“What would you like to know?”
“Is there dinner and dancing first, or do we just go straight to the good stuff?”
He laughed, the sound filling her with reassurance and hope. He stopped walking and turned to face her. As their gazes connected, Julian tipped her chin with one finger and touched his lips to hers, so soft, so gentle, she thought she imagined it. “My preference would be the good stuff.”
Her hands rested against his chest, and she smiled for the first time since her life had changed that day. “Well, this might work after all. We already agree on something.” She stood on tiptoe for the next kiss, sinking into his embrace, and smiling against his lips.
This new life had definite possibilities.
Just Like in the Movies
by Daryn Cross & LJ DeLeon
“‘Winter can be so cold with no warm memories.’” Mindy muttered as she walked down the crowded city street. “Out with the old year, in with the new—ring-a-ding-ding. Every time you hear a bell ring, an angel gets his wings.” She shook her head vehemently. “Bullshit.”
Sure, everything worked out for people in the movies. But how about the average girl, like plain ol’ Mindy Castle? Not in this life.
Three hours ago she’d been handed the pink slip now crammed in her purse. Laying off half its work force three weeks before Christmas, wasn’t what she’d call great PR. But Sheckles and Hannsford didn’t care about anything but the bottom line. Should show a nice profit for the fourth quarter having saved all those Christmas bonuses. Well, maybe not. Knowing the S&H owners, they’ll pay themselves all the bonus money.
Not that she was a Christmas fanatic. Nor did she expect her employers to be big Christmas fans. Christmas was a time for children and starry-eyed optimists. It was also a time of goodwill and generosity. It was not a time for abrupt severance and poverty. Now she really understood what “Bah Humbug” was all about.
Shivering, Mindy began her slog through snow and slush to her space in S&H’s outlying parking lot a mile from work. Too bad all the city’s and company’s buses had been grounded. Poor planning and timing was why she suffered cars splashing her ankles with frigid fingers. Huddled beneath the pushed up collar of her coat, she shoved her fists into her pockets and hunched over to better plow through the abrasive northerly wind. Much longer in this weather and she wouldn’t have just been laid-off but hospitalized with a case of incurable pneumonia.
“Whatcha' doin', lady?” A little boy with brown hair sticking up in a cowlick and wide brown eyes fell in step with her. He walked like a toy soldier, knees locked and arms swinging at his side. “Playing in the puddles, huh lady?” He marched through the icy slush in the gutter, soaking his jeans legs and laughing.
Mindy glanced around for the boy's parents. “Where did you come from? Do you live around here?”
“No. I saw you and decided you needed a friend.” The boy smiled. “You got a real sad frown and red eyes. Mama always said we should try to cheer those who need a lilt in their step.” He shrugged. “Whatever that means.”
Judging from his height and missing two front teeth, the child couldn't be more than seven. In spite of herself, she chuckled. Kids, they said and did the damnedest things. Not for one minute did she believe a parent would let this cutie out of their sight.
“See?” The boy pushed out his chest. “I'm already making you feel better.”
Mindy scanned the desolate street for another adult, any adult. “A boy your age shouldn't be alone in the middle of the city. Where are your parents? I'd feel better knowing they’re close by.”
“I don't have any,” the boy said. “Not anymore.”
“You don't have any parents?”
“Nope.” The boy looked down. “Lost them about three years ago.”
“Where do you live?” she asked again. She liked kids well enough, but she wasn’t equipped to take care of one. Not now.
“Oh, a little here and a little there. Wherever someone will have me. I guess it’s wherever I’m needed.” He pointed at the spire of the Catholic church in the distance.
Must have been helped by some priest. With a shock, Mindy suddenly noted the boy’s shirtsleeves and no jacket. She started to slip out of her coat to wrap the baby in warmth. He put his hand on hers. “No, I’m fine. I don’t need a coat, really. I am warmed by the love of many hearts.”
