Under the Mistletoe Read online

  UNDER THE MISTLETOE

  By Everly James

  Copyright 2017 Everly James

  Table of Contents

  STAY IN TOUCH

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  STAY IN TOUCH

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE BY EVERLY JAMES

  STAY IN TOUCH

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  CHAPTER ONE

  It was a dark and stormy night. Samantha Evans typed the words and sat back in her seat, feeling a growing sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. The clock on the wall ticked ominously, as if mocking her lack of productivity. Outside, the sun was blaring and heat came rushing through the slightly open window.

  Samantha sighed and closed it. She’d been hoping for a breath of at least autumnal if not wintry air, but she was out of luck. South Texas was as oppressive as ever, even though the calendar had passed Thanksgiving. She reached for her tea mug and found it unfortunately empty. She sipped the dregs, the last drop of water rolling down the ceramic surface and finding its way to her parched tongue. Samantha rolled her chair back and heard a yowl of her cat, Harvey.

  “Sorry, buddy!” Samantha cried out. She’d rolled over one of his paws with the chair. Harvey had a surly look on his face. He was clearly not amused by either the offense or the apology. He sniffed the air as if tending to his wounded pride. Samantha lifted him up under the armpits and he acquiesced to the cuddling almost at once, purring up a storm. “I’d love to be a cat for just one day. Not have to worry about a deadline. Just get cuddled and petted and hand fed by fair maidens…”

  The sound of a motorcycle backfiring sent Harvey shooting off for the far side of the little writing cottage.

  “Dan,” Samantha muttered. “If he would just get that damn engine fixed…” Samantha grabbed her tea mug and opened up the Dutch style door for Harvey, who had been pawing at it anxiously. Dan was a little overzealous in his affections for Harvey and as such, the cat tended to avoid him whenever possible.

  Samantha’s boot-covered feet crunched dried leaves that had fallen from the trees—not from cold weather, but from drought. She wended her way between the gnarled Texas oaks in her backyard towards her stone house, which was an ancient Texas ranch. The inside had last been renovated sometime in the decade Carter was president. But she didn’t mind. She lived for kitschiness, and her house had that in spades.

  Harvey darted ahead of Samantha, through the cat door and over to the guest bedroom where he had a little cabinet he liked to hole up in.

  Dan was pounding on the front door as Samantha answered it with a smirk, her empty tea mug still in hand. “Forgot your keys yet again, I see.”

  Dan grinned, pushing back his rakish brown hair that fell in curls around his forehead. He had dimples and a sexy grin that drove the other gay men in his orbit wild. Samantha had fallen for it a time or two; they’d made out drunkenly once back in college before either of them were out of the closet. But it had all been in good fun.

  “Lost the keys, actually,” Dan corrected her. He had two Starbucks drinks in his hands. He pushed one towards Samantha. “Venti hot chai latte for the lady.”

  Samantha took it greedily. “How did you know? More importantly, how on earth did you ride over here with these on a motorcycle?”

  Dan grinned and stepped inside the house. “Secrets of the trade. I’d never give those up.” Dan looked around the house. “Where’s my boy?”

  “Harvey is hiding, as per usual,” Samantha said, shutting the front door to the eighty-degree day. She shrugged off her thigh-length wool sweater she’d put on rather optimistically. At least it had been fifty degrees when she’d woken up that morning. “You want some breakfast?”

  “Lunch,” Dan corrected her, taking off his messenger bag and leather jacket and hanging it on the hook. He sighed. “You lost track of time again. And I see the house is even more of a disaster than usual.” He raised his eyebrows and peered into her soul. “That must mean you’ve been writing!”

  Samantha adjusted her long, thin braids with one hand. “Something like that.”

  “That’s excellent news!” Dan exclaimed. “You must be so relieved! What’s it been? Months?”

  “It’s nothing,” Samantha said evasively, the truth gnawing at her insides. “Don’t you have cleaning to do?” She stifled a yawn. “I’m going to go lay down. Don’t bother Harvey. He’s in a mood today.”

  Samantha left Dan to pick up the disaster of the house and went into her bedroom. It was the only room that had stayed clean after Dan’s last visit to the house two weeks prior, but that was only because she’d been sleeping in the living room. Samantha heard Dan’s words echoing through her head. You’ve been writing!

  If only that were the case.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Two mocha frappuccinos, an everything bagel, and half a dozen cake pops,” Gia Torres repeated automatically back to the customer.

  “And a PSL,” the girl said, smacking her gum while she rapidly texted on her gold iPhone 7+ that cost more than two months’ of rent in Gia’s apartment in downtown Minneapolis.

  “And a PSL,” Gia muttered, trying not to let slip an ‘of course.’ Every single basic white girl in the world came through those doors between September and Christmas asking for a pumpkin spice latte. Gia had made so many of them she sometimes had dreams where all she did was pour foam into the top of paper cups in an assembly line fashion.

