by Nana Malone
Stop and listen carefully. Can you hear the sound of ghostly laughter? It’s Grandpa George, from The Valentine Grinch. If his laughter doesn’t drive you insane, then his insatiable desire to haunt you until you agree to his ridiculous scheme to stop Grandma Elvira’s wedding will surely drive you nuts.
But before you run screaming into the night, stop by the front door, and collect our tasty Halloween treats … full sized Eat-More bars guaranteed to rot your teeth.
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The Valentine Grinch - Back Cover Description
Hearts, cupids, and diamond rings … bah humbug!
Amanda Goodwin inherited her Valentine grinchness from her Grandpa George, so when she returns home for her Grandma Elvira’s Valentine’s Day wedding, it’s bah humbug all the way. Until, that is, she encounters her grandpa’s ghost.
Fortunately, she’s not in this alone.
Long time friend, Dane Weatherby, totally gets her grinchly attitude. Between Grandpa’s demands for her to stop the wedding, Grandma’s inability to let go of her dearly departed husband’s urn, and Amanda’s parents acting friskier than a couple of newlyweds, she’s ready to give in to her grinchness and head back to the city.
Only true love can stop Amanda. And if Dane has his way, he just might convince her to say I do instead of bah humbug.
(Navigation Stars)
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The Valentine Grinch
Copyright © December 2012 by Sheila Seabrook - All Rights Reserved
Published via a temporary license for the purposes of this boxed set via Addictive Reads
ISBN #978-0-9877069-2-8
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by http://www.hotdamndesigns.com/
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to Rick.
You are my Valentine.
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Chapter One
When Amanda Goodwin turned left at the Cranberry Cove Community Hall, and saw the front yard had already been decorated with heart shaped ornaments and cupids holding bows, she reacted with a mean and grumpy, “Bah humbug.”
It wasn’t that she disliked Valentine’s Day so much as she hated the pressure of living up to the romantic madness. Even now, three days before the big day, the radio in her yellow Beetle blared out the holiday’s excess.
Spend one hundred dollars and enter your name to win our Valentine’s Day thousand dollar shopping spree!
This Valentine’s Day, give the one you love the most expensive piece of jewelry on the market!
And on and on it went. Amanda turned off the radio and inched the car over the town’s slippery streets.
Outside, fog swirled through the air and dimmed the glow of the vehicle’s headlights, while enormous white flakes drifted down from the sky and covered the ground in a fluffy blanket of snow. The tiny west coast village of Cranberry Cove rarely had snow in mid-February, but a cold front had settled in the region to give the Washington residents one last blast of winter.
Okay, so all she had to do was get through the next three days. Once her grandma Elvira’s Valentine’s Day wedding was over, she could return to Seattle and forget about cherubs and chocolates and men who’d crushed her heart.
Amanda steered the car up to the curb in front of her parents’ two-storey house and sat there, arms braced against the steering wheel, her frown so tight she was sure a smile would crack her face.
There was only one person who really understood her aversion to the holiday and he was gone.
With a grumbly grunt, she shouldered the car door open and stepped out onto the icy street. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back. Her head bounced once, twice, then settled.
Fat snowflakes landed on her face and melted down her cheeks. Her ears rang with — was that laughter? — and something familiar glided out of the fog and floated in the air above her.
Amanda blinked up at the face staring down at her.
“Get up, bumpkin.”
“Gramps?” She pushed up on her elbows and the image morphed into swirls of fog and snow. A dull pain throbbed at the back of her head. The cold from the ground seeped through her clothes. She scrambled to her feet and turned in a slow circle. “Who’s there?”
But the street was empty, she was alone, and there was only one explanation for what she’d seen. Wishful thinking. She’d inherited her grinchness from her Grandpa George, so it seemed appropriate she’d want to see him at this time of year. He’d hated Valentine’s Day as much as she did.
All that lovey-dovey stuff and for what? A rejection of the epic kind? Been there, done that. Humiliation warmed her cheeks.
Gramps had always told her that it was what a person did all year long to show their love. It wasn’t about showing it for that one day of the year and spending a fortune on diamonds and chocolates.
Although, truth be told, the chocolates would’ve been nice. Amanda suspected her grandpa was part unromantic and part tightwad.
Careful now, she maneuvered across the slick ice beneath her feet. She pulled her suitcase out of the trunk of the car, gingerly lowered the lid so the sound wouldn’t make her head explode, and headed toward the front door of her parents’ house. A gust of wind hit her in the face and sucked the breath from her lungs. She bent her head and shivered against the cold.
Along with the decidedly anti-cupid-like mood, now she had a headache. She stepped carefully up the cement steps so she wouldn’t fall again, set her suitcase down beside her, and rapped her knuckles against the front door. Through the etched glass window on the door, she heard the romantic croon of her parents’ favorite music from the seventies.
Another shiver went through her and she reached into her coat pocket for her keys.
“Pssst.”
Amanda jumped back from the door and squinted through the fog toward the front flowerbed. “Who’s there?”
