Holiday Man (18 page)

The room temperature spiked hotter than a night in July.

And somewhere in the distance—in the middle of yet another Midwestern blizzard—Bram
Hartwick
could have sworn he heard fireworks.

####

About the Author:

Marilyn Brant has been told she writes with honesty, liveliness and wit (descriptors she's grown terribly fond of) about complex, intelligent women—like her friends—and their significant personal relationships. Although her favorite pursuits undoubtedly involve books, she proves she's not just a literary snob by confessing her lifelong fascination (read: obsession) with popular music, especially from the '70s and '80s, most flavors of ice cream and a variety of sensuous body lotions/oils.

Marilyn is the award-winning women's fiction author of ACCORDING TO JANE (2009), FRIDAY MORNINGS AT NINE (2010) and A SUMMER IN EUROPE (2011), all from Kensington Books. She also writes fun and flirty romantic comedies that involve sweet treats and large doses of humor. Her novel ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAE was released on
ebook
in June 2011 and was a Kindle Top 100 Bestseller in Humor. DOUBLE DIPPING followed in September 2011 and was a finalist for Best Contemporary Novel in the 2012 International Digital Awards. Look for more of Marilyn’s original
ebook
exclusives coming soon, including HOLIDAY MAN (November 2012) and PRIDE, PREJUDICE AND THE PERFECT MATCH (January 2013).

As a former teacher, library staff member, freelance magazine writer and national book reviewer, Marilyn has spent much of her life lost in literature. Her debut novel, ACCORDING TO JANE, featuring the ghost of Jane Austen giving a young woman dating advice, won the Romance Writers of America's prestigious Golden Heart Award, and it was selected as one of the “Top 100 Romance Novels of All Time” by Buzzle.com. Her second novel, FRIDAY MORNINGS AT NINE, was a Doubleday and Book-of-the-Month Club pick. And A SUMMER IN EUROPE was featured in the Literary Guild and BOMC2, and it became a Top 20 Bestseller in “Fiction and Literature” for the Rhapsody Book Club.

She currently lives in the Chicago suburbs with her family. When she isn't reading her friends’ books or watching old movies, she's working on her next novel, eating chocolate indiscriminately and hiding from the laundry.

Below are some book details and a few excerpts from three of
Marilyn’s other popular contemporary romances, which are available in multiple digital formats:

An Excerpt from ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAE (June 2011)

In this light romantic comedy involving a shy dessert cookbook writer and a former football star, Brant takes us to an ice cream parlor in small-town Wisconsin where two people who couldn’t be more different from each other find themselves falling in love...

Elizabeth rarely swore aloud but, in her mind, she was cursing not just a blue streak, but also a red, orange, yellow and green streak. She was, in fact, well on her way to a complete blasphemous rainbow, and Rob
Gabinarri
hadn’t even arrived yet.

Of all people. She never thought she’d have to make it through so much as a ten-minute soda pop break with
him
again. The boy who’d broken her heart and didn’t even know it.

Or maybe he did know it.

She couldn’t decide which was the greater tragedy.

A snazzy red Porsche convertible squealed to a stop behind her sensible blue Toyota Camry, and the town’s Golden Boy stepped out of the car and into the empty confectionary shop.

“Hey,
Lizzy
. Long time, no see,” he said, glancing around the shop in a frantic kind of way.

“E-Elizabeth,” she corrected automatically.

“Oh, all right. Sorry.”

She stared at him, which of course he didn’t notice because he was too busy looking at everything else in the place besides her.

He walked into the backroom then out of it again.

He peered into the washrooms.

He opened and shut a few closets.

He paced back and forth, sat down in a booth, got back up and paced some more.

The guy was as tall and muscular and breathtaking as he’d been a decade before when he used to saunter through the unremarkable halls of Wilmington Bay High School, oblivious to anyone and anything beyond the football field and his bevy of admirers. If it were possible, he seemed even more youthful and in command now than he did at age eighteen.

And she felt about as queasy as she’d felt the last time they’d been face to face.

Finally, his pacing stopped. “Where is my uncle?” he asked in a husky whisper, directing the query at a tray of chocolate-dipped sugar cookies. “Uncle?” he called out. “Uncle
Pauly
?”

She wanted to tell him, but the words were lodged in her esophagus and, anyway, he wasn’t talking to her.

He strode into the backroom again, as if convinced the elderly Italian man could be found hiding behind a jar of candied cherries or a vat of butterscotch syrup. The long black eyelashes blinked in confusion when he emerged into the main shop once again, his gaze and those nutmeg-brown eyes directed at her.

“Don’t tell me he left already.” This was more a threat than a question. He shook his head at her as though that gesture alone would discourage an affirmative reply.

She held her breath and nodded.

“
Where
is he?”

She
pursed
her lips, just as she’d learned in her special speech tutorials so long ago, formed the first letter and tried to push it out of her mouth. But she stuttered anyway.

“L-Lufthansa. F-Fl-Flight four-oh-three.”

He cocked his gorgeous head to one side and stared at her in the way she’d grown so accustomed to during her miserable school years:
Poor Old
Lizzy
, the look said.
What a geeky dweeb.

“What time is it scheduled to depart?” he asked her with an affected gentleness that made her want to rip out his vocal cords.

She tapped her watch and gathered her courage for whatever might happen next. “T-Twenty m-m-minutes a-ago.”

“Oh, bloody hellfire!” Rob shouted, adding several inventive phrases to his curse before pausing to take a breath.

Elizabeth had managed to squeeze out a few additional syllables of explanation, but Rob was quick to catch on to the full meaning, she noticed, even when words were left unspoken.