  Gia was lost in thought when she smacked into her manager, Dawson.

  “Oops!” Dawson said with a grin. “Daydreaming?”

  Gia gave him a strained smile. “You know me.” She bustled around him, getting the order prepared as rapidly as possible. She could tell from experience when Dawson wanted to ask her for something. She could feel it coming.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could take this weekend’s shift for me,” Dawson said all in one gust of words.

  Gia almost automatically said yes out of sheer habit. “Actually, I’m going out of town this weekend through next week.” She pumped three spurts of sugar into the latte and gave it a quick swirl.

  Dawson smacked a hand onto his forehead. “I forgot. Family thing?”

  “Yeah,” Gia lied easily. It wasn’t, in fact, a family thing. But there was no way she was getting into the details of it with her coworkers. “My cousin needs help cleaning out her house to move.”

  “Ah, headed home to upstate New York?”

  “Washington state, you mean?” Gia asked, trying not to roll her eyes. Dawson was inherently self-absorbed. It was a trait she’d tried to find endearing. Those efforts had never paid off, however, and she was left with more than mild irritation towards him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. He stepped across her path, her arms laden with the white girl’s order. She was looking impatiently around the shop as if waiting for a latte was the worst thing to ever happen to her. “You want to go to dinner sometime?”

  “Dawson. We’ve been through this. I’m gay.”

  He laughed. “I know. I was just—”

  Thinking you could turn me straight? Gia thought angrily. But she bit her lip. She needed this job desperately. It was the only thing standing between her and living in a cardboard box. “I need to get this to the customer.”

  Dawson stepped aside, still grinning.

  Twenty minutes later, Gia was huddled in her beat up old Camry with the windows cracked slightly to let out the condensation from her breath. Bitter cold seeped through the glass. She was bundled up to her eyeballs in a mish mash of hand knitted wool garments that she’d cobbled together over the years. In the cup holder was a giant cup of pitch black coffee, the bitter scent swirling through the air.

  But Gia didn’t notice.

  In her lap was a battered, cheap, black and white composition notebook that was filled with pages ruffled by the pressure of a ballpoint pen. She wrote furiously, word after word spilling out of her. She always wrote on her breaks, while watching television, while taking a bath, while waiting for her ramen noodle water to boil on the stove. It was like she couldn’t help the words spilling out of her, running through her arm and out through her fingertips.

  When she had first started, it took a lot of energy for her to write. But now, it was li
ke the characters were telling her where to go and what to say. They were the stars of her little ink and paper show.

  Gia’s phone rang and she yelped in surprise, so intense was her concentration. “Hello?”

  “Gia!” screeched the voice of her roommate, Paula. “I got locked out again!”

  Gia put down her ballpoint pen and scratched her cold nose. “Seriously?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m not out of work until five,” Gia said.

  “It’s freezing out here!”

  Gia could hear the wind howling through the phone’s microphone. “Call Simon. You gave him a spare key, remember?”

  “I did. He’s not answering. But you did, which must mean you’re on your break.”

  Gia glanced down at her notebook, her last words lingering mid-sentence. Her fingers itched to complete it; complete the scene, complete the chapter. “Fine. But you owe me.”

  “I’ll cook you dinner.”

  “You always cook me dinner.”

  “Something other than pasta. Handmade pasta! I can make that.”

  “You should be able to make me a lot of things. You are in culinary school after all.”

  Paula laughed darkly. “Very funny. You know I’m too tired after school to come home and cook a masterpiece for you most of the time.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gia said jokingly. “Okay, I gotta go if I’m going to drive to you.”

  Five minutes later, Gia was sprinting through the freezing weather and up to the door of the tiny apartment she shared with Paula, who was jogging in place in an attempt to keep warm.

  “I owe you,” Paula said as snow started to swirl around them both.

  “You really do,” Gia said, peeling back her mittens and exposing her fingers to the icy cold. She wrapped her fingers around the cold metal key and twisted it in the lock. “There. I expect dinner.”

  “Fit for a queen,” Paula said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, roomie.”

  Gia walked back to her car. Her phone rang as she unlocked the door, and she struggled to juggle all of the things in her hands.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re late from your break.” It was Dawson. She knew she’d be paying for spurning his dinner request.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. My roommate got locked—”

  “Just get back here.”

  Gia groaned and hung up the phone, picking up the composition notebook she’d left on the driver’s seat. A gust of wind mixed with snow blew upon her, and she nearly dropped her notebook wide open into a frozen puddle.

  “Shit,” she muttered, her heart racing and pounding, thinking of all those potentially lost words. “That was too close.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Samantha rolled over in bed, blinking. The light outside had changed into that of late afternoon. The dappled light coming through the oak trees and streaming into her bedroom was weak.

