Tinsel My Heart
Authors: Christi Barth
Tinsel My Heart
By Christi Barth
Becca Huntley’s produced the Lyndale Park Players’ over-the-top Christmas show for ten years. It’s a beloved Minneapolis tradition, and the theater’s main fund-raiser. But this year’s production is in danger of being canceled when their director disappears into rehab. Good thing his directing partner steps in to save the day. Except for the minor fact that he hates
everything
about Christmas.
Jack Whittaker wiped this town off his shoe with his graduation tassel and never looked back. But duty compels him to fulfill Tyler’s promise to direct the show. Even though it means working with Becca, the girl he always wanted, lost to Ty, but never forgot.
It’ll take more than a few handfuls of tinsel to soften Jack’s heart toward Becca’s favorite holiday. Steamy kisses that melt the snow right off his boots are a step in the right direction. They’ll both discover that Christmas is about making each other’s dreams come true. But will it require sacrificing their chance at a happily-ever-after together?
30,000 words
Dear Reader,
It’s unbelievable to me that the holiday season is here already. I feel as though I was just stuffing myself full of holiday cookies, spiced wine and all of the wonderful chocolates sent to me during the holidays. But here we are again in what some call the season of joy, while others call it “the season where I avoid all shopping malls for at least two months.” If you’re one of those avoiding all of the seemingly endless holiday tasks, preparations and shopping, let us help you procrastinate with another fantastic lineup of books. If you’re one who revels in the season of joy, not to worry, these books will only add to your enjoyment of the season.
This month, we have so many returning authors who are fan favorites, I’m not sure where to start. So instead, I’ll start with those who are new, either to readers, to Carina Press, or both. Beginning with debut author Michele Mannon, whose book first came to my attention two years ago during a cold-reads session at a meeting of New Jersey Romance Writers. During that session, I gave Michele some suggestions for strengthening her opening and she worked on it for several months before going on to win a few contests and eventually pitching it to me, at which point I acquired with great enthusiasm. I hope you’ll check out her fantastic love story of a former ballerina turned ring girl and a brooding, sexy fighter in
Knock Out
, book one of the Worth the Fight trilogy. And don’t mind me while I claim partial credit for the opening line...
Joining Michele with a debut book is Timothy S. Johnston and his science-fiction thriller. It’s Agatha Christie meets Michael Crichton in
The Furnace
as homicide investigator Kyle Tanner travels to a remote space station to solve a mysterious death that may have enormous consequences for the human race.
Our third debut author makes her appearance in one of my annual holiday collections. These have become a tradition at Carina Press, and one that I love, since I get a chance to work with a new variety of authors every year. This year, we have four collections. Last month saw the release of two of them:
Gift of Honor
, a military holiday collection, and
Season of Seduction
, an erotic holiday collection.
This month we release the two contemporary holiday collections, and it’s in
For My Own
that Shari Mikels makes her writing debut with her novella
Christmas Curveball.
Joining her in this contemporary romance collection are new-to-Carina author Kinley Cade with her novella
Kissing Her Scrooge
, and fan-favorite Alison Packard with
A
Christmas for Carrie.
In the second contemporary romance holiday collection, returning authors Christi Barth, Brighton Walsh and Kat Latham join together to offer some holiday love and forgiveness in
All I’m Asking For
with their novellas
Tinsel My Heart
,
Season of Second Chances
and
Mine Under the Mistletoe.
Also new to Carina Press this month are authors Keri Ford, Ann DeFee, T.C. Mill and Daryl Anderson, each offering up something different for reader entertainment. Keri Ford brings us a fun contemporary romance in
Never Stopped Loving You
, in which the heroine has to remind herself: don’t date your friends—and definitely don’t
ever
date your friend’s brother. Ann DeFee’s
Beyond Texas
is a fast-paced contemporary romance of mystical lights that dance across the desert as the hero and heroine, Cole Claiborne and Twinkie Sue Carmichael, discover love while thwarting an evil cult, giving new meaning to the old saying “Don’t Mess with a Texan.”
