Santa's Perfect Package: A Collection of Holiday Romances

by KB Winters

  I grimaced at the long-ago memories. I hated that I wasn’t there for them. They were getting older and I knew they wanted to see me happy and settled down. Sooner rather than later. My mother, especially. She didn’t like that I was always in the field, risking my life, over and over again, and never even talked about having an end game. I supposed they figured I’d do my four years of active duty and then return home to go to college, get married, and start a family. After all, that was the life of all my high school buddies. They were all married, with big time corporate jobs or a business of their own, and most of them had at least a couple of kids.

  John glanced over at me. “You okay? I told you to lay off that spicy dip last night.”

  I chuckled under my breath at his admonishment. “It’s not the dip.”

  “Well, then what’s wrong? You worried about the mission?” He arched a brow at the second question. He knew I wasn’t the type to get rattled. Especially not over such a cake mission.

  “Just thinking about home,” I said.

  John parked the golf cart at the beginning of the next hole. He looked about ready to ask a follow-up question but stopped short, his eyes darting over my shoulder. I craned around and heard what had caught his attention. A foreign tongue that registered but not clear enough to understand.

  “We caught up faster than I thought we would,” John said, suddenly nervous sounding.

  “Hell of a getaway car we got here.” I replied, pushing out the side of the cart.

  John followed suit and we clamored up the small ridge to get a view of the next hole. Sure enough, Jal Mante and his two men were there, still at the beginning, and from the sound of it, they were arguing with the resort employee who was serving as their caddy. We watched for a few minutes, surveying the scene and silently factoring in different strategies. There was a CIA helicopter waiting less than a mile away. There was a fence circling the entire golf course. A tall, security fence. We had a man ready at one of the gates through the fence. Ready with a car that would take us—and Jal Mante—right to the chopper.

  “Looks like at least one of them is armed,” John said, jutting his chin at the man on the far left.

  I nodded, seeing the bulge of a weapon at his hip, under his jacket. No one golfed in a jacket. Too constraining. The other two weren’t wearing jackets, but that didn’t mean anything. They could have weapons at their ankles like John and me. Or in their golf bags. “I’ll take him. You get our guy.”

  “And the third?”

  I didn’t answer. I let the flash of steel as I pulled my gun from my ankle holster do the talking on my behalf. “Showtime.”

  The caddy was getting the ball set and the three men were speaking rapidly amongst themselves as John and I called in our plan and then started down the slope.

  Everything happened in double time. John barked out orders, flashing his badge beside his gun. Which, of course, was promptly ignored. The caddy screamed and took off running in the opposite direction. Neither of us attempted to stop him. The guard in the jacket pulled his weapon and I shot him before he could get a shot off. He hit the ground before the other man could get his weapon free from the golf bags at the back of their cart. John trained his weapon at him, speaking calm, level-headed instructions in their native tongue.

  Jal Mante watched as his man started to back down, looked at John and me, and then started to run. I flew forward and tackled Jal Mante to the ground. With expert precision, I got him fastened into a pair of zip-tie cuffs. He cursed me under his breath and I was thankful I didn’t understand a word. From the hate in his eyes as he glared up at me, it wasn’t pretty.

  “Grenade!” John screamed.

  An explosion ripped through the air and my heart shot up into my throat like a rocket. I kept my grip on Jal Mante and turned to look at what happened. John was limping away from the blast site that was like a crater in the otherwise pristine grounds. The other man had apparently been packing a grenade and had chucked it at John.

  “Oh, come on! Who packs a fucking grenade to the golf course?” I growled, pushing Jal Mante’s face into the grass. “Stay down mother fucker!”

  John fired at the man, hitting him in the leg, and he went down. John raced over and locked him in cuffs before returning to the third man—the one in the jacket—and checking him for signs of life. He looked up and shook his head at me and I swore under my breath. “Fuck. That’s gonna be an assload of paperwork.”

