It's in His Kiss Holiday Romance Collection (12 page)

“That Cathy be returned to her natural age and beauty.”

But Adhamh didn’t say anything.

The king swirled upward and Adhamh went soaring through the sky, spinning as if he were a leaf caught in the breeze. He screamed again, and again the sound pierced Ronan’s ears. “Grant his wish or I will hurl you higher and drop you in the woods so the tree limbs pierce your body in a thousand different places.”

Adhamh yelled out, “May ye return to thy mortal age, and may thy beauty be that of queens.”

“That’s more like it.” Manannan Mac Lir said, and settled back down in the fountain. Adhamh fell hard to the ground, the knitting needle that still poked out of his foot pinning him down once again.

Cathy turned toward Ronan and fell into his arms. He held on tight as her hair returned to its natural luster, and her face lost all the lines and wrinkles.

She looked even more beautiful than before and Ronan’s heart soared with love for her.

“Now, you, Mr. Unworthy to even crawl on your belly, will come with me back to the Other World and do your penance there, where you are no longer a threat to this village or these people.”

And just like that, Adhamh vanished in a cloud of green smoke.

“Okay then, my work is done here,” Manannan Mac Lir said. “This has been a hoot! Love it when Americans call for my help. I get to speak using such wonderful sounds. They seem to trip off my kingly tongue with a tickle in each word. Call on me anytime. I’m not promising I’ll show up, but it’s always fun for me to see mortals try!”

Then he laughed and in the blink of an eye he was gone, along with his white crane.

For a moment, all Ronan could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. Then, slowly, the sound of rushing water coming from the fountain, and birds chirping and—miracle of miracles—he saw some of the residents of the village come out of their homes, looking to the sky, pointing at the renewed fountain and whispering about the Faerie King. Children were laughing and the sky had turned a bright blue.

The sun felt warm on Ronan’s skin as he embraced Cathy, who wasn’t quite steady on her feet. Then he helped her sit down on the now fat and sturdy rim of the sparkling fountain. He wasn’t taking anything for granted anymore and needed to say what he felt, especially as the church bells rang out, sounding as if they were announcing that the curse had been lifted.

“Cathy, I don’t want to ever lose you again. You’re the girl I’ve always loved since we were kids, and I want to stay right here with you and raise a whole houseful of kids of our own. You were right all along about everything. I was just a stupid fool who didn’t want to believe in faeries or lore or magical kings. Now I know better and I’m happy I do. Cathy O’Toole, would you do me the honor of marrying me at our village church? And can we do it right away, while Kasey and Rourke are still here? I think Tommy’s probably looking down on us right now, and telling you to say yes … so will you?”

She sat there for a moment, then a wide grin spread across her beautiful face. “If you can love me knowing how ugly I’ll be when I get old, and after all we’ve been through in the last few days, I’d have to be crazy to say anything but yes … of course, I still have the right to throw my shoes at you whenever you’re being stupid.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

She stood and they kissed just as a great big splash of water sprayed out on them from the fountain.

When they turned to see how it had happened, nothing moved. But somehow the now restored statue seemed to be smiling even more.

“I thought he left,” Ronan said.

“He’s a prankster. We may never be completely rid of him.”

“I can live with that.”

“I love you, Cailan Ronan Kelly.”

“I love you, Cathleen Fian O’Toole. Now let’s find that church.”

# # #

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Irish Kiss

Copyright © 2013 by Mary Leo

Published by Pryde Multimedia, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author and/or publisher.

Romancing Rudy Raindear

Chapter One

Rudy Christopher Raindear opened his eyes in the early morning gloom and glanced at the dark-haired girl asleep on the green sofa across from him. He figured he was dreaming so he rolled over, punched down his uncooperative pillow, pulled the thin blanket up over his shoulders, closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh.

