A Dixie Christmas (25 page)
Authors: Sandra Hill
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary
“I’ve been meaning to give you some advice,” Sam said to JD, his lips twitching with suppressed mirth. Time for JD to get a dose of his own medicine.
JD snorted with disgust.
“Really. You’re screwing an Amish woman? For chrissake, JD, an Amish woman is just one notch below a nun. And handcuffs? Tsk-tsk-tsk! Even for you, that’s kinda perverted.” The whole time he spoke, Sam grinned, wondering if he might borrow the cuffs himself. That would be one way of getting Reba to sit still and listen to him. And after she talked to him, well, who knew what use they could be put to?
“Until tonight, Reba has been wearing that Jolly Ol’ Fat Boy outfit,” JD apprised Stan. Then he turned with seeming innocence to Sam. “Speaking of perversions, loverboy, where does having the hots for Santa Claus fall on the perversion scale?”
“I heard about this on the Internet,” Maudeen, the Cyber Granny, piped in then. To the surprise of all three of them, her purple spiked head was peeping up over the back of JD’s seat. She must be kneeling on her own bench seat, and, apparently, she’d been eavesdropping on their conversation. Surprise, surprise!
“Heard about what?” the three of them inquired at the same time. Which was a mistake . . . a big mistake.
“Sex perversions,” she answered matter-of-factly. “In fact, I accidentally landed on a website yesterday dedicated to sex with dwarves. Can you imagine that?” She shook her head at them. “Nuns, Santas, Amish, dwarves, all the same fetish, I guess.”
“Actually, in the Santooian Mountains, sex with the god of winter, which could be construed to be St. Nicholas, is considered a blessed event.” Speaking now was Dr. Meg, expounding from her anthropologist role.
“Ah, I remember now,” her sister, Dr. Maggie, said, “how icicles in the form of penises were used to decorate trees during their festivals. And they were flavored with herbs that the women sucked on to increase fertility.”
“Where’d you say those mountains were?” It was Morey Goldstein speaking now, a former butcher from Bangor and the self-proclaimed stud muffin of the senior citizen community. He popped his bright red suspenders and winked jauntily at the two sisters. Morey had a collection of two hundred pairs of suspenders. Sam knew because Morey had regaled him for hours today with details about every one of them.
The twins reacted to Morey’s question and his wink with soft giggles.
Now, I’ve seen it all
!
“There’s nothing perverted when two people love each other,” the soft-spoken Ethel Ross remarked. She and her husband John were sitting in the next booth across the aisle, holding hands, as usual. If there were ever lifetime lovebirds, it was these two, who’d been married for fifty years. He knew because they’d regaled him for hours today with details about every one of those years.
“That’s right, Samuel. Try anything you can, anything, if you really love Reba,” John advised as he exchanged a look with his wife that clearly said they had personally tried it all themselves.
Oh, swell! I really need that picture in my mind. Two old people getting it on!
“What was that you were saying about landing in Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole?” Stan asked him.
“I’m beginning to think we all landed there,” JD said, “or else Bedlam.”
The seniors began to exit then, waving cheerily to them as they passed by, and calling out, “Merry Christmas” to the diner staff. It wasn’t surprising that the owner of the restaurant had packed up several cartons of nonperishable foodstuff for them to take to the next homeless shelter.
“They seem really nice,” Stan observed when they were all gone.
“Wait ’til they start interfering in your life,” Sam warned.
“Hah! They already have,” JD said. “That bus must have passed by a half dozen towns with sheriffs’ offices today, but would Betty Morgan stop? Nosirree. She came up with more damn excuses why she couldn’t veer off her scheduled route than Lucky Charms has marshmallows. There’s no question in my mind that the ladies on this bus have been conspiring to protect Callie.”
“From you?” Sam asked.
“From the law.”
“Oh, that’s right, you already told me she’s an FTA. That means failure-to-appear,” he told Stan, impressed with his own ability to have remembered that bit of bounty hunter lingo.
“Why would the members of the Santa Brigade want to protect a criminal?” Stan wanted to know.
“She’s not really a criminal. At least, I’m not sure she is. She’s a star witness in a federal racketeering case, and she disappeared the day her court testimony was due. But I think the Santa ladies have ulterior motives for harboring Callie. She’s a famous designer, and they’ve enlisted her to help with dressing some old Barbie dolls they received yesterday. If they don’t get them dressed, they can’t give them out tomorrow, or Thursday.”
