Hottie for the Holidays (Three Steamy Holiday Rom Coms)

As she watched Louise’s casket being lowered into the cold ground, Lula made a solemn vow. From that moment on, her wild side was a thing of the past. There was no room in her life for magic or whimsy or handsome men who made her believe in forever, only to disappear without a trace. She was done with that nonsense.

The foolish, flighty, naïve part of her was going into the grave with her great aunt, and it would never be seen or heard from again.

1

Lula

Present Day…

It was the holiday season again in Lonesome Point, and the sunny world outside Lula’s window sparkled in the cool winter air.

Garlands of bright red and green hung across Main Street, The Blue Saloon Hotel was decked out in giant wreaths and bright red bunting that made the old building look like it was smiling, and people were already setting up chairs in the square to watch the Lonesome Point Elementary School Christmas Pageant, due to start in an hour.

Mothers and fathers cuddled their toddlers, bundled up against the unusually cold day. Older folks cupped mittened hands around their coffees, and young couples stole kisses under the mistletoe when they thought no one was looking. The scene begged Lula to break out into “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” Instead, she drew her curtains with a shwoop and returned to icing the cookies on her kitchen counter with a scowl.

Christmas. Bah. Humbug.

If she were a less driven business owner, she would close down Tea for Two from December twenty-first to January second and disappear to an isolated island in the Pacific, where nothing would remind her of her least favorite time of year. But Lula wasn’t the sort who tucked tail and ran. She was the kind of woman who kept her chin up, her upper lip stiff, and soldiered through the misery of the holidays without flinching. She planned a cookie exchange that grew larger and more involved every year and threw herself into preparations for the annual gathering with the enthusiasm of a holiday-a-holic.

No one in Lonesome Point realized that she loathed every minute of icing cookies and decorating the three Christmas trees that graced the corners of Tea for Two, and that’s the way it was going to stay. Lula’s misery was private, like the rest of her emotions. Let her flighty younger cousin, Mia, run around, spreading holiday cheer, and crying every time she heard a choir sing “Oh Holy Night.”

After applying the finishing touches to her sugar cookies, Lula placed the treats neatly into twenty-five identical holiday tins, washed her hands, and dressed in her dark green drop waist dress and black tights. She took a moment to spray a few flyaway hairs back into the chignon at the nape of her neck, brushed on the mascara she wore only on special occasions, and picked up her tube of First Blush lipstick, only to put it immediately back down again.

There was no point in putting on lipstick, only to spend time scrubbing it off of her best china later. She’d waste enough time cleaning up the rest of the ladies’ lipstick smudges after they left. Besides, no one noticed the way Lula looked. She faded into the background like the antique rose wallpaper downstairs, adding to the complete picture of Tea for Two, but taken for granted as a piece of the whole.

She’d only recently celebrated her thirty-third birthday—with a snifter of brandy and a small splurge on crafting supplies. But Lula had been a fixture downtown for thirteen years. People were so used to seeing her puttering in her garden or bustling around in her shop that they took her for granted. She had been the spinster who served tea and made dolls long before her thirtieth birthday, and to the town of Lonesome Point, that’s who she would be until the day she died.

And that was just fine. Lula had stopped longing for a young woman’s life or dreaming a young woman’s dreams years ago. She was content with being overlooked, and rarely felt rancor about being branded a workaholic with a creepy doll fetish.

It was only at Christmas that resentment rose inside of her. It was only when sleigh bells rang and carolers sang that discontent whispered inside her heart, telling her it wasn’t too late to make a change.

“Hmph,” she grunted softly as she stepped into her sensible black boots, ignoring the heeled Mary Janes she’d bought a few days ago, when she’d been browsing in the shoe store and listening to the voice of temptation.

She didn’t really want to change; she wanted her simple, steady life, and as soon as the holiday nonsense was over, everything would be back to normal. She could stop sulking over her morning coffee, stop staring out the window at the bright winter days with a weight on her chest, and stop waking in the night with tears on her cheeks and the memory of one man’s kiss on her lips. She would forget all the pain and longing for another year, and the world would keep on turning, one day weaving its way into the next in the tightly knit, sensible tapestry of her life.