Prologue to the anthology, HOLIDAY HEAT
Fragile glass figurines
rested in a cushioned box---stars, Santas, trees
and toys, even a miniature Noah's Ark with a host
of small animals to surround it. Shiny colored balls
of red, green, blue and gold snuggled in individual
containers, with lacy, white crocheted snowflakes
floating among them. Three strings of Christmas
lights had a few blinking bulbs interspersed among
the steady ones. The angel tree-topper's plaster
body wore a blue satin robe below its light-brown
floss hair and a glowing, golden halo. Most precious
of all, though, was the one single, bubbling candle
light, wrapped in layers of plastic wrap to protect
it.
Three other boxes
of decorations were scattered around Lindsey Hart's
living room, but those contained things she'd bought
herself over the last few years. Some nice pieces
nestled in them in, in truth-consolation prizes
she awarded herself at the after-holiday sales for
surviving another lonely Christmas while helping
others find their dreams. None of them meant much
to her compared to these.
These were Gram's
last, most precious gift to her.
"There's magic in
them, Lindsey," Gram had insisted, four years ago,
as she lay dying. "And you have it in you to unlock
the power. The candles especially. Wait for them
to show you their message, then act. Act boldly,
no matter how absurd it appears. Someone's life
will be changed, and they'll thank you for it."
"I don't understand,
Gram." Lindsey barely restrained a sob on the words.
A thin, hand lay gently
over hers. "You don't need to understand now," Gram
assured her. "Just remember when the time comes."
"There will always
be magic in those ornaments, Gram. Because they
were yours. I'll never…forget." Tears streamed hot
and heavy down her cheeks.
Gram managed a smile
that turned her thin, weary face radiant. "No. They
have more magic than that. You'll see. Trust me."
She sighed and had to wait a moment to gather her
breath again. "There is magic, and in the end, you'll
benefit as well, but it carries great responsibility.
Take care of your sisters, Lindsey."
Only later would Lindsey
understand that the last sentence wasn't a non-sequitur.
She'd wanted to ask
Gram to explain more, to tell her what kind of power
the candles held, how she should use it, but the
old lady was too tired. Unfortunately, she never
got another chance. Gram died later that night,
unexpectedly but peacefully, as she slept.
Lindsey had to tell
her sisters, Crista and Jade, that Gram had passed
away before either of them could get there to say
goodbye. When they did arrive, the sisters huddled
together for a long time over the next few days,
holding onto each other as the tears flowed. Their
parents had died some years before and Gram was
all they'd had. With her death, they had only each
other. And though they lived far apart, they kept
in touch by phone and through annual get-togethers.
They met with Gram's
attorney, a friend of Lindsey's from law school
days, and learned that in addition to inheriting
equal shares of Gram's modest estate, they'd each
received specific bequests of some of her most treasured
possessions. For Lindsey it had been the box of
Christmas ornaments and Gram's prized crystal flower
vases.
She didn't believe
the ornaments could possibly have the magical power
Gram had attributed to them, but she treasured them,
nonetheless.
That first Christmas
after Gram's passing, there were four candle lights
ready to insert into the string of lights. Each
lit up and bubbled merrily during the holiday season,
reminding her of the way Gram's spirit had lit up
her life.
On Christmas Eve,
Lindsey got her first taste of the magic Gram had
promised. A red-and-orange bubble light suddenly
flared brightly, almost like a small explosion,
except no noise accompanied it and the glow held
steady for a long time. Drawn by the sudden brightening,
Lindsey moved over to the tree to stare at it.
In the golden yellow
halo around the flaring bubble light, she saw…movement.
Small figures. A tall, thin, woman of late middle
age, with dyed flame-red hair and…a dog? The red-haired
woman had to be Joanna, a neighbor of Gram's for
the last twenty years. She'd beena close friend
of Gram's for most of those, too, even though Joanna
had been almost twenty years younger. Both women
had been widows for a long time, with a shared interest
in scouring flea markets. They usually returned
with dubious collections of odds and ends.
But Joanna didn't
have a dog. In fact Lindsey couldn't imagine fastidious,
neat-freak Joanna with a pet of any kind, a creature
that would shed on her furniture and track mud on
the carpets.