“Yeah, well, tell the priests next time love won’t keep you from catching pneumonia. I refuse to allow you to freeze or get sick. Until I contact the authorities, I’m responsible for your welfare. And that means you’re going to have a jacket. Come on.” Mindy grabbed his hand and marched him to the department store down the street. Once inside, still holding his hand, she stopped.
A clerk walked up to them, his smile filled with fake holiday cheer. “May I help you, Madam?”
“Yes. I'd like to buy a coat for the boy.”
“Certainly, ma'am. What size does he wear?”
Mindy turned and looked at the child. He shrugged, turning his palms up.
The clerk raised his eyebrow. “Don't you know what size coat your son wears?”
“He's not my son. He's—”
“I’m someone she feel responsible for,” the little boy said with a smile, his tongue peeking out from between his teeth, “me and my welfare.”
“And you don’t know his name?” The clerk’s eyes widened.
Mindy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fired with two weeks severance to her name and she’s getting ready to spend it on a kid whose name she didn’t even know. “I don’t have a lot of experience buying children’s clothing, could you bring me a coat you think will fit? Something warm, but not too expensive.”
The clerk made a disapproving sniff and went to the racks.
“What's your name?” she whispered to the boy.
“Chris.” He smiled.
“As in Christopher?”
“Just Chris.” The boy ran his fingers along the counter. “Vroom, vroom.”
“Sounds like you like cars.”
“I did once.” He frowned. “But now, not so much. That's how Mommy and Daddy died.”
Mindy winced. “I'm sorry.”
“Don't worry. They're happy now.” He patted her hand.
“How about this one ?” The clerk held up a blue car coat.
She took it off the hanger for Chris, and he slipped it on. “Perfect. That'll do. How much?”
“Sixty dollars.”
Mindy glanced down at Chris, then out at the gathering blizzard. Inhaling deeply, she reached into her purse and pulled out her charge card. “Put it on this.” With luck she’d have a job before the bill came due. And if she didn’t, then the blasted card could wait because there was no way she was letting this child freeze to death.
The man ran her card and handed it back to her. “I hope you and the boy have a Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” she said through gritted teeth as she signed the sales slip.
Chris followed her out of the store and up the sidewalk. “You don't like Christmas, do you?”
“Not any more. Nothing wonderful and stupendous is happening to me. Family is what make Christmas and its warm and fuzzy memories and miracles. And I don’t have any family.” Mindy kicked a slush ball down the sidewalk. “I don’t think miracles happen to real people. I've never known anyone who had an honest to God, out of the blue miracle. Those kinds of things happen just in the movies.”
“Maybe you can find one in church.” He stared up at her, all blue-eyed earnestness. “Church can do everybody good. ‘Specially you, when you hurt so bad.”
“I believe in God.” Mindy glared down at him. “I just don't go to church regularly.”
“If you did, you'd believe in miracles.” He handed her a card with John Farragut, Minister, Franklin United Methodist Church printed on it. “Go talk to this man,” Chris said.
She shrugged. “Maybe I'll go by some day, but …” Mindy turne
d around, but the boy was gone. She looked off in the distance, but saw no trace of him. Where was he? She trudged to her car, her head down and hands jammed in her coat pockets. “At least he’ll be warm.”
#
Sitting on her sofa at home, Mindy couldn't get Chris out of her mind. There had been something about the blond-haired kid that made her skin tingle, like Christmas once had when she was a little girl.
Innocence, that’s what it was.
The boy had all good thoughts and none of the bad ones adults seemed to accumulate like cobwebs in their hearts. He’d left her feeling like all of the tangled threads of rotten memories squeezing her heart could vanish if she wanted them to. All she had to do was call the minister.
Where is that card? She grabbed for her purse and pulled it out of the inside zippered pouch. Flicking the card back and forth in her fingers, she stared at the phone, biting her lip.
This whole idea was crazy. Why did she need to speak to a wizened old holy man to make her life better? Yet Chris had said she needed to, and in spite of herself she wondered if the minister was the real deal. Picking up the phone before she chickened out, she dialed the number.
