Decidedly With Mistletoe Read online

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I swear it, Ava. You’re going to find Mr. Right while you’re away. And you’ll have me and the mistletoe to thank for it.”

  Mentally shaking my head, I returned the lid to the box.

  “Promise me you’ll do it, Ava. You owe yourself this. Consider it your birthday present to me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Your birthday isn’t until June.”

  “So it will be my early birthday present. Just promise me.”

  “Okay, I promise.” Guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Maybe there was something to her family legend…even if I wasn’t a member of her family. Maybe just knowing Zoe was enough for it to work for me.

  “And you’re also going to promise me that you won’t spend your vacation working on your next novel.”

  My next novel being the third one in my middle-grade Greek mythology series. That’s right. By day I was an elementary school teacher. By night, an author. “I promise. This trip is about restoring my creative juices. And with that, I should get going if I want to make it to the resort in good time.”

  “Especially since it sounds like a storm will be hitting the area later tonight.”

  “It will?”

  She nodded. “Evan called earlier and told me to let you know. He said you should be fine, just as long as you don’t get delayed leaving on time.” She gave me a big hug. “Remember your promise. Kiss every available man you see.”

  “I promise.” Not to make a fool of myself.

  Where’s your spirit of adventure? the know-it-all voice inside my head asked. And what’s the big deal? It could be a lot of fun. You’ve always wanted to be an actress.

  I have? I must have missed that memo back in private school.

  ***

  As I drove closer to Lake Tahoe, thick snowflakes obscured my vision, even with the windshield wipers on. And the defogger was doing a crappy job defogging the window. But at least my radio hadn’t failed me. Cheery Christmas tunes continued to fill the small space.

  “You do realize you’re supposed to make it easier for me to see, right?” I asked. And no—I wasn’t actually expecting the defogger to answer me.

  I glanced at the speedometer. My car was traveling forty miles per hour under the speed limit. But no way did I want to play risk-taker and go faster. I could see it now: I’d hit a patch of ice, spin wildly out of control, and end up in a ravine.

  Wasn’t that what happened to Paul Sheldon, the protagonist in Stephen King’s Misery? He ended up in a ditch, and that crazed fan happened upon him. She got all uppity because he had killed off her favorite heroine…and then the next thing he knew, the fan turned into a psycho bitch.

  Did I mention Paul Sheldon was a bestselling author in the novel?

  I might have been a New York Times bestselling author for a middle-grade fantasy series, but at least I didn’t have to worry about a kid going psycho on me for killing off his favorite character.

  Or maybe instead of a psycho fan finding me in the ditch, the Minotaur—the giant beast from Greek mythology—would come across my wrecked vehicle and make a meal out of me.

  To distract myself from thoughts of winding up in a ditch and my remains not being found until spring, I sang along with the Christmas music.

  The good news? No one was around to hear me. Yes, I’ll admit it—I was gifted with the creative gene when it came to my vivid imagination, but I fell short on the ability to sing in tune.

  “Not much longer till we’re at the resort,” I said to either my car or myself or us both. “And then I can hang out in the hot tub. And maybe I’ll get lucky and some sexy, single guy will join me.” And then I can put Zoe’s mistletoe to the test.

  A sudden thump was the first warning I got that something was wrong. Followed by vibrations rattling me to the core and the steering wheel pulling to the right. I turned off the music and my worst fear was confirmed as a loud flap-flap-flap noise taunted me.

  My heart picked up its pace, mirroring the flapping of the flat tire. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.

  And because fate clearly hadn’t paid attention to my plans for the holidays, my tires hit ice and my car slid toward—just my luck—a ditch.

  “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  Sad to say, that really wasn’t how I had envisioned using those words while on this trip.

  That was my last thought before my front tires skidded off the embankment.

  2

  LIAM

  “MAKE SURE YOU DRIVE CAREFULLY,” Kelsey’s worried voice said through my SUV’s speakers.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have been able to joke like that to my little sister. But our parents had died over fourteen years ago. Even though we did miss them the most during the holiday season, she and I had long since learned to cope with the loss.

  Which meant I could give her a hard time for worrying about me.

  I had survived being shot at by the enemy while serving with the Navy SEALs, so I was pretty certain I could survive the drive home from Lake Tahoe to San Francisco.

  “I’m not kidding, Liam. Trent told me a storm is expected to hit Lake Tahoe soon.”

  Soon? Try now. The snow had been coming down heavier with each passing mile. It had begun shortly after I left the mountainous area where I’d been helping with a search and rescue mission. Fortunately, the little girl had been found safe and sound.

  Fortunately, she’d been found before the storm hit.

  “Don’t worry, Kelsey. I’ll be careful. There’s no way I’m missing Christmas with you and Trent and his family this year.” I’d already missed too many holidays as it was, thanks to my time in the military.

  Did I regret my stint with the SEALs? Not at all. I had loved my job. But now that I was retired from it and running my own security and investigation company, I was looking forward to settling down. Settling down and possibly one day having my own family—a family like Trent and Kelsey were hoping to start soon.