In the vision, though,
Joanna clutched the leash of a brown, black and
tan creature that looked like a cross between a
Bassett and a Beagle. She laughed as the dog trotted
along the park walkway, nosing at leaves, and suddenly
strained to chase after a chipmunk.
The vision faded,
went misty, and reformed. She saw the dog again,
but not in the park this time. In fact, it was in
a box of some kind, a concrete box with bars…a cell
at the pound. Instead of capering in the fresh air,
the animal curled in a ball, eyes half open in a
sad stare, only rising to attention and yipping
each time someone came near, then settling down
with a sad little whine and shake of the tail when
the person left again.
Then it was gone.
Dog, Joanna and the golden flare all disappeared.
The bubble light blinked a few times and went out.
Lindsey tried to reseat it in the socket, and tapped
it a couple of times, but it appeared the bulb had
blown. She mourned it, since it had been one of
the flea market treasures that Gram had somehow
imbued with her own magic.
Wait for them to
show you their message, Gram had said, and
then act boldly on what you see.
What was she supposed
to do-? Oh, no, please!
That wasn't acting
boldly, it was acting foolishly. And arrogantly.
What gave her the right to decide Joanna needed
a dog in her life? And not just any dog-a pound
puppy mutt with big, sad eyes.
No way. She wasn't
going to present Joanna with an unknown and unwanted
dog, just because her own imagination had cooked
up a weird vision showing them happy together. Not
in this lifetime.
Act boldly… Someone's
life will be changed.
Well, yes, but Gram
hadn't promised their life would be changed for
the better. A dog was a big commitment, and possibly
a burden, for a woman living alone.
Act boldly.
Hell.
Lindsey got her coat
and headed out for the pound, leaving quickly before
she had time to think too much about it and convince
herself it was an entirely foolish notion. She immediately
retraced her steps when she got out her door and
realized she had no idea where the pound was. She
looked it up in the phone book. If the dog was there,
she might start believing there was some kind of
truth in the vision.
The dog was there.
It sat up and stared at her when she approached
its cage, tail pounding the ground in hopeful rhythm.
Lindsey had nothing
against dogs-as long as they didn't jump on her,
shred her pantyhose, goober her face or leave muddy
paw prints on her clothes.
This one was smarter
than he looked. When the attendant opened the door
to the cage, he marched out, sniffed at her feet
and wagged his tail, but he didn't attempt to jump
up or kiss her. Lindsey paid fifty dollars for shots
and worming medication, then loaded the dog into
the back of her Mercedes.
An hour at the pet
store and an additional ninety bucks later, Lindsey
drove to Joanna's home. She parked at the curb and
sat there for the next ten minutes trying to work
up her nerve to take the dog in. She glanced back
in time to see him slobber on the bright red bow
she'd bought him, along with a food dish, retractable
leash, crate, and fifty pounds of premium dog food.
Joanna would probably
give her an earful and tell her to take the mutt
right back to the pound.
Lindsey stared at
the front door of Joanna's home until something
cool and damp licked across the back of her neck.
"All right, all right, you're eager to get to your
new home," she said to the dog, reaching back to
push him away. "Let's go."
Joanna answered the
door after the second knock and greeted Lindsey
with her usual warmth. It quickly changed to puzzlement
when she noticed her companion.
"You've got a dog?"
Joanna went down on one knee to pet the mutt and
let him kiss her hands. "He's adorable. When did
you get him?"
"Um…actually, I don't
have a dog. He's yours. Merry Christmas."
Joanna's head jerked
upward and her eyes widened. "Lindsey!" Joanna's
expression changed and sudden tears glittered. "How
did you know? It's been so lonely since your Gram
died, and I've been thinking about getting a dog,
but I hadn't told anyone yet."
Lindsey felt as though
she'd been punched in the gut. "I suppose…in a way…this
is a gift from Gram."
"Oh?"
In the face of Joanna's
skepticism, Lindsey didn't want to explain, but
she owed it to both Joanna and Gram. When she finished
the story, Joanna looked flummoxed but not nearly
as disbelieving as Lindsey expected.