“Hello?” a deep male voice answered.
This guy didn’t sound wizened and old. “Could I speak to John Farragut please?”
“This is he.”
“Hi. My name’s Mindy Castle. I know this is strange, but someone gave me your name.”
“Who ?” he asked. “I didn’t know anyone was using me for a reference.”
“No, it wasn’t a reference. Oddly enough, it was a little boy named Chris.”
He chuckled. “I’ve never had a child suggest someone get in touch with me.”
“He was about seven, missing his two front teeth and didn’t have a jacket. I’m worried about him, Reverend. He was all alone. I bought him a blue jacket and then he disappeared.”
“Are you sure he said his name was Chris?”
“That's what he said.” Mindy frowned. “Not Christopher. Just Chris. He was very emphatic about his name.”
“Would you mind coming out to the church? I don’t want to discuss it on the phone, if you don't mind. I'll be happy to clear up this mystery in person.”
“Sure.”
Within an hour, she’d driven to Franklin Methodist and was staring up at the bell tower on the gray stone historical landmark with a smile. There was something very stately and calming about it. It towered over the block where it stood, like a regal bodyguard daring evil to stand clear. Having admired it from afar on more than one occasion, she had never taken the time to go inside.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here? Reverend Farragut. Are you there?”
A tall man walked out of the shadows. She stared in shocked surprise. He was drop-dead gorgeous. Dark brown hair, wavy with tints of gold and bright blue eyes, the color of the Caribbean. Towering over her, he was lean, yet muscular. He looked like he could pose for a men’s underwear ad, not be a minister. Probably a husband and father with five children. “You’re Reverend Farragut?”
“Guilty as charged.” He grinned, a deep dimple appearing in his right cheek. “I’m assuming you’re Mindy Castle, please call me John.” At her nod, he gestured to his left. “My office is this way.”
They walked down a narrow hallway. John opened a door, displaying a small office space—no more than ten by ten—piled with papers stacked in piles on every flat surface. “Please excuse the mess. As you can see, I'm not much of a housekeeper, here or at home. Everything else seems far more important.”
“Your wife should help you,” she said as she walked in and sat in a side chair. “It won’t take long to whip this room into shape. As long as she has a handle on your filing system.”
“I don’t have one of either, a filing system or a wife.” He winked.
Mindy wiped damp hands on her coat. Oh, my. “You aren’t?” she said as she struggled not to look heavenward and mouth, thank you.
“It isn’t easy to be a minister’s wife with a husband on call twenty-four/seven, plus having to be an example to the community.” He grinned.
“The pressure of always being ready to help someone must be hard for you as well.” Mindy felt empathy for this man. He was lonely yet obviously dedicated to his job. “But, I know there’s a woman out there who’d like to be a partner in your business and your life.” As her face began to burn, she looked down. Drat and double drat. Here she was running off at the mouth like she was putting in an application for matrimonial bliss.
He cleared his throat. “Now, you said a boy told you to call me. Tell me again about him, this little boy named Chris.”
“As I told you on the phone, he’s about seven years old with his two front teeth missing, and—”
“A really bad cowlick in the back.”
“You do know the boy.” She smiled. “I didn’t think he’d make it up. He seemed so sincere when he suggested I come see you. Tell me about him.”
“Of course. But first, how much time did you spend with him?” His eyes narrowed.
She shrugged. “About an hour or so. You see, I've just lost my job and I was going home and there he was.” She explained how upset she was. She didn’t feel Christmassy. Then she met Chris and bought him the blue coat.
“What I don't understand is why you bought it,” he said. “It doesn't fit with the the Bah Humbug attitude.”
“I don't know. I just felt sorry for him. He was in his shirtsleeves, short shirtsleeves and he needed it.”
“It was thoughtful but not necessary. He's in the best of hands.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
He opened his wallet, pulled out a photograph, and passed it to Mindy. “Is this the Chris you saw?”