  I returned to Jal Mante and resisted the urge to kick him. “You’re fucking lucky my partner is okay. Get up!” I reached down and yanked him up by the collar, not caring when it started to tear, as long as my grip remained strong on the man.

  I commandeered their golf cart, cuffed Jal Mante to the bar at the side, and tore a donut on the green as I whipped around for John and his man to get loaded up. When everyone was loaded, including the one who hadn’t made it, I tore off for the gate where the rest of our team would be waiting as John radioed ahead to get them ready for our prompt arrival.

  When John finished, he glanced back at the site and chuckled. “I can’t believe you just did a fuckin’ donut on the green. You trying to get me fired?”

  I laughed. “Wasn’t my intention. I was just looking for a safe place to flip a bitch and make sure your ass was okay.”

  “Yeah, well, as soon as your sorry ass gets back from vacation, I’m gonna make you do all the damned paperwork.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s get rid of these two assholes, so I can get my ass on a plane and peace the fuck out of this desert for a minute.”

  John laughed. “Deal.”

  Chapter Two

  Ruby

  In all of my twenty-seven years, I’d never felt more out of the Christmas spirit. Instead of running around town, window shopping for gifts, decorating a gorgeous tree with all the trimmings, or baking perfect little sugar cookie angels, I was scrambling to hold my life together after what felt like an off-the-Richter-scale earthquake had torn through it.

  Six months ago, I’d finally landed my dream job, or at least my place on the first set of steps toward my dream job, and moved across the country from Southern California all the way to New York City. I loved the buzz and electricity of the city, the frantic pace swept me away and made me feel like I was part of something big and exciting. Sure, the apartment I could afford was nothing to write home about, but it was big enough for me and my cat, Juniper. I was going to reach Carrie Bradshaw levels of fabulousness. I was sure of it.

  And then…piece by piece…it all went to shit.

  At first, I tried to rationalize away the dark, ever-present despair of loneliness. After all, this wasn’t summer camp. I was an adult. Homesick wasn’t something I should be feeling—or at least not dwelling on it. I pressed onward, ignoring my own emotions. I tried to make friends but most of the people in my office were men and wanted to be a little too friendly. After a while, I got into a routine, but it only managed to make me more isolated and alone. I woke up at four in the morning, squeezed in half an hour on the stair climber at the gym, showered, got dolled up, and raced to work in time for the opening bell. Twelve, thirteen, sometimes fourteen hours would pass, but somehow managing to fly and grind by all at once. After it was dark, I’d drag myself home, curse my way up to my sixth floor and throw myself into bed with whatever take-out box I’d snagged on my dredge home.

  Grueling was the only word for it. Most of the time, I was a zombie all through the weekend as well. All my visions of spending my weekends taking in exciting Broadway shows, spending hours looking chic in Central Park, or finding my own quirky cast of characters to sip coffee with at a local shop like an episode of Friends were all popped like an overinflated balloon within the first month in the city.

  I was miserable. And even worse than that—I couldn’t let anyone know. Which only perpetuated the cycle of misery. Whenever my parents called, I slapped on a smile, infused some cheer into my voice, and gushed about my job and my make-believe friends and th
e things I’d seen or done since arriving. To anyone back home, I was living the dream, and I was going to keep that rouse going as long as possible.

  Fake it till ya make it, baby!

  And then Doom’s Day hit.

  A week ago, I was called into my boss’s office. I stupidly thought it was to receive some kind of holiday bonus. But instead, a bomb was dropped right onto my head. I was being let go. My department was being disbanded and I was no longer needed.

  Two weeks before Christmas!

  Who did that? Who let people go right before the jolliest—not to even mention expensive—time of the year?

  The monsters that lived on Wall Street, that was who.

  So, instead of filling out embossed foil Christmas cards for all of my friends and family—I spent my evenings at my coffee table filling out online job applications. In place of decorating festive cookies, I was digging through my shoebox-sized Manhattan apartment, looking for things to hock at the local pawn shop, trying to scrape together enough cash to combine with my paltry severance pay, in order to buy myself a little more time.

