Paperback
Zebra
ISBN: 9781420103632
#1 New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels headlines this captivating collection of holiday romances. Full of heartwarming stories and holiday cheer, SILVER BELLS makes the perfect stocking stuffer!
In the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas, so settle into your coziest armchair and enjoy four captivating tales that will make your holidays merry and bright…
“Silver Bells” by Fern Michaels
For years, movie star Amy Lee wondered what it would be like to leave her shallow Hollywood life and go back home to Apple Valley, Pennsylvania. This Christmas, she plans to find out. And Hank Anders, her high-school boyfriend, is now ready to give her a welcome she’ll never forget…
“Dear Santa” by JoAnn Ross
Mystery author Holly Berry’s SUV has broken down in the little hamlet of Santa’s Village, Washington. Holly hates the holidays --- that is until lodge owner Gabriel O’Halloran and his five-year-old daughter rekindle her belief in passion, magic, and Christmas wishes…
“Christmas Past” by Mary Burton
Photographer Nicole Piper just received a very unwelcome Christmas gift --- a letter that holds clues to an elusive killer’s identity. Uncovering the truth means enlisting homicide detective David Ayden’s help, and embarking on a road trip that will take them both into the heart of danger and desire…
“A Mulberry Park Christmas” by Judy Duarte
Every Christmas, the folks living on Sugar Plum Lane pull out all the stops when decorating. After a bitter breakup, Alyssa Ridgeway’s heart just isn’t in it this year. But running into her first love, James “Mac” MacGregor, fills her with memories of the tender Christmas kiss they once shared…
Fern Michaels is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over eighty novels and several short stories. She’s a passionate animal lover and lives in South Carolina, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, several dogs and a resident ghost named Mary Margaret.
New York Times bestselling author JoAnn Ross has written ninety-nine novels and has been published in twenty-six countries. Two of her titles have been excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine and she's won several awards, including Romantic Times’ Career Achievement Award. JoAnn lives with her husband and two rescued dogs in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Mary Burton lives with her family in Central Virginia. She is an avid hiker and enjoys the occasional triathlon.
Judy Duarte has published seventeen books won the prestigious Reader's Choice Award. Her stories have touched the hearts of readers around the world with her tales of redemption and renewed trust. She receives many fan letters from readers who tell her of the positive impact reading her stories have had in their lives. She makes her home near the beach in Southern California with her husband and their son.
In the title novella of this heartwarming romance collection, Fern Michaels introduces us to Amy Lee, a glamorous movie star bored with her success and her surroundings. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness must have been thinking about Amy. All the trappings of her Hollywood lifestyle are unable to soothe her troubled past. As a teenager, her parents were killed in a gas explosion in their home in Apple Valley, Pennsylvania. Amy, known then as Amanda Leigh, was out shopping with her girlfriends when she heard the devastating news. Her Aunt Flo, a travel writer and adventurer in the Auntie Mame variety, quickly swooped in to care for her, and the two moved to southern California in an effort to start fresh. It was here that Amy got into acting and quickly ascended into film stardom. But her fame is simply a bandage on a wound too deep.
After suffering through another tedious party at her Malibu beach house, Amy decides to abandon her movie career (at least for the time being) and return to Apple Valley in the hopes of regaining what was lost --- her holiday spirit and a truer sense of happiness and fulfillment. Once there, she runs into her high school boyfriend, Hank Anders, also recently returned to town to spend the holidays with his twin brother Ben, now deployed in Iraq, his wife Alice and their twin infant sons. What he hopes will be a restful holiday is anything but when harried new mother Alice confides in him that she’s cracking under the pressure and leaves him in charge of the house and the boys while she takes a few days for herself. Despite the hurdles of their very different lives, Amy and Hank rekindle their old love, and she realizes that you can indeed go home again.
In “Dear Santa,” mystery writer Holly Berry is lost, both figuratively and literally. On the way to research a new novel, she swerves to miss a deer, and her car plows into a snow bank in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Just as she is wondering how many hours she can survive in this blustery cold, she is rescued by Gabriel O’Halloran, local sheriff, innkeeper and proprietor of the Christmas tree farm in the tiny hamlet of Santa’s Village, the self-proclaimed “most Christmassy place on Earth.” Gabe is a former Marine and single dad to five-year-old Emma, who mistakes Holly as the answer to her Christmas wish for a new mother.
