In Love Before Christmas Read online

  Copyright © 2012 Shunta Montgomery

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Publisher’s Note:

  Redemption is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author Note

  Capri Montgomery books are legally available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Lulu only. If you have received this book at another site, or from any other source, it is not a legal copy and you are aiding in breaking copyright laws. Please purchase and read legal copies only.

  Special Thanks

  Thank you, Barb, for catching the mistakes I missed. Your assist with editing has been wonderful.

  Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.

  Books by Capri Montgomery

  On Thin Ice

  Warriors of Persia

  Sworn to Secrecy

  Redemption

  Explosive: Deadly Connections

  Hydra

  Deliverance

  Betrayal of the Dove

  Vendetta

  Shadow Hills: M is for Murder

  Seducing the Bodyguard

  Shadow Hills: No Valentine

  Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero

  Fahrenheit

  Secrets and Lies

  Returning Sheba

  Saints and Sinners

  The McGregor Affair

  Dream Walker

  The Geneva Project

  The Admiral’s Daughter

  Dangerous Obsessions

  Watch Over Me

  And Many Others…

  Coming December 2012

  Killing Hannah ~ Men of Action series

  Chapter One

  Lani Andrews awakened from her nightmare in a cold sweat. Dark hair clung to her forehead and right cheek and her heart seemed as if it were racing with the horses at the Kentucky Derby. She jumped from the bed as if getting out of bed would save her from the memory of her terror. Of course jumping out of bed after a nightmare that had her rolling wildly around the bed was always a bad idea. Falling in the bundle of red covers that had pooled on the floor did not make for a soft landing, but she didn’t have time to worry about soft landings; she had to figure out what the date was.

  Grabbing her day planner she looked at the cute butterfly nestled in the top right corner of the page before running her fingers down the square boxes to today’s date. “Three weeks until Christmas,” she leaned back against the wall. It was a dumb idea, but they had both been kids. They were young and stupid and not really thinking about the future because that’s what kids did. “If you’re not in love and I’m not in love by our thirty-second Christmas then we’ll marry each other on New Year’s Day,” Derek Vanderbilt had said as he extended his pinky finger for Lani to swear. She had sworn so easily. At the time it had seemed ridiculous. How could neither of them be in love by their thirty-second Christmas? At that age thirty-two seemed old. She figured everybody was in love by the time they were that old—until she grew up and realized thirty-two was not old at all and life marched to the tune of its own orchestra. Back then she was sure she would be free and clear and honestly at the time they made that promise it had seemed more like a joke.

  “Oh my God…thirty-second,” she mumbled. She was thirty-two, single and starting to have nightmares about the pact that she and Derek had made inside of one of the confession booths in St. Mary’s. Everybody knew not to utter promises in that church and then not follow through—nothing good ever came from that. Of course at their age all of the stories seemed like fairytales adults shared to amuse themselves. At that age they thought adults were bored and miserable and they had to come up with something to amuse themselves even if it was something as unrealistic as a St. Mary’s Curse. They had laughed about it then because adults were so strange to them. Now she wished she had taken them more seriously, believed more than doubted, and kept her promises to herself while in St. Mary’s.

  Lani showered at lightning speed, pulled on her clothes and made a mad dash for the door. It wasn’t until the cold rush of winter air hit her that she had realized she had forgotten to dry her hair. “No time now,” she darted to the Christmas inspired street looking at the decorated trees and smaller buildings only briefly as she desperately looked for a taxi. Small towns, relatively anyway compared to Boston or New York, wasn’t exactly flooded with taxies on every corner. Usually she didn’t care if she could find a taxi or not. She lived a few miles from work and sometimes walking was more enjoyable than riding. Even in the winter she loved to bundle up in her wool coat with the faux fur trim, her knitted hats hugging her head and warming her ears, and even her scarf piled around her neck and shoulders like a New York glamour girl. She loved taking a walk down the street, adding a little extra pep to her step or casually lingering in a not so rushed gait depending on her proximity to work and her starting time. The last minute rush usually kicked her day off with energy and she didn’t mind that at all. Today, however, was not one of those days. Grabbing the first taxi she spotted she got in swiftly and informed the driver of her destination. Henry Travis is what the hack license had listed, he looked at her like she was a mad crazy woman for having dripping wet hair in nearly ice cold temperatures—actually it was ice cold and she would probably pay for her haste later in the week, but there was just no time to waste. She quickly made it downtown to High Fashion magazine’s office just in time to catch the only person she knew could help her.

