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'Tis the Damn Season
'Tis the Damn Season Read online
Copyright © 2022 by Erin A. King, Christina Mitchell, Meika Usher, Liz Zerkel
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
About this Anthology
(continued)
Here Comes Santa Claus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Acknowledgments
About Erin
Miss You Like Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Acknowledgments
About Christina
Wonderland
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Acknowledgments
About Meika
A Merry Little Christmas
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
About Liz
One blizzard.
Four canceled flights.
’Tis the damn season.
HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS by ERIN A. KING
* * *
Zoe Monroe hasn’t seen her younger sister on their shared Christmas Eve birthday in five years. When a blizzard strands her at the airport on December 23rd, it looks like this year will be no different. Fortunately, a sexy stranger in a Santa suit offers to share the last available hotel room with her. While he’s not who she’d planned to spend her Christmas with, she can’t deny that he jingles her bells. Maybe this year, she’ll make sure she ends up on Santa’s naughty list…
* * *
MISS YOU LIKE CHRISTMAS by CHRISTINA MITCHELL
* * *
The only thing Gabriel Tilki wants for Christmas is for it to be over. What used to be the security guard’s favorite time of year now just makes his heart ache. But a winter storm and a chance encounter with a charming, disheveled mental health influencer might just be what he needs to get his Christmas back. And maybe in return, he can give her the Christmas she’s never had.
WONDERLAND by MEIKA USHER
* * *
A road trip with a hot stranger was NOT on Jane Archer’s Christmas list this year. But when a massive blizzard shuts down airports across the entire Midwest, how else is she supposed to get home for the holidays? As the miles pass beneath the wheels of their tiny rental car, Jane begins to wonder if this brash, bold woman in the driver’s seat isn’t exactly what she wanted for Christmas…
* * *
A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS by LIZ ZERKEL
* * *
Mae Thompson needs some Christmas magic. As if losing her job right before the holidays wasn't bad enough, a Midwestern blizzard strands her in the wrong city with the very man who annoyed her for the entire flight. And the entire cab ride to her hotel. And at the hotel. Since the universe keeps throwing Mae and Lon together, they stop fighting it—and each other—and decide to make this a Christmas to remember.
For Kevin, who always lets me have all the frosting roses
Chapter 1
Zoe Monroe heaved a sigh as she collapsed into an empty seat at gate A7, blowing her mid-length blonde hair out of her face. She glanced around at her fellow fliers—tired-looking businesspeople; parents at the end of their patience with holiday traveling with their toddlers; a starry-eyed couple snuggling together, the woman glancing down at the diamond twinkling on her left hand—and was glad she was, for once, on this side of the gate.
She pulled the mini bottle of peppermint schnapps out of her purse and popped the top off the grande white mocha she had bought at the airport coffee shop. She poured in half the mini bottle, stared at the coffee for a beat, then dumped the rest in. Merry Christmas to me, she thought, snapping the lid back on the drink and stuffing the now-empty schnapps bottle back into her purse.
This was the first Christmas in five years that she hadn’t had to work. The first Christmas in five years that her family hadn’t had to celebrate early or late to accommodate her schedule.
Her first year as a flight attendant, she’d known she’d have to work all the holidays. She was young then, barely twenty-one, bright-eyed and thrilled to have found a job that would let her travel the world after her failed attempt at college. She hadn’t even minded that “the world” would be limited to domestic flights until she was able to make the move to an international airline. There was so much of the United States she hadn’t seen, she figured anything that got her out of her tiny Nebraska hometown was worth working holidays. She’d had visions of herself standing next to the Grand Canyon, dipping her toes in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, eating lobster rolls in Maine…but in five years she had mostly seen the insides of hotel bars and the highways that ran near the various airports across the country.
She’d gotten to go to a few cool places, of course. She’d ordered a latte at the original Starbucks (after waiting in an obscenely long line of fellow tourists doing the same). Visited the Museum of Modern Art. Toured the Biltmore. And she could have switched airlines, but she’d have been starting at the bottom of the pecking order again, and after watching her teenage sister Lydia’s face as she tried to pretend like celebrating Christmas—and their shared Christmas Eve birthday—on November 12th or February 8th or whatever was no big deal, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Maybe now that she’d finally earned a Christmas off, she could start looking for something new.