Despite her festive name, Holly is not a fan of Christmas. As a matter of fact, she “hated Christmas. The whole Christmas season. She hated the tinsel, the trappings, the decorated trees, the wrappings, and most of all, she hated Santa Claus, whom she quit believing in when she was seven years old” after her father was shot and killed by a mugger on Christmas Eve. Despite a move to sunny Los Angeles, Holly has not gotten over it and never feels the desire to celebrate the holiday again. But once ensconced in the cozy town and after spending time with Gabe, Holly is ready to believe again.
Photographer and single mother Nicole Piper gets an unwelcome holiday surprise in Mary Burton’s “Christmas Past.” Nicole has overcome a great deal of anguish over the last year and is determined to put the past behind her and start anew in Richmond, Virginia, with her baby daughter Beth. But her tranquil future is about to be threatened by her violent past. Nicole receives a DVD in the mail and is horrified to learn that it’s of her late husband Richard, whose violent and sadistic ways forced her to flee her old life in San Francisco. Back then, she was known as Christine, and after a brief and romantic courtship, she married Richard. Soon her daily nightmare of beatings and threats began. She knew she had to leave, or he would kill her. So she seeks out the help of Claire Carmichael, a woman who aids battered women. With Claire’s help, she is able to get out of San Francisco and relocate to Virginia. Watching his face brings it all back, although she tries to reassure herself that Richard is dead and can’t hurt her anymore. Or can he?
Richard is still trying to control her, even from beyond the grave. In the taped missive, he reveals that he hired someone to kill Claire for helping her escape, and if Nicole will go to his attorney’s office in Alexandria, the proof awaits her. As much as she wants to ignore this latest bit of upsetting news, Nicole knows that she must go and get the evidence because a killer has gone free. Maybe after she turns over the information to the police, she can truly get on with her life. Local homicide detective David Ayden insists on accompanying her. David, a widowed father of two boys, has harbored a crush on Nicole for the past year, but senses that she’s not ready to trust a man again. In an attempt to do the right thing, Nicole and David find themselves in the crosshairs of a hired killer bent on carrying out her late husband’s last wish.
Trying to start anew is also a prevalent theme in Judy Duarte’s “A Mulberry Park Christmas.” Mac Maguire has no intentions of settling down on Sugar Plum Lane, but fate has other ideas. A San Diego homicide detective, Mac recently inherited his old partner’s ramshackle Victorian home on the quaint street in his hometown of Fairbrook, but his only intention was to flip the house as soon as possible and get back to his life in the city.
Enter Jillian Grant, his old high school flame, recently divorced and back in town with her two young children. Mac sees poor Jillian struggling with the aftershocks of a bad marriage and tries to help her remember all the fond memories they shared, especially around the holidays. They became close all those years ago at the first annual Mulberry Park Christmas celebration, and this year Mac feels that Jillian needs to experience the joy of the season more than ever. And in his heart of hearts, he realizes he probably does too. For the first time in a very long time, Mac remembers the words a kindly old homeless man once told him: “If you choose to do right over wrong, every chance you get, you’ll get that family you always wanted and reap the kind of life you deserve.” Mac is ready to claim that life he’s dreamed about for so long --- and he wants to share it with Jillian and her children.
The four novellas featured in SILVER BELLS each demonstrate a renewed sense of Christmas spirit. With the economy in shambles, wars being waged overseas, and the destructive nature of death and divorce ever present, who couldn’t use a gentle reminder of the finer aspects of the holiday? The characters all struggle to overcome their individual obstacles and restore their battered spirits. By opening themselves up to the spirit of the season, they revive lost loves, renew long-forgotten hopes and regain that childlike innocence. In the words of Auntie Mame, “we need a little Christmas now.” This delightful holiday collection fits the bill.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
Chapter One
Amy Lee stood at the railing on the second floor of her palatial home in Malibu, staring down with quiet intensity at her guests, mostly employees and a few acquaintances. The occasion was her annual Christmas party. Why she even bothered she had no idea.
It had taken a crew of four three whole days to decorate the house from top to bottom. Another crew of three to decorate the outside. Christmas trees in every room, huge wreaths with red satin bows over all the mantels. Gossamer angels floated from ceiling wire, while a life-size stuffed Santa complete with a packed sleigh and a parade of elves circled the floorto- ceiling fireplace that separated the great room from the dining room. The focal point of all the decorations.
The mansion was festive to the nth degree, and she hated every bit of it. She could hardly wait for midnight, when she handed out the gifts and bonus checks, at which point the guests would make a beeline for the door, having done their duty by attending the festivities.
Amy rubbed at her temples. She’d had a raging headache all day, and it looked like it was going to stay with her throughout the night. She knew she had to go back downstairs, paste a smile on her face, and somehow manage to get through the next hour. For the hundredth time she wished she was anywhere but here.
