Dirty Santa: A Holiday MC Romance

by Daphne Loveling

  One thing’s for sure, though. Their story will be nowhere as interesting as mine.

  Not even if their washing machine breaks down on Christmas Eve.

  The three of us eat homemade pepperoni and sausage pizzas and watch a couple of the Christmas DVDs Addi and I have accumulated over the years. Addi and I have hot chocolate (with a little peppermint schnapps in mine). When Addi has gone to bed, we wait until we’re sure she’s fast asleep, and then Gage helps me bring out the presents. This year, I’m able to be a lot more generous than last year, since I’m not as strapped for cash — and also because Gage insisted on contributing as well. Unfortunately, Addi learned the truth about Santa over the summer, but that’s not going to stop ‘him’ from giving her the best Christmas he possibly can.

  When we’ve finished wrapping and setting everything under the tree, Gage and I collapse on the couch, with a glass of red wine for me and a beer for him.

  “This parenting thing is no joke,” he remarks good-naturedly. “Apparently, you people just never sleep?”

  “Rarely,” I admit. “It’s a little tougher as a single parent. No one else to take up the slack.”

  “So, it’ll be easier on you now, you think?”

  “Gage, I would never expect you to do anything you don’t want to do. It’s not your responsibility.”

  “You know better than that, babe.” His laughing eyes turn serious. “I love Addi. And I love you.”

  “I love you, Gage.” I smile at him softly. “So much. I can’t believe how amazing my life is now. A year ago, I never could have imagined it. You’ve been so wonderful with Addi. She’s just crazy about you.” I grin. “Do you know, she’s already started calling you her stepdad? I heard her saying it to a couple of her friends after school last week.”

  “Yeah? That’s cool.” Gage pauses a beat. “So. You ever think about having more kids?”

  “Well,” I begin, “Originally I wanted three. But by the time Addi was walking, I’d realized her dad wasn’t going to be much help as…”

  My words die in my throat as I realize that might not be what he meant.

  My eyes fly to Gage’s face. He’s giving me that sexy, lazy smirk I know only too well.

  “Are you asking me what I think you are?” I stammer.

  “Yeah,” he says gruffly. “Never thought I’d be saying this. But I wanna put a baby in you, Bailey Shaw.”

  My skin heats at his words. Between my legs, I feel myself getting wet. “That sounds…” I choke… “Hot. And sweet. And dirty. How do you do that?”

  “What can I say?” he rumbles. “It’s what I’m good at.”

  “You are indeed,” I agree.

  “On that note, I got you something,” he murmurs in a gravely voice.

  “But I thought my engagement ring was my Christmas present,” I protest.

  “It was. It is.” He chuckles. “Maybe this present is for me, actually. Not sure.”

  “What?” Now I’m really confused.

  He goes to the closet, grabs a wrapped gift from the top shelf, and comes back to the couch. “Here,” he says, handing it to me.

  I open it. Inside, there’s a Santa hat. And a sprig of parsley.

  “Um, what?” I hold up the parsley and look over at him quizzically. But then I remember.

  Last year. His substitute for mistletoe.

  “So,” I murmur, my voice going husky. “Am I supposed to wear this hat, or are you?”

  “You,” he replies. He stands and reaches for my hand, pulling me up into his arms. “Come on, let’s go into the bedroom. I’m looking forward to seeing it on you. That, and nothing else.”

  I bite my lower lip. “You’re filthy,” I tell him, mock-pushing him away.

  “Yes, I am,” he growls against my skin, making me shiver. “And I know from experience, you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Dirty Santa is an instalove Christmas story — because what better season for instant love than Christmas?

  Gage Caron is also a character in my new Lords of Carnage MC — Ironwood Chapter series, coming out in 2019!

  If you’d like to learn more about Ironwood, the Lords of Carnage, and my other series, Stone Kings MC, you can sign up to join my mailing list here. You’ll get a free standalone Stone Kings MC novella when you do.

  Sign up to my mailing list.

  Continue reading for Chapter 1 of GHOST: Lords of Carnage MC Book 1!

  GHOST

  LORDS OF CARNAGE MC

  CHAPTER 1

  Jenna

  Mistakes.