In T.C. Mill’s male/male fantasy novella,
Gardens Where No One Will See
, Nemaran’s gentle attentions inspire Renad to go beyond the boundaries he’s set for himself for so long—but can they help him break free of even crueler bondage?
And last in the new-to-Carina category, Daryl Anderson
is on the scene in
Murder in Mystic Cove.
In this new mystery, a former Baltimore homicide detective thought she’d put murder cases behind her—until she discovered a resident in her father’s retirement community shot dead in his golf cart.
Returning to Carina Press with contemporary romance
Love Me Not
, Reese Ryan introduces us to struggling artist Jamie Charles, who finds refuge from the painful secrets of her past in her art and prefers living on the edge—without the complications of love—until she encounters charming ad exec Miles Copeland, who is harboring his own dark past and is determined to have her heart.
Fantasy romance author Shawna Thomas has the third installment in her Triune Stones series,
Journey of Wisdom.
It’s not too late to catch up before the series wraps up with the last book,
Journey of the Wanderer
, in February 2014.
If you’re looking to spice up your holidays with a BDSM erotic romance,
The Dom Project
by Heloise Belleau and Solace Ames will keep you warm, even when it’s cold outside. When buttoned-up university archivist Robin Lessing agrees to spend one month submitting to a sexy, tattooed colleague, she presents her new Dom with a firm set of rules. But once they begin their stimulating sessions, it’s not long before she’s ready to beg him for more—much more.
Also this month, we have three powerhouse fan favorites with new books. Shannon Stacey returns to the Kowalskis with the much-anticipated
Love a Little Sideways.
When Drew Miller had a casual rebound fling with his best friend’s sister, he thought she’d go back to New Mexico and stay there, but now Liz Kowalski has come home to stay, and Drew’s feelings for her might not be as casual as he thought.
After a two-year wait, Lauren Dane is back with
Blade to the Keep
, the follow-up to
Goddess with a Blade.
Rowan Summerwaite is no ordinary woman. With the power of an ancient goddess in her belly, she’s the perfect candidate to re-negotiate the fragile Treaty keeping the peace between the Vampire Nation and the last line of defense for humanity, The Hunter Corporation. And she’s got to do it as she attempts to manage a politically awkward romance during a trip back to a place she escaped nearly fifteen years before. No pressure.
Wrapping up this month is
The Principle of Desire
, the final book in the Science of Temptation trilogy from Delphine Dryden.
1
Sexy Switch
+
1
Nerdy Newbie
=
A
Master Class in Seduction.
Last, no matter what your religion, or what you celebrate, books are a common bond, so from all of us at Carina Press, we wish you a wonderful season of reading. May there be incredible books, stories and characters on your ereaders all year long!
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to
[email protected]
. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
www.twitter.com/carinapress
www.facebook.com/carinapress
Dedication
For my husband, who played Joseph to my Mary in
The Nativity
for several years. You always put an extra sparkle in my holidays, darling.
Acknowledgments
A big nod of gratitude to the hundreds who were with me in the real-life Minneapolis cast of
The Nativity
. Thanks to Marilyn & Glen Nelson for creating the show that is the inspiration for this book. You gave me a magical experience I’ll never forget. Hugs to the MRW Scribblers for putting up with reading a Christmas book in the middle of March. Sincere appreciation to Judith Cauthan for sharing her sentimental ornament memory.
And I’m thrilled Angela James edited this particular book, for she truly “got” every Upper Midwest reference. And much gratitude for how she pushed me to make it a better, deeper book.
Chapter One
“Christmas is ruined.” Becca Heglund paced the length of the Loring Park Players’ rehearsal room. Since the middle-of-the-night call, her stomach had been twisted into a gigantic knot. She was running on no sleep and far too many gingerbread lattes. Not to mention the adrenaline boost from sheer panic about the future of her theatre company. Dramatics always got the actors’ attention. But over-exaggeration with their board of directors might detract from the seriousness of the problem. She dialed it back a notch. “At least, Christmas is ruined for all of Minneapolis. Probably a good chunk of St. Paul too.”
