Cowabunga Christmas (12 page)

When
we stepped back out onto the street, I took a deep breath of fresh air. I was delighted
to get out of there and put this whole mess behind us. Owen’s troubles had
drawn him into an abyss—even before that horrible last plunge into the deep end
of a swanky resort hotel pool. Coincidence had dragged us into Owen’s misbegotten
life of harebrained schemes. When Mitchum had uttered those words about a
buried treasure, I felt a shiver run down my spine. A shiver comprised, in
part, of curiosity. Fear, too.

I’m no
stranger to trouble. Brien and I had both pitched in on criminal investigations
before, so tangling with bad guys wasn’t entirely new, either. For the first
time in my life, though, I wondered if indulging my curiosity was always a good
thing. I reached for Brien, touching him for reassurance. I had more to lose,
now—more than ever before.

“What
do you think, Brien? Will they wrap up those loose ends?”

“Who
knows?” He shrugged and slung his hair back. Then he stepped closer. “It
doesn’t matter, Kim. We have a honeymoon to finish and a gnarly New Year to
kick off.” Brien bent down and kissed me—a kiss that started out sweet and
morphed into a toe-curler.

“Cowabunga,
Baby!” he whispered as he wrapped his arms around me and held on tight.

“Cowabunga,
Baby!” I replied, renewing a silent vow to leave it alone.

