It Must Have Been the Mistletoe... Read online

  Look what people are saying about these talented authors….

  Of Kate Hoffmann…

  “Hoffmann’s deeply felt, emotional story is riveting. It’s impossible to put down.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Charmer

  “Romantic, sexy and heartwarming.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Who Needs Mistletoe?

  Of Rhonda Nelson…

  “Well plotted and wickedly sexy, this one’s got it all—including a completely scrumptious hero. A keeper.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Ranger

  “Wonderfully written and heart-stirring, the story flies by to the deeply satisfying ending.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Soldier

  Of Tawny Weber…

  “Sexy, hot, intriguing as well as fun are all hallmarks of a Tawny Weber tale.”

  —CataRomance

  “If you like laugh-out-loud tales laced with spicy scenes, I recommend Tawny Weber. I look forward to reading more from this talented author.”

  —Romance Junkies

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Kate Hoffmann began writing for Harlequin Books in 1993. Since then she’s published sixty books, primarily in the Harlequin Temptation and Harlequin Blaze lines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys music, theater and musical theater. She is active working with high school students in the performing arts. She lives in southeastern Wisconsin with her two cats, Chloe and Tally.

  A Waldenbooks bestselling author, two-time RITA® Award nominee and RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice nominee, Rhonda Nelson loves dreaming up her characters and manipulating the worlds they live in. In addition to a writing career, she has a husband, two adorable kids, a black Lab, and a beautiful bichon frise who dogs her every step. She and her family make their chaotic but happy home in a small town in northern Alabama. She loves to hear from her readers, so be sure and check her out at www.readRhondaNelson.com.

  Tawny Weber is usually found dreaming up stories in her California home, surrounded by dogs, cats and kids. When she’s not writing hot, spicy stories for Harlequin Blaze, she’s shopping for the perfect pair of shoes or drooling over Johnny Depp pictures (when her husband isn’t looking, of course). Come by and visit her on the web at www.tawnyweber.com.

  Kate Hoffmann,

  Rhonda Nelson, Tawny Weber

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE MISTLETOE…

  CONTENTS

  WHEN SHE WAS NAUGHTY…

  Kate Hoffmann

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  COLE FOR CHRISTMAS

  Rhonda Nelson

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  A BABE IN TOYLAND

  Tawny Weber

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  WHEN SHE WAS NAUGHTY…

  Kate Hoffmann

  Prologue

  THE WINDOWS OF THE converted school bus were caked with frost. Alison Cole peered out at the dimly lit parking lot. Though she loved winter, she’d always imagined it would be much more comfortable spent in a real home, with a fireplace and a functioning furnace and a Christmas tree with lights and tinsel—not in an old bus traveling the highways of…well, whatever state they’d found themselves in that day.

  Today, they were at a holiday craft fair in Minot, South Dakota. Or was it North Dakota? Her musician parents were inside the arena, entertaining the crowds, while their three children were supposed to be doing the math homework their mother had assigned that morning.

  Though her parents found this gypsy lifestyle fulfilling, Alison couldn’t say the same for herself. A thirteen-year-old girl was supposed to experience certain things in life—boys, shopping, movies, school dances. She didn’t even have a best friend, beyond eleven-year-old Layla and nine-year-old Rita. And who wanted to be best friends with their little sisters?

  “That’s mine!” Rita screamed.

  Alison turned away from the window to see her sisters fighting over a fashion magazine. She broke up the argument and grabbed the offending article. “Where did you get this?”

  Rita stared at her sullenly, refusing to answer, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “She stole it,” Layla confessed. “She found it on the counter at that diner where we ate dinner last night and she put it in her backpack on the way out.”

  “No one wanted it,” Rita cried. “And it was just sitting there. They would have thrown it out anyway.”

  “Why would you want this?” Alison asked, flipping through the pages of Vogue. “It’s for grown-ups, not little girls.”

  “I’m not little!” Rita reached out and grabbed the magazine. “Besides, I like the pictures. The models are…pretty. And the clothes are interesting. I’m making my Christmas list.” She pointed to a photo. “I want these shoes.”

  Alison shook her head. “We should practice. I have a new song I want to try.”

  “We’re supposed to do our math,” Layla said.

  In order to accommodate a life of touring, their mother had been homeschooling the girls at a table near the front of the bus. In addition to the basic subjects like math and history, the girls also got a large dose of traditional American music from their father—folk, country, bluegrass—along with a smattering of rock and pop. And all on their parents’ collection of instruments—guitar, fiddle, mandolin, dulcimer.

  When they weren’t playing, they were listening, anything from Robert Johnson to Bill Monroe to the most obscure artists their father could find in the discount bin at the music stores they frequented. Alison had saved her meager allowance and made her first purchase a few years ago—a Jean Ritchie cassette she’d found at a flea market where her parents had been playing. From the moment she’d popped the cassette into the player, she knew this was her kind of music, simple mountain songs, full of longing and despair. This was the voice of an angel, and every day since, she’d tried to emulate it.

