Page 9 of The Humbug Holiday

I inclined my head and hightailed it to the house before I was tempted to plead my case into the ground. My proposal was slightly unorthodox, but it was all true. Yes, I had a professional LA-based manager, whose job it was to make sure any real-life details were taken care of for me. A call to Martin would have sufficed. He would have a team here in the morning and repairs complete within a week.

I didn’t want a team. I wanted Joe.

Not sure why it mattered, though. Sure, I wouldn’t say no to a repeat, but at forty-eight, I was well versed in one-night-stand protocol. It happened. Over and done. No need for further discussion. I could tell myself I needed research assistance from a local, but that was BS. I was a research guru. And I liked being alone.

But I remembered liking his company too. That stranger in the dark had been easy to talk to, easy to be with. I hadn’t connected with anyone like him in many years. I’d thought it was a nice twist of fate that I’d ended up pulling over that night, but it was an even better twist that we’d met again.

Almost like it was meant to be.

Okay, scratch that. See, this was what happened when your Hallmark holiday-loving aunts infiltrated your life. You started thinking shmoopy thoughts and chasing after sexy younger men. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be humming Christmas carols and hanging mistle—

“What is that?” I asked, closing the front door with an exaggerated sigh of relief, then frowning at the sprig of greenery hanging in the archway leading to the living room.

“Mistletoe, darling,” Aunt Mary chirped.

I put my hands on my hips and cast a wary glance around the bedecked entry. Nutcrackers stood like soldiers on the hall table under the chandelier while a long length of artificial garland was draped over the newel post, cascading in a heap on the bottom stair. Red and green plastic bins were half-opened, their contents either on the floor or haphazardly piled on plastic container tops. It was a mess.

“How did you get that up there?”

“I used a stepladder, honey.” She gestured toward the small ladder in the corner.

“You stood on that?” I raked my hand through my hair and let out an incredulous gasp. “Aunt Mary, you can’t do all this.”

“Do what, dear?”

“Climb stepladders, hang mistletoe, decorate…everything. It’s not safe.”

She snickered, sounding more like a teenage girl than a woman pushing eighty. “Don’t be daft. I’ve been decorating for years. I know what I’m doing. I’d hoped Georgia would have gotten most of this done, but I’m up against the clock now. We have to put the tree up, hang the lights outside, drape the garland properly… My flight leaves in the morning.”

“Tomorrow. Oh. I lost track of time.”

“You tend to do that,” she admonished without heat. “But at this rate, we’ll have to pull an all-nighter.”

“No.” I set my hands on my hips. “I don’t want you to kill yourself over silly traditions.”

“Silly?” She gasped and made a sign of the cross. “I worry about your soul, Cameron Warren. You spend too much time writing about ghastly murders for your own good. You know we promised your mother that—”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” I met her eyes and briefly closed my own.

I did. I truly appreciated everything my Aunt Mary and Aunt Georgia had done for me. They’d rearranged their lives to make room for a nine-year-old orphan almost forty years ago. I owed them the world. If holiday decorations made them happy, so be it.

And yes, decorations made them very, very happy. The house I’d bought for them in Carlsbad was a Christmas lover’s paradise. They had big trees, little trees, indoor lights, outdoor lights, talking Santas in the bathrooms, a blowup Frosty on the lawn. It was as if Christmas elves had literally thrown up in every damn room.

Those same elves had attempted to sneak into my college dorm room and the various apartments I’d shared with roommates before buying my own LA condo. Each year, I’d point out that there simply wasn’t enough space for large-scale holiday madness and my aunts would relent to some degree.

I couldn’t say the same here. This house was enormous and my aunts knew it. So I really shouldn’t have been remotely surprised to find holiday boxes in the shipment of house stuff I’d asked Martin to forward.

No joke. My aunts had shipped ten or more boxes of this stuff. My basement was filled to capacity with enough holiday shit to make a department store envious. I’d tried hiding them in the basement, but Aunt Georgia sussed them out and nearly broke her ankle pulling one bin upstairs. Aunt Mary took over and smartly enlisted Joe’s help.

I couldn’t decide if I was impressed with their ingenuity or frustrated that they wouldn’t accept the fact that the nephew they’d raised as a son was just your average modern-day Scrooge. I might not be able to curb their holiday enthusiasm, but I wasn’t going to let anyone get injured, for fuck’s sake.

“You’re very welcome, darling.” Aunt Mary patted my cheek and picked up a sprig of artificial holly, tucking it artfully between two nutcrackers before gesturing to the heap of greenery on the floor. “Now, I’m going to wind the garland through the posts and—”

“I’ll do it.”

“No, you won’t. I know you too well. You’ll get busy or distracted or worse…you’ll pack everything away and not give yourself a chance to enjoy the season.” She sighed worriedly. “Perhaps I should postpone my flight. Oh, maybe Millie’s due date is off and the baby won’t come for another month.”

I shook my head. “Not likely. She’s due in three days and if you don’t get home, Aunt Georgia will have all the great-aunt baby bragging rights.”