Under The Kissing Bough: 15 Romantic Holiday Novellas

by Kathryn Le Veque

  As with most nights the first dreams Selene had were of her parents. Oddly, the car crash was something that replayed in her mind each night, but it was no longer terrifying. Instead it was a silent scene where she knew right away they were both gone.

  She felt herself screaming, but not a sound was heard. As always the aching combination of loss and solitude crashed against her.

  The fear of being alone lasted only seconds before a bright light blinded her and a voice broke through the fog of silence. “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

  “My parents.” Her voice sounded like someone else, as though it came from outside her body.

  “Gone, but you are not alone. You’ll never be alone.” Those words weren’t just statements. They were a pledge as solemn as any oath, and Selene knew it the moment she heard them.

  She carried them in her heart, falling back on them each and every time she felt abandoned in the world.

  For many years she believed an angel or God had spoken to her that night because beyond that moment she hadn’t been able to remember another thing about the crash and what followed. But in recent months the dreams lasted longer, playing out more of the details of what transpired that night.

  Now she remembered being lifted and carried. She remembered going into the church, the sound of the big oak doors banging shut, and the smell of the wood cleaner.

  The warmth and strength of whomever cradled her body.

  Tonight the dream continued, and she felt herself being laid on the pew where Aunt Margery found her. The gentle touch of a calloused hand smoothing her bloody hair from her face accompanied the now familiar cologne. Lemon and bergamot and the faintest scents of orange and jasmine

  “You smell good,” she said, her voice scratchy and hoarse.

  The answer was a deep chuckle. “Go to sleep, Kit.”

  “Don’t leave me.” She clung to his hand.

  “Never.”

  The darkness that always clouded the dream lightened to a hazy gray, giving way to a face Selene had not expected.

  Ozzy.

  No sunglasses. No smart-ass smirk. Only concern shown in dark green eyes. “You’ll never be alone.” He sat for the longest time with Selene’s head resting on his lap.

  She watched him, memorizing every feature from the brilliant hue of his eyes to the curve of his nose to the small scar above the left side of his top lip.

  Reaching up she pressed her palm to his cheek. “You’re scruffy,” she mumbled, feeling her head swim.

  “You prefer it smooth.” He smiled.

  “No. I never touched a beard.” Her father and uncle were always clean-shaven and at sixteen years old she was not in the habit of touching men she did not know.

  He nodded and rubbed his cheek on her palm.

  She tried to say something about the way his beard tickled, but the words garbled in her mouth, her tongue becoming a thick, useless slab.

  She looked up at the man who rescued her from the fiery crash. He was so big, larger than the men she knew. His short dark hair held a slight curl. His nose was long and his chin, square.

  But she was drawn back to his eyes, as if a silent voice beckoned her to look at him. With each passing second the green seemed to deepen, pulling her in like a tempting pond in some mysterious lagoon.

  “Go to sleep.” The words breezed through her mind like a gentle whisper. Her eyelids were heavy, and it felt so good to close them. “I swear on my soul, I’ll protect you forever.”

  Drifting to the sound of his voice, she slipped into peaceful sleep.

  As clear as she knew her own name she knew some sort of invisible link to this man now existed, and she knew everything would be fine in her world.

  Selene snuggled deeper into the covers. The familiar sense of contentment and safety settled into her bones and she slipped deeper into sleep, hoping she’d remember all the details of the dream in the morning.

  HER VAMPIRE PROTECTOR

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Slumping down in the chair Oz brought one foot up to rest on the windowsill, then dropped the other one over it and settled in for the next few hours. Arms folded over his chest he stared across the street into the bedroom window where Selene lay curled into a ball beneath a pale pink sheet.

  She slept soundly. No tossing and turning as happened many other nights. This surprised him. Given the events of the evening he expected her to pace for hours rather than lay down to sleep.

  The details of the evening played over and over in his mind, and surprisingly, it was not the touch of her skin or the press of her body that remained centered. Rather, her comment about knowing he’d been in the confessional kept playing over and over.