  “Get your mandolin out, Layla. We can do math later.” Her sister eagerly scrambled over a pile of laundry that their mother had left for them to fold and grabbed the battered case of the mandolin she’d received the previous Christmas. Layla glanced over at Rita, who was now absorbed in her magazine, an anxious expression on her face.

  Their youngest sister had never been interested in music. At only nine, she’d made it her goal to hate everything that Alison and Layla loved. She refused to conform to what anyone expected of her. She was stubborn and rebellious and a general pain in the butt. And yet, Alison still hadn’t given up on her. If Rita had inherited any musical talent at all, it wouldn’t take long to teach her what she needed to know.

  “Skeeter, you have to sing, too,” Alison said. She used her pet name for Rita, hoping she might persuade her sister to join in willingly. “This song really needs harmony and I can’t sing both parts.”

  Rita rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “No. I’m reading. Make Layla sing.”

  “You’re looking at pictures,” Layla said. “And I can’t sing and play at the same time.”

  “If you try, just for a little while,” Alison said, “I’ll get you another fashion magazine the next time we’re in town.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Rita asked. “You don’t have any money.”

/>   Alison wasn’t sure how she’d keep her promise, but that didn’t matter now. She’d heard an interesting song on one of her father’s cassettes and was dying to try it out with her own little trio. The Cole Sisters. That’s what they’d call themselves. Just like the Carter Family or the Judds. Since they were on the road anyway, why not become the opening act for their parents?

  “I want to start with ‘Barbara Allen,’” Alison said. “And then, ‘The Cherry Tree.’ And ‘Gypsy Laddie.’ And the new one is called ‘Molly Ban.’ It’s so sad and pretty. It’s about a boy who shoots his girlfriend because he mistakes her for a swan.”

  “Jeez,” Rita grumbled. “What? Are you working up an act?”

  “What if I am?” Alison glanced over at Layla. “It’s not so impossible. Kid acts are really big and there are plenty of families who sing together.”

  “Yeah, when they’re old,” Layla countered.

  “It’s already been done,” Rita said, her nose still stuck in the pages of her magazine. “They called it the Partridge Family.”

  “Who?” Layla and Alison asked in tandem.

  Rita glanced up and sighed dramatically. “Some really old group from the seventies. The Partridge Family? They had a show on television.”

  “Mom doesn’t let us watch television. When did you see it?”

  “Those kids I met at the folk festival last fall,” Rita explained. “They had a television in their bus and they had lots of tapes.” She set her magazine down. “The show’s about this family who rides around on a bus and plays music together. But they play rock music. And they have a regular house, too. And there’s no father. And there are five of them and only three of us. Two, if you don’t count me. And one if you don’t count Layla.”

  “Next time you find someone with a television, you have to invite me along,” Layla said. “When I get older, I’m going to have a television in every room of my house. And I’m going to eat as much candy as I want. And regular bread, not that whole wheat stuff that Mom makes us eat.”

  “So, what do you think?” Alison asked.

  “About what?” Layla looked puzzled.

  “A group. The three of us, together onstage. We could do it. We’d need to work on our harmonies, and Rita would have to learn to play an instrument, but if we perform together, we could make a little money.”

  Rita frowned. “Except that I can’t sing or play or do anything that anyone wants to pay to watch. And Layla won’t do it.”

  “Why not?” Alison turned to her middle sister. “You’re the best musician of us all.”

  “She’s scared,” Rita said.

  “I’m not,” Layla countered.

  “You are so. That time Mom and Dad brought us onstage last year at the Christmas show, you almost peed your pants you were so scared. And we were just singing ‘Silent Night’ along with them. You forgot the words and your face turned all red and then you had a stomachache for two days.”

  Alison looked at the stricken expression on Layla’s face. “It’s all right,” she murmured, her dreams suddenly fading. “We can work on that. You’ll get more comfortable the more you perform.”

  Layla shook her head. “No, I won’t.” She grabbed her mandolin and headed for the rear of the bus, then plopped down on the bunk bed she called her own.

  Rita shrugged and went back to her magazine. “I guess you’re just going to have to make a solo act,” she said, a satisfied smirk curling the corners of her mouth.

  Alison reached around her sister and picked up her dulcimer. “Well, Merry Christmas to you, too.” She stomped up to the driver’s seat and plopped down. “I hate this bus. I can never get far enough away from you two.”

  Someday, she’d have everything she dreamed about. Someday, she’d own a place—and it wouldn’t have wheels! And she’d be the one making decisions about where she’d go and what she’d do. And when she performed, people would listen to her and smile and clap for hours on end. And when she traveled, she’d sleep in a proper hotel with a bed and a real bathroom. And when Christmas came around, she’d have a real tree, not some silly plastic thing they found at a flea market.