  Sometimes it seems like my entire life has been one long one.

  Sometimes you rack up so many of them, you can’t work out where one mistake ends and the next one begins.

  That’s how it feels right now, returning to Tanner Springs. The site of most of my biggest mistakes.

  Once, it was home.

  Then, it was anything but.

  And now, I’m back. And I don’t know if it can ever be anything like home again.

  “Oof,” Angel grunts as he drops the last of the boxes onto the old moth-eaten sofa. It’s a big, heavy paper ream box full of books — one of a few I’ve been lugging around from place to place for the last few years. Old college textbooks, mostly. The remnants of a dream I should have given up on by now.

  “Is that the last one, I hope?” he says. It’s pretty evident by the look on his face what he hopes my answer is.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I nod, and resist the urge to apologize. Even though he offered to help me move in to my new apartment, I still feel guilty accepting the favor.

  I watch my brother pull up the front of his black T-shirt, revealing a snarl of tattoos on his stomach and chest. He wipes the sweat from his face with the fabric, then pulls it back down. “You want something to drink?” I ask him. “I think I can find the box of glasses in the kitchen.”

  “You got any beer? I sure could use one.” He raises his arms out in a massive stretch.

  “Sorry, no,” I say regretfully. “I haven’t had time to go shopping yet.” One more thing on my mental list of things to do, I remind myself. There’s no food in the house, either, and it’s getting close to supper time. I’ll need to find something for Noah and me to eat.

  I heave an exhausted sigh at the thought of trying to make a grocery run with a wound-up and hungry four year-old. Hell. Maybe I’ll just give in and order a pizza, I reason. I can take care of the grocery shopping tomorrow, when I’ve had a good night’s sleep.

  Speaking of the wound-up four year-old, my son Noah emerges from what will be his new bedroom. His arms are out in a T and he’s making a buzzing noise with his lips as though he’s a prop plane. He “flies” around the room, circling the boxes and crates, then crashes into Angel’s legs as he turns toward the kitchen.

  “Hey, easy, buddy,” Angel said, looking slightly annoyed. “Look, go play somewhere else, okay?” Angel shoots me a glance. “He sure is keyed up.”

  “He’s been cooped up all day,” I explain, again resisting the urge to apologize. “First in the U-Haul and now in here. He’s bored.”

  Noah flies back down the hall toward his room. I know my brother doesn’t have a lot of experience with kids, so he probably doesn’t realize how easily they get antsy. Actually, I’ve been pretty impressed at how little Noah’s been acting out today, given the circumstances. “He’s only four,” I tell Angel. “He doesn’t have great impulse control.”

  I wander the few steps into the kitchen and look around for the box labeled “glassware.” Pulling off the tape, I grab one of Noah's plastic glasses with a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine out of the box. I turn to the sink and hold it under the faucet. Water sputters violently when I twist the handle, and I start and take a quick step back. Brownish liquid begins to run out of the tap.

  “This apartment hasn’t been used in a while, the landlord said.” Angel comes up behind me and peers at the dubious-looking water. “You probably want to run that for a few
minutes.”

  As I wait for the water to turn clear, I look around me at the dingy tile floor and dusty, grease-tacky counter tops. This entire place needs a good scrubbing from top to bottom. Still, I have no business complaining. Noah and I are lucky to have a roof over our heads at all, given everything that’s happened in the last few months. It isn’t paradise, but it’s home for now. More importantly, it’s all I can afford.

  “Thanks for helping me, Angel,” I murmur. “Moving all these boxes up a flight of stairs wouldn’t have been easy with just me and Noah.” I fill up the glass with now clearish water and hand it to him.

  Angel takes the glass and frowns at it. “No worries,” he shrugs, then takes a long drink of water, his Adam’s apple moving as he gulps it down. When he’s finished, he sets the glass on the counter and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You sure you don’t want to tell me what happened back in the city, to make you come back to Tanner Springs?” he asks, eyeing me curiously.