“That’s unacceptable,” blustered Rick Ryerson. The top of his fooling-no-one toupee fluttered a bit as he whipped his head back and forth to share his frustration with the entire board. “The city needs this show. We need the goodwill, we need to keep a tradition that makes our citizens so happy, and frankly, we need the hotel and restaurant revenue the out-of-town audiences will deliver.”
As deputy mayor of Minneapolis, he cared about how the news of the LPP Christmas pageant’s imminent cancellation affected the city first and foremost. Whereas Becca, as LPP’s producer, cared more about the fate of the theatre company. Either way, they were screwed.
With a gentle throat-clearing—because everything Judy Bergdahl did was gentle—the chair of the board bestowed a wry smile upon Rick. “LPP needs the money too.”
Thank goodness. Someone else who understood just how dire their situation would be if
Season of Celebration
didn’t open. Becca made a mental note to bake Judy some thank-you cranberry cream cheese brownies. Nope, better not leave it to chance. She pulled out her smartphone and tapped in a reminder. Lists and reminders and notes were the bulwarks of her life. They soothed her. Most of all, they helped her keep her sanity amid the crazy, raucous and generally disorganized group of actors that formed her company.
Their perpetually frazzled costume designer jumped off the haystack she’d been perched upon. Rats. That haystack was left over from last spring’s production of
Oklahoma
. Which made it now nothing more than a fire hazard. Becca tapped another note to have one of the set crew haul it out of the building ASAP. “Christmas isn’t about money,” proclaimed Nora. “We aren’t laborers toiling in the fields, you know. We’re a company of artists.”
Rick harrumphed. “Artists aren’t worth spit once they’re off stage. That’s why the board is dealing with this crisis, instead of the company.”
Amazing that a man so blunt—and with his head so far up his ass most days—had even minimal control over her beloved hometown. Becca couldn’t stand Rick. Nobody at LPP could. But an automatic seat on the board was a supposed perk of his job description. In years past, counting a city official among their members had been beneficial to the company. Rick, however, hated the arts. Tried to cut all arts funding to elementary schools. Tried to install parking meters in every theatre lot in the city in order to raise extra funds for a new minor league baseball stadium. And only suffered coming to meetings because, in a stroke of brilliance, Becca had shown him a chart illustrating just how much revenue LPP added to the city’s coffers with their shows. His lack of respect for the cast and crew of LPP, however, had not improved.
“Look, you all know I love Christmas.” Without a speck of self-consciousness, Becca tugged at the jingle bell hanging from her neck on a red ribbon. “I love that our show fills people with that special magic of the holidays. I love that
Season of Celebration
gives back to the community by involving more than a hundred volunteers. This year, our twentieth anniversary production, should be the capstone to a great legacy of holiday shows. But this year, I’m afraid it truly is also about the money.”
Martin Ecklund raised his hand. It cracked Becca up. He’d been on the board for over three decades, and still raised his hand for every question, every meeting. “Marty, what’s your question?”
“I thought we’d already sold hundreds of DVDs. To finance the move into our new theatre. Doesn’t that solve the money problem?”
With his button-down cardigans and smelling faintly of menthol lozenges year round, Marty was adorable. He was also pushing eighty. Nobody had the heart to toss him off the board. They were pretty sure LPP was the only thing that got him out of bed most mornings. He’d started as a volunteer set-painter a year after his wife died. His daughter dragged him to it in order to get him out of the house. It took only one show before he threw himself into the company whole-heartedly. But he was slipping. Especially on the days he didn’t wear his hearing aid. Which was most of them.
So Becca dug deep for patience and started again. “Yes, we’ve had great response to our mailer. We pre-sold the DVDs. Of this year’s show. Which hasn’t happened yet. If we don’t open, we’ll have to refund all the money we’ve collected so far. Worse yet, we won’t be able to afford to move into our new building. Oh, and our lease on this building expires on January 1. Our money problems are far from solved.”
“I helped touch up the nativity scene last weekend,” Marty said with a befuddled shake of his head. “Heard the actors rehearsing. The show’s coming along fine.”
