by A. E. Radley
She looked up at Victoria who was barely able to contain her smile.
“What?” Holly asked.
“You look like Santa didn’t bring you anything.” Victoria chuckled. She looked over to Hugo and nodded her head. He left the room, hopefully to get the gift that Holly had been waiting for.
“Santa has been mean and teasing me for the last few days,” Holly replied.
“Santa thinks it’s highly amusing.”
Hugo returned and handed a large box to Victoria. Holly frowned as she examined it. Of course, it was impeccably wrapped, white paper with a thick red ribbon around the middle. It was about the size of the folder that the Arrival Book arrived in. She hoped it wasn’t a copy of Arrival, as much as she loved Victoria’s work… it wouldn’t be her dream present.
“Merry Christmas, my love,” Victoria handed over the gift.
“Thank you,” Holly said. “Finally.”
She ripped at the paper and a plain cardboard box was soon left. She lifted the top and moved aside some sheets of tissue paper. She gasped. It was a leather-bound journal.
“Italian leather,” Victoria spoke softly. “Created in Florence. The spine has been hand-tooled to create the arched spine and the ripped effect. The paper is cream, plain, just how you like it.”
Holly turned the exquisite work of art over in her hands. Her initials were embossed onto the front corner and the spine, in silver leaf.
“I know you prefer silver to gold,” Victoria said as if reading her mind.
“I do… this is… absolutely beautiful. And way over the agreed budget we set.”
She looked at Victoria who looked thoroughly unapologetic. “The perfect gift cost more than your arbitrarily set amount. I wasn’t going to sacrifice quality.”
“It is the perfect gift,” Holly agreed. “Thank you, I… my whole journaling story started at Christmas.”
“I remember you telling me.”
Holly put the book back into the box and placed it beside her on the sofa. She launched herself at Victoria and kissed her, wrapping her arms around her neck and pulling her in as close as possible. She distantly heard Alexia and Hugo grumbling good naturedly, but she knew that they were used to these displays of affection by now.
She pulled away and leapt over the sofa and ran downstairs towards the study and where she had stashed Victoria’s gift. A couple of minutes later she returned, Victoria still looked shocked at the sudden turn over events. Holly held out the thick red envelope.
Victoria took it and looked at her children, who had gathered around with interest. “Do you two not know what this it?”
Alexia shook her head. “No, she ignored my suggestions.”
Victoria raised her eyebrow in surprise. She opened the envelope and pulled out the card from within. The front of the card was a pencil sketch that Holly had been working on for weeks, it was of Victoria, Hugo, and Alexia. Holly had taken the sketch from a photograph she’d taken a few weeks before, they were all huddled together and looking up at fireworks at an event.
“This is beautiful,” Victoria announced. “I… I knew you sketched but this is incredible.”
Holy smiled at Victoria’s assumption that the sketch was her gift. “Open the card.”
Victoria opened it and a piece of paper fluttered onto her lap. She placed the card down reverently on the arm of the sofa and scooped up the piece of paper. She unfolded it and looked at it with confusion. It was from a page-a-day calendar that Holly had purchased for the entire purpose of ripping out one day and placing in the card.
“January 4th?” Victoria asked in confusion.
“It’s your day,” Holly explained. “All planned out with Arrival and the kids. It’s a Friday and we’re going to spend the whole weekend doing everything you love. Friday morning we’re going to Holton’s for breakfast. Then we’re heading over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where you can stare at European sculpture for as long as you like. In the evening, we’re going to the East Village to eat at that sushi place that you think is too low-brow but can’t get enough of their karaage. And we’ve rented out a small cinema nearby to play Singin’ in the Rain to the four of us, because it’s your favourite movie but you said we can’t watch it unless it’s on a big screen—”
“You can’t watch it on television, it’s made for the big screen,” Victoria quickly agreed.
Holly grinned. “I know, you’ve told us all several times. Anyway, after that, I’ve chartered a small boat to take us out onto the Hudson to do some evening sightseeing. I know you love a night-time cruise.”
“It’s a day dedicated to you, Mom,” Alexia said excitedly.
“And the weekend is clear to do whatever you want,” Holly added. “I didn’t know what to get the woman who has everything… but I thought you might appreciate time.”
“I do.” Victoria stared at the large number 4. “I… I really do. That is without a doubt the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received.”
Victoria leaned in and kissed Holly on the cheek. “And also, way over the budget we agreed upon.”
“Well, I knew you wouldn’t stick to my arbitrarily set amount.” Holly winked.
She blew out a sigh of relief that her instincts had been right. Victoria looked up at her with devotion clear in her eyes. Holly knew that if the kids hadn’t been there, they’d be going back bed.
She clapped her hands together. “Right, let’s see what Santa brought Alexia…”
CHAPTER 11
Victoria leaned her head back and closed her eyes. As usual, she was dead on her feet by three o’clock in the afternoon. It had been a wonderful Christmas, the children were happy, Holly was delighted with her present, and the food had been spectacular. She thought about her own gift: a day off. Apparently, her schedule had been moved around to allow her an entire long weekend free of work. She was already salivating at the thought of the sushi.