  How in the hell had she known? He’d been so careful not to allow her to see him. He was certain he’d wiped her memory clean of the two times she had seen him. There should have been no way she knew of his presence in that church. So how could she possibly be aware?

  Maybe she wasn’t conscious of what she said. Maybe she had no idea what she knew, and somehow her subconscious was getting a message to Oz that he needed to be more careful. Or, was she truly aware? There hadn’t been an opportunity to ask before she leapt to the conclusion he was some sort of sacrificial lamb.

  “She spends far too much time in that church.” He huffed, noticing the homeless man dragging a bag along the sidewalk in front of Selene’s house. For more than a few moments his attention was diverted from scowling about Selene’s fantasy to cataloguing every minute detail about the man.

  Torn jeans, one shoe, slight hunch that deducted a good four, maybe five inches from his true height. Dirty white t-shirt. Big plastic bag dropped by his feet.

  Oz glared when the man stopped in front of Selene’s house and looked up at the window. Pulling out Garrison’s favorite weapon, a camera, Oz focused the high-powered lens and began snapping pictures in rapid succession.

  In the few minutes the man lingered in front of the building Oz took more than a hundred shots, all of which he sent back to the base for enhancement and review to see if the stranger matched anyone in the database.

  Just as Oz lifted his foot with a plan to slip out the window and scale the wall down to the ground, the stranger moved on, dragging the bag with him.

  He sat back and stared after the man, watching him enter a dead end alley two blocks away.

  Selene continued to sleep in peace.

  Oz sighed and settled back into his seat, allowing his thoughts to roam back to the events of the evening.

  How had he allowed himself to be caught? In the eight years he’d known Selene he’d been very careful around her, hiding, creeping along rooftops or in shadows. He’d made absolutely certain he never did anything that would allow the memory of the night they met to rise from her subconscious.

  He’d practically turned himself inside out becoming a super stealth, unnoticed, unidentified bodyguard. Yet, somehow Selene had known he was there. “How is this possible? How can she have possibly sensed my presence? I’ve studied her so closely, there’s no way she could have some hidden skill, some vampire radar.” He gritted his teeth at what had clearly been a miscalculation on his part.

  How was he supposed to know anything about her? He’d only been guarding her for eight years. Not that she knew what he’d been up to or needed to know. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. This was definitely one of those cases. Her ignorance was his bliss.

  Though clearly she was not as ignorant as he hoped. He’d missed something. Somehow, he’d missed some ability she had or some skill, some power to notice and not speak about it. The fact that she had not mentioned she’d known he was in the confessional for who knew how long was nearly as mind-blowing as the pure fact that she even knew he was there to begin with. He growled at his carelessness.

  Behind him someone snorted and someone mumbled something, but he didn’t bother to look. Mr. and Mrs. Johansson wouldn’t mind him using their bedroom as a lookout. They hadn’t minded at all in the
six months Selene had lived across the street. Of course, they didn’t know, but that was beside the point.

  Again, ignorance being bliss and all.

  What he wouldn’t give for a bit of both. Oz had known Selene’s parents well before he’d met her the night of their deaths. He had worked with them to try to free the entire family from Raymond Tyrone’s wretched plans. They’d nearly succeeded. But Raymond was one step ahead of them.

  Oz was absolutely certain Selene’s father had not suffered a heart attack at the wheel as Raymond had the papers announce. Sean Kittery had been pretty high up the Panthera corporate ladder, which meant he knew things that very few others were allowed to know. And that knowledge got him and Mrs. Kittery murdered.

  A vibration of the phone on his lap signaled a text.

  I’m coming in. Don’t try to kill me.

  Beyond the bedroom door the main door to the apartment opened and clicked shut. The familiar sound of heavy footsteps clunked down the hallway stopping outside the door.

  “Are you in there?” Garrison whispered.

  “Yeah. Come in,” Oz answered, not bothering to look back. There wasn’t much that could pull his attention from the third floor apartment across the street.