Here was California. While she lived in Malibu, she worked in Hollywood, where she and all the other movie stars worked. Phony and superficial Hollywood --- just like most of the people she worked with. But she’d learned how to play the game, and it was a game. If you wanted the star status that she had, you learned quickly what the rules were. And then you stuck to them.
Amy always told herself she would know when it was time to get out. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected the time was now. At thirty-three she was fast approaching has-been status. New, rowdy, outrageous, flamboyant starlets were giving the paparazzi a run for their money in their bid for stardom, and it was working. It seemed like the world couldn’t live another day unless they read about one of the starlet’s underwear or lack thereof, or getting busted for drunk driving while underage or of age, then signing autographs for the arresting officers or going to jail for ignoring the law. Autographs to the highest bidder as they were being fingerprinted. Translation --- big bucks at the box office.
She wasn’t a prude, but she’d always prided herself on a certain decorum befitting her celebrity. She didn’t flit from affair to affair, she didn’t drink and drive, she didn’t do drugs, and she absolutely refused to do nude sex scenes in her movies. One of the tabloids recently called her dull and said she wouldn’t know what excitement was or an adrenaline rush if it hit her in the face. They were right.
Amy looked down at the dress she was wearing. It was a plain Armani scarlet sheath befitting the holidays, with a slit up the leg. It draped perfectly over her body. Just the right neckline, just the right amount of sleeve. She’d walked the red carpet enough to know she looked glamorous in her sparkling gown. Just like all her female guests looked glamorous. Once she’d heard a rumor that if you wanted to attend an Amy Lee party, you had better dress down. At the time she’d thought it funny. Now, it wasn’t funny. Why was that?
Her head continued to throb each time she put her foot on one of the steps. Thank God she’d made it to the bottom without her head splitting open. She walked among her guests, chatted, patted arms, smiled, and even giggled at something one of her employees said. She risked a glance at her watch. Fifty minutes to go. Three thousand seconds. It felt like a lifetime.
It dawned on Amy that she’d been so busy with the party details that she hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Maybe if she ate something, the headache would go away.
Amy made her way over to the buffet table. Earlier in the evening it had looked gorgeous, with a Christmas tree ice sculpture nestled in a circle of bright red poinsettias. The matching red candles had long ago burned down. Red candle wax pooled on the white tablecloth. The lobster and shrimp in their ice bowls, what was left of it, looked watery. The turkey and roast beef looked dry. The champagne fountain was as dry as the turkey and roast beef. She felt a surge of anger. Where were the people she’d hired to take care of the table? Outside smoking cigarettes, that’s where. Did it even matter? When the last guest left, maybe she’d scramble herself some eggs.
Forty minutes to go. Two thousand four hundred seconds. What she should do was go to the sleigh, pretend her watch was fast, and start handing out the presents and the bonus checks. There were expensive token gifts for the other guests, so they wouldn’t feel left out. Boy/girl gifts. Tomorrow it would be all over TMZ, Page Six, and anywhere else the gossips gathered. It was all part of playing the game.
Amy moved closer to the sleigh, touched her secretary’s arm, and whispered. Word spread, and the guests started to mince their way toward the sleigh.
Twenty minutes later it was all over, and she was standing at the door wishing the last guest a Merry Christmas. Two weeks early, the last guest pointed out. “But then, my dear, you always were ahead of the curve.” Amy forced a smile and stood in the open doorway until the last car pulled away from the driveway. The valet boys waved and walked down the driveway.
Amy turned to go inside when she looked at her oversize magnificent front door. She loved everything about the house, but the front door was special. She’d had it made of mahogany and gone to great lengths to find a lumber mill to round it out so that it looked like a cathedral door. Anytime she had been interviewed at home, the reporters had taken pictures of her front door. A memory. She was going to miss it. Her eyes burned when she looked at the huge silver bells attached to a glorious red satin bow. The bells were hammered silver, specially made. The tone was so pure, so melodious, it always brought tears to her eyes when they rang. Another memory. Maybe she’d take the bells with her.
Amy closed the huge door and locked it. Now she could relax. First, though, she walked about, turning off lights. The buffet table had been cleared and carried away. There was still noise in the kitchen, but she ignored it. She kicked off her heels and made her way to the sofa. She sat down, leaned back, and closed her eyes. It took a full minute to realize her headache was finally gone.
The multicolored lights on the artificial tree winked at her. How pretty it looked in the dim light of the great room. In broad daylight it looked like just what it was --- a fake tree with a bunch of junk hanging off it.