"It would be like
Nora to find a way to watch over us even after she's
gone from this world," Joanna finally said.
Lindsey helped Joanna
set up the food dish and crate, then departed, leaving
dog and mistress cuddling up together on the sofa.
Three weeks later,
Joanna met a man while walking the dog, now named
Noah, in the park. Sam was walking his retriever,
and the leashes somehow got tangled as the two dogs
nosed each other.
Six months later Joanna
and Sam married. Both dogs went with them on the
honeymoon.
The next Christmas,
Lindsey set up the tree the day after Thanksgiving.
She waited, not too patiently, for another candle
flare, wondering what this one would bring.
Chapter One
Three years after the first vision, only one candle remained. Lindsey didn’t like to acknowledge, even to herself, that she hoped the last message would be for her.
As usual Lindsey set up her tree the day after Thanksgiving and waited impatiently. Almost a month went by with nothing happening. Most of the visions had come two days before Christmas, so on that Thursday she could barely stand to leave the room for fear she wouldn’t see it happen. She fell asleep on the sofa that night.
The candle kept her waiting until almost two o’clock Christmas Eve before it flared to life.
Excitement and anticipation made her lightheaded as she looked into the vivid, golden glow of the blazing candle.
It showed her a man. Just his head, initially, but he was good-looking in a rough, unkempt way. Medium brown hair, with just a few threads of gray at the temples, was mussed and falling into his eyes in front. A couple of days’ growth of beard gave him a sexy stubble, particularly since it surrounded a hard, but sensuous-looking mouth. The square jaw, long, straight nose and level dark eyebrows added up to a face that could belong to a model, with some improvement in grooming and a lighter expression. He seemed to be sitting, leaning back against a cinderblock wall, frowning at something she couldn’t see.
Lindsey felt thrilling bubbles floating around in her stomach. Her pulse picked up speed.
Then she began seeing more of the scene, almost as though a camera showing the scene drew back to allow a wider-angle view.
Her excitement turned to dismay.
The man wore an orange jail jumpsuit and sat on a cot in a cell.
Well, crap.
He didn’t look like a hardened criminal. In fact, clean him up a bit and he’d look like any other normal businessman. Well, maybe not exactly normal. He was too good-looking and too disturbingly, knowingly sensual for normal. But even more, a sense of barely leashed power, ambition and, right now, anger, radiated almost palpably from him. A hard man, a formidable man, under ordinary circumstances. Right then, he reminded her of a caged tiger. Dangerous.
Lindsey kept waiting for the rest of the story. But that was all she got. The view of the man in the jail cell.
It was all she needed, but she didn’t want it to be that way. She knew what to do. She just didn’t want to do it.
Act boldly.
But not stupidly, she argued back. Which was even more stupid. How could you argue with a ghost?
Anyway, the visions had asked her to do foolish, even stupid things before. They’d all worked out spectacularly well. She tried to see that as a guarantee this would, too, but another look at the man made her shiver. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to gaze right at her as though he could see her. The raw fury hit her like a club in the gut.
She didn’t dare. He was in jail for a reason.
Having delivered its message, the candle flared even brighter for a moment, almost blinding her, then it went out. For good.
And that was it.
The last thing she wanted to do on Christmas Eve was make a trip to the local jail and bail out an unknown and likely dangerous man. But...…the visions hadn’t let her down yet, even though each had seemed foolish, and sometimes even dangerous, at the time.
An hour later, Lindsey had managed to get lost trying to find the parking lot for the jail and then again once inside the government building that housed it somewhere in among the maze of corridors and elevators. By dint of perseverance and questioning everyone she met, she finally found the right office.
It was only when a clerk asked her the name of the prisoner she was inquiring about that it occurred to her she had no idea, and that might complicate her mission. Once again, fate or otherworldly help came to her rescue, in the form of a man who had looked up from his desk nearby.
“I’ll bet she’s here for Greg MacIntyre. I figured he’d have some gorgeous woman come bail him out eventually. Guy that looks like that.” He picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it out to her. “You need a picture of him for your dresser, honey?”
