Twelve Dates of Christmas: The Ballad of Lula Jo (Lonesome Point)

by Jessie Evans

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas:

  The Ballad of Lula Jo

  A Lonesome Point Holiday Novella

  By Jessie Evans

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright The Twelve Dates of Christmas © 2014 Jessie D. Evans www.jessieevansauthor.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This contemporary western romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book 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 person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring alpha cowboys. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design © by Violet Duke. Edited by Robin Leone Editorial.

  PROLOGUE

  Eleven years ago

  Lula

  The desert night was cool, the Christmas carnival cast downtown Lonesome Point, Texas in giddy splashes of color and light, and the air smelled of hot chocolate, cookies, evergreen trees, and unadulterated happiness. The old west town came alive on December twenty-fourth when the shops on Main Street brought their wares out to the sidewalk for the annual holiday sale, a carnival set up in the square, and mistletoe hung from every street lamp, issuing an invitation to romance that only a Scrooge could refuse.

  And Tallulah Josephine Watson was no Scrooge.

  She’d deliberately staked out a spot beneath a clump of mistletoe, across the street from the Blue Saloon Hotel, and her lips were tingling with anticipation. She could feel it in her bones, in her fluttering belly, in her feet that couldn’t seem to stand still. She paced back and forth in her red ballet flats, purchased to match her red dress with the Peter Pan collar and the scandalous hemline. Her green eyes scanned the lamp-lit street, determined to spot Carter the moment he turned the corner.

  Lula wanted to remember every single second of tonight, the night the man of her dreams asked her to marry him. He’d told her to dress for a special evening, and she had it on good authority—her Aunt Cathy, who owned the jewelry store—that he’d been in to the Lonesome Point Mining Company to purchase a diamond ring a few days ago. Visions of romantic proposals under the mistletoe had been floating through Lula’s head ever since. She couldn’t wait to say yes to the most fascinating, funny, adventurous, gorgeous man she’d ever met.

  Carter was an archeologist and treasure hunter who’d been working the mesa around Lonesome Point’s ghost town for the past two years. He’d come to southwest Texas hoping to find gold bars hidden in the hills by a notorious wild west outlaw and stayed to help a team of paleontologists unearth dinosaur bones in the desert nearby. He joked that he’d come to Lonesome Point hunting treasure, but the only time he’d struck gold was when he met Lula Jo.

  She felt exactly the same way.

  Lula swung in a giddy circle, sending her skirt twirling around her thighs. She was going to say yes to forever with Carter in a few short hours! The thought made her stretch her arms over her head and blow a celebratory kiss to the stars in the cool winter sky.

  “Hope you have some of those left for me,” a deep voice rumbled from behind her. A moment later, Carter’s muscular arms were around her waist, lifting her feet off the ground as he pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck.

  “How do you always manage to sneak up on me?” Lula asked, giggling. “I think you’re part mountain lion.”

  “Part ninja,” Carter corrected, smiling against her skin. “Self-trained ninja—the most dangerous kind. All the stealth, none of the honor code.”

  “Ninjas didn’t have a code. They were assassins who specialized in covert espionage in feudal Japan.” Her laughter turned to a sigh of contentment as she shifted in Carter’s arms and looped her wrists around his neck. “You’re thinking of samurai. They’re the ones who had a code.”

  “Hmm…as smart as you are sexy.” His melted chocolate eyes wrinkled at the edges as he smiled, making Lula’s heart feel like it was still spinning in circles. “I’ve missed you since yesterday.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she said, brushing his soft brown curls from his forehead. God, he was wonderful. He was everything she wanted in a man—handsome, intelligent, funny, unpredictable, taller than her own lanky five-ten, and so sexy her knees still went weak every time they kissed.

  "You ready for a night of adventure?” He hugged her closer, setting her nerves to fizzing. “Because I’ve got plans for you, L.J. I’m going to make all your secret Christmas wishes come true.”

  Lula bit back a squeal of excitement. “I can’t wait. But before we go, I need you to take advantage of the situation I’ve arranged right here.” She pointed one finger to the air above their heads, making a little circle with her arm as she arched one brow.

  Carter looked up, a slow, sinful smile spreading across his face as he spotted the mistletoe. “I love the way you think.”

  “And I love you,” Lula whispered as his mouth dropped to hers, and he kissed her the way Carter always kissed her—with a focused intensity that left no doubt she was the only woman in his heart.

  Until the day Carter swept into her quiet, ordered world, Lula hadn’t believed she was destined for an epic romance. She was pretty in the willowy way of the women of her family, with short blond hair and pale green eyes, but she had never garnered much male attention. She was attractive, not beautiful, but that had never bothered her. She was happy to spend her time running her tea shop and collectible store, knitting lace with the tiny needles she’d inherited from her grandmother, and crafting porcelain dolls that had been her secret obsession since she was a little girl. She was a nerdy homebody who had preferred chocolate kisses to the real ones, and that had been just fine with her.