As a child, back home in Pennsylvania, there had always been a floor-to-ceiling live tree that scented the entire house. Until that fateful Christmas when she was fourteen and allowed to go to the mall alone. Three days before Christmas, she’d gone to the mall with two of her friends. An hour into her shopping the police had come for her to tell her a gas explosion had rocked their house and killed her parents.
The days afterward were still a blur. She knew she’d gone to her parents’ funeral, knew she stayed at her friend Katie’s house until her aunt Flo, a writer of travelogues, could be found. A week later she’d been located in Madrid, Spain. She’d rushed home, swooped Amy into her arms, then swooped her out to California, where Amy had lived ever since.
There had been money, lots and lots of money that her aunt Flo invested for her. Huge insurance policies added to her robust nest egg. And the house was hers, too. The town had pitched in to repair the damage from the explosion, then closed up the house. Flo paid the taxes every year and said from time to time that they would go back, but they never did. Neighbors mowed the lawn in the summer and shoveled the snow in the winter. Kind people, caring people who had loved her parents. Flo said people in small towns looked out for one another. Amy believed it.
She’d cried a lot back then because she missed her parents. Not that Flo wasn’t a wonderful substitute. She was, but it wasn’t the same as having a real mom. Flo had enrolled her in everything there was to enroll in --- gymnastics, soccer, choir, art classes, music classes, the drama club --- everything to keep her hours full. But at night, when she was alone in her pretty bedroom, which Flo had decorated herself, she would cry.
Her world changed in her senior year when she had the lead in the school play. She’d given a rousing performance or so said the critics. A movie producer had shown up at the door five days later and asked her if she’d be interested in an audition with a photo op. Flo had raised her eyebrows and hovered like a mother hen in case it was some kind of scam. It wasn’t. Flo continued to hover, saying college was a must. Amy had agreed, and the studio worked around her studies. Back then she did two movies a year, not little parts, not big parts, but big enough for her to get noticed. And then the plum of all plums, the lead in a Disney movie. Her career took off like a rocket. Flo still hovered until she convinced herself that Amy could take care of herself. The only thing Flo had objected to was the name change from Amanda Leigh to Amy Lee. But in the end, when her niece said she was okay with it, Flo stepped aside and continued on with her own career, which she had put on hold to take care of Amy.
Thanks to modern technology, aunt and niece stayed in touch daily. Time and scheduling permitting, they always managed at least one vacation a year together.
Amy closed her eyes again as she ran the last phone call with Flo through her mind. Flo had called just as she was getting out of bed. She’d flopped back onto the pillows, and they talked for almost an hour. The last thing she’d said to her aunt before breaking the connection was, “I don’t want to do this anymore, Flo. I want to go home. I am going home. Tomorrow as a matter of fact. I bought my ticket two weeks ago.”
“Just like that, you’re throwing it all away?” Flo had said.
“Well, not exactly. I have two more pictures on my contract, and I don’t have to report to the studio till April of next year. I don’t know if I’m burned out, or I just need to get out of the business. Come April, I might be more than ready to go back. I will honor the contract, so that’s not a problem. Before you can ask, I am financially secure. You know I never touched my inheritance. I’ve got fifty times that amount from my earnings, and it’s all invested wisely. I’m okay, so don’t worry about me.”
“Mandy, I just want you to be happy,” Flo said. She’d never once called her by her Hollywood name. “I want you to find a nice man, get married, have kids, get a couple of dogs, and be happy. It’s all I ever wanted for you. I’m just not sure you’re going to find happiness back in Pennsylvania.”
“We should have gone back, Flo.”
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I did what I thought was best. For you. So, you’re going to open up the house and... what... put down some roots?”
“I don’t know, Flo. Maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist, and you’re right, if I had wanted to go back earlier, I would have made your life miserable until you took me. The best I can come up with is, I wasn’t ready to go back. I’m ready now, and I’m going. It would be nice if you could find a way to join me. Hint, hint.”
“Darling girl, I met a man! He has the soul of an angel, and don’t ask me how I know this. I just know it. He loves me, warts and all. He’s a simple man, never been out of Madrid. He lives on a farm. Owns the farm, actually. Never been on an airplane. I’ll ask him if he wants to spend Christmas with my movie star niece. He’s seen all your movies, by the way. He thinks you’re a nice-looking lass.”
Amy laughed. “You getting married?”
“The minute he asks me, I am, but he has to ask first. I have to run, Mandy, I have an appointment I can’t break. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Love you, Flo.”
“And I love you, too.”
