Merry Random Christmas

by Julia Kent

  Merry Random Christmas

  Random Series Book 8

  by Julia Kent

  It all started with a game of Truth or Dare…

  It’s bad enough I got arrested for prostitution on Christmas Eve. Alleged prostitution, mind you. I didn’t do it. Of course I didn’t. The cops say I offered up a certain sex act for a $5 gasoline gift card, but honey?

  My sex acts are worth way, way more.

  So when I tried to explain what happened to the person who came and bailed me out of jail, she wasn’t exactly impressed.

  Because it was my boyfriend’s mother.

  Now, I got two boyfriends, so Murphy’s Law said it had to be the mother I hate the most. And she hates me right back. Even more now that I lost her son.

  That’s right. Where in the hell are Joe and Trevor? It’s Christmas Eve, and I keep getting pictures on social media showing Joe and Trevor all oiled up in g-strings that look like candy canes, dancing with a bunch of well-coiffed older women.

  I, on the other hand, am wearing Santa pants, flip flops, and smell like jail cell pee.

  That game of Truth or Dare turns out to be way more dangerous than anyone expected.

  And our savior? It ain’t the baby Jesus. Not the three wise men. No little drummer boy. Not even the donkey that carried the Virgin Mary on its back while she howled for an epidural.

  Nope. Can you guess?

  That’s right.

  Mavis the Chicken.

  Can she help us out of this clustercluck?

  * * *

  Merry Random Christmas is the eighth book in the New York Times bestselling Random series. Join the gang on Christmas Eve as Darla is unfairly arrested, Trevor and Joe are forced to become strippers, and candy canes appear in places where sugar is a bad, bad idea in this crazy, rollicking romp.

  Copyright © 2015 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  * * *

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  Merry Random Christmas

  Chapter One

  Darla

  “It all started with a game of Truth or Dare,” I said with a heavy sigh as I stared into the eyes of Joanne Ross through the jail cell bars. Joanne is my boyfriend’s mother. I’m sure there are plenty of fates worse than having your boyfriend’s mama dig you out of jail on Christmas Eve, but right then, I couldn’t think of any.

  “I don’t want to know.”

  No, lady, I thought. You don’t. You really don’t.

  “Where’s Joe?” I asked, wondering why he sent his mom to do his dirty work.

  “I have no idea.” She looked at me like I was a cockroach and she wished she had a seven-pound can of Raid to kill me with.

  By dropping it on my head.

  Not that she could lift a seven-pound can of anything. That was more than this bitty little woman weighed. She was the size of a teacup Chihuahua and about as annoying.

  “Then why are you here?” I asked. Groaned. Complained. Whatever.

  “Because I’m a masochist.”

  “I didn’t ask you about your bedroom antics with Gene and Herb,” I snapped back. “I asked why you’re here and Joe’s not.”

  She recoiled.

  Good.

  The only way to take on an attacking snake is to put them on the defensive.

  “You know, Darla, I realize you didn’t learn proper manners back in Iowa—“

  “Ohio.” Jesus. Do these people in Massachusetts not know their geography?

  She waved her hand dismissively, the perfect French manicure like a work of art. “Whatever. It’s all corn in flyover country. Anyhow, I know you weren’t taught proper manners back in Ohio,” Joanne Ross said with a sniff.

  A sniff that made me realize the only thing keeping me from a homicide charge was those jail cell bars.

  “I got plenty of manners. Buckets of them. I got more manners in my pinkie finger than you got in your—”

  She snorted. “Case in point.”

  I narrowed my eyes and said nothing. Saying nothing is not part of my nature. In fact, the words cluttered at the base of my throat like people in my hometown of Peters, Ohio rushing the nearest Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

  But I held them back. Studied her.

  And then I realized why she was here.

  “You monitor Joe’s phone, don’t you? That’s the only way you’d know where I am.”

  Now, I expected lots of responses out of Joe’s mom. She could have denied it. She could have been offended. She could have admitted it. She could have pretended she didn’t hear me.

  I sure as fuck didn’t expect her to ask me, “Were you really blowing Santa Claus behind the vegan restaurant for a $5 gas card?”

  If I’da known she was gonna say that, I’da stepped back from those jail cell bars.

  ’Cause when my hand reached out and grabbed the pearl necklace around her throat and twisted so tight she started to sound like a balloon poodle with a puncture in it, I realized my mistake.

  I’m pretty sure she realized hers, too.

  Two cops rushed to her aid, pulling her back. The pearls snapped and scattered, the sound like rat’s claws on the concrete floor, skittering to and fro.

  Ask me how I knew that sound.

  Yeah. A few hours in this jail and I was more than ready to go home.

  “We’ll add assault to the charges,” one of the cops growled. Officer Kuli. He was bald, with a ridge of fat in his forehead that made him look like something out of a Star Trek episode, like a hybrid Klingon-Human. Sweat covered his neck and face, and half his mouth pulled up in a permanent sneer, cold, dark eyes perfectly fine with putting me in a women’s prison forever.