They’d all gathered back in the living room for the afternoon. Supposedly to watch one of Alexia’s DVDs gifted to her. Unsurprisingly, her youngest child had promptly fallen asleep and Hugo had taken the opportunity to go to his room to play on his game console.
Victoria was enjoying the relaxing sounds of a satisfied household following a wonderful Christmas. She felt Holly shift beside her and opened her eyes in time to see Holly lower her head into her lap.
“Hi,” Victoria whispered with a smile.
“Hi,” Holly greeted. “I’m just going to write in my new journal.”
She watched as Holly angled the book on her raised knees. She could easily see the pages, presumably the point if Holly’s positioning was anything to go by.
“Christmas Day,” Holly spoke softly. “I had many expectations of what Christmas Day would bring. Possibly, I had indulged in one too many Christmas movies prior to the big day itself.”
Victoria chuckled. That was true; Holly had single-handedly viewed every Christmas title on their Netflix account before December had even rolled around.
“Shh,” Holly turned her head to gently headbutt Victoria in the stomach to silence her. “I’m writing.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Victoria told her. She appreciated the gesture, but she had meant what she said, Holly’s privacy came first.
“I know… I want to.” Holly looked up at her. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Victoria said.
Holly smiled and then turned her attention back to her journal. She tenderly read out her entry for that day as she wrote. Victoria closed her eyes again and leaned back, listening to Holly’s words wash over her.
ABOUT A.E. RADLEY
A.E. Radley is an entrepreneur and best-selling author living and working in England.
She describes herself as a Wife. Traveller. Tea Drinker. Biscuit Eater. Animal Lover. Master Pragmatist. Annoying Procrastinator. Theme Park Fan. Movie Buff.
When not writing or working, Radley indulges in her third passion of buying unnecessary cat accessories on a
popular online store for her two ungrateful strays whom she has threatened to return for the last seven years.
Connect with A.E. Radley
www.aeradley.com
DRIVE ME WILD BY ADAN RAMIE
CHAPTER 1
Everything around her went white, and Jesse Waters’s stomach felt like it dropped to the bottom of her seat. The kids were asleep – she thanked the universe for small miracles – but they wouldn’t stay that way long with the car sitting still, so she knew she had to do something. She let the wipers and the defrost do their jobs for a few tense moments. Nothing. She pulled off to what she hoped was the side of the small, winding road the signs called a highway and put her emergency flashers on.
The gauges all looked good, as far as she could tell, but she had never been one to pay much attention to cars. Her dad had told her the last time she called him about a cracked engine block that he wouldn’t bail her out the next time she ran a car into the ground, but she didn’t believe him. Neither did he. They both know he couldn’t help but try to save her.
It was in his nature to come to his only daughter’s rescue; he had been doing it since she was a baby, blue in the face from choking on her older brother’s miniature toy car, and though he complained, he never would give her the Cars 101 course he taught her older brother when he turned fifteen. Men’s work, he called it, and that was that.
Jesse laughed out loud at the thought as the snow swirled around the car like dust from an old fan. The older of the two kids sniffled in her sleep, and Jesse held her breath until she quieted.
Cars might be men’s work, but Jesse had yet to find a relationship in which she had been the least masculine.
After a moment, some of the snow-laden wind let up enough for her to pick the road out faintly a few feet away. She was on an unimproved shoulder, as she had hoped, and that knowledge gave her the confidence she needed to start going again. She put the car into drive, pressed the accelerator, and listened to the engine hum as the car moved exactly nowhere but deeper into the snow.
She tried again, but in reverse, hoping to back out of the mire she knew she had dug for herself. Again, the car didn’t budge. She swore softly, put her car back into park, and silently screamed until red pulsed behind her eyes and her ears rang. If the job she had been offered hadn’t been so good, and if she hadn’t already sold the house in her hometown and sent everything to the new address, she would call a tow truck to get her out, turn her around, and send her back home feeling like she had dodged a bullet.
Instead, she took a deep breath, woke her phone, and opened up the book she had been reading last in her e-book reader. She clicked on the notes section, then scanned down until she found it. She read over the instructions once, commanded a few key words to memory, then closed her eyes. She breathed deeply, visualized the happy image in her mind, and started to recite the lines one by one.
“My goal is to acclimate to Brewton and my job with peace in my heart. I deserve to accomplish my goal. I am a smart, capable person. This is only a stumbling block. I can get through this.”
After a moment, she got out of the ebook reader, connected to the roaming data network, and tried to find herself on a map. According to the screen, she was only four miles from the nearest tow truck company’s main office. She didn’t know much about snow storms after growing up in the humid, snow-less southern tip of Texas, but what she did know was that a short distance could stretch out infinitely in the wrong weather. She dialed anyway.
The man who answered had a pleasant voice like a teacher who had taught Jesse in elementary school, and it was only when relief poured over her that she realized she had been slowly panicking.
“Can I help you?” the man asked again.
She cleared her throat. “Yes, sorry. I’m stuck about four miles from you on US-287 North coming from Horton.”