Zoe took another long pull from her boozy-minty coffee, letting her gaze wander the airport. At the gate across the aisle, a white man in a Santa costume chatted with some kids. She watched as one of the kids’ moms said something to him, and he nodded, lifting the child onto his lap for a photo. The fabric of Santa’s sleeve pulled taut across his bicep; it looked like Santa worked out. She let her gaze drift to Santa’s face, chatting with the little boy he had just posed for a picture with. It was hard to tell specifics with the beard and wig, but he appeared to be young for a Santa—under thirty—and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he laughed at something the little boy said, she wouldn’t be surprised if he was good-looking underneath the plasticky white hair.
As if he felt her staring, Santa looked across the aisle and made eye contact with her. Zoe’s stomach flip-flopped and she felt a zing of electric desire shoot through her as his ice-blue eyes locked onto hers.
Yeah. Under the beard, Santa was hot. She was sure of it.
Zoe ripped her gaze back to the coffee cup in her hands, fiddling with the cardboard sleeve as though it was the most important thing in the world. Her face heated with the knowledge that Hot S
anta had just caught her ogling him, and she felt certain that he knew that that was exactly what she was doing.
Her phone buzzed with a text, and she pulled it out of her coat pocket, grateful for a legitimate distraction. It was from her roommate Gina. “Blizzard coming in fast. What time is your flight again?”
Zoe tapped her answer out on the phone’s screen. “1:30.”
Gina’s response came quickly. “I hope it holds out so you don’t miss your trip.”
Shit. This couldn’t be happening. This was the first time she had won a bid to have Christmas off in five years, her sister was counting on her to be home, her parents had even bought her a plane ticket so she wouldn’t risk not being able to get a flight home as a non-rev. She slumped against the seat and shoved her phone back into the pocket of her parka, squeezing her eyes shut. “Fuck,” she muttered under her breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Well, that’s not very family-friendly,” said a voice next to her. Zoe opened her eyes to see Hot Santa, blue eyes twinkling, grinning at her. She glared at him, and he shrugged. “I’m just saying. Lots of kids around. Grandmas. That cat.” He pointed to a soft-sided pet carrier at the feet of a middle-aged woman nearby. “That cat looks offended.”
“It’s a cat, and it’s in a carrier,” she muttered. “I don’t think I’m the one offending it.”
“That’s probably true,” Hot Santa said, his tone far more agreeable than it had any right to be given her own crankitude. “I came over because I thought we had a moment there a second ago and I was hoping to chat you up, but I’m sensing the moment has passed and you’d prefer if I just disappeared.”
She stared at him. “You’re Santa.”
He looked down at himself. “Sometimes.”
“I don’t want to be chatted up by Santa.”
“Fair enough,” he replied, standing. “Merry Christmas.” Hot Santa handed her a candy cane, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he retreated to his own gate.
You were just an asshole to Santa Claus, Zoe’s brain said. Hot Santa Claus, at that. What sort of monster are you?
The sort who, it appeared, would not be going home for Christmas for the fifth year in a row.
Zoe’s stomach churned as she stared down at the coffee still clutched in her hands, her red-and-gold fingernails a bright contrast against the white paper cup. Maybe the storm would bypass them. Or at least hold off long enough for her plane to get away from the airport. She would not be able to handle letting her family down yet again.
Her phone buzzed again in her pocket, and she dug it back out. “Happy birthday eve!” Lydia had sent a picture of herself, long blonde hair in a messy ponytail and gray eyes big with excitement, holding up a cupcake—lemon, which only she and Zoe liked, and which their mother dutifully made a half dozen of every year just for them.
Zoe closed her texts and pulled up a video call with Lydia. “What’s up?” her sister said around a mouthful of cupcake when she answered.
“You’d better not eat all of those,” Zoe admonished. “Put half of them aside for me right now.”
“Mm, sorry, we’re all out of Tupperware, guess you’re just gonna have to fly here faster if you want to have any left,” Lydia told her, licking frosting off her thumb.
“Yeah,” Zoe mumbled, “about that. Turns out there’s a big blizzard coming through. Looks like I may be delayed.”
“Delayed is fine,” Lydia replied, “canceled is not fine. Don’t get canceled.”
“Well, I won’t if I can help it,” she assured her. “But it’s really not up to me. Is Mom or Dad there?”
“Yeah.” The video shook as Lydia walked from the kitchen to the living room. “Hey Mom, Zoe wants you.”
“Hi, honey,” her mother said after Lydia passed the phone over. She had never liked video chatting, and turned the camera around so Zoe was still looking at her sister, who began making faces at her.
