No Ordinary Christmas

by Talia Hunter

  No Ordinary Christmas

  Lennox Brothers Romantic Comedy

  Talia Hunter

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Sneak Peek of No Laughing Matter

  Also by Talia Hunter

  Chapter One

  Willow

  The worst part about putting on an enormous pair of snow goggles was getting the strap caught on the points of my plastic elf ears.

  Sure the elf costume was cheesy, and it was a pain in my patootie, but the gimmick had been working for me. The customers who hired me to set up their Christmas events loved it when I showed up looking the part. Most of my online reviews mentioned my costume.

  But I usually worked in Vegas. Now I was in San Dante. And though my home town was only a five-hour drive from Vegas, it couldn’t be more different. For starters, though I’d seen a few houses and stores decorated for Christmas, you couldn’t compare the decorations here to the ones I was paid to put up in Vegas. That would be like comparing bingo night at San Dante’s community center to high rollers’ night at the Bellagio, and at only one of those events were all the players still awake at the end.

  This time of year in Vegas, I’d usually be run off my feet. But because my sister Holly was marrying a guy called Rudolph—and yeah, I’m not making that up—my sister just had to have a Christmas wedding. So, seeing as my business was fully mobile, and Holly had asked me to stay in San Dante for several days to have my bridesmaid dress fitted and attend a wedding rehearsal, I’d decided to bring everything with me and advertise my services in my home town.

  Unfortunately, so far I’d only been able to get one job, and it was a weird one.

  Tugging my elf hat firmly down, and with my snow goggles already fogging over, I nodded to the woman standing beside me on the sidewalk.

  “You’re sure about this, Mrs. Watson?” I asked for the third time. “I usually sprinkle snow over dance floors, or in front of wedding chapels. I don’t spray it at houses.”

  Mrs. Watson was a small woman, made slightly taller because her long gray hair was piled on top of her head and fastened with colorful barrettes. She’d been my English teacher back in high school, and was what folks in the town of San Dante called eccentric, though people in other parts might not be so polite.

  But seeing as I was all of five-foot-five, and a small bell was jangling on the end of my pointy elf hat, I couldn’t exactly accuse her of being either short or eccentric. Even if she was wearing bright pink overalls with sparkly sneakers.

  “Quite sure, Willow,” Mrs. Watson said. “And didn’t I tell you to call me Trixie?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said doubtfully. I might be twenty-nine, with school far behind me, but I hadn’t seen my old teacher since the day I left town and she’d always be Mrs. Watson to me.

  “I want snow all over the house, piled up on the porch, everywhere.” She pointed to the small, neat house in front of us. It had wooden steps leading up to its wrap-around porch, and had been built close enough to the street that I’d been able to park my snow machine right in front of it, in perfect firing range.

  “Snow will cover the steps,” I pointed out. “They’ll get slippery. And the snow will melt so fast, it won’t look good for long.” It was chilly and the sky was overcast, but it was nowhere near freezing.

  Mrs. Watson nodded enthusiastically. “That’s exactly what I want. Snow the house in.” She made shoving motions with both hands as though manually piling it on. “Give me a mid-winter blizzard at the North Pole. Bury it twenty-foot deep!”

  It was an odd request, but Mrs. Watson’s weirdometer had always been stuck in the red. At school she used to dress up as characters from whichever book she was teaching. When my class read A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she’d turned up wearing a donkey head made from moth-eaten fur stretched over a bent wire frame.

  Twelve years later, I still had nightmares.

  “You’re really having a party?” I asked.

  “My guests will be here any minute. Cover the house with snow now, so they get the full effect.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said with a shrug. Weird or not, the customer was always right, and Mrs. Watson had paid in advance.

  Pulling on a thick pair of gloves, I clambered onto the snow machine attached behind my SUV, hiking up my green elf-skirt to straddle the machine. Bracing my boots on either side, I took a moment to hitch up my red-striped leggings, then picked up the large hose.

  For winter-wonderland weddings and parties, I set the snow machine to sprinkle a gentle, picturesque snowfall over a dance floor or stage. For Mrs. Watson, I’d use the snow cannon attachment to blast out three cubic feet of snow per second.

  Turning the output dial all the way to eleven, I pressed the ignition to make the machine roar into life, and braced myself. Then I hit the trigger with my foot.

  The hose shuddered as snow came shooting out, and I hung on for dear life, using all my strength to aim the white torrent at the house in front of me.

  My snow goggles instantly fogged right over, so it was difficult to see the house. But squinting through the white haze, I could just make out the snow blasting the front windows and doors, and starting to pile in drifts on the porch.

  Over the loud roar of the engine and the thump-thump-thump of snow hitting the house, I dimly heard Mrs. Watson cackling with delighted laughter.

  And was that the sound of angry male shouts?

  Bending my head, I tried to wipe the fog off my goggles with my upper arm, while keeping a tight grip on the vibrating canon. When I lifted my face, a small clear patch on the lens gave me a better look at the house.

  The front door was… open?

  My heart flipped over as I hit the kill switch.

