Christmas Al Dente

by Hart, Jennifer L.

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  What critics are saying about

  Jennifer L. Hart's books:

  "Who Needs A Hero is a wonderful story of two people who made their share of mistakes during their lifetime but seem to complete each other."

  —Sizzling Hot Book Reviews

  "Ms. Hart writes all genres with ease and I enjoy her books but my heart will always be with Neil and Maggie because I am a total sucker for the Happily Ever After."

  —The Reading Reviewer

  "A must read for all people who love a good mystery and a jolly good laugh...laugh out loud funny."

  —Black Orchid, Cocktail Reviews

  "A wonderfully fun whodunit"

  —ParaNormal Romance.org

  "Laugh out loud funny, realistic characters, snappy true to life dialog, and a sufficiently difficult mystery; all the required elements for an excellent read."

  —Manic Readers

  "I would not hesitate to pick up another of Ms. Hart's works as she definitely made me with one book a lifelong fan."

  —Joyfully Reviewed.

  "Jennifer L. Hart gives readers a contemporary love story constructed by two achingly real main characters."

  —Coffee Time Romance

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  CHRISTMAS AL DENTE

  by

  JENNIFER L. HART

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  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer L. Hart

  Cover design by Janet Holmes

  Gemma Halliday Publishing

  http://www.gemmahallidaypublishing.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 both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This 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.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  I thought I'd been having a bad day until I stumbled across my sous-chef crying in the pantry. Sure the holidays could be stressful, but this was ridiculous.

  I crouched low and put a hand on her shoulder. "Is everything all right, Mimi?"

  She glanced up at me, her big dark eyes full misery. "She's going to kill me."

  It was an off the cuff remark, but I shifted uneasily. There had been a murder not so long ago in our small town of Beaverton, N.C., and Mimi had been in the midst of it.

  "Who?" I asked. "Is someone threatening you?"

  Mimi shook her head. Her dark hair had grown out and reached her small, elfin chin. "Your aunt."

  I frowned. "Aunt Cecily? She thinks the world of you. Why she's practically adopted you into the family."

  Though my words were meant to comfort, Mimi just cried harder.

  Crud muffins. "It's okay, I swear the insanity is genetic, not contagious." The Buckland-Rosetti family tree was full of nuts, and we're not talking chestnuts here. But though my great aunt could be scary at times, she truly did appreciate Mimi. She never would have let her work in our family's pasta shop, the Bowtie Angel, otherwise. Which made this whole crying jag even more bizarre.

  The door separating the kitchen from the small pasta shop eatery swung open, and

  Malcolm Jones, my current beau, entered the small space. Strains of Michael Bublé's rendition of "Silent Night" crooned from the speakers, a harsh contrast to Jones's dark countenance.

  "Andrea, you can't just run away in the middle of a disagreement. I wasn't finished—"

  He stopped when he saw Mimi's tear-stained face. "What the devil? Is she all right?"

  Even though the man made my blood boil, I melted every time I heard his sexy New Zealand accent. Forcing myself to remember that he had just royally ticked me off, I cleared my throat. "She's not hurt. From what I can tell, she's afraid of Aunt Cecily."

  Jones made a derisive noise. "Who isn't?"

  He was full of it. Though he was always respectful of my great aunt, I was fairly sure Jones wasn't afraid of anything. It took a fearless man to take on a woman with as much baggage as I hauled around.

  Always the gentlemen, Jones handed Mimi a handkerchief and helped her off the floor. "Tell us what's wrong, Mimi."

  Mimi glanced up into Jones's face then looked to me. "It's all my fault."

  It was obvious she wanted to make that clear right from the get go. I nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

  Mimi's large eyes grew even wider, and before I could so much as phrase a question, she bolted.

  "What goes on here? No one makes the pasta?"

  I jumped. "Aunt Cecily, you scared the bejeesus out of me."

  My aunt didn't apologize. She merely put her tiny hands on her slim hips and waited for an explanation as to why no one was making pasta when we had dozens of orders and a shop full of people.

  I hurried over to a bubbling pot and poured rotini into it. "What did you say to Mimi?"

  "Eh?" Aunt Cecily's eyebrows were thin and spidery looking, a perfect mixture of salt and pepper.

  "She's scared to death of you."

  "Girls are foolish. Fretting about men when there is work to be done." She narrowed her eyes at Jones, as though accusing him of leading the kitchen staff astray.

  He held up his hands in a defensive maneuver. "I can see you ladies are busy. I'll leave you to it."

  Courting Aunt Cecily's wrath, he made his way over to me, dropped a chaste kiss on my cheek, and took the opportunity to whisper, "We will finish our discussion later."

  I crinkled my nose. "Something to look forward to, like a tooth extraction."