  And then Carter happened. Sweet, sexy, unstoppable Carter who looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world, had turned a homebody into a bona fide sex fiend, and insisted she was more fascinating than ancient Mayan tombs and dinosaur bones combined.

  “Let’s go,” he said in a husky voice when they came up for air, long minutes later. “I’ve got a big night planned. But if we keep kissing, all I’ll want to do is take you back to your apartment and make you scream so loud everyone on Main Street will know what we’re doing.”

  Lula’s body sparked to life at the thought, but getting naked under
the Christmas tree would have to wait until the parade was over. “Considering half my family is at the carnival right now, and the other half is in the parade in an hour, I’ll pass on that. But run it by me later,” she added with a wink. “I have a feeling you might get lucky.”

  “I’m already lucky.” Carter took her hand, giving it a squeeze that she felt from the tip of her chilled nose to the ends of her freshly-painted toes.

  Only Carter could say I love you in the way he held her hand or brushed her hair from her face. Only Carter could make her feel like the town she’d lived in all her life was a place filled with fascinating secrets and untapped magic, instead of a dusty, though adorable, hamlet, barely clinging to its spot on the map.

  Since the day Carter had arrived in Lonesome Point two years ago in his wide-brimmed fedora and battered blue jeans and set up camp in her tea shop, guzzling Earl Grey as he chatted her up about the ghost town, he had been making her fall in love with her hometown all over again. He found the treasures other people overlooked and embraced experiences many in sleepy Lonesome Point would call flat out crazy.

  So Lula shouldn’t have been surprised to round the corner onto the Old Town Highway to see a sleigh on wheels and a team of four reindeer tied at the hitching post near the copy store.

  But she was surprised and so thrilled that she couldn’t keep from clapping her hands in excitement. “They’re adorable!” she said, laughing. “Where did you find reindeer in the middle of the desert?”

  “I borrowed them from the Santa’s village up the highway about half an hour,” Carter said, pride in his voice. “I figured it was past time for you to have your first sleigh ride. May I help you into your carriage, m’lady?”

  By the time she and Carter were settled on the padded leather seat of the sleigh, Lula was grinning so hard her face hurt. Carter set the reindeer in motion with a soft “whup now,” and the sleigh moved smoothly down the two-lane highway leading toward the edge of town. The bells on the harnesses tinkled softly and the cool wind stung Lula’s cheeks, making her feel like she was in the middle of one of the Christmas movies she loved so much.

  “This is perfect.” She looped her arm through Carter’s and squeezed. “This was one of my secret Christmas wishes.”

  “I figured it would do until I can get you up to Alaska for a real sleigh ride,” he said. “My dad still has his cabin up there, and I have friends who will loan us dogs. We could go winter camping next Christmas.”

  “Sounds miserable,” Lula said cheerfully as Carter turned left on Mesquite Lane, the last road before the highway narrowed. “I’ve never felt air colder than thirty-one degrees and that’s just fine with me. I’ll be a Texas girl ’til the day I die.”

  “Oh, come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?” He nudged her shoulder. “I know there’s a wild child inside of you, Lu. You may have everyone else fooled, but I see the real Lula Jo.”

  She fought a smile. “Wild and ‘enjoys freezing to death in the Alaskan wilderness’ are not the same thing. Now pull over, mister. I have a mission to accomplish.”

  “And what’s that?” Carter asked, grinning as he tugged on the reins.

  “You’ll see,” Lula said mysteriously, pointing to the side of the road.

  Carter pulled the reindeer to a stop in the middle of the residential street, where bungalows from the 1920s and larger mid-century homes threatened to overflow their tiny yards. Most of the windows were dark—nearly the entire town was at the carnival and getting settled for the parade—but Christmas lights twinkled merrily from rooftops, shrubs, and around the neck of the giant plastic armadillo the Grant family was famous for resurrecting every year.

  The Grant family’s display was obnoxious, but nothing compared to the last yard on the block, where floodlights illuminated the nearly one hundred garden gnomes that filled the front lawn. Lula’s great-aunt Louise had been collecting holiday garden gnomes for twenty years. Lula had been stealing one from Louise’s lawn for ten, ever since she was twelve years old and her brother had dared her to smuggle a gnome home in her backpack.

  By now, The Mystery of the Missing Gnome was a holiday tradition in Lonesome Point and many of the people who came into Lula’s tea shop waited breathlessly for the annual theft announcement—covered by the town reporter, complete with gnome pictures. It was harmless fun, and Lula didn’t really care if she was caught one day. But she still did her best to practice stealth and to grab the gnome on a different day every year, so there was no pattern to her crime against gnome-kind.

