Eventually Gwen and I retired to our room. But sleep wasn’t what she had in mind. After a lengthy stay in the bathroom, she stepped out, and suddenly Basil Capolla was a distant memory.
She began walking toward me, wearing just a set of sexy Santa lingerie. When she reached me, I took her in my arms and we began to kiss. We fell onto the bed, and as we did, suddenly we weren’t alone anymore.
Basil was back. I tried to shake him out of my head, but the bastard wouldn’t budge.
I pulled away. “I’m sorry … I can’t do this tonight.”
Gwen looked stunned. “What’s wrong, JP?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Is it about your brother?”
“Ethan or Noah?”
She flashed a brief smile. “Either, I guess.”
“No, it’s not family related.”
“Please tell me that this has nothing to do with that restaurant manager. You blew that totally out of proportion … he was just being nice.”
“No—it was the sauce.”
“The sauce? Are you having that acidic issue again? I thought you said you were going to see Doc Mac about that.”
“You could say it’s something like that.”
We retired to bed. And after Gwen drifted off to sleep, I slipped back into my clothes, and made my way downstairs. I grabbed the keys to our rental and tiptoed around the sea of gifts that blockaded the tree.
I was almost at the front door when I was stopped in my tracks.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Carter said, gripping tightly to the back of my suit coat.
“I ran into an old friend tonight, and I was going to say hello.”
“Anyone I might know?’
“We both thought we knew him, but I’m not so sure we did.”
“That’s deep.” He thought for a moment, and added, “I’m coming with you—they say I’m a good judge of character. Well, with the exception of you.”
“I need to do this alone … make sure my mind isn’t playing tricks on me.”
Carter looked a little hurt to be excluded, but he saw the determination on my face and didn’t push it.
As the clock clicked to Christmas morning, I headed out to try to find a Mafia hit man. How could that ever go wrong?
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Acknowledgments
With this being the ninth book, I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I'm so fortunate to work with the best team in the business. First off, I'm so lucky to have found Charlotte Brown (or maybe she found me!) all the way in Melbourne, Australia to edit the books, and fix as many of my bad sentences as she can! She has been a great partner along the way in shaping the stories and improving my writing. Carl Graves is the best cover designer in the world, and I think he created another winner for Psycho Hill. Sandra Simpson has come on board over the last couple years and really helped increase the quality of the proofreading. Curt Ciccone is the one who formats it so that it can be used on the many e-reader devices out there, which might be the most underrated part of publishing a book these days, and he did another masterful job. And the readers who keep reading and supporting the JP Warner stories, thanks for inspiring more stories. As long as you keep reading them I'll keep writing them!
Psycho Hill (JP Warner Book 3) Page 38