White Witchmas (Paris Texas Romance Book 4)
Table of Contents
Title Page
Excerpt
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Note from Dakota Cassidy
eBooks by Dakota Cassidy
White Witchmas
A Paris, Texas Romance, Book 4
Dakota Cassidy
Published 2016 by Dakota Cassidy.
Copyright © 2016, Dakota Cassidy.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Dakota Cassidy.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.
Manufactured in the USA.
Excerpt
He stood there by the Christmas tree they’d all decorated as a group just a week ago—as breathtaking as always.
Okay, maybe she’d forgotten his amazing body and the ripples of muscles beneath his comically small, very pink T-shirt that read, “Keep Calm And Paint Your Nails”, and only came to about an inch or so above his waistband, or his bulging thighs encased in a pair of plaid golf pants clearly too tight for him.
But the hell she’d let it show.
He leaned against a broom, crossing his bunny-slipper-clad feet at the ankles while waiting for her to speak first.
“Nice outfit. You shopping blindfolded these days?” she asked, pointing a finger at his shirt.
The seniors snickered.
But he grinned. The bastard. He had the gall to grin—perfect, devastatingly handsome, dimples and all.
“You don’t approve? I picked out this shirt from the bin of Goodwill donations at Winnie and Ben’s with you in mind. I know how much you like to get your nails done in the color pink. I’m a little hurt you disapprove.”
No. Nada. Nope. He would not remind her how turned on he claimed to get whenever she talked about her love of all things girlie. Finn had always said it made him hot all over just thinking about her pink-dipped nails wrapped around the handle of a hammer. He’d loved that she was both handy and feminine to the core.
Instead, she stared at him with a blank expression. She’d read somewhere, if you didn’t want your nemesis to know you gave a shit, be indifferent. It was like death to someone trying to get a rise out of you.
Indifferent girl was indifferent.
Blurb
Cozy Meadows, a middle school music teacher, is a little low on spirit this holiday season. After being abandoned by her fiancé, Finn Donovan, months earlier, she’s just not the same.
When her werewolf friend, Calla, asks her to head up Hallow Moon Senior Center’s Christmas recital for the Council of Elders and the members of town, she dives in head first. What better way to keep her mind busy while she tries to get over the hunky Finn?
Until Finn comes back to their hometown of Paris, Texas. Fresh from a stint in magic abuse prison, Finn behaves as though he didn’t literally disappear the night of their engagement party. He’s all smiles and still sexy as sin.
Cozy’s got her hands full with the wily seniors who call themselves The Depends Patrol, and her feisty familiar Jorge, as she tries to navigate the return of Finn and keep track of the seniors and their shenanigans.
But things get a whole lot worse when someone makes an attempt on her life. It’s Christmas daggonit! Shouldn’t killers take at least one day off a year?
Everything isn’t as it seems, including a secret Cozy’s kept most of her life. A secret that just may end up costing her that very life…
* * * *
Dear Readers,
I’ve taken license with the lovely town of Paris, Texas, because it worked so perfectly for my witch Cozette (Cozy) and her journey. First, I turned the town into a paranormal-palooza—dripping with witches and magic.
Second, I’ve fictionalized it to a degree, creating street names to suit me and places I’m certain don’t exist, but I kept the amazing Eiffel Tower with the red cowboy hat on top—because it’s just too awesome a structure to ignore.
That said, to anyone who reads this and lives in Paris, no disrespect intended. I lived in Plano, Texas, for nine years and I love Texans. Y’all are some of the best folks on the planet!
Previously Published
(2015) Alphas Unwrapped Anthology.
Acknowledgements
Editor: Kelli Collins
Cover Art: Valerie Tibbs
Dedication
Enormous thanks to Scharize Khamille for her help with the Spanish in this book—you rock, chica! And thanks to Teen Wolf for the binge-watch. You gave me a great idea when I was stuck!
Also, this one’s for my one-eyed wonder, Milo the Shih Tzu. You’re cranky, incontinent, defensive, disobedient, and mean. But I’d walk through fire for your four-legged butt!
Chapter 1
“Gus Mortimer, what’s in that cup?”
“Why do you ask, Cozette Meadows?”
“Because it’s a red Solo cup. No one drinks innocuous apple juice from a red Solo cup, which is what I’m serving tonight at rehearsal in matching innocuous plastic cups. Come to think of it, we don’t even have red Solo cups here at the senior center.”
“Maybe it’s grape juice…”
Cozy fought a snicker, pushing her eyebrow to rise in mock suspicion as she stroked the ears of her familiar, Jorge, before setting him down on the ground and adjusting his blue camouflage diaper. “And maybe it’s whiskey.”
“Or maybe it’s gin, so hah!” Gus barked in a “take that” kind of way, puffing his chest out.
She sucked in a breath of the cool Texas night, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she rocked back on the heels of her boots and used her eyes to warn Jorge to keep his cranky, opinionated yap shut.
Cornering Gus, one of her favorite seniors ever from Hallow Moon Senior Center, she asked, “Gus? Do you want to be angel number five in the Christmas concert?”
“More’n I wanna breathe.”