“That's him.” She nodded. “Are you related?”
“We were.”
“Were?”
He stared into her eyes. “Mindy, Chris died three years ago in a car accident with my sister and brother-in-law. He was my nephew.”
An electric charge sparked down her spine. “He can't be dead! I just saw him today.”
“They died on Christmas Eve on their way to visit me.”
“How do you handle it? The guilt? I’ve never recovered from my sister’s death. It was Christmas Eve, she was the designated driver. We were coming home from a party and they say she fell asleep at the wheel and ran us off the road and into a tree.”
“Yet, you survived.”
“Because of my seatbelt. Sally didn’t wear hers and was ejected from the car. It rolled over onto her.”
“It wasn’t you’re fault.”
“If you say it was God’s will, I’m getting up and leaving.”
“No. It was a tragic accident, just like my sister’s and her family’s. I believe Chris brought you to me for a reason,” John said. “I think I know what he had on his mind. How about going to dinner with me and we'll delve into this mystery together.”
She nodded, her mouth still agape. “I-I’d love to. But, this type of thing doesn't happen…except in the movies.”
He smiled. “God works in mysterious ways. Chris is proof of that.”
“Well at least he's warm.” She looked up at John, her heart doing a stutter-step. “Maybe he’s given me a way to recapture the Christmas spirit.”
He helped Mindy on with her coat. “We’ll talk more over dinner.”
As they passed the Sunday school rooms, a solitary blue car coat appeared on the rack.
First Date
by Madeleine Drake
Homicide Detective Joe Brennan watched the woman of his dreams float into the room. The Captain’s secretary dressed like a librarian: calf-length skirts, tailored shirts buttoned to the neck, wavy black hair twisted into a knot and skewered with a pointed wooden stick. She spoke in prim, quiet tones, and she even wore those old-fashioned wire-rimmed librarian glasses.
But Kallista Ophiades didn’t walk like a librarian. She moved with the sinuous grace of a b
elly dancer, the smallest shift of her hips enough to send the blood meant for his brain on a detour to his groin. He couldn’t help remembering how she’d looked in his dreams, her hair writhing free over her shoulders as she rode him, her eyes gleaming with ecstasy, and her nails digging into his chest. He’d never seen her naked, but his subconscious insisted that he dream her with a tiny emerald snake tattoo coiled around her navel.
That’s the only way I’ll ever be with Kallista. In my dreams.
Oblivious to his distress, she crossed the room, nodding politely at each person she passed without breaking the demure eyes-down manner she maintained. In another woman, it would have seemed pretentious, but on her it came across as polite.
He waited next to her desk, file in hand, mentally rehearsing what he was going to say. When’s the Captain due back? But it was impossible to focus on the words when his brain superimposed sexy dream-Kalli over the real Kalli. Every time he tried to talk to her, his thoughts evaporated, his mouth went dry, and he blurted out something stupid.
Like, “I need a date.”
Kalli glanced at him over the top of her glasses. He barely had time to notice her eyes were gray-green before she looked down again. “When you ask like that, how can I resist?”
Joe flushed. She couldn’t possibly be flirting with him. “I was hoping Vice could spare someone for an op tomorrow night.”
“What op?”
“Those snuff films that surfaced last week. I think I know who made them.”
“Who?” She looked up again, and this time her gaze stayed on him.
This was the most eye contact she’d ever given him. The restless hum of arousal pulsed through him, keeping time with his accelerating heartbeat. “Stefan Brozi.”
“The porn king?”
Joe nodded. “All three vics worked for him in the last year. That’s the only connection between them. We haven’t found the bodies and no one wants to talk about Brozi behind his back.”
“Can you tell where the videos were shot?”
“I can see stone walls in the background, and nasty things hanging from hooks.”
She pursed her lips. “You’re working a hunch.”
Just One Bite Volume 3 Page 2