“New in town or just passing through?” he asked.
“New,” she answered, and hoped he wasn’t going to gab too long. “I’m moving to Brewton for a job.”
“Then you’re not far from where you need to go.”
She could hear keyboard keys clacking in the background and a warm blanket of relief fell over her. The snow still swirled and dropped wetly on the windshield, and in the backseat behind her, two little bodies started to squirm and groan in their car seats, but that didn’t matter. Help was coming.
“Will you hold?” the man asked. Jesse acquiesced. A moment later, he came back on the line. “Okay, we’re all set. Someone will be to you in the next ten minutes or so. Is your vehicle still operational?”
“Yes. I got myself stuck in the snow when I pulled off the road.”
“Emergency lights on?”
“As soon as I pulled over,” she answered.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Excellent. Is your tail pipe clear?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep the heater on low, not high, and outside air instead of cabin. That should keep you toasty and safe until our driver gets to you. Should you or any passengers start to feel tired, agitated, or nauseated, turn off the car and open the windows immediately.”
“Carbon monoxide, yeah, nothing to mess with,” she assured him. She clicked the heater knob down to its lowest setting and checked that it was pulling air from outside. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Call me back if you don’t see a truck soon.”
She agreed, hung up, turned off her data and location, and waited. One kid squeaked out a yawn and she turned around to check out the damage. Her plucky seven-year-old daughter, Wyatt, gave her a loose, sleepy smile and blinked her eyes slowly under choppy brown bangs she had cut herself only the week before.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she whispered, then pointed to her brother, still asleep beside her, and covered her lips for a moment with one finger. “Let’s try not to wake him.”
Wyatt put a finger over her mouth and adjusted her body up in the seat. “Are we at the new house yet?”
“Not yet,” Jesse said. “I made a mistake, and now we are waiting for someone to come help us fix it.”
Wyatt adjusted her glasses and smiled, her tongue poking out the slightest bit from between her teeth. “It’s okay, Mama. As long as you tried your best.”
Beside her, the two-year-old whimpered and rubbed his face, then his red hair, with one chubby fist. He stretched as much as he could in his car seat, and when he realized he was still in it, popped open both eyes and stuck out his bottom lip.
“Don’t cry, Misha,” Wyatt said, and patted him on one arm.
He frowned at her, but stayed quiet and turned to look at Jesse with an expression of betrayal written all over his face. He looked just like his father’s baby pictures, and she couldn’t help but smile.
“Do you want to meet a tow truck driver?” she asked, then grabbed her phone, turned on the data, and searched for pictures of tow trucks. After a moment, the results popped up and she turned the phone to show them both. “Tow trucks are fun. They’re big and handy.”
“Handy?” Misha asked, craning to get a better look at the phone. “I fix it.”
Jesse laughed. As much as she didn’t like to let them watch television, she would still admit to using it every now and then when she needed a break. Around them, the snow was piled on the windshield and windows, but she noticed that the wind had stopped gusting and blowing snow all around them. A good sign.
“You can fix anything,” she told Misha, then turned back around in her seat. She looked at the call log and found she had requested a tow truck fifteen minutes before, and still there was no sign of it. She squinted out into the density of whiteness around them. In the time they had been stopped, not a single car had passed by on the so-called highway.
“I need to go,” Wyatt said, a warning strain in her voice.
Jesse tried to suppress a groan. As much as she tried, she could never time out the girl’s bathroom needs to her own ability to handle them. She put on a smile and
looked over her shoulder. “Can you hold it just a few more minutes? I’m sure the tow truck man will be here anytime.”
“How long?” Wyatt asked, and twisted her legs together.
“Truck!” Misha cried out, and pointed one slobbery finger out the windshield.
Jesse twisted and found the tow truck had crawled up on them while she was trying to defuse the bathroom situation. The truck door opened and the driver dropped down into the snow just as Jesse killed the ignition.
“Why did you shut it off?” Wyatt asked, straining against her car seat to see the driver’s seat.
Jesse bit back a string of profanity as she took the keys from the ignition and dropped them into her pocket.
“We need to get you into the truck,” he said with a jerk of his head. He grabbed her hand and tugged her up onto her feet.
She planted her feet as he started moving, and he turned around, his eyes narrowed against the wind. “My kids are in the car!”
They each took a side of the car, opened the door, and unbuckled one crying child. Jesse let the driver get Misha; the sight of him would probably calm the boy, she knew, just out of novelty alone. She unleashed Wyatt from her seat, unhooked the seat from the car, and was halfway to the truck with the girl on her heels when she realized the driver already had the toddler inside and was heading back toward her car.
“Get in,” he barked, snow coating his hat and the scarf he wrapped around the bottom half of his face.
Jesse complied. Her hands shook as she tried to work the seat belts in the back of the cab, but by the time he was back, she and both kids were secured and waiting expectantly. The driver’s door closed with a slam that reverberated through the whole cabin, and he looked at the three of them for a long, calculated moment. Then he reached out one gloved hand to rub a bit of wet snow from Wyatt’s long, wavy brown hair.