The top of a camouflage colored toque popped out. A snort came from deep within the greenery, and then the rest of the toque appeared, followed by a familiar grizzled and worn face. “It’s been so long since you visited me, bumpkin, it’s no wonder you don’t recognize your own grandpa.”
Amanda stumbled backward on the porch landing and nearly slipped on the ice coated surface, stopping only when her back end hit the wrought iron rails and she could escape no further. “Gramps? What the hell?”
“Don’t swear, bumpkin. You know how your grandma hates blasphemy.”
Dizziness swirled in her head. She closed her eyes, forced herself to breathe deep, stay calm.
This wasn’t possible.
She opened one eye, opened the other, then gaped as the apparition floated out of the shrubs and hovered in the air like part of the fog.
Amanda pressed back against the railing. “No, no, no. You’re dead. I was at your funeral.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.” He cupped his hands around his eyes, pressed his nose to the window and peered inside.
“Seriously dead. Dead as a doornail dead. Dead, dead, dead.”
“I agree, I’m dead. Can we get past this, bumpkin?” With a sigh, he dropped his hands to his sides and turned toward her, the ghostly vision slowly settling into something more solid. Tall. Shoulders slightly stooped. Gray eyes twinkling. Definitely her grandfather. “I need your help.”
Amanda covered her eyes, then peeked through the spac
e between her fingers and saw him still there, floaty and real and impossible to believe. “It’s the holiday stress. All of the cupids and cherubs and Grandma’s wedding—”
“That’s why I’m here.” Grandpa stretched to his full five-foot-ten height, and shuffled out of the bushes and onto the sidewalk without leaving a mark in the snow. “To stop the wedding.”
Her legs trembled beneath her and she put out a shaky hand to ward him off. “Go away. You’re just in my imagination.”
“Here, I’ll pinch you.”
Before she could blink, he was on the landing before her, reaching one bony hand toward her, thumb and index finger in the pinch position. Amanda yelped and pressed against the front door.
Gramps let his arm drop and his bushy eyebrows lowered into a frown. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Uh, yeah.” Amanda let out a nervous laugh. With her gaze fixed on the vision before her, she backtracked through the last few hours of her road trip, almost positive that nothing had gone wrong. Until she’d slipped on the ice. The bubble of laughter caught in her throat. “Am I dead, too?”
“No, bumpkin. Now about your grandma—”
“Am I in the hospital? Unconscious?” She leaned forward and swiped one hand through the foggy image. A cold shiver raced up her arm, forcing her back against the door. “Maybe I’m fast asleep and when I wake up, you’ll be—”
He reached out and pinched her cheek. “Real enough for you?”
“Ouch.” She rubbed the side of her face and gave him her best glare. “That hurt, Gramps.” With one hand, she rubbed at her forehead. “I need some time to think. This is so ... unexpected. And you’re so ... not supposed to be here.” She looked around the snow covered front yard, the flakes still drifting down from the sky, her car parked on the front street.
Okay, what she really needed to do was go inside, have her mom check her head, then take an aspirin and go to bed. In the morning, she’d wake, realize it was all a dream and forget all about it.
She turned and through the glass window, saw her mom glide toward the front door, flick on the deadbolt, then turn back to the kitchen.
Amanda pounded on the door and her mom turned back, a frown on her forehead. The porch light flickered on, then off again, and out the corner of her eye, she saw Grandpa disappear in a swirl of fog, jumping off the steps like he was forty years younger, slipping through the azalea bush and cedar trees, reminding Amanda of those spy penguins in the Madagascar movie. Except they were only animated and her grandpa was ... most definitely dead.
The front door squeaked open and through the screen door, Amanda saw her mom frown up at the outside lamp before she returned her attention to her youngest daughter.
Dora Goodwin unlatched the screen door, pushed it open, and gestured Amanda inside. “Honey, what are you doing here? We thought you were coming tomorrow. Where’s your key? Is the front light burned out again? Come in, come in, before you freeze to death.”
Amanda glanced back at the flowerbed. The fog had lifted and she could see quite clearly now. There was nothing there but the bushes covered by the new snow. Not a single footprint on the sidewalk, except for her own. Not a whisper of her grandpa’s voice in her ear, only the wind.
With goose bumps spreading across her body, she grabbed her suitcase by the handle, and stepped into the warmth of the house.
“Tom, Amanda’s here. And the outside light is burned out again,” Dora called as she closed the front door behind her. “Oh, honey, you have snow all over your back. What happened?”
Amanda plunked her suitcase on the rug. “I slipped on the ice.”
Dora took Amanda’s coat and shook the snow onto the front rug. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m okay, Mom.” She could live with the throbbing head. It was the vision of her grandpa that had her worried. As she heard the soft soled sound of her dad’s slippers approach from the kitchen, she pushed away the thought.
“Babycakes,” she heard him call out. “I found the whipping cream.”
