Sunday Share Day

 

 

 

In honor of the holidays I'm implementing Sunday Share Day, where I'll share some scenes or lines from whatever I'm working on at the time. Everyone is free to comment, give opinions and ENJOY the story!

 

The following excerpt is from a Christmas short story titled

The Naughty List

which will appear in a box set with several other holiday romance stories on December 20th.

 

 

She paused at the opening to the trail in front of the old couple’s cabin. The door was open, banging in the wind. Likely a badger or a raccoon had gotten inside to wait out the storm, and she hurried onto the wide porch and pushed the door open all the way. In the middle of the room lay a man on his stomach, wearing only the skin God gave him.

 “Oh, my goodness!” Merry hurried to him and knelt at his side. “Excuse me?” She poked him with her finger. “Are you all right?”

He was tall and his body was very muscular. Hair, as black as hers was white, lay against his neck, long and fine. She tried to ignore the dimples at his buttocks, but they were hard to miss. He was a fine male specimen. A small red bow sat squarely on the top of his head.

“Sir? Are you hurt?”

She touched his shoulder hesitantly. When he made no sound she rolled him over, half expecting him to be cold and blue, frozen to death in the below zero chill. But his cheeks were flushed with blood flow, a patch of skin on his forehead grazed and bleeding sluggishly. She touched the jut of his chin and the sensual curve of his lower lip. He was a gorgeous man, and she felt ashamed for ogling him. Still, she couldn’t help the quick perusal of his entire body. He was definitely well made.

“Sir?” She shook him. When he didn’t stir she sighed.

“Well,” she said, grabbing a thick comforter from the bed and tossing it over his lower half, “you’re going to have to stay here til Nicholas gets back I suppose.”

She touched his cheek, but he felt as warm to her as if he’d been inside as opposed to lying in the snow for goodness knew how long. She stood and went into the bathroom, searching for a first aid kit. She cleaned the wound on his forehead and looked him over for others, but he was in perfect shape otherwise. She gathered a few more blankets and covered him over, stoking the fire. She heard a sudden clap of thunder that made her jump, and she ran to the window.Thunder in the winter was a sign of a severe storm on the horizon. It was already snowing, falling so heavy and thick that she couldn’t see the road beyond the window. She looked over her shoulder at the injured man. She really should hurry home before the road became impassable, but she couldn’t very well leave him on his own. With this kind of storm it might be days before the old couple was able to return from the valley.

“Damn.” She flinched as the door blew open, and she grabbed it to push it closed. There’d be no going home now. The wind would push the snow about and make it impossible to see, and getting lost in the forest in this weather would mean death. She put her head against the door and sighed. This was not how she’d imagined celebrating her Christmas holiday. She hurried out to the battered barn and fed the doves before closing the barn up tight against the cold. Back inside the fought against the wind to close the door and bolt it tight.

There was a rustling behind her, and husky male voice whispered, “Merry Christmas?”

She was thrown back in time to when she was fourteen, and another voice, younger but the same, had whispered those words to her. Only one person had ever called her “Merry Christmas”.

“Jack?”

She turned to look at the man. She really looked at him. The cobalt blue eyes under thick black lashes. The tumble of unruly black hair and the dimple in the right cheek that always drove him crazy. He was older, taller and stronger and he was handsome now when he’d always been cute before.

“Is that you?”

“Merry?” He looked bewildered, and he blinked as if he didn’t believe his eyes. “Am I dead?”

Her heart was pounding harder than a human heart should have been able to do. “No, Jack, you’re alive. You’re on the mountain.  You’re home.”

“Home?”

She nodded and he stumbled to his feet, holding the comforter around his waist. She reached for him and he backed away from her. “No, this can’t be. I can’t be here. They told me I could never come back here.”

 



(This story was written with my amazing best friend R. Rivera)