“Do I detect sarcasm in your tone?”
“Nope. You detect the ‘my youthful dreams of Off-Off-Off-Broadway finally comin’ true’ tone.”
Cozy shook her head with a grin. “Ditch the booze. For me, Gus. Please? How will it look to the Council of Elders when we put this extravaganza of a concert on if you’re lit up like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, buddy?”
“I dunno how it’ll look to those bags of brittle, outdated bones, but it’ll feel a damn sight easier on my ears if I got a little hair o’ the dog in me. So I figure, everything’s better with hooch—especially when the Depends Patrol sings. Because we suck.” He looked down at Cozy’s one-eyed, incontinent Chi/Dachshund for confirmation. “Ain’t that right, Hor-Haaay?”
God. That was true. They did suck. Every last golden-oldie witch and warlock at Hallow Moon Senior Center starring in the Christmas recital sucked. Off-pitch, squeaky suck. But it was the most adorable suck ever.
Jorge let his head drop in disgust before he looked up at Gus, his bulging Chihuahua eyes flashing. “Hey, Papi! Jorge is all one word, you uneducated, hedonistic—”
“Do you need a diaper change, mister?” Cozy narrowed her eyes in warning at him again as she reached down and clamped his tiny muzzle shut.
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Jorge sniffed indignantly, but he remained silent.
She rose and made a pouty face at Gus, pinching his weathered cheeks. “You’re going to make a great angel number five. You look so cute in your halo, and Glenda-Jo did shorten the length on the angel costume she made out of a sheet so you’ll stop tripping when you make your big entrance during ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’. That’ll make up for the suck.”
“That’s somethin’ I been meanin’ to ask you, Cozy-Coo. Why did everyone else get Egyptian cotton sheets for their angel costumes and I got smelly old Clive Stillwater’s leftover flannel sheet from nineteen twenty-two?” he asked, running his thumbs under his reindeer-and-mistletoe suspenders.
“Did they make flannel sheets back in nineteen twenty-two?” she asked on a giggle.
She loved Gus Mortimer. He was one feisty elder witch, and he was a handful, but he was her handful, and she intended to take good care of him and all the others while they practiced to put on this holiday show for their families and the esteemed Council of Elders.
He waggled a wrinkled finger at her, his lined face scrunching up. “That ain’t the point.”
“Nope, it’s not, and you’re deflecting. The point was, you were out here sneaking some hootch when you know better than to drink while we’re rehearsing, if at all. If not for Jorge, I might not have found you until you were snockered. Not to mention, Calla would kill me if she found out I didn’t have my eye on you. She’s a werewolf, remember? She’ll eat me for supper. Scotch is bad for your blood pressure, pardner, and you know it.”
Calla Ryder, one of the rare werewolves in a town full of witches and warlocks, ran and owned Hallow Moon Senior Center. It was the place to be if you were a bored, aging witch prone to magical shenanigans, with grown children who didn’t know how to keep up with you during their busy workdays.
The center was designed to keep the seniors active and a part of the community. Thus, the program had spawned a tight-knit group of co-conspirators who were up for almost anything their wands could touch.
Upon Cozy’s return to her high school music teacher job in Paris, after her summer break—or breakdown, depending on how you spun it—Calla had asked her to volunteer her services for the seniors’ Christmas concert, and she’d been all in.
A distraction like this bunch of greased-in-Flexall-454 cats—albeit hysterical, utterly adorable greased cats—was exactly what a girl needed to mend her shattered heart.
They kept her busy and focused and she’d jumped at the chance to fill her long, mostly empty nights after spending all day teaching. If she could just keep her brain busy, her plate full, maybe her heart would finally heal.
Don’t think about the bad past. Think about your bright new future.
“What Calla don’t know won’t hurt her,” Gus said on a charming wink, reminding her why she was here tonight.
“Which is exactly why you’re going to give me that cup or suffer the wrath of my schoolteacher’s propensity for penance.”
“What’re ya gonna do? Make me write my name on the blackboard a hundred times?” Gus taunted as though he were ten and just shy of sticking his tongue out at her.
“Aw, heck no. That’s too easy, Gus. I’m gonna take away your Ice Cream Tuesdays for a month and make you write your name on the chalkboard one hundred times. Plus, if you keep pushin’, I’ll use my magic wand to mete out justice, and you know how unpredictable my crazy wand can be. How do ya like them apples?”
“You’re a hard taskmistress, Cozy-Coo.”
“That’s mistress to you.” She smiled and curtsied before pointing her finger toward the back door of the center with an indulgent chuckle. “Now off with you.”
Gus set the cup down on the wrought iron patio table located just outside the center, where they’d earnestly been practicing three nights a week for almost two months, and backed up a step with his hands raised in white-flag submission.
“Can’t believe you’re making me do this, Teach. That’s some fine booze.”