  The deafening rumble from the machine cut out, and suddenly the angry male shouts were loud. So was Mrs. Watson’s laughter. She was bent over, hands on knees, cackling so hard I was amazed she wasn’t peeing in her pants.

  “You said nobody was in the house!” I dropped the snow canon attachment and jumped off the machine. She was too busy laughing to answer, but the shouting coming from inside the front door told me she must have lied.

  This was bad.

  With the door wide open, the snow had blasted into the house. My insurance wouldn’t cover that kind of damage.

  I ran up the steps, racing toward the door with vague ideas of shovelling out the snow and trying to mop up water residue before it ruined the floor. But as I sprang off the top step, my boot slipped in the slush. My momentum carried me forward, turning me into a human cannonball. Limbs flailing, I flew through the door.

  I hit a man, who let out a loud ‘Whompf,” and went down with me on top of him. Snow was all around us, great mounds of it already melting on the hallway floor. We landed in a pile of it, but the landing still hurt.

  “Ouch,” I said, pulling my head out of the man’s surprisingly nice-smelling armpit.

  Then I stared up in horror, forgetting about the man I was lying on, because two other men were standing over me, gaping down.

  One man was around my age, tall and muscle-bound. In spite of the long scar on his neck and another scar on his forearm, he was just as gorgeous as I remembered, though his shoulders had grown at least twice as wide since I last saw him. His name was Mason Lennox, and I knew him from my school days.

  The other man was Mason�
�s father, Edward Lennox. I instantly recognized his impressive eyebrows. It should have been impossible for them to get even bushier in the years since I’d last seen him, but they were wilder than Einstein’s hair.

  Edward’s face was red and he was spluttering as though trying to form words, but he seemed too shocked and enraged to get them out.

  I had a horrible sinking realization.

  This wasn’t Trixie Watson’s house.

  It was Edward Lennox’s house.

  It should have been against the laws of the universe for my old English teacher to lie to me. But judging from the hysterical laughter I could still hear from outside, she wasn’t even remorseful.

  The woman who—I belatedly remembered—had given me a barely-passing grade after an entire year’s hard work in her class, had tricked me. For some reason, she’d paid me to snow-bomb Edward’s house. And now here I was, an innocent elf in some serious trouble.

  In the shock of seeing Mason Lennox and his father, I’d almost forgotten about the man I was lying on. Until he shifted under me, groaning and lifting his head.

  “What the hell?” he demanded, his voice a deep, sexy rumble.

  I found myself gazing into eyes that were almost, but not quite, the same color—one eye blue-green, and the other green-blue. They were ringed with dark, long lashes. But the man’s hard jaw and muscled shoulders negated the lashes, as though his maker had gone overboard with masculine features to make up for his pretty eyes.

  My stomach somersaulted and thudded on the floor. I knew this man all too well.

  I used to gaze adoringly at him in high school. Whenever I spoke to him back then, I’d usually get tongue-tied and trip over my own feet.

  Last time I saw Luke Penn, I was eighteen. Back then, his jaw had been stubble-free, his chest wasn’t as large and solid, and he didn’t smell like new leather. But what hadn’t changed was how his beautiful, mis-matched eyes made my limbs feel weak.

  Oh. My. Gawd.

  It was Luke Penn.

  Gorgeous Luke. High school crush, and witness to my excruciating humiliation. I’d experienced the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to a high school senior—an event I thought of as The Incident—and Luke had been there to see it.

  I was supposed to be his prom date the next week, and instead I’d skipped town.

  As the memory hit, I vaulted off Luke with all the grace and agility of an electrocuted rabbit.

  “Sorry,” I babbled. “My mistake. Got to go.”

  Mason grabbed my arm, halting my mad dash for the door. His hand was enormous, and I barely came up to his chest. It was like being stopped by a giant.

  “What the hell?” He repeated Luke’s very eloquent question. “You did this?”

  “It was Trixie Watson!” Edward roared at the top of his lungs. He stomped through the slush in his hallway, out onto his porch. A moment later, I heard him yelling at the woman still laughing outside.

  “You’ve gone too far, you evil shrew! Watch your back, devil creature. I’ll repay you ten times over!”

  Mrs. Watson yelled something rude back, but I couldn’t concentrate on what it was, because Luke was pulling himself to his feet. He wasn’t as tall as Mason and his muscles weren’t as bulky, but that wasn’t saying much. Ninety-nine percent of the human population weren’t as big as Mason.

  And with us all on our feet, I realized I was in a narrow hallway, ankle-deep in slush, with a magnificent male deity on either side of me. One was a God of Mountains and Muscles, the other a God of Sex Fantasies. I couldn’t look at Luke without wanting to picture him naked.

  “Who are you?” Luke rumbled. “Show me your face.”

  He reached for my elf hat and googles, but I jerked away, not wanting him to realize it was me. Part of the reason I’d moved away from San Dante was so I’d never have to see him, or any of my other classmates, again.

  “Don’t touch me,” I blurted. “Remove one article of my clothing and I’ll have you arrested!”

  Mason and Luke exchanged a look over my head, but Luke dropped his hand, letting me keep my disguise.