  “No,” Joanne snapped, straightening herself. She looked me right in the eye. “No additional charges. We need to get her out. Now.”

  Blood pumped through me harder than Joe’s jizz after we’d been sexting for three days from a distance then finally been able to fuck like bunnies. It raced through me like this was a competition.

  Why was Joanne here? Why was she being nice?

  Yeah. This was nice by her standards. You really don’t want to see Joanne Ross’s version of mean.

  Kuli the Kop opened his mouth to question her, but he shut it damn fast when she made eye contact with him. Looking into the Soul of Hell will do that.

  Catcalls and offers of various sex acts (one of which involved a chicken and a popsicle) greeted me as the cop followed us out. Depending what Joanne had in store for me, the popsicle thing might be a better option.

  Ten minutes later I was outside, woefully under-dressed in my white silk long-johns, oversized Santa pants, and cheap flip-flops the cops gave me to wear.

  She looked me up and down, then sighed. “Where are your clothes?”

  “These are it.”

  She pulled her manicured fingers up to her mouth, parting the perfectly-lipsticked lips. Joanne tapped on her front teeth with the ends of her nails, then declared:

  “We need to talk.”

  With that, she turned on one heel and stomped down the street, determined. For a tiny little woman, she could walk. She took two steps for every one of mine.

  “If we need to talk, why are you running away from me?”

  Her silence scared me. Joanne Ross was the kind of woman who had seventeen version
s of “seethe,” none of them good. I supposed I should have thanked her for bailing me out. Manners would, in fact, dictate I do just that. With a mind that felt like a shattered candy cane and blood that felt like sludge, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

  “Why are you dressed like something out of a Key West Christmas Pride parade?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth to argue, but then I looked down.

  Huh.

  She had a point.

  “And what’s this about a game of Truth or Dare landing you in jail?” She gave me a hard glare. “And technically, that wasn’t jail. You would be in Billlerica if they’d processed you. Luckily, you were just in an overcrowded holding cell, so quit calling it ‘jail.’”

  She sounded like that teacher on those old Charlie Brown cartoons. Whatever.

  “You said you didn’t want to know.”

  “I do now,” she snapped. She had a way with words. Like getting barbed wire caught in your short and curlies, being interrogated by her was painful and made your eyes water.

  I sighed. “Joe started it. Mama won me a bunch of sweepstakes prizes and I think these companies ship stuff out fast at the end of the year for some godawful reason—”

  “Probably to get the marketing deductions before the end of the reporting quarter,” she said, cutting me off.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” she said with a curt shake of the head. “Go on. Sweepstakes? Your mother is a professional sweepstakes marketing coordinator?”

  My turn to look at her funny. “What?” Marketing coordinator and Mama go together about as well as Darla and celibate.

  “Why else would your mother send you so many sweepstakes prizes?”

  “Because she wins them,” I said slowly. We were talking at cross purposes. Hell, every time I spoke with Joanne Ross it was like talking underwater. In Croatian. With baby sharks in the tank.

  And the full expectation that I would understand every word out of her mouth.

  “Anyhow,” I said pointedly, “Joe watched me pull out the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer nipple clamps Mama won from a—”

  “Excuse me?” Too bad I broke Joanne’s pearls back at the jail cell, because she’d be clutching them so hard right now she’s garrote herself.

  Which would pretty much solve half my problems.

  My temper was already at a slow boil. Her constant interruptions made my lid start to warble. “If you’d quit interrupting me, I could explain.”

  “If your words made any sense, I’d stop interrupting you.”

  “Jesus, lady, the egg didn’t fall far from the chicken’s asshole, did it?”

  She threw up her hands, her expensive purse dangling from her wrist like a loose handcuff. “If you spoke like a normal person, Darla, maybe I—”

  “Don’t you make fun of my Ohio accent!” I thundered.

  “What in the hell does your accent have to do with eggs and chicken assholes?”

  We were both breathing hard, either from the rush of adrenaline that spurted like a professional squirter porn actress through our veins, or from the cold, December air that chilled the nearly-vacant Cambridge streets.

  “What are you talking about?” we said simultaneously.

  “My mama enters sweepstakes,” I said, staring her down, giving her a death glare. “She sends me the winnings. She won a set of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer nipple clamps.”

  Joanne shuddered. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and then she winced, finally asking, “I know I’ll regret this, but my curiosity is getting the best of me. Do they light up?”

  I pulled the neck of my shirt out and looked down. “Good question,” I said, reaching down for one of my boobs. “Let me check.”

  “NO!” Her hand went right over mine, pressing my palm into my ample breast. “Please. I don’t require proof.” She looked like I had just informed her she had a leech stuck to her lower lip.

  I smiled nice and wide. “You sure?”

  “Positive.” I could feel the vibration from her throat as she swallowed hard. Slowly, she pulled back her hand, looking away. “But I still don’t understand how a Truth or Dare game led to jail.”

  “When you’re playing it with Joe, it ain’t exactly hard to piece together.”

  “What does that mean?” she demanded.

  “Joe likes to up the ante. Keep things interesting.”