“Uncle
Pauly
said he’d be gone only a couple of weeks.” He rubbed his palms against his eyes. “Not a freaking
month
. And he never mentioned
Europe
.” He pounded his fist on the ice-cream-window part of the counter three times in rapid succession. “He said everything would be explained when I got up here.” He turned toward her. “Guess you were elected to supply the details.”

If she’d been capable of it, she would’ve laughed. Oh, yeah. Now that was a first. One for the record books. Elizabeth Daniels: Verbal Disseminator of Information.
Hee-hee
. Ha-ha.

“S-Sorry,” she said.

He paused. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just…” But words must have defied him, too because he left the sentence uncompleted.

A jangling of bells broke the silence.

“Howdy, folks,” the chatty old florist from down the block said. “Hey,
Pauly
, Siegfried,” he called. “Need to get me a double scoop of Cherry-Almond S—” He stopped mid-speech and surveyed Rob from the top of his dark Italian head right down to his pricey black-and-white Nikes. “Holy Hydrangea. Is that really Roberto
Gabinarri
standing in front of me?”

Rob grinned but a look of something other than gratification (wariness, perhaps?) slid over his face like a well-formed mask. “Good to see you again, sir. You’re looking fit as ever.”

The gentleman shook his head as if disbelieving the sight. “Been blazing a hot trail through Chicago, I hear. But, we’ve all missed you in Wilmington Bay, son. Does your uncle know you’re back?” He didn’t wait for Rob to answer. “
Pauly
! Siegfried!” He raised his palms. “Where are they?”

She watched Rob inhale several slow breaths. She could almost see him selecting his words with precision, the way a pastry chef might chose just the right filling for a pie.

“They’re taking a much-deserved vacation,” he said, nodding sagely at the older gentleman and motioning him closer as if letting him in on a deep family secret. “And we couldn’t let them close the shop now, could we? During June?”

The florist’s eyes grew large. “Oh, no.”

“Of course not. Especially since their best customers were counting on them.” Rob winked at the man and grabbed an ice cream scoop. “This cone’s on the house,” he said, digging into the tub of Cherry-Almond Swirl and piling the sweet concoction in massive, if inexpert, blobs atop a sugar cone. “Uncle
Pauly’s
orders.”

So Rob was going to start bribing and spin-doctoring, was he? Fine. She’d play along. In fact, she had to hand it to him. Considering the look of bliss on the talkative florist’s face, the gossip he’d inevitably spread about them could only be in their favor. She clamped her mouth shut and did her part by passing the man a paper napkin and shooting him a closed-lipped smile.

“Why, thank you,
dearie
,” the florist said to her. “
Gotta
get back to talking to my geraniums and begonias before they start complaining.” He licked his cone and twinkled his delight at her with his eyes.

She waved him off without uttering a sound, a trick she’d perfected through years of social avoidance, then she grabbed her notebook and ripped out the page she’d been working on. She handed it to Rob.

“What’s this?” he said, slumping against the counter.

With her pen, she pointed to the heading she’d written in block letters.

“A schedule? For what? The shop?” He stared at her as if this were the most foreign of concepts.

She nodded.

“For us? To divide up the opening and closing times?”

Good. He could read. She nodded again.

“But who’s going to work the shifts in between? Last time I talked with Uncle
Pauly
, he said he and Siegfried were doing most of the serving themselves. Said they didn’t trust many people and they’d only hire out part-time helpers during really busy times or when one of them was sick.”

She knew this, which was why she’d have to rely more heavily on Jacques, and why she’d called both Gretchen and Nick and told them they absolutely
had
to come over tomorrow to help her with this. She was desperate.

“M-M-My
fr
-friends will be w-working here,” she said.

“Well, great,” he said, looking relieved. “Hey, I mean, if you think you can handle all of the organizing, get trustworthy people to take the over shifts and all, you can count on me to chip in with other things. Funding their salaries for the month. Doing all the stock ordering. Sending out publicity notices. Anything you need, just so I can be back in Chicago soon.”

She winced. She’d been especially dreading relaying this part of
Pauly’s
parting message. Although she didn’t know the precise reason, she sensed Rob wouldn’t like the news. “Y-You can’t l-leave.”

“Why not?” he said, but the uneasiness in his tone convinced her he wasn’t surprised there might be a complication.

“P-
Pauly
called your m-m-mother. T-Told her to expect you for Sunday d-d-dinner tonight. And every n-night.”

“Oh, hell.”

She pushed her long, unruly hair out of her eyes and blinked at him. Funny, she’d never before seen the Golden Boy’s rugged olive complexion look quite so peaked.

“
Lizzy
,” he said, setting her carefully constructed schedule back on the counter. “You’re looking at a dead man.”

And with that, he collapsed into a six-foot heap of hunky male onto the floor.

An Excerpt from DOUBLE DIPPING (September 2011)

Opposites collide in this light mystery/romantic comedy when a dedicated 2nd grade teacher fights the school’s new financial director in order to reinstate a much-beloved autumn festival. But secrets, ambition, attraction and meddling family members complicate matters in this small Midwestern town...

Cait
whipped the lid off an activity box and dropped it to the floor with a clunk. She tossed some folders onto a kid’s desk and glanced up again at the clock. Another twenty minutes gone and still no Ogre-
ish
Budget Man. Huh.

She’d tried to find the guy, but his office was locked. Figured. So she’d scribbled a message for
him
to find
her
, tacked it to his door and took out her fury on the remaining boxes.

In an unpacking frenzy, she displayed the puzzles, put away the new stash of construction paper and arranged the language arts worksheets. Where the heck would she get the money to purchase the rest of the supplies she needed, though? The ones the school was too thrifty to buy this year?