  "Behave, or I'll be forced to restrain you." Jones swatted me playfully on the rump and exited the kitchen.

  "He will give you many fat babies," Aunt Cecily said with an approving nod. "You should marry him soon. Your eggs are already old. Soon they will shrivel and be useless."

  "Jeeze-a-lou," I yelped, hoping to the powers that be that Jones didn't hear that because he'd never let me live it down. "Can we talk about something else please? Like why Mimi ran out of here in tears? What did you say to her?"

  "I said nothing." Aunt Cecily, though she was supposed to be retired, bent and took the lasagna out of the oven.

  "But—"

  "Basta!" Aunt Cecily waved her hand in a sharp, slicing motion, indicating our discussion was at an end.

  Oh, rotten sugar plums. When she broke out the Italian, there was no reasoning with her. Not that there ever was, but Italian was the quintessential kiss of death. I drained the rotini and poured it into
a bowl, taking it and the fresh loaves of Italian bread out front.

  The South loved their all-you-can-eat buffets, and it was gratifying to see the all-you-can-eat pasta bar packed with people. I refilled the rotini and cleared a few booths then spied my best friend Donna Muller and her two impish twin girls at a nearby table. With Mimi out of commission, I couldn't chat long, but I had to tell her what was up.

  "Jones wants me to spend Christmas with him and Lizzy."

  Donna's pasta fork clattered to the table. "I never thought he was stupid, but Lord knows I've been wrong before. This is your last year in the Grove Street house. Like you'd want to just turn your back on that and share eggnog with the queen bee-yotch of the universe."

  "You said a bad word." Donna's more inquisitive twin Pippa, shamed her mother. "I'm telling Daddy."

  "Where do you think I learned it?"

  I ruffled her daughter's strawberry blond head. "Thank you."

  "What for?" Donna helped me stack the girl's plates.

  "For understanding."

  Donna nodded, obviously lost in thought. "Although—"

  I held up a hand. "Stop right there."

  "What?" Donna blinked in mock innocence, a tip-off that her thoughts were truly devious.

  "I don't want to hear it. Christmas is going to be weird enough—I don't need Lizzy and Kyle and, God forbid, Kyle's parents too." Just the thought of my ex with his fiancé and his prune-faced parents gave me a migraine.

  Donna wiped her youngest's mouth with the bib she wore. "It's just that if you and Jones are going to have any future, um, interactions you'll have to accept that, as his half-sister, Lizzy is part of his life.

  Lizzy had been the bane of my existence in high school. A spoiled brat down to her marrow, she'd gone out of her way to ostracize me because she'd wanted my boyfriend, Kyle, for herself. Eventually she'd snagged his attention but not before I'd gotten pregnant and my life fell apart. Seeing either of them wasn't up there on my Christmas wish list.

  "I really can't talk about this right now." Or ever.

  Donna skillfully hefted the baby onto her hip. "Can't or don't want to?"

  I grinned at her. "A little of column A, a little of column B."

  "Keep me posted." Donna hustled her brood into the tiny restroom.

  I admired her multitasking skills. Donna was a professional career woman, a top notch Realtor, and an awesome mother to boot. She juggled work and family and looked good doing it. I, on the other hand was a Southern Scottish-Italian train wreck looking for a place to derail. I grimaced as I caught my reflection in the plate glass window. My wild curls were making another bid for freedom from my loose ponytail holder. My pale complexion was paler than usual in the winter months, and my jeans were too tight from indulging in way too much pasta of late. It wasn't all bad though, because Jones liked what he saw and was willing to put up with the nonstop crazy for it.

  A loud crash came from the kitchen. I whirled around just in time to see Aunt Cecily appear in the doorway, a black cloud of fury emanating from her small frame.

  All noise in the pasta shop stopped. Some people froze with pasta still dangling from their forks.

  "Who…" Aunt Cecily's voice was low, even dangerous. "…stole my recipe book?"

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  "Hey!" I called out to Jones as I entered his house. Technically speaking it was Lizzy's house. But Lizzy was still living at her father's monumental estate across the field and had no plans to move into this place until she and Kyle were officially married. Whenever that would be. They'd been engaged for almost two years now, and unforeseen circumstances had delayed their official date. From what I could tell Lizzy wasn't in a hurry to pick a new one. Jones had set up semi-permanent residence in the meantime. "You missed the fireworks."

  "There were fireworks?" I heard his footsteps on the basement stairs. He must have been working in the darkroom. Among his many other talents, Jones was a brilliant photographer and was putting out his own North Carolina calendar for the new year.

  "Of the duck-and-cover variety. Aunt Cecily's recipe book is missing, and she's convinced someone stole it. She threatened to give everyone in town the Evil Eye."

  "Wine?" Jones asked.