The sigh triggered the mild headache he’d been nursing for most of the night into a thunderous pounding which reverberated down his spine. The pounding caused his stomach to pitch several times which made him bolt upright banging his about-to-explode head on the low, slanted ceiling. This in turn reminded him that he wasn’t at home in his ultra-modern apartment in New York City, but in his grandfather’s partially converted attic in North Pole, Maine, the Christmas Capital of the World.

The now dying Christmas Capital of the World.

The town Rudy and his parents had happily abandoned as soon as he’d graduated from high school.

The town he had returned to some ten years later for basically one purpose: to close a lucrative deal with the executives of Smart-Mart, the fastest-growing retail chain in the country.

The only thing holding him back was his grandfather’s bakery, which happened to be the lynchpin to all the other real estate Rudy had purchased for a cost of next-to-nothing in this fading town. The massive one-stop retail store would attract customers from all the surrounding towns, and probably devastate the few remaining shops and Always Christmas, the local department store. But that wasn’t Rudy’s problem. Making this deal would set him and his gramps up for life.

Nothing else matters.

Rudy leaned his shoulders against the metal headboard, waiting for the throbbing to subside, as he carefully stuffed his pillow behind his back in a desperate attempt for some comfort. If he could just relax for a moment, and not move he was sure the pounding would stop.

The smell of freshly baked cookies coming from the bakery on the main floor filled the room with the scent of vanilla and cinnamon, causing Rudy’s nose to itch. The itching made him sneeze five times in a row, only adding to his complete misery. He so needed water and drugs.

Now!

“Are you all right?” the smokin’ hot girl on the sofa asked.

Rudy couldn’t respond. For one thing, he didn’t recognize her, and for another, his head hurt so much it trumped any form of speech.

The girl yawned and stretched, looking all warm and sexy from sleep then sat up, putting her bare feet on the wooden floor. She gazed over at him with concern on her face, and Rudy wondered if he looked as bad as he felt.

Ignoring his obviously hideous condition, the girl walked over to him. She wore a red flannel nightgown with Santas and reindeer splashed across it. For some reason, and clearly only in this town, Rudy found this angel in a flannel nightgown completely fascinating, even in his nauseous, head-pounding state.

“Can I get you anything? Aspirin? Water? Alka-Seltzer? Coffee?”

He slowly nodded.

“Which one?”

“All of them,” he whispered.

A devastatingly spectacular smile lit up her entire face, and Rudy flashed on her name, but it slipped away just as quickly.

“Poor baby,” she cooed, and patted his shoulder as if they were good friends, or as Rudy hoped, good friends with benefits.

Had there been sex last night?

A strong part of him hoped not, at least not while he was drunk. A woman like this deserved to be remembered.

Ten minutes later she returned with a tray and set it down next to him on the funky wooden nightstand he and his grandfather had made out of a salvaged barn door when Rudy was about eight years old. He was surprised his gramps still had it, but then from the looks of the majority of the deep attic stacked with old trunks, bookshelves, boxes, lamps, dressers, and who knew what else, his gramps probably still owned everything he ever carried into this old house.

“I brought you an Alka-Seltzer Plus. It’ll settle your stomach, and help with your stuffy nose. It’s a little pink this morning.”

Rudy rubbed his itchy nose with a tissue she gave him from the tray. The tissue felt soothing against his sore nose, just what he needed.

She held out two aspirin, along with a glass of fizzing relief.

“Thanks,” Rudy told her as he reached for his cure, popped both pills then eagerly drained the glass.

Everything he needed for hangover survival was on the tray, including a dish of assorted cookies from his grandfather’s bakery, not that he could possibly eat a cookie at this point.

“That was some reunion you guys had,” the mystery girl said, getting all comfy at the foot of the bed then sliding her long legs under his blanket.

He remembered now. His gram had taken up needlepoint when he was growing up, and the bed was testament to her obsession. There were at least a dozen pillows scattered around in various sizes and shapes, all with a Christmas theme. They were enough to make him dizzy, and combined with the unusually warm weather in this town, the attic seemed hot.

Or was it the girl that was making him hot?