If only it was that simple. “The show is fine. Our stage manager’s been going over the blocking basics to get people up to speed. But our big-time guest director Tyler Petersen got hauled off to rehab. Yesterday. Which brings the production to a screeching halt.”
Judy threw up her hands. “Directors are a dime a dozen in this town. I’m sure, if we all put our heads together, we can scrape somebody up.”
“Theatre directors, sure,” Becca pointed out. “Not film. Not like Tyler Petersen. He’s huge. Equally comfortable with blockbusters and indies. He’s got all the film experience we need to deal with lighting and camera angles. Not to mention he’d offered to direct free of charge. We don’t have time or resources to find a new director who can handle this hybrid live/taped production. We certainly don’t have the money to pay a stipend even if we could find one. We’re dead in the water.”
“You always were a drama queen, Becca. Relax. Consider me your official life raft.” A tall man, black leather coat swirling about his ankles, leaned both arms against the door frame. Tousled black hair fell in artful disarray over his forehead. A trim goatee and black brows made his blue eyes pop. He looked dangerous, more than a little pissed off and sexy as all get out.
But then, Becca had always found Jack Whittaker sexy. Ever since she first set eyes on him back in high school. He and Tyler had been an inseparable pair. When they met Becca in drama class, it became the three of them, fused together as a unit, every waking minute. If Becca had to name a single regret in her entire life, the answer would always be the same: never kissing Jack. Not that he’d ever made a move.
He wasn’t the high school hottie anymore. The tall, lanky boy had disappeared. Now Jack had as many muscles as all the heroes in the movies he directed. Wide shoulders stretched a plain white T-shirt taut across defined pecs. Swirls of dark hair poked out of the vee of his shirt. He was all man. Mouthwatering man. Big, brawny, sexalicious man. The kind of man who made a woman feel tiny and delicate. Even a woman like Becca, who stood at five foot eleven in flats, thanks to her Scandinavian ancestors and their big blond genes.
Then she remembered to breathe. And close her mouth. “Jack? Jack Whittaker?” That’s right. Play it cool, she thought. As if he was just another Eden Prairie High School alum stopping in to shoot the breeze after ten years. As if all of America didn’t know who he was. Hadn’t seen him front row at every award show, and on the morning shows and the late night shows and daytime talk shows and the cover of
People
magazine a dozen times. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass.”
* * *
Damn, she looked good. Tyler constantly bugged Jack by shoving Facebook photos of their old high school classmates in front of him. Some of the men were going bald. Lots of the women had mom-spread going on. But the sight of Becca Heglund still zinged right into his eyes and straight down to his dick. Something about the way all that wavy blond hair looked like a man had slept with it crumpled in his fist. Or how her lower lip pouted out just enough to make him think about biting it. Every damn time he looked at her. Like everyone else in this frozen tundra, she wore a bulky sweater. Didn’t manage to hide her lithe frame. Tall enough that Jack imagined he could kiss her without getting a crick in his neck.
“Don’t you have a movie to make?” she asked.
“Yup. Something called—” he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and double-checked the name, “—
Season of Celebration
.” Jack rolled his eyes. “Hokey, right? But that’s the price I pay for joining up with a project already underway. Too late to fix everything. Just gotta keep moving forward.”
A woman with grey hair shorter than Jack’s stood. “Young man, this is a closed meeting of the Loring Park Players Board of Directors. We’ve very important problems to iron out. If you’re a friend of Becca’s, you’ll have to catch up later.”
Only in his home state could people smile politely while they put their foot on your ass and booted you out the door. “I think you’ll want me to stick around. From what I hear, you need a director.” Jack walked all the way into the room. Bowed at the waist with a flourish. He’d learned how to do that in a tenth grade production of
Cyrano
. Some things stuck. Whereas the geometry he’d learned that year? Out of his brain before he’d swapped his learner’s permit for a license. “At your service.”
The woman gave him a once-over. Her wrinkled nose and crossed arms told him that she didn’t approve of the leather duster. Or the well-worn combat boots. What was she expecting—a guy with a skinny French mustache and a beret? Or the classic I-don’t-want-the-world-to-know-I’m-losing-my-hair baseball cap? “You’re a film director?”