  “I can’t believe you sit right in the middle of their bedroom,” Garrison said, tapping Mr. Johansson on the shoulder. “Do you mind, sir? I’m starving.”

  “No. Not at all.” The portly man with a bushy handlebar mustache and a shocking red beard that hung to mid-chest rolled onto his back and turned his face toward his wife. Taking his facial hair with him, he gave Garrison, who was already kneeling beside the bed, easy access to his neck.

  The next few moments were quiet other than the sound of two humans breathing and Garrison’s occasional lips smacking.

  “Ah. Thanks. That hit the spot.” The lanky vampire stood, stretching and smiling. “Anything happening out there tonight?”

  “That homeless guy again.”

  “You get the shot?”

  Oz held up the camera.

  “I could have done it. You know I’m better with that baby.” Garrison snatched the camera away, practically moaning when he looked through the lens finder. “Damn, she is perfect.” The shudder on the camera clicked several times.

  Oz glared up at Garrison.

  “What? You…wait. Did you think I was talking about Selene?” Garrison snorted. “Yeah, she’s great, but I was talking about Lola” He cradled the camera in both hands.

  Oz sighed heavily and returned to his position at the window.

  “Well, it’s quiet out there now. Not a thing going on.” The camera clicked several more times.

  “Right, nothing going on.” Which was just the way Oz liked it. No action near or around Selene was exactly as it should be.

  “No angry vampires trying to break in and bite her?” Garrison leaned against the wall beside the window and laughed. “You know that’s what she thinks is going to happen, right?”

  Oz grinned. He knew just as well as Garrison and probably every other vampire in The Guard, that Selene thought her worst nightmare was one of them being angry about her weekly soapbox sermons.

  “She’s amusing.” Garrison burped. “Shit. He must have eaten those stuffed cabbages again. I thought I told Mrs. Johansson not to make those anymore.”

  Oz was fairly certain Selene annoyed several vampires. She may have been funny to Garrison and adorably confused to Oz, but she did piss off others. There was no doubt about that. But no one with any experience living as a vampire would be stupid enough to hurt her.

  “I saw you go into the church after her,” Garrison said.

  Oz nodded.

  “I saw the priest and aunt go in, too.”

  He nodded again.

  “Then I saw the bishop.”

  Oz didn’t move.

  “Then she left. Pissed, for sure. Then it took quite a while before you left.”

  “Why didn’t you follow her?” Oz liked Garrison. He was amusing and did have his usefulness, limited as it was. “We agreed that you’d follow her if you knew I was detained.”

  “I find it hard to believe the priest, the aunt and the bishop could detain you.” Garrison snapped a picture. “That’s a good one. You in the foreground and the Johanssons in the background.”

  Detained might have been the wrong word. Certainly he’d been able to leave. He just needed some time alone with them to…talk.

  “Have you met the aunt?” Oz glanced up at Garrison. “She’s got a damn mean stare.”

  “Can you see that round old maid as a vampire?” Garrison laughed a bit too loud.

  “Quiet, please.” Mr. Johansson sat up.

  “Sorry. I’ll keep it down.” Garrison gave a slight bow toward the bed.

  “Thank you.” The old man rolled onto his side.

  “Funny thing, a man who wears a nightgown to bed,” Oz said.

  “Yeah. That is weird. But makes sense when you consider that head of curlers lying beside him.” Garrison peered out the window, leaning left and right, and managing to block Oz’s view.

  “Move.” He brought his foot up to push Garrison out of the way.

  “So what kept you in church? Getting right with God?” Garrison laughed. “If you weren’t getting right with God, you should tell everyone you were. It will give Kit more to consider regarding her argument about whether or not God condones vampire existences. Then she could also apply your ‘getting right’ to her new argument that we shouldn’t try to change back to humans but rather we should all accept who we are and be pleased with it even though God may not condone us.”

  Oz stretched his arms up over his head, then cradled the back of his head. “She is a conundrum.”

