Holly and Homicide by Leslie Caine Read Free Book Online Page A

as they were checking in, a lavish yet still tasteful partridge on its uppermost branch. Ideas for the other rooms were also springing to mind.
    “That sounds like a great idea to me,” Henry said.
    “Me, too,” Mikara chimed in.
    Chiffon’s eyes widened, then her features took on an expression of childlike glee. “Audrey, I take back everything I said, plus everything I was secretly thinking. That’s a
great
idea!”
    “Thank you,” Audrey said in a monotone. “I’m humbled by your enthusiasm.”
    “Could we do a big promotion with this, over the Net?” Mikara suggested. “Allow customers to stay twelve days for the price of ten, for example?”
    “I don’t see why not,” Wendell said cautiously, turning toward Henry, who truly was supposedly in charge of this type of decision.
    “You were already telling me about the housewarming party for the neighborhood,” Chiffon said to Henry. “We could make a party game out of identifying the Christmas day in each room … like, we’d list them on our invitations, the twelve days, and we’d put an A, B, C, or so on in each doorway, and make people match the right letters to the right twelve days. Get it?”
    “Hey, I like that, Chiffon,” Henry said with a big smile. “But getting back to Mikara’s suggestion, most of our guests have already booked rooms based on our previous weeklong price breaks. But we’ll contact our registered guests and offer them a special rate—pay for ten days andstay for twelve, from December twenty-fourth to January fourth.”
    “No! That’s going to make us sound desperate,” Mikara said, shaking her head. “You’ll make people think something’s up. And what about all our reservations for the week
after
Christmas? We’ll be double-booking ourselves.”
    “But
you
were the one who suggested it in the first place!” Henry cried, throwing up his hands in exasperation.
    “Don’t yell, Henry,” she retorted. “I reconsidered, and recognized a flaw in my idea. It’s not like
you
never change your mind and take back things
you
said!” She glared at him till he averted his eyes.
    “This is no big deal,” I said, “but just so you know, the Twelve Days of Christmas actually begin on Christmas day and end on January fifth.”
    “Please,” Wendell said, with a dismissive wave in my general direction, “nobody but a church nerd would actually know that. We can assign the dates however we want.”
    “I’m hardly a ‘church nerd,’ Mr. Barton, but I’ll grant that it’s your right to time the promotion however you want.”
    “Which is
not
going to involve a twelve-day rate at this late juncture,” Mikara stated emphatically.
    The noise level increased exponentially as everyone except Sullivan and me began to bicker. He gave me a loving smile, which I returned. With all parties feuding about something, I reminded myself that, no matter what happened, my relationship with Steve couldn’t bestronger. If not invincible, the two of us could at least prove to be unflappable tonight.
    Wendell cleared his throat and grinned at someone in the doorway behind me. “Ah. Here’s my director of operations. No need to worry about a thing from now on.”
    I turned. My heart started hammering in my chest as I stared in shock at the tall, handsome man, recognizing him at once.
    “Everybody, this is Cameron Baker,” Wendell was saying.
    Our eyes met, and we both froze with our gazes locked for several seconds. He was my former boyfriend—my first love, and the first man I’d been intimate with—and we hadn’t seen each other in ten years. When I was at Parsons School of Design, he’d been a grad student at Columbia.
    “Erin?!”
    “Cam! You …came back from London.” He was wearing an exquisite black cashmere coat. Other than his upgraded wardrobe, he looked exactly the same.
    “Six years ago. I told you I would. You left New York.” He grabbed both my hands and helped me to my feet. “My God. Erin Gilbert, as