  She checked the clock; she’d slept all day.

  She yawned and stretched, cursing the fact that she had only further managed to mess up her sleeping schedule. She padded across the Saltillo tile floor and into the bathroom to splash water on her face. She paused, listening for sounds of Dan cleaning the house but heard nothing. Maybe he’d left.

  Walking out into the hallway, she called for Harvey, who slowly crept out of the guest bedroom, stretching as he did so.

  “Is Dan gone?” Samantha asked.

  Harvey looked back at her with his inscrutable feline expression.

  A few minutes later, she was ensconced in the kitchen with a hastily thrown together turkey sandwich and a fresh cup of tea. She was biting into it when the back door flew open. She dropped the sandwich with a start.

  Dan was there, sweat on his brow, his headphones blaring music. He was holding her iPad Pro in his hands.

  “You scared the shit out of me!” Samantha said, wiping her mouth with a soft, checkered cloth napkin.

  “What the hell is this, Sam?” he asked, pointing at the iPad and ripping the headphones off dramatically.

  “That’s my iPad,” Samantha responded calmly. “What are you doing with it?”

  Dan walked over and placed it on the table. She could tell he was trying with all his might to restrain himself from slamming it down. “Your book. This is the book you’ve been working on?”

  Samantha sighed and rubbed her eyes. “No, that’s… that’s a different book.”

  “Mmhmm,” Dan said skeptically, crossing his arms. “A different book. You mean a different book than the one that’s due on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Right,” Samantha said.

  “Because of course, five weeks before a deadline, you’re not sitting here with an open Word document that reads: ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’”

  Samantha bit her lip. “What are you doing messing around with my iPad anyway?”

  “It was open on your desk when I was dusting, that’s all,” Dan said defensively. “You know me better than to think I snoop around in your shit, Sam. How long have I been cleaning your house?”

  “Five years,” Samantha grumbled, cursing herself for being so careless as to leave her iPad open and unlocked.

  “And how many times have I stolen, snooped, or otherwise messed with your stuff?”

  “Zero. Until now, anyway.”

  Dan’s expression softened slightly as he pulled out a kitchen chair. He sat down. “You have writer’s bl—”

  “Don’t! Don’t say it! I don’t believe in that,” Samantha said. She stood up quickly in an attempt to avoid his eye line, bustling about to make another cup of tea.

  “Sam. You have one sentence. A shitty sentence.” He counted on his fingers. “Seven words out of how many?”

  “Fifty thousand,” Samantha acquiesced.

  “Seven! Words! Out! Of! Fifty! Thousand!” Dan said, punctuating each word with a slap of his hand on the table. “Five weeks to go!”

  “Four weeks,” Samantha mumbled.

  “What?”

  “It’s four weeks. I only have four weeks, because I also have to edit it. That’s all I have.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking about her timeline or her pitiful lack of progress.

  Dan looked at her with something like pity. “Sam. What’s going on?”

  She walked back with a fresh cup of piping hot tea and sat at the table, massaging her temples. “It’s just not coming out, Dan. No matter what I do. The words aren’t coming. I’ve never had this happen before.”

  Dan patted her hand consolingly. Music still blared out of the headphones that were wrapped around his neck. “Of course it hasn’t happened before. You’re Samantha Evans—no, you’re Ava Hillary, the most prolific queer romance author out there. You publish ten books a year. Who else does that?”

  “Stop flattering me. I’m a hack.”

  “You’re not,” Dan said, rolling his eyes. “You’re not a hack. I hate reading and I read your books. Can’t put them down. And what possible interest does a gay man like me have in lesbian romance? None. But they’re just that compelling.”

  Samantha rubbed her eyes. “I’m trying, Dan. I just don’t know what to do. I’ve been like this for weeks.”

  “Since Rachel left?”

  Samantha groaned. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t. I want to eat my sandwich, drink some tea, and go watch some Netflix in peace until I fall asleep drooling on the couch.”

  Dan drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “You’re pathetic.”

  “I’m single.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “It has everything to do with it, Dan!” Samantha screeched, causing Harvey to back out of the kitchen slowly, away from the noise. “I haven’t been single in ten years!”

  Dan laughed and slapped his hand over his mouth in a too-late attempt to suppress it.

  “What?” Samantha asked, pulling her hands out of her hair. “Why are you laughing at me?”

  He shrugged. “It’s like I said, you’re pathetic. You don’t know who you are without someone there to hang on your every word and give you great sex and ideas for your stories. You don’t know how to be alone.”

  Samantha picked at the grain-encrusted bread. “I hate when you’re right.” She exhaled. “So what am I supposed to do? I can’t possibly find a girlfriend in four weeks. Less than that; I still need plenty of time in which to write the actual damn book.”

  Dan shook his head again. “You’re unbelievable.”