  “Someday,” Alison murmured. “Someday, everything will be different.”

  1

  ALISON COLE PEERED OUT the rain-streaked window of her Subaru station wagon at the fork in the road. A quick glance at her GPS was no help at all. She’d been off the government maps for the past fifteen minutes.

  She grabbed her cell phone from the seat beside her, determined to call Stephen, the graduate assistant who’d given her directions. But the moment she turned it on, she realized there wouldn’t be service this far into the mountains. She punched in his number and waited, hoping that she was wrong. But when the call didn’t go through, Alison tossed the phone back onto the seat.

  The way she looked at it, she had two choices—well, actually three, if she counted turning around and going back down the road to civilization. “Right or left,” she murmured. She had a fifty-fifty chance of finding Ettie Lee Harper’s cabin. The same odds had her getting stuck on a muddy road with no way of calling for help.

  Alison had spent the past four months tracking down the elusive Ettie Lee and she was running out of time. Her search had begun the moment she uncovered an old reel-to-reel recording in the archives at the university last summer. A yellowed label gave the date as 1939, but a sound technician friend said that the tape was probably a recording of an old phonograph record. It featured a young Ettie Lee Harper, her voice clear as a church bell on a cold winter night, singing Appalachian Christmas songs along with a dulcimer.

  For a musicologist, it had been like discovering a treasure chest filled with precious jewels. Only Alison’s jewels were songs—traditional songs that had been passed down for generations in mountain families and over time were transformed into entirely new versions. She recognized many of the original songs but there were three on the tape that were completely unfamiliar to her—three lost treasures that she was determined to uncover.

  Alison had made Christmas carols the subject of her doctoral thesis at East Tennessee State, tracing the roots of Appalachian songs back to their origins with the Scots and Irish settlers who carved out a life in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Discovering a trio of new songs would open all sorts of doors. She could put together an album featuring the new songs or publish them in a folio. And she’d sing them at her Christmas-themed recital in two weeks.

  The discovery alone was enough to assure her of her dream job, the chance to start a whole new department at the University of North Texas, one of the nation’s top music colleges. The selection committee was coming to hear her Christmas faculty recital and she’d already been scheduled for a series of interviews in Denton.

  With this new music, they’d have to see how important her work would be to their university. At the least, she’d finally get an offer of a tenure position at East Tennessee. She’d be Professor Alison Cole, Ph.D., making her music teacher parents proud.

  “That’s it,” she muttered. “I’m calling the governor. This is ridiculous. I’m still in Tennessee. We have road signs in Tennessee.”

  Over the past year, Alison had ventured into the mountains a number of times in search of singers and songs. And she’d learned one important thing—mountain folk were suspicious of outsiders. Maybe suspicious enough to pull down road signs? She leaned over the steering wheel and squinted into the gray light of the afternoon.

  There it was. Not a regular Tennessee Department of Transportation sign, but a crude wooden marker nailed to a post. Alison jumped out of the car and ran toward it, trying to read the letters carved into the weathered plank. “Harper,” she said with a smile. The left end of the sign had been fashioned into a point and she stared down the muddy road. Though the narrow cut through the forest looked nearly impassable, at least she knew there would be help at the other end if she got stuck.

  Alison ran back to the car and got behind the wheel, then sharply turned the Suba
ru to the left. There were signs in the mud that another vehicle had passed that way recently, giving her a boost of confidence. After two minutes on the steep, winding drive, the thick forest opened into a small clearing. A pickup truck was parked off to the side of the driveway and she pulled in behind it.

  A wide porch spanned the front facade of the rough-hewn log cabin and smoke curled out of a stone chimney. A small oil lamp flickered in the window between panels of a lace curtain. There were no wires or poles running along the driveway. Though indoor plumbing wasn’t a must in many of the mountain cabins she’d visited, nearly everyone had electricity and phone service these days.

  She honked her horn to announce her presence and waited for the obligatory dogs to appear to chase her off. When they didn’t, Alison stepped out of the car and started toward the front steps. But halfway up the muddy path, the front door swung open. Two dogs came tearing out and Alison glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she could get back to the safety of the Subaru in time. Her split second of hesitation was too long and the hounds raced around her, barking and sniffing at her feet.

  If that wasn’t enough to frighten her, an elderly woman appeared on the porch, a shotgun in her hands. She raised it, pointing it directly at Alison. “You better watch yourself,” she shouted, holding the gun steady. “This is private property and you’re officially trespassing.”

  “There wasn’t a sign,” Alison called, protecting her eyes from the rain, which was slowly increasing to a downpour. “I’m sorry. I—I’m looking for Ettie Lee Harper. Does she live here?”

  “There’s nothing here for you. I don’t have any antiques to sell, I’m not lookin’ to buy life insurance and I don’t wanna leave my savings to whatever charity you come callin’ for.”