  She rushed past the reception area with a quick hello to Julia, the red hair striking green eyed young beauty, before nearly colliding into Matthew Taylor. “I need your help.” She pushed Matt into his office so fast he had barely had time to respond. Maybe she should have started with “hello,” but there was just no time. This was dire and her sense of panic would not allow her to calm down for even one second. She shut the door behind her and turned to find him now sitting with his butt on the edge of the desk—more leaning than sitting she would say—and he had a smirk on his face. She would have ripped into him about his lack of compassion, but Matt was the nicest guy she knew. He was the only man who could help her. He would have to understand her sense of urgency—he would just have to.

  “Are you behind deadline again?” Matt said “again” because he had often known Lani to wait until the last possible minute to get her column together, but he had never seen her so distressed over it. They were doing the photo shoot now and she had to write the piece about the fashion along with her typical women’s piece for the magazine. If she were behind he was not going to be able to write either one for her. He gave her the once over. Her still wet hair clung to her face.

  “You’re going to catch pneumonia.”

  “That would mean I’d be lucky; and I’m not. You have to help me. I have to fall in love in three weeks.”

  He laughed. Surely she couldn’t be serious. “You’re joking right? I mean you’re kidding me, yeah?” He stopped laughing as he saw the serious expression on her face. “What, are you going to die if you don’t?” He returned his attention to the spew of papers he had dropped when Lani pushed him inside the office. He really should pick those up and put them back in order. Thankfully, he had remembered to number the pages this time. The last time Lani had been in h
is office while he was working on a big project he had forgotten to add the page numbers to the file before printing out the papers and of course when he clumsily dropped them while on his way to see the boss all the papers had scattered. Lani had been the one to help him get each page back in order in time for his big meeting.

  “No, but I made a promise with Derek Vanderbilt years ago and well…it’s the thirty-second Christmas.” She went on to tell him of how two kids had made a stupid arrangement years ago, how she had just been reminded of it through her “way too real” nightmare. The truth was that she couldn’t stand Derek; nobody could actually. He was rude, obnoxious, self-absorbed, arrogant, and those were his good qualities.

  “You do know you don’t have to follow through.”

  “We pinky swore.”

  “Oh, you pinky swore,” he laughed as he shook his head.

  “In St. Mary’s.”

  Matt stopped laughing immediately. Everybody knew St. Mary’s was the one place to hold whatever was said sacred. He wasn’t Catholic, and she didn’t go to church anymore either, but that didn’t negate the fact that they all knew a person couldn’t swear anything in that place and not follow through. “You know, Ash Henderson said that he…”

  “I know the story,” she quipped. Ash Henderson, right there in church, before all the members of the church, had promised to donate part of his lottery winnings to charity. He didn’t follow through and two weeks later a bus hit him while he was crossing the street; fortunately their version of a bus was a cute little trolley shaped thing and the driver had just been taking off from a bus stop so Ash only ended up with a few broken bones. Of course broken bones weren’t the end of his problems. He lost his winnings in a small business suit, and was now considered to be a miserable old man. Yes, they all knew the story for it was told everywhere around town as another testament to the curse of St. Mary’s church. The people around town called it the St. Mary’s Curse. For some reason people still didn’t seem to learn to just keep their mouth shut while in there and to this day there were still those who made promises they had no plans to keep.

  “So help me.”

  “How?”

  “Do something! I can’t marry that jerk. I mean it is bad enough he’s our boss.”

  “True,” he grumbled. “Speaking of bosses, he wants you up covering the photo shoot. I was supposed to tell you that the moment you came in. They’re up on the top floor.”

  “Why? I can write the article based on the photos from the shoot. What’s the point of being there? It’s just a dress that nobody in their right mind is going to want to wear.”

  Matt shrugged. “Hey, maybe you’ll fall in love.” He chuckled and she slapped his shoulder.

  “I’ve known you since we were twelve, Matt.”

  “I know. And actually part of that is why you and Derek stopped being friends.”

  “No, we stopped being friends because he treated you like crap and I realized he was a jerk. I was so angry with him when he and his friends took your clothes and locked you out of the school gym naked.”

  “You gave me your coat.”

  “It was pink,” she laughed. “But it’s better than being naked right?”

  “I was mortified. I didn’t want to go back to school, but when I came back I found out nobody was talking about me.”

  “I know.”

