A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  I swear on a stack of Bibles

  and holding Nonna’s rosary beads blessed by Pope Pius XII in my hands I could feel sexual tension palpating in the air.

  There was no mistaking the charged energy bouncing between our bodies, though we were dressed head to toe in parkas, gloves, hats, and scarves.

  I could smell it, pungent and spicy; feel it, hot and steamy; taste it, honeyed and sweet.

  This is how animals must recognize their mates in the wild.

  I was so glad it was dark because I knew my face looked as red as Mama’s tomato sauce when it’s coming to a soft boil.

  Neither of us said a word. We just stared at one another. Even in the dark, I could make out the moisture flickering in his soulful eyes. His breath steamed into vapor with each expiration, a white puff of clear smoke veiling his face, and from the looks of it, he was breathing as hard and fast as I was.

  My girlie parts suddenly got quite warm, the sensation not only shocking me, but exciting me as well.

  A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights

  by

  Peggy Jaeger

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A Kiss Under the Christmas Lights

  COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Margaret-Mary Jaeger

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Rae Monet, Inc. Design

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Champagne Rose Edition, 2016

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-1215-6

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Elvira.

  You know a little sumthin’ sumthin’ about

  large, loud, and loving Italian families.

  I’m glad we are sisters-in-law.

  Chapter One

  “Gia Gabriella,” Mama bellowed from the bottom of the staircase. “Andiamo! Let’s go. We’re gonna be late.”

  I cringed at the shrill sound blasting up the stairs and into my room. At just under five feet and less than a hundred pounds drenched, Mama should have a quiet, dainty little voice befitting her stature.

  No such luck.

  Francesca San Valentino, when she wanted or needed to, could be heard by people in New Jersey, the next state over, and even they would flinch at the deafening decibels this little Italian woman was capable of attaining.

  I grabbed my down vest and shrugged into it. I was barely awake because I’d been up late into the night studying for my CPA exams and it wasn’t even seven thirty yet. Forfeiting any makeup except for a small dab of concealer on the shadows under my eyes, I pulled my hair into a ponytail and barreled down the stairs of my childhood home.

  Mama, hands fisted on hips that had borne six children and were still only as wide as a handspan, waited, a scowl of irritation glaring across her face only the daughter of a son of Italy can do properly.

  “I’m ready to go, Mama.” I stopped on the riser just above where she waited, and kissed her flawless, unlined cheek. “Don’t worry. We won’t be late.”

  “We’d better not be. I told the aunts we’d be there early to set up. And I don’t want Father Mario giving me the malocchio.” She tossed her purse over her shoulder and made the sign of the cross in front of the current pope’s picture hanging next to the front door.

  As long as I could remember, there had been a photograph of the current, smiling, pious pontiff on the wall, giving us a silent wave and blessing as we left the house.

  Since it was expected, I did the same.

  How to be a Good Italian, Lesson 1:

  Revere the Holy Father.

  “Why would Fr. Mario give you the evil eye, Mama? You volunteered to help set up for the Christmas bazaar. It’s not like it’s expected. You’re not getting paid or anything for your time.”

  She buckled herself into the passenger seat of her two-door compact, her suitcase-sized purse planted on her lap in front of her chest like some weird female body armor.

  “Believe me, bambina, Fr. Mario, God bless him”—she made the sign of the cross again, her fingers dancing over the purse in the general direction of her heart, spirit, and soul—“is the type of priest who expects his parishioners to volunteer for church activities. If you don’t, well…” One tiny shoulder pulled upward through her coat, and I couldn’t see the half of her face hidden behind the fur collar. “I think he keeps a list of people who don’t help out.”

  “Why would he?” I glided the car to a stop at a red light and glanced over at her.

  She shook her head, her champagne-colored chignon plastered in place by a lifetime’s overindulgence of hairspray. “To let God know who’s a good Catholic and who isn’t.”

  I snorted a laugh. “You make the father sound like some kind of ecclesiastical Santa Claus. Who’s been a naughty Catholic and who’s been a nice one? That’s ridiculous. I’m sure he doesn’t keep a list.”

  Her face drew into the squinty-eyed, know-all pout every Italian mother pulls off to perfection and that basically says, “You’ll see. I’m right.”

  The traffic was sparse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan this morning, so within ten minutes I turned into the Church of St. Rita Armada de Jesus parking lot, referred to by my four older brothers for as long as my memory could recall as CRAP. All four of them had been altar boys, and all four of them had hated every moment of it. Luckily, Chloe, my older sister, and I had been spared the wearing of the junior vestments because Fr. Mario was a true apostolic misogynist who believed girls should never be allowed to help serve at mass, but should be seen (if necessary) and not heard (always).

  Fr. Mario was not only an old-school priest with old-school ideas, manners, and ways, he was also old as dirt. His knees clicked when he walked, the sound making anyone who heard it—and that was everyone—wince when he walked by. His ill-fitting dentures had a habit of slipping out of his mouth when he yawned, which he did often and at inappropriate times, like during the blessings at funeral masses and weddings. For the past few months, his homilies had turned from concise and predictable ten-minute sermons into rambling and repetitive twenty-five-minute tomes.