“Oh dear.” Her mom nudged her out of the way, hung up the still snowy coat and with more emphasis this time, called out again, “Tom, Amanda’s here.”
“I’m ready to lick this—” He came around the corner, a bright yellow can in his hand, a naughty gleam in his eyes, and froze.
Her mom poked her in the back. “Your father’s hearing is getting worse.”
Amanda chose to ignore the can and shucked her boots. “Hi Dad.”
Despite the ruddy flush working its way into his cheeks, he thrust the bright yellow can into his sweater pocket and approached her. “Welcome home, kiddo. You’re early. How are the roads?”
Amanda stepped into his arms and hugged him back. “A little icy, but I have winter tires on.”
“Good girl.” As he pulled back, the can fell out of his pocket. He picked it up and handed it to her mom. “We’ll, ah, finish decorating that dessert later, right, Dora?”
Wink, wink.
Too much information. Amanda turned her back on her parents and peered into the living room, doing a quick search for strange wisps of fog that looked like Gramps. Nothing, nada, zilch. She rubbed the lump on the back of her head and turned to face her parents. “This may sound weird, but have you seen Gramps lately?”
Her dad shook his head and picked up the suitcase. “That’s my girl. Always the joker. Just don’t be joking around your grandma like that.”
“Seriously, you haven’t seen Gramps hanging around? Has Grandma mentioned him lately?”
Her mom exchanged a concerned look with her dad. “Only about a hundred times a day. I’m surprised Morty still wants to marry her. She’s taken to lugging your grandpa’s urn around. We’ve tried to talk to her but she refuses to listen. It can’t be healthy. Maybe you could talk to her, honey.”
“Where is Grandma?”
“Already asleep.” Her mom slipped one arm around her waist and urged her toward the hallway. “Tom, get Amanda’s suitcase, will you?”
He held it up and wiggled it. “I’m way ahead of you, babe.”
Amanda took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. “Is Steph here yet?”
“Your sister’s not coming till the day of the wedding. Apparently work is keeping her busy.”
Behind them, her dad grumbled. “You’d think with her being a wedding planner and us paying for her education, that she could take a little time off to help with Grandma’s wedding.”
“Now, Tom, you know I enjoy planning parties.” Dora Goodwin had a reputation for getting the job done, which was why she was in charge of pretty much everything, including Grandma’s wedding.
“Well, I don’t,” he grumbled back.
Amanda felt her mom’s hand against the back of her head and tried to wiggle away, but her mom had a firm grip on her.
“That’s quite the lump you’ve got. Tom, come feel this.”
He did as he was requested, his warm fingers tunneling through her hair. “Maybe we should call the Doc.”
“I’m fine, really. Tired from the drive. I’ll just get washed up, climb into bed and catch up on some sleep.”
“Are you hungry, honey?”
Her stomach rolled at the mention of food. “No.”
“Come on, kiddo. We’ve got your room ready.” Her dad lead the way up the stairs to the second floor. “You should move back to Cranberry Cove. The city is no place for a girl like you.”
“I like the city, Dad.”
Amanda followed him up the stairs with her mom bringing up the rear. The walls were lined with family photos of her parents’ wedding day, school pictures of her and Steph, and other favorites taken over the years.
At the top of the steps, her dad turned right, opened the door to her room and flipped on the light switch. “Sorry about the mess.”
Along with a ratty old armchair that her mom had wanted to toss and her dad had wanted to keep were Valentine decorations. Lots of Valentine decorations. There were red cardbo
ard cutouts of Valentine hearts and grotesque cupids with bows. Enough for a massive wedding or a massive headache.
Her head throbbed again, reminding her that she already had a headache. As she turned to face her parents, she rolled her neck a couple of times with hopes of releasing the tension.
Dora moved to the bed, gathered an armful of the decorations and handed them to Tom. “You should have let us know you were coming a day early. We would have cleaned this up for you.”
Amanda watched her dad set the decorations down in the corner of the room. “Are these all for Grandma’s wedding?”
“Uh huh.” Her mom gathered up the rest of the decorations and pulled down the covers on the bed. “We thought you might bring a date for the wedding.”
“No date, Mom.”
“Not even a boy that’s a friend?” her mom continued as she smoothed her hand over the sheets, then one handed, fluffed the pillows. “Your father and I aren’t getting any younger, you know, and it would be nice if we had grandchildren before we died.”
Amanda groaned. “Bug Steph. She’s the one infatuated with weddings.”
Her mom straightened and faced Amanda, her shoulders squared, her arms wrapped around the decorations, looking as though she wasn’t about to back down from her favorite topic. “Did your father mention that Dane Weatherby is back in town? And that he’s taking over the newspaper office so his grandpa can retire? He’s single, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Dane, her best friend till college, when they’d gone their separate ways and lost touch. An image of her childhood friend floated up from the nether regions of her mind. Black rimmed glasses with thick lenses. Tall and lanky. Yeah, they’d been quite the pair of geeky misfits. She pushed the memory away. “I’m so tired, I could fall asleep standing up.”