  Her eyebrows met. Whoa. Eighth wonder of the world. Someone created flexible Botox. Joanne shot me a look like I was expected to explain.

  “I was giving away a bunch of candy-cane flavored sleeping bags my mama won in a contest and—”

  “Flavored sleeping bags?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You suck on the piping, which is filled with candy canes.”

  She frowned. “Wouldn’t that just attract every insect imaginable?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  “What marketing genius came up with that hot mess?”

  At least she and I agreed on something. “I’m guessing that’s why the camping equipment manufacturer was giving away twelve thousand of them in a contest, and why my mama won a hundred and forty-four of them.”

  “You gave away more than a hundred candy-filled sleeping bags on the streets of Cambridge tonight?” Her eyebrow couldn’t arch more if it was made from a pipe cleaner.

  “No. Joe and Trevor gave some away, too. We had a contest to see who could find the most people dressed as Santa on the streets of Somerville and Cambridge and hand them out. It kinda unraveled from there.”

  Joanne took in my attire. Dirty Santa pants. Flip flops. Stained silk shirt.

  “Speaking of which, where are they?” I asked.

  Her palm was my only greeting. “Wait. I am asking the questions here.”

  Oh, God. She sounded exactly like Joe when he was going into cross-examination mode. And not the good kind, where we dressed up as a lawyer and his bad, bad client, or the doctor who needed to examine—

  “You were booked on prostitution charges, Darla. How do you plan to plead?”

  “Not guilty! For the record, I would never blow a homeless dude who licks his chicken’s outer feathers clean each night.”

  “Everyone says they’re not guilty.”

  “And I don’t even own a car, so why would I need a gas card?”

  Her eyes didn’t so much as narrow as they telescoped. Joe took after her quite a bit. I could see where he got that granite face that imparted no emotion during times of stress. “You do have a good point about the gas card,” she said with a sniff.

  “I do not randomly suck off men on the street for gas cards I don’t need.”

  “That’s not what the cops allege.” Her eyes glittered like blow pops in the hands of college students on Molly. She was enjoying every minute of this.

  So why’d she spring me from jail?

  “Look, I’ll tell you the whole story, including the part about the Vietnam war vet with no legs and the guy riding the capybara, saddle and all. But first, you gotta tell me—where in the hell are Joe and Trevor?”

  She frowned.

  “I thought you were joking. You really don’t know where he is?” Notice how she singularized that? He. She only cared about Joe. I was worried about both my men.

  “Last time I saw Joe, he was carrying a bag of candy cane thong underwear and handing them out to the Salvation Army bell ringers for the pure joy of watching their faces when they realized what he gave them,” I said. “And throwing glowing nipple clamps in the red pots.”

  My eyes felt like wet blow pops, too, as her face morphed, responding to my words to the extent that the Botox let her express emotion. Which meant she twitched.

  Exactly once.

  “He what? My Joey wouldn’t...” Her voice faded out as she went from instinctive outrage to logical contemplation. “Actually, he would do something like that.”

  “Right.”

  “And Trevor?”

  Oh, finally she cared enough about him? The w
oman was evolving.

  “He was carrying a chicken around, dressed as Santa.”

  “Which one was dressed as Santa?”

  “What do you mean, which one?”

  “Trevor, or the chicken?”

  “Who in the fuck would dress a chicken up as Santa Claus, Joanne?”

  “Don’t look at me like that! It’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask. You’re the one talking about Santa Chickens!” She stopped walking and now faced me, hands on her hips, looking up at me like I was the fucking Green Giant and she was Tinkerbell. Joanne Ross was as tiny as I was big. You would think my size would intimidate her.

  It didn’t.

  “Trevor. Trevor was dressed as Santa.”

  “Thank you for clarifying.” She breathed a sigh of relief, then looked at me in horror. “Please tell me there are no gerbils involved in this situation. Joey’s arms have finally healed.”

  I had the decency to blush as the topic of me, Trevor, Joe, sex, and the gerbil came up. It’s not what you think.

  Okay, maybe it is. No one actually had sex with the gerbil. Or with the chicken that clung to Joe’s back like it was a finger-lickin’-good cape.

  I swear. No cross-species nooky.

  “The orthopedist cleared him for our family holiday ski trip. We’ve spent a fortune on cleaning up his Internet reputation. All those videos of your...escapade with the chicken and the gerbil are finally on page two when you Google his name. And then there was the settlement we made to the pastor with the name Joseph Herbert Ross, and...”

  Family holiday ski trip?

  First I heard of it. I opened my mouth to ask where they were going, then shut it. Fast.

  ’Cause I wasn’t part of their family. I blinked hard to fight back the sudden assault of tears against the rims of my eyes. Words hurt. Names feel like little rocks thrown at your heart. But Joanne Ross had wounded me with a simple, tossed-off phrase that hadn’t been wielded against me with any intention.

  Family holiday ski trip.

  I really wasn’t part of their family.

  I was just the alleged prostitute Joanne Ross came and had dug out of jail because she was monitoring her twenty-five-year-old son’s texts.