  Otherwise, I was going to end up with an eviction notice as an early Christmas gift.

  The only bright spot on the horizon was knowing that in a week’s time, I’d be back in my home state, sunny California, surrounded by my family and the people who are always there for me. I was most excited to see my brother Rick, his wife Vanessa, and their new little bundle of joy, Kayla, who was just about to pass her four-month milestone. I hadn’t even met her yet, my own niece! Wall Street didn’t stop for things like births or deaths or weddings or birthdays. A lesson I’d learned the hard way when I’d put in for a day off and was denied and then laughed out of the HR office when I meekly explained that it was my birthday and I wanted to spend it with some girlfriends at the spa.

  It was disheartening to find that after years spent getting my master’s degree in economics, dreaming of the buzz and excitement of life in the Big Apple, it was a lot less like Sex and the City and a lot more like The Shawshank Redemption.

  Sigh.

  “Soon you’ll be home,” I reminded myself under my breath as I rummaged through my closet. Juniper, my calico, meowed in agreement from her perch on the end of my bed. “What do you think, Juni? No place like home?”

  Great. I was beginning to sound like Dorothy, lost in Oz. Now, if only I had some ruby slippers.

  I bet the pawn shop on Thirty-Second would snap those puppies up in a hurry.

  Juniper lowered her head to the bed, her large green eyes following me as I picked my way through the small pile of clothing I’d gathered at the end of the bed. Which one did I want to wear? I had fifteen minutes to get ready before I needed to be out the door. At six o’clock I was meeting Lonnie Andrews, the only friend I’d made since arriving in the city, for happy hour at a trendy little, hole in the wall bar we used to escape to after work. We’d worked together up until last week and she’d insisted on meeting up before I flew home, to have one last drink.

  I just hoped I could find some half-drunk patron to buy mine for me. With that in mind, I reached for the short, tight, eggplant purple cocktail dress. “Guess that means you’re the winner,” I said to the dress. It was the kind of dress that always got me a lot of extra eyeballs and more than a few offers to buy my drinks. “Great, Ruby.” I scowled at my reflection in the long mirror beside the closet. “Whoring yourself out for Lemon Drops and Long Islands now, huh?”

  I sighed and undressed. Whatever.

  I needed to get good and silly tonight and at fourteen bucks a pop, I wasn’t gonna get there on the strength of my own bank account. It wasn’t like I was going to let any of the suckers who bought me drinks actually touch me. That was the last thing I wanted.

  Another way that life in the city had let me down. There were no available men anywhere! At least, not the kind that I was interested in. The ones I’d had the misfortune of meeting were all self-absorbed, egotistical, douchebags who thought that the label on their suit gave them the right to be complete asshats and still have women falling at their feet.

  Or, more accurately, into their beds.

  Nope. Not this girl.

  Sorry, boys. I was waiting for a real man. Not some little frat boy playing dress up.

  * * * *

  As expected, the dress worked like a charm, and while I had to beat off a few lewd comments, my drinks were free and my bank account remained in the black despite the four Lemon Drops I’d plowed down. I was going to hate myself in the morning from the sugar and alcohol-hangover, but for the minute—I was flying high. Lonnie was just as tipsy by the time we lurched from the bar, back into the freezing cold air.

  I gasped as the wind whipped at my bare legs, my teeth instantly starting to chatter. “Damn, it gets dark so fast this time of year! It feels like it’s freakin’ midnight out here,” I complained, starting down the street. “It’s barely nine o’clock.”

  Lonnie laughed. “You’ll get used to it. Besides, it’s more fun to see all the Christmas lights when it gets dark earlier.”

  I nodded, not quite sure I agreed with the sentiment. I wasn’t used to New York City yet and night time still unnerved me. I really needed to stop watching so many episodes of Law & Order: SVU.

  “You want a taxi?” Lonnie asked, glancing both ways up the street. It was a quieter part of the city—if there was such a thing—but a few yellow cabs sped down the street in both directions.