  “What are we doing?” Carter asked as he tied the reindeer to a lamppost.

  Lula held a finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow her. They moved soundlessly through the grass to the edge of Louise’s lawn. A glance at the windows revealed lights on in the family room, but the kitchen window that overlooked the front yard was dark.

  “I’m going to go for the little elf gnome with the stocking on his head this year,” Lula whispered, pointing to the center of the display. “What do you think? Isn’t he a cutie?”

  “You’re going to…” Carter’s words trailed off as he turned to her with a smile. “You’re the Gnome Bandit!”

  Lula grinned. “Ten years running.”

  Carter shook his head as his dark eyes skimmed her up and down, his heated look enough to make her skin tingle. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more irresistible. If you weren’t in the middle of a heist, I’d kiss you.”

  “Come on,” she said, waving him forward with her. “You pick one out, too. I want everyone to know the bandit has an accomplice.”

  A few minutes later, both she and Carter had their gnomes tucked under their arms and were creeping back into the shadows. They were nearly to safety, when Aunt Louise’s porch light flicked on.

  “I see you,” her aunt’s shrill voice screeched into the night. “I see you mister! And I’ve already called the police.”

  “Shit,” Carter cursed, breaking into a run beside Lula.

  “Don’t worry, she didn’t see us. She’s half blind,” Lula said, sprinting for the sleigh. “We just need to get out of here before the police arrive. I don’t think she’d press charges once she knew it was me, but Aunt Louise hasn’t been all the way on her rocker the past few years.”

  “Getting arrested wasn’t on my Christmas wish list,” Carter said, handing her his gnome as he untied the reindeer. “But I guess as long as we get booked together it could be fun.”

  Lula giggled as he jumped up beside her and set the reindeer into motion, turning left into the alley behind the abandoned Blue Plate Cafe as a siren sounded in the distance. “I can’t even imagine,” she said. “My parents would kill me.”

  “You’re twenty-two years old, babe,” Carter said. “You don’t have to be afraid of your parents anymore.”

  “I’m not afraid of them,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder as Carter took another left onto Rook Street. “Just respectful of the guilt-inducing power they wield.”

  Carter sighed. “I guess that means you’re not changing your mind about closing down the shop and coming with me when I leave town this spring.”

  Lula shot him a hard look, her pulse picking up. “You’re still going?”

  “I’m still going,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road, guiding the reindeer back onto the Old Town Highway as a police car streaked by in the other direction. “My work here is almost finished. I want you to come with me more than anything Lu, but if you can’t, I’m still going. I have to.”

  “But I thought…” she started. “What about—” She broke off, her throat tightening.

  “What about what, babe?” Carter asked, sounding as miserable as she felt.

  “What about the ring? My aunt said you bought an engagement ring a few days ago.” Lula pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to cry. “I thought that meant you’d changed your mind.”

  He cursed softly, “I should have known better than to think she’d keep t
hat a secret. Your Aunt Cathy is a busybody, you know that?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lula said in a soft voice. “She didn’t mean anything by it. She was just excited for me, for us.”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” Carter pulled to a stop on the side of the road and turned to her, slipping a small box from his coat pocket and opening it to reveal a perfect little princess cut ring.

  “I had a more romantic setting in mind,” he said with a nervous laugh. “But a proposal after a gnome theft is still pretty memorable.”

  Lula sniffed, wishing she could get swept up in the moment. But if Carter was still leaving, if he refused to understand that she couldn’t abandon her shop and the town she loved to roam the earth, searching for treasure that might never be found…

  “I love you, Tallulah Josephine,” Carter continued. “And I want you to be my partner in every adventure. Will you take this ring and run away with me?”

  A sob rose in her throat. “Why can’t you stay?”

  “I can’t make the kind of living I want to make here, Lu,” he said, his dark eyes pleading with her to understand. “I don’t want you to have to work all the time. I want to make enough money to give you everything you’ve ever wanted, and the only way I know how to do that is to keep doing what I’ve been doing until a job pays off the way it did for my dad.”

  “But all I want is you,” Lula said. “I don’t mind working a lot. I like to stay busy. I’d go crazy sitting around the house, doing nothing all day.”

  “And I’ll go crazy if I stay here and never find out what’s waiting for me out there,” Carter said before continuing on in an urgent whisper. “Please say yes, L.J. Come treasure hunting with me. It’s such a rush. I promise you’ll love it.”

  “The rush. That’s all you care about.” Lula shook her head, dodging Carter’s hand when he reached for her arm, and jumping out of the sleigh. “Don’t touch me. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think I was enough for you.”