“That’s what it says on my Director’s Guild of America membership card.”
Becca assumed the middle ground and a placating expression. “Judy, this is Jack Whittaker. Tyler Petersen’s directing partner. He knows his way around a camera every bit as well as Tyler.”
He corrected her backhanded compliment. “Some would say better.”
“Judy Bergdahl.” The older lady shook his hand. Then stepped back and re-crossed her arms. Clearly he still hadn’t passed muster. “You want to help us out?”
Jack didn’t usually have to force favors down people’s throats. Nowadays people lined up in droves to fawn and beg for a moment of his time, two minutes to pitch the next big screenplay. Here he was, offering up the next three weeks of his expensive, overscheduled life to this pissant theatre company, and getting nothing but the cold shoulder. Fuck it. “No. I really don’t.”
He’d sworn never to return to Minnesota. Left the state almost before his graduation tassel finished swinging from one side of his cap to the other. Jack tried like hell never to walk down the memory lane of his hometown. When the odd remembrance did pop into his head, it was always a flashback to the humiliation of being poor. The derision with which people had treated him. How the parents all looked down on his dad for being a mere janitor. And how the kids treated him like dirt for being the son of the guy who mopped the floors and threw out their trash.
“I don’t
want
to help you. But I will. I’m obligated to, as Ty’s partner.” And didn’t that just sting worse than tequila on a sore throat. “He left you in the lurch when he decided to throw his career out the window. His life down the drain. When he decided that getting high was more important than the livelihood of the two hundred and eleven people currently employed on our movie set.” Jack caught himself. Guess he shouldn’t talk about Ty yet. Not when the rage at his dumb-ass best friend was still so close to the surface.
Sure enough, he looked around the room and saw identical expressions of shock on every face. Well, Minnesota Nice might be the way people behaved here. But he was a New Yorker now. Lived in a loft smack in the middle of Manhattan. Jack had toughened up. Believed in calling it like he saw it. If this board wanted to work with him, they’d have to get used to it.
Tapping her papers into a neat pile, Judy said, “You understand we can’t pay you, Mr. Whittaker.”
Jack thrust out his arm, shoved up his cuff to display the Breitling aviator watch on his wrist. “I’m not exactly living paycheck to paycheck. I’ll get by.” God, he was being a total jerk. Flashing his piles of cash like the dickwads he hated back in Hollywood. Aside from the watch and his sky-high rent, Jack liked to fly under the radar with his wealth. He hadn’t spent all those years in film school eating ramen noodles because he assumed he’d ever get rich.
Filmmaking was in his blood. It fired up every cell in his body. The magic of bringing a story to three-dimensional life thrilled him every damn time. As long as he could eat—better than ramen noodles, anyway—and had a roof over his head, the money didn’t matter. But they kept throwing it at him. In bigger and bigger piles, especially since he and Ty brought home every award possible with their smash hit a few years ago. The money didn’t define him. Except, apparently, when he came back home. In front of people who hadn’t even had the chance to treat him either good or bad yet. Still, he’d gone on the offense. Guilt warred with pride. Better to be known as a rich bastard than sneered at as a poor charity case.
“Welcome aboard, Mr. Whittaker.” Judy bestowed a stiff nod. Guess he’d burned the bridge on handshakes. “We appreciate you honoring Mr. Petersen’s commitment.”
An old geezer in a Mr. Rogers cardigan wheezed out something between a laugh and a death rattle. “Thought we were really in a bind there. Looks like the first Christmas miracle came early this year.”
“This truly is a season of celebration,” agreed Judy with a broad smile.
Shit. For a couple of blissful minutes, Jack had managed to forget the stupid name of the stupid seasonal show. Bad enough he’d had to shut down production on their current project. Worse that he had to deal with the shitload of fallout from Ty going off the rails. Epically worse that it entailed coming back to Minnesota. The inevitable churning up of his miserable past. A past, and a state, he’d vowed never to revisit.