  “If she knew the half of it, she’d be too confused to ever let loose with one of her lectures.” Garrison grabbed a tissue from a box near the bed and worked on a black scuff at the toe of his red cowboy boots. “Can you imagine how tongue-tied she’d be if she had any idea her father had been the one leading the charge on changing us back?”

  Shaking his head, Oz thought about how she’d react, knowing exactly how red her face would become and how far her eyes would widen, and the way she’d suck in a harsh breath before trying to regain her composure.

  “She wouldn’t be able to say a word, but she wouldn’t be able to pretend she was not upset,” Oz said. He knew she’d work like mad to rationalize a reason for her father to participate in such nonsense.

  “Given tonight’s lecture I think she’d keel over, denying her father’s involvement at first, but then…” Garrison laughed, and Oz had to chuckle, too because he’d seen Selene attempt to reconcile events of the past “…oh, man. The story she would come up with on Sean Kittery’s role in developing a cure for vampirism would be monumental.”

  Smirking, Oz said, “And you know as sure as we’re sitting here she’d absolutely have to explain it to everyone.”

  “Oh, yeah. There is no way in hell she’d be able to stop herself.” Garrison clipped an attachment to his phone. “Zoom lens. I love this thing.” He aimed at Selene and snapped a few pictures. “We’ll see how these compare with the ones from Lola.”

  For as long as Oz had known Selene she’d been terrible at hiding her feelings or containing her thoughts. If it came to her mind and she had any emotion about it, she seemed utterly incapable of stopping it from coming out of her mouth. This had been a source of great personal torture for her and her aunt and uncle.

  “She’d be a terrible poker player,” Oz said, letting his mind wander to what a game of strip poker would be like.

  “That’s not a half bad idea, inviting her to our poker nights.” Garrison switched cameras and began clicking away, taking a multitude of pictures. “Though, I think Brandt might lose his mind.”

  Oz’s brief daydream of Selene sitting in her bra and panties was interrupted by Garrison. “What the hell is that?”

  Garrison held the screen in front of Oz and zoomed in
on the corner of the picture. “Is that a camera?”

  Together they examined the picture, moving it back and forth, enlarging and shrinking the view to be sure they saw what they thought.

  “That is one small camera. We’d have never seen it without this baby.” He tapped Lola, the camera he helped select. “Wonder why that’s there.” Pointing the camera across the street the shutter clicked several more times.

  On the outside of the building just above Selene’s bedroom window a tiny camera blended into the stonework of the building. It pointed into her room.

  “Photograph the camera, not Selene,” Oz ordered.

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Garrison held Lola before Oz and they enlarged the shot to study the camera on the building. “I don’t see any Panthera emblems. But if it’s not Tyrone, then who? Seems odd for anyone else to monitor her.”

  “Of course it’s that bastard. She’s a member of The Guard, and he’s the sick fuck who killed her parents. Now that she’s clearly aligned with us it would be a feather in his cap to kill her.” Oz turned the high tech camera around to get a better look at the device on the wall, and the picture flipped. After two more attempts he shoved the camera at Oz. “Fix it. Stop it from doing that.”

  After a couple taps Garrison handed Lola back to Oz. “I wonder if she’s the woman we’ve been hearing the rumblings about. She’s certainly Tyrone’s type. Beautiful. Single. Smart. Bold. He does know how to pick them. Maybe he doesn’t want her dead after all.”

  Low and deep in the very depths of Oz’s mind a painful buzz began to drill as if the very thought of Tyrone having any contact with Selene might somehow cause his brain to heat to a thousand degrees.

  “Has Tyrone been taking pictures of her sleeping?” Oz asked, feeling more than hearing the anger in his voice. “Has that pervert been watching her? Has he been watching her when she’s awake? I’m sure he’s got twenty-four-hour surveillance on her.”

  That fact infuriated him. Yes, she was monitored during the day, but not by Oz. Serge had flexed Selene’s hours so she worked part of them during the day and part of them into the evening, but that left at least twelve hours when she was not protected by Oz. Instead on the hours when he couldn’t watch her, they’d assigned the human element of The Guard to watch her.