  "I thought you'd never ask." I followed him into the kitchen and settled on a bar stool.

  "Aren't you all set with the calendar?"

  "This is just a side project." Jones poured two glasses of Zinfandel and handed one to me. "What's the Evil Eye?"

  "It's an Italian thing, like a curse or a hex. Bad fortune comes to those who've been given the Evil Eye."

  Jones leaned on the counter, his dark sweater clinging to well-developed muscles. He smelled luscious, even better than the Crock-Pot full of stew I'd started that morning and just as mouthwatering. "Can you do it?"

  I snickered like an adolescent at his phrasing. "Gee, I hope so."

  His gaze turned hot, but he rose and turned toward the fridge. "I meant the Evil Eye thing."

  "Oh, no. My blood has been too diluted. You have to be pure Italian for the Evil Eye to work. Didn't stop me from threatening people when I was in high school though."

  "People like my sister?" He raised one dark brow.

  "I plead the fifth."

  Jones nodded almost absently. "So, about Christmas…"

  I held a hand up. "Don't start."

  His neon blue eyes fixed on my face. "She's my sister."

  "Half-sister."

  "Considering all she's been through this year, I think she deserves some consideration."

  "And I don't? I'm your girlfriend, and this is the last year I get to spend in my family home." To my horror, tears threatened.

  Jones came around the table and pulled me into his warm embrace. "I know how hard this has been for you. I've helped you clean it out for the past six months."

  He had. He'd been terrific as we'd pawed through all of my family's memorabilia, generations of Buckland and Rossetti family heirlooms, some over a century old. The process had been exhausting both physically and emotionally.

  Since Pops and Aunt Cecily had moved into a retirement community the previous spring, I'd basically been alone with my memories at the house. Jones had been my lifeline. He of all people knew how hard it was to let go of the house and how important it was to have one more holiday season in my childhood home.

  "Lizzy got you for Thanksgiving, but," I groused like a bitter divorcé in the middle of a custody battle. But I hadn't liked being apart from Jones, and I knew he wanted to be with me just as badly.

  "I just wish you'd understand how much I detest being in the middle," he murmured.

  "Why can't Lizzy just go to Kyle's house? She's going to marry into the family eventually, right?"

  He released me and circled the counter, his movements agitated. "There are…complications."

  I sat up straighter, my fatigue forgotten. "What sort of complications?"

  He cut his gaze to me. "She doesn't want you to know."

  "Now who's putting you in the middle?" I slid off the stool and cornered him. Though he was head-and-shoulders taller than me and could move me aside like I'd move a pot off the stove, he stayed where he was. "You're my concern, not Lizzy. I promise I won't repeat anything you tell me about her."

  One dark eyebrow arched. "Not even to Donna?"

  I crossed myself and laid a hand over my heart. "Not even to our Lord and Savior at Christmas Mass. Now spill."

  "Kyle and Lizzy are having problems."

  I blinked, sure I wasn't interpreting the information correctly. "Like relationship problems?"

  Jones nodded. "She refuses to set the date. I'm not sure why, and Kyle's frustrated. I walked in on them shouting about it last week."

  I was proud of myself for not breaking out into jazz hands. There was trouble in paradise between my wretched ex and his miserable intended, the woman who had made my life a living hell in this town. Sometimes late at night I wished I was a bigger person, that I could rise above the pa
st and just let it go and not begrudge them their fairy tale happiness.

  I so wasn't that evolved.

  But at least I didn't do any soft shoe in front of Lizzy's brother, who I happened to care about very much. And despite our rocky history, Lizzy wasn't quite as big a bee-yotch as she'd been in high school. It was the holidays for the love of Pete. Surely I could muster up an iota of compassion, no matter how much it hurt.

  I took his hand, laced my fingers through it, and looked into his eyes. Took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. "You know how much it means to me to have one more Christmas at Grove Street. I see how much it means to you to be with Lizzy. So I guess you're just going to have to bring her with you to Christmas dinner."

  All the air rushed out of my lungs as he pulled me into a sudden embrace. I didn't mind getting the wind knocked out of me. Having Malcolm Jones, the sexiest, most incredible man I'd ever met, holding onto me like I was a unique Christmas gift was totally worth the inconvenience.

  We finally broke apart and went about serving up the stew. I had a second glass of wine raised to my lips when Jones said, "Tell me about your aunt's recipe book."

  "It's full of family recipes, all the ones we use at the pasta shop and some that we only use with family. It's the one possession Cecily and Nana brought with them from the old country. Believe me—heads will roll if we don't find it soon."

  "And Mimi was upset because she had it last?"

  I swirled the wine in my glass. "Yes. Aunt Cecily wanted her to familiarize herself with the recipes so she could take on more of the cooking."