  A few nights ago at dinner, Daddy mentioned he’d heard from a guy who knew the bishop that a new priest, fresh out of seminary and not even ordained yet, had been assigned to St. Rita’s to assist the aging Fr. Mario.

  In everyone’s opinion, the new guy couldn’t arrive soon enough.

  This morning, the back half of the church parking lot was roped off and filled with makeshift wooden huts that would serve as the indiv
idual booths for the upcoming holiday celebration.

  Every year, St. Rita’s hosts a countdown-to-Christmas festival during the twelve days before the holiday, culminating in a Christmas Eve vigil at the church with a program of Mary and Joseph’s trek into Bethlehem acted by local parish kids.

  “The new guy is supposed to be here this morning, helping out,” Mama said as I parked the car.

  “What’s his name?” I buttoned up my vest against the biting cold rolling off the East River and cursed myself for not dressing warmer.

  “Fr. Santini.”

  “You’re kidding? His name literally means little saint, and he’s a priest?”

  Mama is a walking encyclopedia of kinesthesia and can relay a simple or a complex idea with just a few easy movements of her body. So when she turned to me, lifted her shoulders, palms upward at her waist, and pouted again, closing her crystal-blue eyes and raising her pencil-thin eyebrows almost to her hairline, I knew she was telling me, in essence, “What can you say?”

  From the trunk of the car, I helped Mama remove our contribution to the festival: Christmas lights for the booths. Strand after strand of tiny bright white lights would be strung over, across, and down the huts to illuminate them to the holiday hordes who attended the festival each year.

  You know those tiny clown cars in the circus you think fit two clowns, but when the car door opens, about twenty come barreling out one after the other? Just like those cars, every time I pulled another bag filled with light boxes out of the trunk, more would materialize.

  “Gesu, Mama,” I said, lifting a bunch of bags from the trunk. “How many did you buy?”

  “I figured ten boxes of one hundred lights per booth would do it.”

  I did a quick mental calculation—CPA candidate, remember? “There are fifteen huts, so you bought one hundred and fifty boxes?”

  She nodded, wrapping three plastic bag handles around one hand.

  “That’s fifteen thousand lights. How much did all that cost?”

  “Not much.” Her chin disappeared behind her fur collar again when she lifted a shoulder. “Your uncle Sonny knew a guy, so I got a good deal.”

  Uncle Sonny, my dad’s younger brother by ten months and five days (hey, we’re Italian Catholics, so what can I say?) is what is called in polite circles connected. In our house that means he intimately knows people who can get you anything you want, from whatever make and model car you desire to helping you get rid of a pain-in-the-neck in-law.

  And when I say get rid of, I mean it in the literal sense of the word.

  You never saw them again.

  Ever.

  “The aunts are bringing extension cords,” Mama told me as she started dropping off bags of light boxes at each hut.

  After an hour of helping people move supplies from cars, I passed by Mama, who was carrying a humongous swaddled baby Jesus statue for the crèche.

  “The new guy is here,” she called out.

  “Where?” I put down the ladder I’d been carting and looked in the general direction of where she’d cocked her chin since her arms were full of the Lord.

  I found him in an instant. It wasn’t difficult because he was the only guy in the parking lot I didn’t recognize. Plus, he was dressed head to toe in basic clergy wear: black long-sleeved shirt under a black vest over black trousers and standard-issue shiny black, boring priest shoes.

  His back was to me and he was carrying a table, but after he put it down and turned around, I got a good look at the front of him.

  And Holy Mary, Mother of God, what a front he had.

  Close-cropped, military-style hair the color of windblown wheat topped a head that stood—truly—head and shoulders above everyone else around. The guy had to be six three at least. Sharp, etched cheekbones God cut with a knife sat under deep and dark oval-shaped eyes. His face was a composite of planes and angles, the carved cheeks meeting up with a chiseled-from-stone chin. Hardened concrete looked softer than this guy’s jawline. His nose was perfectly fixed in the center of his face, the slight aquiline bend at the tip bringing to mind Michelangelo’s David, the Cupid’s bow under it well defined and pronounced. His lips were full and thick and—God help me—looked utterly kissable.

  I could tell even with the chunky vest covering his torso, he was closer to thin than stocky, but from the way his biceps pulled against his sleeves, he had some muscle to him.

  And some pair of legs. They went on forever, from heaven to earth in a full, hard line.

  I don’t know how long I stood there just gawking with my mouth open like an empty cannoli shell waiting to be filled, but I’m being truthful when I say I couldn’t move. My feet were frozen to the ground, my knees had locked, and my hips weren’t taking me anywhere soon.

  This was one beautiful man.

  The old masters would have used him as a springboard for their work, and I could actually picture him in a Botticelli fresco, garbed in Roman robes, lounging while naked, buxom-breasted chubby women fed him grapes and sweetmeats.