She chuckled again and snapped her fingers to make the cup disappear before she made a shooing motion at Gus. “Go! Hurry before Flora tries to steal Clive’s part as the Great Christmas Tree again. She’s always taking advantage of how he nods off. You’re the only one who can soothe those two when they get to fighting, and you know how adamant Flora can get when she doesn’t get her way. No one can convince her she wasn’t born to play the part like you can, Gus.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go soothe the old bat’s ruffled wings and remind her that being one with the branches on a Christmas tree isn’t exactly gonna win her an Emmy,” he muttered and tugged a lock of her hair with a saucy grin as he made his way back into the center, leaving her with a moment to herself.
She didn’t like too many moments to herself; she liked constant motion, a steady whir of thoughts and activities to keep her from dwelling.
Jorge plopped down on her feet and sighed. “You okay, Jefe?”
She smiled down at her loyal companion. “The seniors are work, huh?”
Jorge snorted, scratching his backend. “All the work. I don’t know how you do it, mi corazon. I especially don’t know how your ears do it.”
“The same way I deal with you,” she teased, nudging his round middle, but he’d drifted off to sleep, his soft snores rising upward.
Cozy took another cleansing breath of the night air, leaning on the railing surrounding the patio to look up at the deep velvet of the Texas sky. Stars filled the ebony Milky Way, clustered and bright, as a cool breeze blew.
She’d missed Paris while she’d been away licking her wounds at her friend’s swanky SoHo apartment in New York. Missed the sounds and smells of Paris. Missed her friends. Missed her community of witches and warlocks, with the occasional werewolf or other supernatural creature thrown in for good measure. Missed her family.
Missed…
She sighed, preparing to go inside and fill up the empty spaces of her mind with bickering seniors and song-list rearrangement, but a shooting star arcing in a bright sizzle of light across the sky made her stop.
And she found herself closing her eyes and making a wish like she used to as a child.
Dear Shooting Star,
I think there’s some kind of nursery rhyme or something I’m supposed to chant before I make a wish. Like star light, star bright, first star, something, something, something tonight. Wish I may, wish something else…um, have this wish I wish tonight?
I dunno, I can’t remember the whole thing. Despite the fact that I’m a schoolteacher, I’m pretty crappy at keeping my nursery-rhyme stuff straight. Anyway, fancy requests aside, I’d just like to make a wish, if you don’t mind. Let’s call it a Christmas wish, if you will.
So here goes. If Finn Donovan is out there somewhere—you know, the guy who abandoned me the night of our engagement party? Even though he’s a jerkface of the highest order (I realize it’s not terribly mature of me to call him infantile names, but it’s like college level compared to some of the other things I’ve called him since he disappeared), please look out for him. He needs looking out for. Please.
Um, thanks.
Cozy Meadows
“Did you see that?” Calla asked as she pushed open the door to the center, from which the sound of the seniors barking out “O Christmas Tree” floated to her ears. She came to stand next to Cozy, wrapping her arm around her shoulders and giving her a squeeze.
“I did.”
Calla tucked her long dark hair behind her ear and smiled. “Did you make a wish?”
“Yep. I wished for a Charlie Hunnam—Hugh Jackman sandwich. You’d better get the mustard. They’ll be here any minute.”
Calla laughed but then she sobered. “How are you, my friend?”
Cozy rolled her eyes at her beautiful friend who was newly married, and happily so. All of her married and exclusively dating friends worried way too much about her. Okay, so she showed up at parties stag. Sometimes she felt like a fifth wheel
, but she was managing.
But the concern their happiness was somehow going to hurt her—their guilt because of it—was unnecessary.
“Are you checking up on me again, Werewolf? I’m fine. Really.”
She loved Calla, appreciated her worry, but all this hovering over her was getting old. She didn’t want to be babied. She wanted to be better—to feel better.
It was Christmas, for the love of chicken-fried steak. The time for laughter, and sleigh bells, and baking cookies, and white elephants. It wasn’t the time to drag everyone down with her pathetic longing for a man who absolutely did not deserve even a shred of pining.
“I am checking up on you, and I’m going to keep right on checking up on you just like everyone else checks up on you. So will Winnie, and Bernie, and Daphne, and Greta. Because it’s what we do. We’re your friends, and because you’re just not you lately.”
“Really? Who am I?”
Yeah. Who was she? This moping wasn’t like her. She’d broken up with men before. Three, to be precise. It never took this long for her to pull up her bootstraps and get back into the game. But Finn hadn’t been like all those other men she’d dated…
Yet, it had been months since he’d been gone and it still felt as if she’d been run over by a freight train only yesterday.
“You’re not the easygoing witch I used to know. Now you’re all sound and motion and lights, camera, action. You’re working overtime. You’re involved in every volunteer activity known to man in this town. You’re burning the candle at both ends, Cozy. You have to slow down sometime, honey. Or it’ll catch up with you.”
No. That’s why she kept so busy. She never wanted that kind of pain to catch back up with her again.
“I like being busy is all.”
“No. You like to keep the hurt at bay by filling up your days and nights with endless activities. I’m a werewolf, I have super power and gallons of energy, and even I can’t keep up with you. Not to mention, I can smell your sadness—which, upon reflection, sounds creepy when I say it out loud, but it’s true. It’s what we werewolves do. Point is, you’re going to have a nervous breakdown.”