Thanks
for reading
COWABUNGA CHRISTMAS!
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leave a rating or a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Kim and Brien will be back
soon in
GNARLY NEW YEAR! To find out when it will be released signup at:
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Here’s a
sneak peek
at what’s to come...an excerpt
from Chapter 1 of
GNARLY NEW YEAR

~~~~~

T
he
week between Christmas and New Year has always been anticlimactic for me. Not
that I ever made a big deal out of Christmas. Growing up poor and then hitting
the streets as a teen didn’t leave me with the wherewithal to deck the halls,
if I’d had halls to deck. Still, there’s so much hoopla going on around you
it’s hard to ignore. Despite my bah-humbug attitude about all the hustle and
the bustle during the holiday season, I have to admit the celebratory spirit
touches me. For weeks there’s more color, bright lights, cheery music, and the
excitement is palpable. Then, bam! It just stops and you’re face-to-face with
the end of another year.

After
our most recent misadventure, I won’t ever complain again about an uneventful
week following Christmas. I was relieved, in fact, that the past week had been
everything a honeymoon should be—filled with romance, relaxation, excellent
food, spa days, and no more visits from surly detectives. Yay!

Surfing,
too! Brien and I woke up early, checked the surf, and if it looked decent we
grabbed our boards and hit the beach. I was getting better at handling my surfboard
on and off the water. Not that I possessed the panache my hubby displayed as he
gloried in riding the waves.

My
hubby—can’t believe how easily that term of endearment rolled right through of
my mind, like it was old news. I stopped to savor the prospect of being an old
married woman. What would it be like to have years and years of shared memories
like the ones we were storing up now, day by day?

I
gazed at the surf this morning, still not adept at reading the swells rolling
into the cove. I liked what I saw. The stunning black cliffs stood out against a
glittering riot of color created by the sunrise. I could see a single figure in
black out on the beach, alongside a surfboard that stood upright in the sand.
It could have been Willow. She was back. They told her to cool it after
recovering from injuries sustained in a standoff with a gunman. She did. In a
few days, though, she was out in the cove with us.

Could
it be Mick? From this distance I could not tell. There was still no sign of
him. Everyone agreed that was odd for the would-be tribal leader of the make-shift
surfer community, Sanctuary Grove. We were all curious, but the residents of
Sanctuary Grove decided to abide by his ‘live and let live’ edict and wait for
Mick to turn up on his own. Besides, Detective Mitchum with the local police in
San Albinus had promised to track Mick down. He intended to tell Mick there was
no need to continue searching for a missing GPS device that had belonged to a
now dead member of Sanctuary Grove. The cops were on it. One of several loose
ends they were wrapping up after discovering modern-day pirates running amok in
Corsario Cove. The scummy pirates had help, too, from staff at the spectacular
Sanctuary Resort & Spa we had chosen as our honeymoon destination.

Brien
and I were sticking with our vow to ‘leave it alone,’ and refrain from pursuing
those loose ends as we had been told to do. That doesn’t sit well with me. I
don’t like being told what to do by the bad guys
or
the good guys.
Still, it was the right thing to do. We had so little time left to indulge
ourselves. Soon, Brien and I would have to return to the desert near Palm
Springs. He would go back to his job with a high-end private security firm, and
I would resume my position as a legal assistant at a posh law firm on El
Paseo—the desert’s answer to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. We’d be back to
hustling and scrambling to find quality time—heck,
any
time just for just
the two of us.

I
sighed, and picked up the phone to call room service. We needed coffee. Coffee
would get Brien up on his feet so we could decide if surfing would inaugurate our
celebration of New Year’s Eve. If not, we had other options. The resort had
activities planned all day with dinner, dancing, champagne and fireworks set to
close out the evening and the year. Our reservations had been made for that
event when we booked our honeymoon trip. Soon after I placed an order for
coffee, there was a knock at the door.

“That
was quick. Too quick,” I muttered.

“Oh
hell, no!” I said. A peek through the peephole revealed Santa standing there.
“Go away, Santa, you’re too late—Christmas is over!” Not that the resort seemed
to agree with me. Santas still roamed the grounds, distributing gifts and
belting out tributes to the Christmas season. Every once in a while I got
creeped out by it—thinking about our recent experiences with folks decked out
like Santa. I also couldn’t shake the memory of a ghostly glimpse of Santa standing
up there on the cliffs overlooking Corsario Cove as a rescue boat whisked us
away. I chalked it up to the stress of the day. Willow had not been alone in
that standoff with a gunman.

When I
peeked again I was almost eyeball to eyeball with Santa. That was so creepy, I
yelped! Brien heard me even though I had shut the French doors that separated
the sitting room from the bedroom in our luxurious suite. He came running. Half
asleep, and not realizing the doors were shut, he bumped into them. I could see
him rubbing his nose through panes of glass that weren’t completely covered by
billowy voile curtains. I ran to open the French doors for Brien. Santa pounded
on the door again.

“Brien,
are you okay?” Not waiting for a reply, I continued. “Santa’s at the door—I
told him to go away.” Brien, wrapped in nothing but a sheet, tripped as he took
a step toward the door. He caught himself before falling and threw the long
edge of the bed sheet that had been dangling on the ground, over his shoulder.
That gave the sheet he wore the shape of a Roman toga. Santa knocked again.

“My wife
told you to go away, Santa!” Santa stopped pounding. Brien peered through that
peephole. “He’s still there. Call security, Kim. No, wait... wait!” Brien
slipped the chain off the door, slung the door wide open and Santa fell in,
landing face down on the floor of our sitting room!

To be
continued...

While
you’re waiting, why not check out the books in which Brien and Kim first
appear? Meet them for the first time in the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities
Mystery series, Books 1-3 are out now!

A DEAD HUSBAND
http://smarturl.it/deadhus

A DEAD SISTER
http://smarturl.it/deadsis

A DEAD DAUGHTER
http://smarturl.it/deaddau

AND THERE’S THE AWARD-WINNING PREQUEL TO
THE JESSICA HUNTINGTON SERIES...

LOVE
A FOOT ABOVE THE GROUND

http://smarturl.it/LOVEABOVE

Just to get you
started...here’s the first chapter from A DEAD HUSBAND!

~~~~~

A Dead Husband

CHAPTER 1

Jessica bolted upright in bed. Not a
good thing to do. The light of day pierced like a knife. Her world spun. Her
head throbbed, and a wave of nausea flowed through her. The force of her body’s
revolt knocked her back onto the pillow. She closed her eyes to shut out the
light and waited for the spinning sensation to subside. From somewhere in the
depths of stupor she heard the sound that had startled her awake: a loud snort.
She struggled to make sense of the fear and confusion while remaining
motionless to avoid another assault to her senses. Where the hell was she? Risking
a peek, she glimpsed up and recognized the vaulted ceiling and dramatic angles
of the room in which she had grown up.

For a moment she felt comforted because
she was, at least, in her own bed. The plush bed cradled her body, lulling her
back toward oblivion. Then it all came rushing in on her, crushing her chest with
an anvil of rage and regret.

My own bed all right
, she thought. In her mother’s house
that is, not her adult, married-woman bed now occupied by her feckless,
soon-to-be ex-husband, and the blond. Jessica’s breathing quickened; her heart
fluttered, and then palpitated wildly. Her heart now beat out a vicious dirge
to match the pounding in her head.

“Oh no,” she muttered, as she spiraled
toward a full blown panic attack. She rolled over and scooted toward the edge
of the bed, hoping to dig out the paper bag she kept in the bedside table. She
needed to breathe. To regain control of her mind and body that had betrayed her
so often.