  I take in a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”

  I don’t want to talk about it. Just more mistakes, more bad choices. This one involved taking a job at a place I shouldn’t have, even though my warning bells were going off the second I noticed the boss’s eyes roving over me during the interview. When he tried putting his paws all over me one night after hours, I fought back, and he fired my ass on the spot. Not only that, he stiffed me out of my final paycheck, knowing it would take a lawyer I couldn’t afford to get it back from him. A couple months later, I was late on my rent one too many times, and got evicted. What kind of heartless asshole evicts a single mother with a four year-old child?

  My shoulders sag with fatigue just thinking about it all. I’m so tired of looking back at the past and regretting things. I want a fresh start, eyes pointed toward the future. And I’m determined to have that fresh start, too. Even if it has to happen here, in a place that’s full of all sorts of memories both bad and good.

  Angel sighs. “Okay. No skin off my nose.” He glances toward an ancient-looking, yellowed phone sitting on a ledge between the kitchen and the living room. “By the way, Jenna, Dad wants you to call him when you get settled in. He left his phone number over there in case you needed it.”

  Somehow, I hadn’t noticed the phone at all when we’d been moving boxes and furniture in. “Oh, my gosh, is that a land line?” I say in disbelief. “I haven’t seen one of these things in a house in years.”

  “Yeah,” Angel laughs. “I tried it. It even works.” He picks up the receiver and holds it out to me so I can hear the drone of the dial tone. I look closer. Wow. It’s even a rotary phone, not a push-button one.

  I shake my head and laugh. “That’s so weird. I wonder if the last person to live here just forgot to shut it off?” I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, though. My cell phone service is pretty basic, so being able to make some local calls from home without wasting my minutes will be kind of nice.

  I pick up the stickie note that’s been stuck next to the phone. On it, in my dad’s unmistakeable handwriting, are the words: “Jenna. Call me as soon as you’re able. Dad.” The phone number for his office is scrawled underneath. I make a mental note to call my dad and thank him for setting me up with a place to live. As much as I hate to be in anybody’s debt, it’s only fair that I express my gratitude.

  Though, by rights, I’m not really sure whether I owe the cheap apartment find to him, or to the Lords of Carnage.

  And I don’t know which debt would be worse.

  Click here to continue reading GHOST

  Did you like this book?

  You can make a big difference!

  Reviews are the most powerful tool in any independent author’s toolbox when it comes to getting attention for our books.

  I don’t have the financial power of a big New York publisher, so I can’t take out huge full-page ads in the paper to advertise my novels.

  But I do have something even better:

  A wonderful group of loyal and dedicated readers.

  Honest reviews of my books help bring them to the attention of other readers.

  If you liked this book, I would be so grateful if you would leave a review of it on the book’s Amazon page. It can be as short as you like. You can jump right to the page by clicking on this link.

  Thank you so much!

  About Daphne Loveling

  Daphne Loveling is a small-town girl who moved to the big city as a young adult in search of adventure. She lives in the American Midwest with her fabulous husband and the two cats who own them.

  Someday, she hopes to retire to a sandy beach and continue writing with sand between her toes.

  You can connect with Daphne on Twitter at @daphneloveling, on her Facebook personal page at https://www.facebook.com/daphnelovelingwrites or her author page at https://www.facebook.com/authordaphneloveling

  Her website is http://daphneloveling.com

  Contact her via email at daphne@daphneloveling.com

  Books by Daphne Loveling

  Motorcycle Club Romance

  Los Perdidos MC

  Fugitives MC

  Throttle: A Stepbrother Romance

  Rush: A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance

  Crash: A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance

  Ride: A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance

  Stand: A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance

  STONE KINGS MOTORCYCLE CLUB: The Complete Collection

  GHOST: Lords of Carnage MC

  HAWK: Lords of Carnage MC

  BRICK: Lords of Carnage MC

  GUNNER: Lords of Carnage MC

  THORN: Lords of Carnage MC

  BEAST: Lords of Carnage MC

  ANGEL: Lords of Carnage MC

  HALE: Lords of Carnage MC

  Sports Romance

  Getting the Down

  Snap Count

  Zone Blitz

  Players: The Springville Rockets Collection

  Paranormal Romance

  Untamed Moon

  Collections

  Daphne’s Delights: The Paranormal Collection

  Daphne’s Delights: The Billionaire Collection