Holidays Ever After: Contemporary Romance Holiday Boxed Set
Publication date: December 5th 2017
Genres: Adult, Romance
Which holiday hottie will you unwrap first?
No matter the time of the year, it’s always the season for seduction!
From Spicy to Sweet and everything in between, this sizzling boxed set of TWENTY contemporary romances from today’s New York Times, USA Today, and International bestselling authors will give you tons of holiday hunks to fall in love with.
Inside these pages you’ll find everything from sexy strangers and brooding billionaires to marines, firefighters, and the guy next door.
Whether you’re in the mood for a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, or a New Year’s celebration, this limited edition Holiday Ever After anthology is packed with exclusive, full-length titles to lift your spirits. From Halloween to Kwanzaa, Valentines Day, Norooz, and the Fourth of July, these stories will give your holiday season extra spark and will be the best romantic holiday bundle to hit your ereader this year!
Get ready to heat up your holidays when you treat yourself to Holidays Ever After!
Including stories from…
Colleen Charles
Monica Corwin
Amy L. Gale
Becca Fanning
Victoria Pinder
Alexa Padgett
Tuesday Embers
Khardine Gray
Holly Dodd
Liz Gavin
Jillian Quinn
Courtney Hunt
Vivi Holt
Kristen Luciani
Astrid Arditi
Rebekah R. Ganiere
Jessica Gray
Ja’Nese Dixon
Teresa Roman
Angela Corbett
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SNEAK PEEKS:
Holiday Kisses (Hollywood Crush Series)
by Angela Corbett
Three years ago Sutton Simon joked that if she ever ran into Kutler Cane, her celebrity crush, she’d kiss him senseless. She’s about to get that opportunity.
Prologue
The drums pounded so loudly it felt like my heart was trying to match the rhythm. The band at the front of the bar was playing a bass-heavy cover of a Christmas song with so much enthusiasm that I could barely hear myself think. Most Christmas traditions consist of family, bright lights, trees, and presents. Mine was drowning in alcohol.
“Whoa, Sutton!” My best friend, Kathy, grabbed the shot glass from my hand. “I think your hollow leg is filling up. Drink some water for a minute.” She put a glass of ice water in front of me instead.
I looked at her through slightly hazy vision. “I’m fine!”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“Thanks for being here with me,” I said, trying to keep my thoughts straight. I was having a lot of them. “It’s hard.”
“I know,” she said. “I hate that they ruined the holidays for you.”
I scowled at the memories that started flooding my mind. “Me too.”
The noise of voices, laughter, and gleeful conversations around me made me stabby. I turned my attention to the TV, a happy couple flashing across the screen.
“Why can’t I find a nice guy like that?” I said, pointing my glass at the screen.
Kathy’s eyes widened. “Like Kutler Cane?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Someone sweet. And good. Who helps people. Maybe with an accent.”
Kathy’s eyebrows rose. “And a dick the size of Texas.”
I tipped my glass toward her. “Good point. I’d like him to have excellent junk, too.”
Kathy took a swig of her beer and lifted one shoulder. “Maybe one day you’ll meet him.”
My mouth gaped. “Kutler Cane? As in, movie star Kutler Cane?” I narrowed my eyes and searched her face. “Are you drunker than I am?”
She laughed. “No, I’m just more optimistic. You never know what the universe has in store for you.” Kathy was a free spirit who loved everything to do with energy and firmly believed she could think an exotic car into existence if she wanted to. I loved that about her. Her positivity had saved me repeatedly. She had a bumper sticker that said, “I’m mostly peace, love, and light. And a little go fuck yourself.” It summed her up perfectly and I loved her for it.
“Words and intentions are powerful,” she continued. “You want to meet Kutler Cane, so ask. It could happen.”
I snorted a laugh and almost choked on the water I’d been drinking. When I got my coughing under control I said, “And flying coach could be pleasant, and people who drive slow in the fast lane will move out of my way, and I’ll be crowned a queen. Those are all things that are far more likely to occur than me meeting Kutler freaking Cane.”
She shook her head and the movement made me a little dizzy. “You just need to change your attitude and have some confidence in the universe.”
I’d lost my faith in positivity a year ago and had no desire to try and retrieve it. “If I had that, I wouldn’t be sitting in this bar drinking my emotions.”
“That’s exactly why you need to change your approach and be more positive. Your thoughts and words create your reality. You shouldn’t doubt that.”
The image on TV switched to a photo of Kutler wearing a mouth-watering black suit with a white shirt open at the collar. His lips were stretched into a wide smile that highlighted his perfect jaw and cheekbones. I stared at the photo. Hard. And decided I’d give a lot of things to be able to see that incredible bone structure in person. I didn’t believe in wishes like Kathy, but I also didn’t see any harm in making one; it was Christmas, after all. I grabbed my shot glass for courage, threw it back, and turned to Kathy. “Okay. I’ll play your game.” I threw my hands in the air and looked up at the ceiling like I could see the universe through it, then made a dramatic oath, “One day Kutler Cane will walk into my life, sweep me off my feet, and kiss me senseless.” I opened my eyes and leaned into her conspiratorially, “And when it happens, I’ll kiss him back.” It was one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever said or done—and I’d once dressed up in a squirrel costume to hide my identity while I was toilet papering an ex-boyfriend’s house.