  “They were all talking about Derek and his friends because you got them back for me.”

  “Yeah, boys were not supposed to wear pink, but I found the photos his mom had taken when they dressed up as Little Bo Peep and the sheep that one Halloween and I plastered it all over the school.”

  He laughed hard. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but in love in three weeks is going to be hard, Lani.”

  “Just help me make it happen. I can’t marry him.”

  “Okay; okay, just get upstairs and get to work before boss man comes down here to my office. I don’t want to see him either.”

  She moaned. “I wish he hadn’t bought the magazine. I miss the old owner.”

  “Me too…boy do I ever second that sentiment.”

  “Okay, I’ll come back after,” she pointed upstairs and he nodded. He had his work cut out for him. How on earth was he supposed to make her fall in love before Christmas?

  Chapter Two

  Lani took the stairs instead of the elevator, as she always did. She was a woman who liked to keep her body healthy. She didn’t always have time for a run in the park, but she did manage to work it in at least three times a week before work, sometimes after, sometimes only twice a week on her days off. She did what she could when she could and she relied on the rest of the normal daily activities to make up for the cardio she couldn’t get in that week. Walking to work, taking the stairs, eating relatively healthy—it was all part of her grand plan to keep her body in mint condition. There was no way she could do her job if she couldn’t keep up with the hectic pace, and getting sick was so not an option—something she should have thought of before she left the house with wet hair. At least her hair was starting to dry—a little. She wasn’t still leaving a trail of water droplets to follow.

  “You,” the photographer shouted. “You’ll do.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but she knew her name wasn’t “you,” and it would be nice if he had known that. “Pardon me?” Lani gripped her notebook a little tighter.

  “The model didn’t show. There was something about a car accident; not that I care. I need a model.”

  “Oh no; I’m the writer,” she stated. He didn’t seem to be listening.

  “She’s a little fat,” the assistant said.

  “I’m not fat! I’m a size two.” She took great offense to being called fat. There was nothing fat about her. Working in this industry, even in the not so spacious town, there was always a constant reminder of what thinner models looked like. Typically she didn’t care. She was confident in her own body and her own looks. The models did their thing and she did hers. Besides, everybody in the office knew the models were Photoshopped because not even they had the perfection the industry demanded. A little trim here or there could shave off a few more pounds—pounds that didn’t need to be shaved off at all. A little work here or there could hide the scars makeup and lighting hadn’t hidden. Lani had laughed to herself when she saw the post shoot team work their magic on the pictures. Way back in the day people actually knew how to take pictures using film and great lighting, good makeup too, and they came out with beautiful photographs that hid the flaws and emphasized the natural beauty. Today everything was about quickly getting the photos and letting the guy in front of the computer manipulate it to perfection. She didn’t focus on any of that because it wasn’t her concern. She was a writer, not the photographer, magazine owner or ethics committee. She had bills to pay and she figured most people were smart enough, and jaded enough, to assume every photo was touched up and manipulated anyway.

  Small town, or relatively small she would say, or not, the magazine was big. People read it, respected it and looked to it for fashion advice on a monthly basis. She was lucky to get on with the magazine when she did. What made her stories pop was her hard work and writing skills along with the writing voice that women love, as her old boss had said. He told her those things had made her such an invaluable member of their magazine staff. She had quickly moved up the ranks—not that she was looking to move up them. She was perfectly happy with her limited work load. Moving up the ranks meant more articles, longer, faster, and the pay still wasn’t on par with what she could have made at a larger magazine in Boston or New York. If it weren’t for her love of their town she probably would have moved on after Derek bought the magazine. She should have moved on, but she loved it here.

  “Her butt is too big for that dress.”

  “My butt is just perfect for my body!” Nobody was listening to her. Confidence in her body did not mean she would take snide remarks about her body. “Writer,” she reiterated. “Not
model;” she said in a tone that told them she was seriously wondering why they couldn’t process her words the first time.

  “I don’t care, put her in it. Nip, tuck, squeeze and pin if you have to. I need a model!”

  “I’m not doing it—” She felt the assistant dragging her along and then the hair and makeup crew went to work on her so fast she didn’t know what was happening. Between getting her hair blown out, flat ironed and dominated into submission she felt people pulling off her clothes and getting her into the dress, which was, without any doubt, too tight for her. They pushed and squeezed and pulled on the zipper.

  “Suck it in and hold it,” the assistant said as he tugged on the zipper until it went all the way up.