesheets onto the desk and then wandered over to drool over the framed photos of Justin Claire kept on the bookshelf. “When are you going to take pity on me and hook me up with him?”

“When I don’t like you anymore and want to see you curled up in front of a Meg Ryan movie, bawling into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.”

“You’re so sure he’s going to break my heart. How do you know I’m not the one?”

“Justin doesn’t have a one. He has many and I don’t want you to be one of them.”

Penny turned and gave her a speculative look. “Or maybe you want to keep him for yourself.”

A blush heated Claire’s face and she looked down at the papers on her desk while shaking her head, hoping her hair would hide her pink cheeks. “Don’t be stupid. He’s my best friend.”

“So?”

“He was Brendan’s best friend.”

“So?”

“So…” So what? “It would be weird.”

“What’s weird about it? You already know you’re compatible in almost every way. Why would sex be any different?”

Sex. With Justin.

Her body tingled like an extremity that had fallen asleep and was waking up in a blaze of pins and needles. And that’s all it was, she told herself. Her sex drive’s sudden fixation on Justin was just its way of letting her know it was ready for a man again, even if her heart wasn’t.

She forced herself to laugh and look straight at Penny. “For somebody who wants to be hooked up with him, you’re awfully pushy about me sleeping with him.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t necessarily want to keep him. Just play with him for a while. But I’d deprive myself of the toe-curling pleasure of multiple orgasms to see you happy, because I’m a good friend that way.”

This time Claire’s laugh was genuine. “Gee, thanks. What makes you think sex with Justin would be toe-curling and multiorgasmic?”

Not that it mattered, of course, since she wasn’t going to have sex with her best friend, toe-curling or otherwise. There was too much between them and the only thing she’d end up with when the alleged multiple orgasms were over was no best friend.

“The guys with commitment issues are usually the best in bed,” Penny said, and Claire wondered if she spoke from experience or if she’d read it in a magazine. “They have a lot of experience with a lot of different styles on a lot of different models, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t even want to think about that. “You’ve known him longer than I have, anyway. Why do you need me to hook you up?”

“We travel in different circles. Always have.”

Penny was the reason she’d met Brendan and Justin in the first place. Claire and Penny’s senior year at UNH, they’d ended up roommates and friends. One weekend, Claire had gone home with her instead of heading to her parents’ and they’d gone to a party. A few minutes with Brendan had been all it took.

Since Penny was giving her a funny look-like maybe she thought Claire wanting Justin all to herself wasn’t just a joke-she decided to wrap it up. “The checks will be ready by the usual time Thursday.”

Once Penny was gone, Claire straightened her desk and fed Moxie. Then she did a little housekeeping and her thoughts turned to Justin.

She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but something was definitely wrong with him. Even though they were practically best friends, she suspected he was hiding something from her. And whatever that something was, it probably wasn’t very good.