  I paused at the edge of the sidewalk. I’d saved a bundle on the absurdly overpriced Lemon Drops, but I was still running low and had no idea when I’d be back to work. I knew I should save myself the cab fare and walk…but the chill in the air made each passing cab look incredibly inviting. After a long moment, I shook my head, deciding to hoof it back to my apartment. It was only nine blocks away.

  Only. Ha!

  I plastered on a smile over my original grimace and waved off Lonnie’s offer to flag one down for me. “Nah. I’ll walk. Maybe the lights will make me feel less Grinch-y.”

  Lonnie laughed as she tossed her curtain of black hair over her slim shoulders and gave me a quick hug. “All right, doll. I’ll see you when you get home from your trip! Say hi to the fam for me.”

  I nodded, promising that I would, even though she’d never met any of them. “Have a good Christmas, too!”

  Lonnie smiled and waved as she wandered down the other street, her path slightly zig-zagging as she went tottering away in her five-inch stiletto heels. My own shoes weren’t quite as high and I managed to start my walk home without rolling an ankle.

  As I walked, I took Lonnie’s advice and smiled at the scattered twinkle lights people and businesses had strung up along the exteriors of the homes and shops I passed. Soon I’d be in California, warm, sunny and surrounded by my family. I’d figure out my next move and not feel so lonely. It was all going to be okay.

  My apartment building loomed up ahead and relief rushed through me. I was going to grab Juniper and bury us both under a stack of blankets for the rest of the night since I’d finish packing in the morning.

  Relief quickly turned to cold dread as an arm wrapped around my waist and yanked me from my path. A gloved hand slipped over my mouth, the thick fabric muffling my gasp.

  A hot breath skimmed my frozen cheek. “Scream and you’re fucking dead.”

  Chapter Three

  Ruby

  “Lay down your purse and jewelry and you can walk away,” the man growled into my ear.

  My heart plummeted at the gravelly voice. Inside my head, screams for help echoed, but I couldn’t make myself push them past my lips. As far as I could tell, he didn’t have a weapon on him. From the way I was pressed against him, and the strength of his grip around my waist, he was taller and a lot stronger than me. He wouldn’t need a weapon to hurt me. Badly. The alley he’d yanked me into was pitch black. No security lights or any other sounds. No one walking by on the street, just yards away, would be able to see me in distress.
<
br />   I was alone with this bastard.

  He still had a hand pressed over my nose and mouth. My eyes watered as my lungs screamed to suck in a full breath. It was like being underwater too long and suddenly panicking as your body realized it was nearly out of oxygen. “Got it?”

  I nodded frantically, tears welling at the corners of my eyes.

  “Good,” he said, a sickening smile audible in his tone. My stomach churned and my knees threatened to give way. “Now, put them down on the ground and don’t turn around. Then you can go. No crazy ideas, or—”

  Something hard pressed into my side. A gun!

  My heart hammered even more violently. I nodded again, even harder. I understand. Please, just let me go! Please…

  The man released me and I nearly hit the ground. I forced my muscles to work—in slow motion—and bent to set my purse down on the ground. With trembling fingers, I reached up to remove the earrings I’d selected for the night. As I removed them, I silently said a prayer of thanks that I hadn’t worn my only pair of real diamonds—the only authentic piece of jewelry I’d kept back from the pawn shop. They were my grandmothers. I wouldn’t part with them under any circumstances.

  I set the silver hoops on top of the purse and then fished the necklace from around my neck, cursing under my breath as it got snagged in my hair. My hair was cut into a long, angular bob and was shorter than I normally kept it, but still managed to get tangled and in the way all too often.

  When the jewelry was sitting on my purse, I slowly rose from my bent position and squeezed my eyes tightly, hoping the mugger didn’t have any other plans in mind. A long duster concealed my short dress but it was fitted enough that my figure was on display for the monster lurking in the shadows. I just hoped he wasn’t interested. “That’s everything I have,” I said softly, my voice wavering. “Please, just let me go. I—I didn’t see your face. I—I won’t call the co—cops.”