  That’s right. My best friend and Kelsey were married a few months ago. This was the same best friend whom I decided not to kill after I found out he was screwing around with my sister.

  “You better be,” she said, “because I have a surprise for you.”

  “What kind of surprise?”

  “One I’m positive you’ll enjoy.”

  “Even if I don’t like surprises?” Surprises were usually not a good thing when you were on a mission with the military. “You aren’t trying to set me up with someone, are you?”

  Kelsey laughed. “As much as I would enjoy seeing you fall in love, I’m not setting you up with anyone.”

  “That’s good.” I was referring to the part about setting me up. Kelsey knew I had already strolled down the route that involved me falling in love. It had been a path filled with prickles and thorns.

  But it wasn’t the girl who had been that way. That honor went to her family—most notably, her grandmother. They were the ones who’d been against us getting married.

  But that was the past. Ten years in the past.

  The snow started coming down heavier. Two headlights shone faintly ahead through the near white-out conditions.

  “I’ll call you once I’m home,” I said, keeping an eye on the lights in case they unexpectedly swerved into my lane. I ended the call.

  As I drew closer to them, it became clearer that the car wasn’t moving. It was stuck in a ditch.

  And standing in the headlights was a woman with long, blonde hair whipping about her shoulders. Which was all I could make out of her, thanks to her woolen hat and winter coat. The wind wrapped around her, attempting to push her over. Possibly into oncoming traffic.

  Not that there was any traffic—from either direction.

  “Shit. What the hell does she think she’s doing?” I pulled to the side of the road and turned on my hazard lights.

  I climbed out of the SUV and pushed my way through the wind. The snow hit my f
ace with a not-so-friendly reminder that we were still a long way from summer.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” I yelled as the wind tried to steal my voice away. “It’s too dangerous.” A car could lose control and pin her against her vehicle.

  Not a pleasant way to go, in anyone’s books.

  She turned around and her eyes widened at seeing me—familiar eyes and an equally familiar face.

  “Ava?” I would recognize my ex-fiancée anywhere, even if it had been ten years since I last saw her. And shit, she was as beautiful as she had been back then. Maybe even more so.

  My cock stirred, seconding that opinion.

  She didn’t respond. Her wide-eyed expression then transformed and she glared at me. Glared at me like she would rather be dipped naked in honey and fed to a bear than be in my presence.

  Not that I could blame her. I’d broken off our engagement, but as her grandmother had explained to me, it was the right thing to do. For Ava. If she had married me, she would have lost her trust fund. She would have gone from living her former lifestyle to living on a Navy SEAL’s salary. And she wouldn’t have had the money she needed to attend a prestigious law school.

  But instead of being able to remind Ava of those things, her grandmother also kindly pointed out that Ava would’ve foolishly picked me over the money and her education. And eventually she would’ve regretted that and resented me.

  Her grandmother’s solution? I was to convince Ava that I’d changed my mind about marrying her. That I didn’t want her waiting around for me while I served my country…because I might not come back home in one piece.

  Her grandmother always was the optimist.

  Had I bought the part about Ava foolishly picking me? Not at all. Ava would do anything to make her family happy. Picking me wouldn’t have been an option for her.

  “Any particular reason why you decided to park in that ditch?” I nodded at the car. It wasn’t a BMW or some other high-end model you’d expect someone with her wealth to be driving. It was an older model Honda Civic.

  “I didn’t park there.” She let out a long, God-this-sucks sigh. “The ditch just got in my way when my tire decided to call it quits.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched up. That was one thing I had always appreciated about Ava: her humor. “Must have been a conspiracy.”

  I checked the offending tire. Or rather, I would have checked it if the side of the car with the flat wasn’t buried in snow. The only way I could change the tire was if the car was out of the snow bank.

  And even if I could change the tire, Ava would still have to back out of the ditch, and right now that was questionable since she didn’t have chains on her wheels.

  “Do you have a spare tire?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, it’s not like I’ve gone looking for it. This is the first time I’ve ever had a flat.”

  A few minutes later, I had determined there was no spare.

  “The only thing you can do at this point is call for a tow truck, and have them take your car to a garage. But I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting one during this storm. They’ll be busy with emergencies.”

  Ava’s face paled—her skin only a shade darker than the falling snow.

  “Where are you headed?” I asked. She told me. “That’s still over an hour from here in these conditions. I can drop you off at a nearby hotel to spend the night. The tow truck can take you and your car to a garage in the morning to get your tire fixed.”

  “That’s okay. I can wait here.”

  I shook my head. “No, you can’t.”

  “Sure, I can.”

  “It’s only going to get colder, and staying in your car will be dangerous. Someone might drive past and lose control and hit you.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  Right. Rule #1 when it came to women: if they said they’d be fine, it usually wasn’t true. They were just too goddamn stubborn to admit it.

  And when faced with a woman like this, there was only one thing to do. I hoisted Ava over my shoulder and started walking back to my SUV.

  The second thing I used to love about Ava? She was a fighter. She was never one to go down without a battle—other than when it came to her family.