  In the time it took for a hummingbird to flap its wings once, I pictured myself as one of those women.

  Just when it hit me this was my new parish priest—a priest, for pity’s sake—he turned, and our gazes locked across the lot.

  His dark eyes widened, and his beautiful full mouth opened, forming the sexiest O I’d ever seen on a guy. With a slow, steady determination, he stood to his full height, shoulders folding back and squaring, his neck doing a little stretchy thing that sent my stomach muscles into a conniption fit.

  Unlike me, he could move. And did.

  Straight across the parking lot and straight to me.

  Madonna!

  As he came toward me, I could see every ripple of muscle, every action and reaction of his gait, every blink of his eyes while it happened. Detailed, distinct, delicious.

  The bright sun shone low due to the hour, but it haloed around his form, bathing him in light.

  He looked like an angel. A dressed-all-in-black angel, but an angel, nonetheless.

  “Need some help?” he asked when he was within a foot of me.

  I still hadn’t moved, my fingers cemented around the ladder rungs. I couldn’t feel them anymore. Merda, I couldn’t feel anything I was so numb from just looking at him.

  But I could hear. My blood, as it river-rafted crazily through my temples; my heart, drumming like a heavy metal band in my chest.

  And his voice. Mio Dio, his voice.

  When I was six, I’d had a terrible chest cold. The doctor told Mama to keep me warm and hydrated and the cold would ride itself out in time. Nonna prescribed her own old-world remedy. She sat me in her lap and held a tiny shot glass up to my lips coaxing, “Tu bevi, Gia bambina. Tu bevi.” Drink, Gia baby. Drink.

  She tilted the glass back into my mouth, and I drank every drop.

  I don’t remember much after because Daddy told me I slipped into a coma for about sixty hours, bombed out of my head from the anisette Nonna dosed me with.

  But what I do remember is the amber-colored liquid slipping to the back of my throat, warming each place it touched like a million little hits of heat popping everywhere inside me and filling my senses with the sweet flavor of Mama’s Sunday morning caramel rolls and sugar.

  That’s what his voice sounded like: warm and sweet, thick, delicious, and soothing.

  My entire body relaxed when I heard it. My paralysis flew, and my frozen-in-place digits melted.

  He’d held my stare the entire time, never wavering, never becoming distracted by something else. He looked straight at me, like a missile deadeye-aimed for a target.

  “This looks heavy,” he said as he finagled the ladder out of my grip. “Where do you want it?”

  With as much effort as it would have taken me to lift a feather, he raised the heavy ladder on to his shoulder.

  “Um?”

  Really? This was the best I could do? I shook the dust bunnies out of my head and pointed. “Over by those wooden huts
.”

  “After you,” he said in the voice that had my legs—and all my other necessary parts—liquefying.

  We walked over to the first hut, which belonged to the St. Rita’s convent, the nuns big hawkers of their own handmade Christmas cards.

  We stopped, and he opened the ladder. “Is this a good spot?”

  I was struck mute again when I glanced up at his face. And I did have to glance up. Way up.

  I’m blessed with Mama’s DNA, unlike my brothers and sister who favor my tall, swarthy, Mediterranean-gened dad. I was their opposite in every way: small-boned, blonde, and blue-eyed northern Italian genes flow through me, which include a genetic marker for short stature. If I stood completely upright without a bend or kink in my spine, I could manage five foot three.

  So when I say I had to curve back in order to see his face in full, I’m not exaggerating.

  “Perfect. Thanks.”

  “I’m Tim Santini, by the way.” He stuck out his hand, and I stared down at it for a few beats. “My friends call me T.”

  A cute nickname, but I wasn’t a friend so there was no way I was calling him by an initial. “Tim” seemed too informal since he was a priest and I’d been raised to respect the calling and the called, so I opted to graze over any moniker and simply said, “Gia San Valentino. My friends call me Gia.”

  He chuckled as I slipped my hand into his.

  And time stopped.

  I know it sounds hokey and clichéd, and maybe it is. But truly, everything around us slowed, stilled.

  A moment ago the parking lot had been filled with people, all talking, gossiping, working, and the noise level had been what you’d expect from a crowd.

  But the moment I folded my hand into his, all sound ceased.

  A confused little stutter shifted in his gorgeous eyes, and I knew exactly how he felt.

  I pulled my hand from his with just a little too much force and took a step backward, mentally and physically. “I’ve got to get these lights strung.” I reached for one of Mama’s numerous boxed sets and started opening it. “Thanks for helping with the ladder.”

  I figured he’d go on to help the next person who needed assistance, but he didn’t. He stayed with me while I began opening the light boxes. For some ridiculous reason, though, my hands weren’t working and I couldn’t get the first box open. The flap was taped shut on both ends with what had to be industrial-strength adhesive mixed with superglue because no matter how hard I tugged and yanked, I couldn’t split it.