Lindsey took it from him. It was a poor photocopy of a classic booking shot, showing full face and profile of the man from her vision, with a numeric label at the bottom. She nodded at the clerk, who asked, “You’re posting bail for him?”
“How much?”
“Fifty thou,” the clerk said.
“Oh, heck. I guess I better go find a bail bondsman.”
“Do it quick,” the clerk warned. “It’s Christmas Eve. We’re closing at four.”
Lindsey looked at the clock. Two forty-five. “Can you recommend someone close?”
Fortunately there was one right across the street. The clerk gave her a piece of paper with the information she would need. Thirty minutes and five thousand dollars later, Lindsey took back the signed paper to the clerk.
“Have a seat,” the clerk told her. “This will take a few minutes.”
A few minutes turned into ten, then twenty, then thirty. Finally at five to four, the clerk returned, followed by the man she’d seen in the candle’s glow. Her first reaction was an internal sigh of relief that she’d bailed out the right man. It didn’t last long, chased away rapidly by the fear that followed.
She’d seen his smoldering sensuality and the anger that suffused him in the vision. It hadn’t shown her how big he was and how aggressively male. She shivered under the impact of his riveting gray eyes looking at her with all his rage and fire on the verge of exploding.
He looked at her and frowned. “Who the hell are you?”
She opted for the safest response she could think of. “Lindsey Hart. I’m an attorney.” She stuck out her hand.
Nothing could have prepared her for the impact when his palm wrapped around hers. Fire. Heat. Meltdown. Tingles crawled all over her skin, emanating from the hand he held. It stole her breath and flipped her heartbeat into overdrive. Oh, dear heaven. She was so not ready for this.
“Are you an associate of Tom Redmond?” he asked.
His voice was smooth, rich and deep with just an edge of bitterness, like the best dark chocolate. It sent shivers running up and down her spine.
She drew a deep breath to clear the obstruction in her throat. “Not exactly. Let’s get out of here.”
“Fine by me,” he answered. “Have you got a car? Can you give me a lift?”
She nodded. They made an eerie trip out of the building, with lights going off in hallways behind them as offices closed up for the holiday. Greg wore the slacks of an expensive wool suit and a wrinkled dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. A red silk tie hung out of the pocket and the suit jacket was draped over his arm. He looked more like a businessman after a long hard day than someone just sprung from a jail cell.
The front of the car felt crowded with him in the passenger seat, and not just because his broad shoulders and long legs took up a lot of space.
She started the car, but before she pulled out of the parking place, she asked, “Where to?”
He stared out through the windshield, but she didn’t think he was looking at the side of the city government building. “Who are you? Lawyers don’t normally bail their clients out of jail.”
“Lindsey Hart,” she said. “And I am an attorney. But I’m not associated with Tom Redmond. He’s your lawyer? He’s a good one; probably the best.”
“I know.” He said it curtly, as though he wouldn’t even consider anything but the best. “You haven’t answered. What kind of lawyer are you, Lindsey Hart?”
“Actually I’m a tax attorney.”
He turned to stare at her and rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell. Is someone investigating my tax returns, too? I’m clean. Squeaky clean. I don’t cheat and I pay every dime I owe. Unlike some people I know.” His tone turned from outrage to bitterness on the last sentence.
“I don’t know anything about your taxes,” she answered. “That’s not why I’m here.”
One dark, almost level eyebrow slid upward. “Then why are you here?”
“You aren’t going to believe me when I tell you.”
“Two weeks ago I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me I’d be in jail the week before Christmas. I’m learning to believe a lot of things I didn’t believe before.”
There were layers of meaning in his words. Below the reassurance that he would at least consider her explanation was something else. Suspicion—directed at her.
“This one is still pretty out there,” she said, wondering what he might suspect her of. Her instinct said it was more serious than just thinking she was a few crayons shy of a full box. It didn’t make sense. What had that candle-vision gotten her into?
“Why don’t you explain it as you drive me home,” Greg suggested.
“All right. Tell me where to go.”
PS:
Want to know why Greg was in jail? It had to do
with an ex-girlfriend's jealousy!
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