“Hi, Mom.” Zoe filled her in on the blizzard and likely delay. “So I guess I’ll keep you posted, but it’s not looking good for me getting there on time.”
“What about driving? Is there any chance you could outrun the storm?”
“I doubt it. Gina dropped me off so I don’t have a car here. Plus it’s like a thirteen-hour drive, it doesn’t make any more sense to drive than it does to just wait it out.”
“That’s fine. Just let us know what’s going on as you find out, okay, sweetie?”
“Will do, Mom. Go ahead and give me back to Lyds. I love you.”
“Love you too, Zoe Belle.” Her mother handed the phone back to Lydia, who flashed a quick peace sign before unceremoniously hanging up on her.
She wandered over to the window. The snow had begun to fall, and while it didn’t look like much now, it was going to start coming down harder and faster soon. She sidled up to the counter. “Are we looking at just a delay, or a full-on cancellation?” she asked the desk attendant, whose crisp blue uniform and short, carefully-gelled black hair was at odds with the stressed expression they wore.
They shook their head. “Hard to say. I’m about to announce the delay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up canceling.” The attendant turned away, picking up the receiver to make the announcement. The PA system garbled their voice, but not so much that the dozens of passengers at the gate couldn’t understand that their plans had just been royally fucked. A collective groan went up all around the gate.
She stared out the window again. What to do? Assume the flight would be canceled, and try to find a way back to her apartment? Try to get a hotel room nearby before everyone else in the airport had the same thought and there were none available? Or hold out hope for a simple delay and risk not having a place to sleep tonight if the tides turned and she was stranded after all?
Optimism was the way to go, she decided. She never chose optimism, but this was the first Christmas in years that she was able to be home for, and she wasn’t going to give up on it. She would manifest a Christmas-birthday miracle for herself, and the storm would bypass them, and she would be on a plane to the Omaha airport before dinnertime.
Returning to her seat, she glanced across to where she had last seen Hot Santa. He had disappeared, taking his biceps and his blue eyes with him into the ether. Good riddance, Zoe thought. The last thing she needed while trying to stop a storm by sheer force of will was the distraction of a cocky, sexy Santa Claus.
Chapter 2
“May I have your attention, please. Cortana flight 2237 has been canceled due to the impending weather. We apologize for the inconvenience, but the safety of our passengers and flight crew is our priority…”
Welp. That was the last time Zoe was ever going to choose optimism. She was going to miss Christmas. Again. She was going to miss her and Lydia’s birthday. Again.
Text receipt tones pinged, phones rang, people ranted into their cells about the massive inconvenience they were facing, and through it all, she just sat and stared at her hands.
She couldn’t bring herself to call her family yet. She didn’t want to do it with all these people around, because she knew she would cry, and she didn’t want an entire airport’s worth of people to see her break down.
She glanced across the aisle against her better judgment. Hot Santa had not returned since he had disappeared around forty-five minutes ago. Which was probably a blessing. She really didn’t want Hot Santa to see her cry. She was an ugly crier, all blotchy and gross, and the only thing worse than Hot Santa thinking of her as the cranky asshole who yelled at him for saying hi was to have him think of her as the snot-covered, red-faced asshole who yelled at him.
The airport was providing cots for stranded patrons to sleep on while the storm raged outside, but Zoe didn’t want to stay at the airport. She wanted to go home, and if she couldn’t go home to her family, she’d go home to the beige apartment she and Gina had never gotten around to decorating. It was a boring apartment, but it was hers, and right now she just wanted to curl up in bed with her weighte
d blanket and Labyrinth—not exactly a holiday movie, but the cinematic comfort food her soul was craving at the moment.
Zoe trudged to the taxi area outside the airport, but there weren’t any taxis. She opened up her ride share app, but it crashed before it finished loading. She tried again with the same result. “Asshole app,” she growled at her phone, trying a third time, knowing full well that it wouldn’t load. Which, of course, it didn’t. “You suck.”
There was, as far as she could figure, only one option. The closest hotel was about a half mile away, and it would be far better than sleeping on a cot in the airport.
Hoisting her purse onto her shoulder and pulling the hood of her coat up, she stepped out into the swirling snow, dragging her suitcase behind her.
By the time she reached the hotel, Zoe was soaking wet, chilled to her bones, aching from the weight of her shoulder bag, and angrier than she had probably ever been.