Heartwarming Holiday Wishes

Read the Excerpt

Excerpt for Mistletoe and Holly, my novella in Heartwarming Holiday Wishes:

(Cameron McCormack and Holly Brewster have gone Christmas shopping for his six-year-old daughter Sophie, but toward the end of the evening Holly’s excitement for the coming holiday has obviously changed)

Cam piled the packages in his truck. As they drove to his house, Holly’s ongoing mood bothered Cam, but she wasn’t really his concern. Keep it light, he told himself. Don’t make more of this than it is.

In his driveway they unloaded the shopping bags. Cam helped Holly carry them upstairs to her apartment where she would hide them from Sophie. They made tentative plans to wrap gifts together, but something still wasn’t right.

“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. Sophie will be thrilled on Christmas morning.”

But her tone sounded downcast, as if she’d been eliminated from any celebration.

On their last trip to his truck, Holly reached in for a last package, and Cam caught her arm. He lightly turned her toward him. “Holly. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t want to know.”

“I do,” he insisted when he’d thought exactly the opposite minutes ago.

What was happening to him now? In the veil of snowflakes drifting down, Holly’s skin seemed to glow like a pearl and her eyes had stars. Or were those tears? Either way, in that instant, if only to comfort her, Cam wanted nothing but to kiss her.

Maybe she allowed him to rather than tell him what was wrong, but for a long, suspended moment his mouth met hers, the softness of her lips against his warmer ones, and held. He felt Holly’s arms lift but she didn’t embrace him before they fell and their only point of contact remained that kiss. Then, slowly, she drew her mouth from his and the kiss ended.

She sounded shaken. “Wow. That was some thank you. We only went shopping. 

Then she took the bag from Tiny Tim’s Toys and went up the stairs, leaving him in the driveway, feeling as if he’d been suddenly flattened by Santa’s sleigh.