Stan put his face in his hands, then shook his head like a shaggy dog. “Hold the train . . . uh, bus . . . here, JD. What does the Amish woman, sheriffs and FTA have to do with each other? Better yet, what dress designer?”
“Callie is
the
Callie of Callie Brandt Originals.”
“Holy Smoke, JD! She’s as famous as Donna Karan or Vera Wang.”
“Who the hell is Vera Wing?” Sam was addressing Stan. “You know the names of women’s dress designers?”
“It’s Vera Wang, you lunkhead,” Stan laughed. “And who hasn’t heard of Callie Brandt? She designed a bunch of the gowns for the Oscars last year.”
“Well, this just takes the cake! An ex-NFL football player who’s into dress designs!”
“You wanna make something of it?” Stan growled just before poking him in the ribs with an elbow. Between the overhearty shoulder whack and this jab, not to mention Mrs. Smith’s head bang with a clipboard, he was going to be black and blue.
Then he turned his attention back to JD “And you have
the
Callie Brandt handcuffed to your bed? For the love of Mike, JD, you are in big, big trouble.”
Instead of disagreeing, JD nodded with a self-deprecating grimace.
It was Stan’s turn to play catch-up.
“How you doing, buddy?” JD stared pointedly at the cane propped against the table, near Stan’s knee.
“I’m okay,” Stan answered, but the lack of enthusiasm in his voice belied his assurances. “With continued therapy, this gimp leg should be near perfect. Once I get this shoulder back the way it should be, I won’t suffer so much pain, either. But my football days are over, guys.”
A prolonged silence hit their booth then as each contemplated Stan’s prognosis.
“Dammit, I’m thirty-two years old. I probably would have had to quit in a year or two anyway as these old bones grew creaky. But I always said I’d go out in a blaze of glory, not through the blaze of a distracted driver.” The bitterness in his voice was telling.
“What will you do now?” JD asked.
“Hell if I know.”
“Do you need any cash?” Sam inquired. “I have a little stashed away.”
Stan laughed. “Thanks for the offer, but money is the least of my problems. Truth to tell, I’ve made a ton this past year, but not from football. It seems I have the Midas touch in picking stocks.”
“Like how Midas?” JD wanted to know.
“Like one million profit on Dilly.com, alone. And another mil on some medical stocks. Like I said, I seem to have the knack.”
He and JD just gaped at their friend. Who would have guessed it, when they were raggedy orphans back in Snowdon, that one of them would turn into a regular Warren Buffet.
“And the woman with you? Dana? Is she someone special?”
“Nah!” Stan said. “I mean, she’s special, all right, with those great legs of hers.” He smiled to himself as if picturing those very legs. Probably in some interesting positions. “She’s a friend of George’s. He asked me to pick her up along the way.”
When Stan was done talking, a comfortable silence prevailed.
“No matter what our problems might be at the moment,” Sam said suddenly, “you have to admit, we’ve come a long way from Snowdon.”
“Yep,” his two good buddies concurred.
Sam planted his elbow in the middle of the table, a signal for the multiple-handed shake that had been a symbol for their friendship from way back. The other two put their elbows on the table, as well, and all of them clasped hands, one on top of the other. Tears of emotion rimmed all three sets of eyes.
“Friends Forever,” they said.
There was something missing from this picture, though. It was supposed to be a four-handed shake, not just three. Reba had been their best friend, too.
Sam vowed then and there. He was going to get Reba back, come hell or high water . . . or Santa Brigade. As a military man, he knew how to plan assaults. He had weapons. He was Slick. If nothing else, she was now his target. Let her just try to escape his cross-hairs.
Reba didn’t stand a chance.
(Continue reading for information about Sandra Hill)
About the Author
Sandra Hill is the bestselling author of more than thirty romantic humor novels. Whether they be historicals, contemporaries, time travels, or Christmas novellas, whether they be Vikings, Cajuns, Navy SEALs or sexy Santas, the common element in all her books is humor.
As the mother of four sons and the loooong-time wife of a stock broker, Sandra says that she had to develop a sense of humor as a survival skill in the all-male bastion she calls home. (Even her German Shepherd is a male.) And as a newspaper journalist, before turning to fiction, she managed to find a lighter side to even the darkest stories.
It’s been said that love makes the world go ’round, but in Sandra’s world, love with a dash of laughter, makes it spin.
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