Kathy grinned at me. “I’ll hold you to it.”
Two more shots showed up in front of us. “Cheers,” Kathy said, picking up her glass. “To new adventures, powerful affirmations, and kissing hot celebrities!”
I clinked my glass against hers. “I’ll drink to that.”
Blossoms of the Heart Excerpt
By: Khardine Gray
Phoebe secured her arms around Tai and he picked her up and took her up the stairs to his bedroom. The gentle breeze blew the curtains out either side from the long, glass windows and moonlight spilled into the room. It created that dreamlike feel she always felt with him, but more so today. Tonight.
She didn’t want to feel like the broken woman trying to make do with what she had tonight. She wanted to indulge on the godlike, beautiful man who carried her in his arms as if she were weightless. Tonight, he held her like she belonged to him.
No one had ever made her feel that. No one. The fear of that clenched her stomach and gripped her heart, but she pushed it aside. She asked him to make love to her, but she wanted to make love to him.
Violet’s Bucket List
By: Tuesday Embers
I slid into my sleeping bag on my belly, my fists stacked atop my mother’s memorial plaque, and my chin resting on my hands. The air was cold in the graveyard that night, but I was too fixated on my mother’s name to shiver. I stared down at the scripted font, recalling how many years we’d camped out in this very graveyard. I never guessed I’d be sleeping here without her – or with her in the ground like this.
My mother’s relatives were all in Mexico, so we’d scoured the graveyard for another Rodriquez we could pretend we were related to. Ana Concepcion Rodriquez didn’t have anyone else with the same last name around her, so we adopted her into our little circle, making her our own. We pretended she’d been stolen away from her wealthy parents at a young age, grew in poverty with nothing but gruel sandwiches, her morals and can-do attitude. Then when Ana was a teenager, she went in search of her family.
It was a tearful reunion when fake Ana was welcomed into the family she’d always known was out there. They showered her with love, kisses, presents, and an elephant because, well, Caty had a healthy imagination. Love, kisses and presents hadn’t seemed like enough to her.
In our rendition of Ana’s life, she’d died peacefully in her sleep as an old woman, surrounded by her family, and the gardener. Julio had admired her from afar as he’d pruned the roses at her family’s estate, but
only ever got up the courage to kiss the back of her hand. We always brought flowers for Ana’s grave from fake Julio, swooning at the romance of their unrequited love.
We’d slept on Ana’s grave every year. Now that I had my mother in the ground, I knew where I would be spending every November 1st for the rest of my life.
Brady and Caty came back forty-five minutes later, their eyes wide as they rejoined me. “What’s up with you two? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” I let out a perfunctory laugh and clapped my hands at my terrible joke. The spirits of the dead were supposed to walk around on the Dia de Los Muertos, searching for treats and their loved ones. They were granted one night a year to rise from their graves and go bonkers, reuniting with family and friends who camped out on their graves to greet them.
“Nothing happened!” they both exclaimed, looking guilty. Then Caty folded herself into the sleeping bag and set a few pieces of my mom’s least favorite candy on her plaque, next to our row of sugar skulls. “How’s Mama?”
“I think she’d be glad her traditions didn’t die with her. I’m glad you guys came tonight. It wouldn’t be the same without you. Thanks for pushing me to get out of bed. I needed this.”
“Anytime,” Caty smiled, situating the lantern next to the gravestone, so we could see each other a little better.
I smoothed away a leaf that had fallen onto my mother’s no-frills plaque, studying her name and timeline as Brady tucked in between us. It was such a simple thing, the dash between her birth year and her death. “That’s all we get,” I mused in my shifting melancholy, tracing the line that summed up her entire life. “Just a dash to the end.”
Brady’s features grew tense, his eyebrows pulling together, and his mouth in a tight line. “We need to make our dashes count, then. Vi, you’ve only got four things on the bucket list. It’s time we started crossing them off.”
“Hello, we can’t afford France yet.”
Brady shook his head. “We can’t afford not to go. We can’t afford cancer. We can’t afford getting older. Now’s the time, Vi. We’re putting something on the calendar. By this time next year, I want France crossed off Violet’s bucket list.”
I shot him an appreciative smile. “But that list belongs to all of us.”
Brady smirked at me. “Then I guess we’ll all have to go.”
Brady’s finger traced the small engraved line with mine, and then Caty added her finger to the mix. We scooted closer to each other, knowing that we might not know what our respective dashes would hold, but certain we would go through it all together.
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