Especially now when she rested those fine legs of hers against his as if they were lovers, only he couldn’t feel skin on skin. Unfortunately, he still wore his black slacks and heavy wool socks. No possibility of sex with all those clothes on, but why so familiar on her part? He couldn’t figure her out.

“I seem to be lacking some of the details of last night. Maybe you could fill me in.”

She chuckled. “Understandable, especially since you kept drinking those really sweet Christmas Bombs that Carol pushes this time of year.”

“Carol?”

“Carol Winters, the Bartender over at Yule Tide’s. You went to school with her, remember?”

A bright pink fizzy drink in a tall glass garnished with a candy cane now took center stage in his memory, along with Carol’s charming face.

“Yeah. She was wearing one of those Santa hats.”

“Yep, we all were.” She nodded toward the coat hooks on the wall next to the stairs, and there hung two Santa hats along with coats, scarves, her jeans and white sweater.

That’s when it came to him. “Jenny Bells! You’re Jenny Bells from Donner Street. You were my very first kiss.”

“Good grief, how bad off are you?”

He chuckled, careful of any actual movement. “Apparently, pretty bad.” Then he stared at her for a moment as last night began to come into focus. “You were there, along with Kris and Nick, and some guy who looked a lot like the real Santa or was that a dream?”

“I don’t remember the Santa guy, but your buddies Kris and Nick were absolutely there. I came in at midnight with a plate of your grandfather’s cookies which you all devoured. Carol told me you kept buying rounds, and everybody kept drinking. I’m sure the guys are feeling just as bad as you do this morning.”

“Why aren’t you dying like the rest of us?”

“Somebody had to be the adult. After just one of those Christmas Bombs, I knew you three guys would never make it home if I didn’t drive. Besides, I’ve been living here in this attic ever since my apartment building went into foreclosure, so any way I can help out your grandfather, or his grandson, seemed like the right thing to do.”

“You live here?” He looked around at the long, narrow room and could tell she had transformed half of it into a livable, feminine space, but still … “Why the hell would you live here?”

She shrugged. “Your grandfather needed some help both in the bakery and around the house after your gram passed. I needed a place to live. It just made sense. He won’t let me pay rent, so I try to do the things he can’t.”

“I’m sure Gramps loves having you around, but doesn’t your day job get in the way?”

“Helping your grandfather is my day job. He’s teaching me how to bake Santa’s favorite cookie, or at least that’s the plan. We haven’t exactly gotten around to it yet. Gramps can’t remember the recipe, nor can he find your grandmother’s recipe book, but we’ve got ten days to go before Christmas. I’m sure we’ll figure something out by then.”

Rudy hoped to have the Smart-Mart deal locked-up by then.

He sneezed.

“Bless you,” she said.

“Thanks. Don’t you miss your own place? I mean if this is your room, it’s not very private for overnight guests.”

Rudy felt a mild pang of guilt for taking her bed, but on the other hand, he was over six feet tall and that sofa would never have been long enough.

“It’s a small town, remember? Not much guest action going on. Besides, I thought you’d have a room at the Inn, when you didn’t, I had no choice but to bring you home.”

“You could have slept in bed with me. I wouldn’t have attacked you,” he lied. If he had awoken and been at all coherent, he probably would have tried it. Of course, he wasn’t about to tell her that.

His nose suddenly itched. He tried to ignore it, but it tickled like a son of a bitch.

She threw him a little grin that told him there was no way in hell she would have climbed into bed with him. He had the distinct feeling she knew his game.

“It was tricky enough just sleeping on the couch. You kept telling me how much you still loved me. You must have tried to get me into bed ten times before you finally gave up and fell asleep.”

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

“Accepted. I really loved my old apartment. I would have lived there forever if I could have. I heard someone bought the building, but they haven’t done any work on it yet. Shame, it’s such a cute place that with some TLC it could be beautiful again. I’ve been hoping to move back in, but so far, I haven’t heard who bought it or when the renovations are going to start.”