  Mason said in a reasonable tone, “We just want to know what’s going on.”

  Before I could answer, Mason’s father stomped back inside and pointed at me. “Arrest that woman!” His face was the color of an over-ripe tomato and his hairy eyebrows quivered with outrage. “Arrest both of them! She and Trixie did this together.” He kicked at a mound of fast-melting snow, spattering slush up the leg of his pants. “I demand you charge them with vandalism, house destruction, assault, battery, and… and… attempted murder!”

  If my heart could sink more it would have, but it was already hanging out with my stomach at floor level.

  “I’m innocent,” I protested. “Mrs. Watson set me up. She told me this was her house.”

  As soon as the words Mrs. Watson left my mouth, I realized I’d made a mistake. Luke shot me a narrow-eyed look of evaluation, as though he guessed I wasn’t used to using her first name because she’d been my high school English teacher.

  “Let me go!” I tried to make a break for the door, but was thwarted by a barrier of unyielding muscle.

  Edward glowered at Mason and Luke. “What are you waiting for? Throw the book at her! If you don’t arrest her right now, I’ll take her down to the station myself.”

  The two male deities on either side of me exchanged another look. “I’ll take her,” rumbled Luke. “You deal with Trixie and your father.”

  “Wait,” I squeaked. “You can’t take me anywhere. I told you, I didn’t do anything. I’m a victim too.”

  Luke picked up a blue shirt that had been tossed over a chair, and shook off some remnants of snow. He shrugged it on over his white T-shirt and turned to face me, still buttoning it up.

  The silver badge on his chest glinted.

  “I’m a police officer.” Luke’s deep, authoritative voice sent inappropriate shivers down my spine. “And you have the right to remain silent.”

  Chapter Two

  Luke

  I’d seen weird shit before.

  Of course I had, I’d been a beat cop for six years. There was nothing weirder than the things that went on in the early hours of a Sunday morning, when I answered calls that took me into the drunkest, most drugged-up parts of the county.

  At least, I’d thought there was.

  But this was the first time I’d escorted an elf wearing goggles, plastic ears, and a jangling hat down the street to where I’d parked my patrol car.

  The elf protested a lot while I loaded her into the back of the car. Which was fine by me, because I was trying to work out why her voice sounded familiar. I had a nagging feeling I should know her, even with most of her face behind goggles and her elf hat pulled low.

  It was pure luck I’d been at Mason’s father’s house when the unexpected snowstorm had hit. Mason was an old school friend who worked with the DEA. The agency had requested a local surveillance team to work with him to take down a drug dealer. I’d recently passed my detective exams and applied for a promotion, so I was hoping for a place on the team. When I’d stopped by to talk to Mason about it, he’d asked for my help shifting a bookcase. I’d taken off my uniform shirt so it wouldn’t get dirty, and we’d just eased the case into place when the thumping started. Snow hitting the door and windows wasn’t exactly a common sound on the Californian coast.

  “Please let me go,” said the elf from the back seat. “Trixie told me it was her house.”

  She’d started using Trixie’s first name, but I could still hear some hesitation, as though she had to keep reminding herself not to say Mrs. Watson. Driving slowly, I studied the elf in my rear vision mirror. The long curly hair flowing from under her elf hat was light brown. She was small, but under the thick fabric of her elf dress her figure seemed very nice, and…

  Wait.

  Could the elf be Willow Buchanan, the girl who’d stood me up?

  I hadn’t seen Willow for years, and I definite
ly hadn’t expected to be bowled over by her—literally—in Edward’s hallway, after being stunned by a blast of high-pressure snow.

  But the elf was Willow-sized, the top of her head barely reaching the base of my neck, and the elf’s long curls were similar to the ones that had tumbled down Willow’s back in high school. The elf was also here four days before Holly and Rudy’s wedding.

  It had to be Willow. She’d arrived back in town riding a snow machine and wearing plastic ears. And of all the weird shit I’d seen, this incident was rapidly heading to the top of the list.

  “I’ll let you go if you take off the goggles and show me your face,” I said.

  Truth was, I’d only put the elf in the car to get her away from Edward Lennox, and taking her to the station would result in a stack of paperwork. Besides, taking in the mayor’s daughter might be a career-ending mistake.

  But really, those were just excuses to go easy on her.

  Last time I’d seen Willow, she was about to be my prom date. How could I transition to advising her that if she couldn’t afford a lawyer, one would be appointed?

  “I was only doing my job,” the elf insisted. “That’s not a crime.”

  “You know that Ed Lennox is Trixie’s next door neighbor, and they’ve been waging a very public war for at least a decade?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Oh,” she said faintly. “That’s right.” Then her voice firmed. “But how could I know that when I’m not from around here?”

  “You can drop the act, Willow Buchanan. I know it’s you.”

  The elf gave an audible swallow. Behind her snow goggles, her eyes were magnified. They darted from side to side, as though searching for a way to escape.

  Though we were nowhere near the police station, I pulled the car over. Turning to look at her through the screen that separated the front seat from the back, I said, “Willow, take off the goggles.”