As Jessica reached into the drawer, she
heard it again. A snorting sound, but this time much louder. Without thinking
she jumped out of bed and stumbled, almost head first, into a luxurious upholstered
club chair in the tasteful neutral tones of the Kreiss furnishings her mother
adored. The room spun again as Jessica’s knees hit the floor. Her upper body
landed on something hard in the chair. She pulled out an empty bottle, Cristal
champagne, vintage 2004.

A decent year, at least
, she thought.

A party, there had been a party. She set
the bottle on the floor and pulled herself up into the comfort of the bedside
chair. Holding her head in both hands she scanned the floor around her feet and
spotted two more empty Cristal bottles. That helped explain her current state. Discarded
take-out food containers and candy bar wrappers were strewn about as were
articles of clothing.

The slinky little Dolce & Gabbana
dress she had worn last night lay in a twisted heap on the floor not wearable
ever again. A couple grand down the drain. It must have come off in a hurry. One
red Alexa pump peeped out from beneath the bed, silk stockings nearby, and a
pair of men’s jeans. Jessica’s scanning came to a dead stop. She raised her
eyes to gaze on higher ground.

A scantily-clad man lay sprawled on the
far side of her super-sized bed, face down. Something about him was familiar,
but in her addled condition she could not make out who he was. Nor could she
remember how he, or she, got there. Looking down as quickly as she dared, she
noted she was still wearing her Spanx. Jessica let out a little sigh of relief.
Things
couldn’t have gone too far with the guy in her bed since she was still wearing
her Spanx
. She struggled to
get into the body shaper stone cold sober. If she had done her share polishing
off the contents of the bottles in her room she would have needed help.

The guy on the bed looked like he could
have given her that help. Unless he drank as much Cristal as she had. Jessica
squelched a bout of shame as she lingered on his well-muscled body, clad in
nothing but a pair of boxers. It felt voyeuristic. Not to mention, that even if
her life depended on it, she couldn’t say who he was. Besides, she was still a
married woman. She hadn’t signed the divorce papers yet.

Why isn’t he moving?
Jessica wondered. From where she sat,
it didn’t even look like he was breathing. It must have been his snorting that brought
her back so abruptly from the edge of insensibility. But he was dead to the
world now, not a sound or a twitch in any of the bronzed body parts she could
see.

Lifting herself from the chair, Jessica leaned
over to get a better look at his face. A shock of peroxided blond hair covered
much of it. Jessica hiked one knee up onto the bed. Edging closer she reached
out to move the hair so she could see his face. She had hardly touched him when
he grabbed her hand and smiled at her. Jessica let out a loud whoop and
struggled to break free.

“Whoa,” he said, still dull with sleep.

“Let go!” Jessica barked, pulling away
from him. Startled, he let go of her hand and the momentum propelled her back
off the bed. As her feet hit the floor she continued moving backwards. She tripped
over the discarded Cristal bottle, and landed flat on her butt on the floor,
with a loud “ouch!”

Her shrieks evoked an even louder male
response. Not from the buff, blond man-boy in her bed who couldn’t have been
more than 23 or 24—25 tops. The sound came from the floor on the other side of
the bed. Another male head popped up and Jessica could not stop another yelp.
Her heart started to rev up again.

“What the hell, Jessica?” her friend Tommy
said. “I’m going to take a Technicolor yawn all over this fine Italian duvet
you scored at Between the Sheets last week if you don’t stop screaming. I don’t
want to ruin it,” he said caressing the silky cinnamon-colored duvet as though
it were alive and needed soothing. He rested his head on the edge of the bed
then looked up.

“You will have wasted all that revenge
shopping, the time, the energy, the focus. You only have so many divorce
tantrums in you, you know?”

Jessica blinked several times. Her eyes moved
from the disgruntled Tommy, still only partly visible from his perch on the
floor, to the sandy haired Adonis. Smiling, he was now propped up in her bed. His
arms were folded across a well-developed chest, washboard abs exposed above the
waistband of his boxer shorts.

Not my usual type
, she mused to herself,
if I have a
type
. Her eyes lingered a moment longer focusing more on his face, then
widened in horror and recognition.

“Ppppool boy!” she gasped loudly. Remembering
how little she had on, a new wave of embarrassment worked its way through her
body from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Without warning, the
bedroom door flew open. All three of them wailed and shrank away from the door.