  And in this case, the battle involved her squirming against my shoulder and pummeling her fists against my back. “Let me go, you barbaric caveman!”

  “Hey, that hurt my caveman feelings.” I kept moving forward, squinting against the snow.

  “I somehow doubt it.” She squirmed some more. “Now put me down.”

  “Not until you’re safely in my vehicle.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I’m driving you to the nearest hotel. After that, I’ll continue driving to San Francisco, where my sister and her husband are waiting for me to come home.”

  Ava stilled. “Wow, Kelsey’s married? Oh God, it’s not to that boring guy she was dating back in college, is it? What was his name? Oliver?”

  “You mean Owen?”

  “That’s him. Ohmigod, she did marry him! Well…um…I’m sure he’s not so boring anymore. I’ll shut up now.”

  Chuckling, I lowered her to the ground. “No, Kelsey didn’t marry him. And yes, you’re right, Owen was boring. She was engaged to him for a bit but then called it off.”

  Ava muttered something that sounded like it might be “Must be a family thing,” but I couldn’t be certain.

  I opened the vehicle door and indicated for her to enter my SUV. “Give me your keys, and I’ll get your stuff out of your car.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself.”

  “I know you are, but as you’ve already pointed out, I’m a caveman. And this caveman was brought up right by his mom. Which makes me a gentleman caveman.” I winked at her and held my hand out for her keys.

  “Fine,” she huffed.

  Once I had her stuff safely stowed in the SUV, I Googled the nearest hotel, inn, or motel, and programmed the inn’s address into the GPS.

  I started the engine. “Do you remember my best friend, Trent Salway?”

  “Dark-haired, incredibly hot guy? Yes, I remember him. Why?”

  “That’s who Kelsey married.”

  Silence filled the inside of the vehicle. I glanced at Ava to check her reaction. Definitely shocked.

  “Wow, didn’t see that one coming,” she said.

  “Neither did I. But he’s a great guy and they’re perfect for each other, so who am I to complain?”

  After we had driven a mile in an awkward silence, I asked, “So what are you up to these days? Did you join the family business?”

  “By family business, do you mean did I become a lawyer?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Being a lawyer was never my dream. It was my parents’ dream. It was my grandparents’ dream. I just became the family disappointment instead.”

  She didn’t sound too upset by it. I was tempted to look up to see if a spaceship was hovering above us with the real Ava Versteeg. Because the Ava Versteeg I knew would have dived into a pool of fire ants if it meant her family’s approval.

  “So if you didn’t become a lawyer, what did you end up doing?”

  “I teach first grade. And let me tell you now—I’m probably the only elementary school teacher who has a degree in international politics, along with an education degree. But it has come in handy when it comes to dealing with peace negotiations with my students.” She chuckled.

  She’d been studying international politics when we were dating in college. I’d been studying criminology.

  It was official. Aliens had abducted the real Ava. Not because she hated kids and I could never see her as a teacher. She was great with kids. “That’s not exactly the high-power career your family was pushing for.”

  Ava laughed. The sound was as sexy as I remembered it, maybe even more so now. “You remember them well.”
r />   Christ, did I ever. “I take it they finally decided to let you do what you wanted?” The disbelief in my tone wasn’t that obvious, was it?

  “Not exactly. They pretty much disowned me when it came to that. Well, my parents didn’t totally disown me, but they were disappointed in my career choice. But it wasn’t like that was the only time we hadn’t seen eye to eye.”

  I choked back a laugh. They hadn’t approved of me either. That had been part of the problem when it had come to Ava’s and my relationship. “What else did they disapprove of?”

  “My divorce.” Her tone had an edge of fierceness to it. Not the I’m-going-to-rip-you-to-pieces kind of fierceness. It was more like, I am a strong woman. Hear me roar.

  “You were married?” The words came out evenly and alpha-man tough—as though I were merely curious. Which was partly true.

  “Yes. For two years.”

  The GPS instructed me to take the next left. The snow was coming down even heavier now, leaving a thick layer on the road in both directions. And the street I had to turn onto wasn’t much better.

  I drove slowly, not wanting to risk going too fast and having my vehicle follow the same fate as Ava’s car. “The inn shouldn’t be much farther.…So how come only two years?” I asked.

  “What difference does it make?” Her voice was still strong but there was another emotion there. Sadness?

  “It doesn’t make any difference. I’m just wondering what kind of idiot he was for the marriage to last only two years.” Because I was pretty sure it was all on her ex-husband. The Ava I’d known back when we were engaged was an amazing person.

  It was her family who had their heads up their asses.

  3

  AVA

  I’M JUST WONDERING what kind of idiot he was for the marriage to last only two years.

  I almost burst out laughing as Liam’s words echoed in my ears. I wasn’t sure who exactly had been the idiot: my ex-husband or me.

  I mean really, when did arranged marriages ever result in happily ever afters? Yes, I was aware it had worked wonderfully for Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall. But they were characters from a novel. I wrote about Greek mythology, but that didn’t mean preteen Poseidon, Hermes, and Aphrodite were walking around San Francisco. It was make-believe. Fantasy.