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Sugar and Spice

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Overview

'Tis the season when anything can happen ... when passion sparks brightest ... and miracles and magic can turn any heart toward love ...

The Christmas Stocking, Fern Michaels
Philadelphia businesswoman Amy Baran is determined to raise money for a new seniors' center by harvesting Christmas trees from the small-town Virginia farm she remembers from her childhood. Trouble is, Gus Moss has come home from California with his own ideas about saving the farm his father has neglected. Neither wants to give up, but when attraction turns to romance, they just might have to give in ...

The Ghost of Christmas Past, Beverly Barton
Wounded Special Ops officer Mack MacKinnon doesn't have any reason to look forward to the holidays - until he rescues pretty widow Katie Hadley from a raging blizzard. Now, in a season of miracles, he's falling as hard and fast as the Christmas Eve snow ...

The Twelve Desserts of Christmas, Joanne Fluke
Take two lovestruck teachers. Add a dollop of conspiring kids. Place in a boarding school over Christmas break. And add a little help - and eight, great recipes - from amateur sleuth Hannah Swenson, and you've got a romantic holiday tale that's sweet, delicious, and definitely served warm ...

Twelve Days, Shirley Jump
Of all the luck - Natalie Harris can't believe she drew Jake Lyons as her Secret Santa pal! The dreamy hunk leaves her completely tongue-tied. But with twelve days of secret gifts, sweet notes, and steamy emails to go, she just may conquer her fear and discover something surprising under the tree ...

Treat yourself to four unforgettable tales of holiday romance filled with sugar and spice and everything nice .

Editorial Reviews

Sweet is the word for this anthology from four top Kensington writers. Barton's contribution, about two strangers snowed in after a Tennessee storm, is the steamy standout. Michaels creates a paean to childhood disappointment, but the romance gets short shrift. Fluke's near-innocent tale of two teachers is clunky, but the dessert recipes make up for it. Jump's office romance gives the collection a kick, with fiery writing.(Nov.) Copyright 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Fern Michaels

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines a biography this way: A biography is the written history of a person's life. Fern Michaels isn't a person. Fern Michaels is what I DO. Me, Mary Ruth Kuczkir. Growing up in Hastings, Pennsylvania, I was called Ruth. I became Mary when I entered the business world where first names were the order of the day. To this day, family and friends call me Dink, a name my father gave me when I was born because according to him I was `a dinky little thing' weighing in at four and a half pounds. However, I answer to Fern since people are more comfortable with a name they can pronounce. I've been telling stories and scribbling for twenty-five years. I hope I can continue for another twenty-five years. It wasn't easy during some of those years. As I said, I had to persevere. My old Polish grandmother said something to me when I was little that I never forgot. She said when God is good to you, you have to give back. For a while I didn't know how to do that. When I finally figured it out I set up The Fern Michaels Foundation. The foundation allows me to grant four year scholarships to needy, deserving students. I then went a step further and opened pre-school and day care centers with affordable rates for single moms who are having a hard time of it. Doing Fern Michaels allows me to do this and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't thank God for being so good to me. I don't know what I'm the most proud of, the books I write, the scholarships, the pre-schools or the fact that I put my kids through college on my own with no help from anyone. Probably the latter because when all else is said and done, the only thing that matters is family. Is Fern Michaels a great writer. No. She is however, one hell of a story teller. When people ask me what I do, I say, "I scribble and tell stories." It's a great way to make a living. The Dutch have a saying, `If you can't whistle on your way to work, you don't belong in that job.' I whistle all day long.

Bio of Beverly Barton

New York Times bestselling author Beverly Barton has written over fifty contemporary romance novels and created the popular "The Protectors" series for Silhouette's Intimate Moments line. This sixth-generation Alabamian is a two-time Maggie Award winner, a two-time National Reader's Choice Award winner, and a recipient of a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Series Romantic Adventure. She is currently working on her next novel of romantic suspense for Zebra Books. Readers can visit her website at www.beverlybarton.com.

Bio of Joanne Fluke

Joanne Fluke was born and raised in a small town in rural Minnesota but now lives in sunny Southern California. She is currently working on her next Hannah Swenson mystery, and readers are welcome to contact her at her e-mail address.

Bio of Shirley Jump

Shirley Jump lives in the Midwest with a husband, two kids and a kleptomaniac puppy with a bad habit of dragging her underwear around in public. Because her real life is just too funny to be believable, she writes romantic comedies for Silhouette and Kensington, preferring the fictional world where dust bunnies dare not to tread. Visit her Web site at www.shirleyjump.com.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Kensington

Filesize

1.20 MB

Number of Pages

416

eBook ISBN

1420100793

Excerpt from: Sugar and Spice by Fern Michaels

The Christmas Stocking
Fern Michaels

Chapter One

Los Angeles, California
October, Two Months Before Christmas

It was a beautiful five-story building with clean lines, shimmering plate glass and a bright yellow door. A tribute to the architect who designed the building. An elongated piece of driftwood attached to the right of the door was painted the same shade of yellow. The plaque said it was the Sara Moss Building. The overall opinion of visitors and clients was that the building was impressive, which was the architect and owner's intent.

The young sun was just creeping over the horizon when Gus Moss tucked his briefcase between his knees as he fished in his jeans pocket for the key that would unlock his pride and joy, the Sara Moss Building named after his mother.

Inside, Gus turned off the alarm, flicked light switches. He took a moment to look around the lobby of the building he'd designed when he was still in school studying architecture. He thanked God every day that he'd been able to show his mother the blueprints before she'd passed on. It was his mother's idea to have live bamboo plants to match the green marble floors. It was also her idea to paint clouds and a blue sky on the ceiling. The fieldstone wall behind the shimmering mahogany desk was a must, she'd said. Fieldstones he'd brought to California from Fairfax, Virginia, in a U-Haul truck. There was nothing he could deny his mother because he was who he was because of her.

There was only one picture hanging in the lobby: Sara Moss standing next to a sixty-foot blue spruce Christmas tree that she had his father plant the day he was born. That tree was gone now from the Moss Christmas Tree Farm, donated to the White House by his father the same year his mother died. Over his objections.

He'd gone to Washington, DC, that year and took the Christmas tour so he could see the tree. He'd been so choked up he could hardly get the words out to one of the security detail. "Can you break off a branch from the back of the tree and give it to me " For one wild moment he thought he was going to be arrested until he explained to the agent why he wanted the branch. He'd had to wait over two hours for one of the gardeners to arrive with a pair of clippers. He'd had a hard time not bawling his eyes out that day but he'd returned to California with the branch. Pressed between two panes of glass, it now hung on the wall over his drafting table. He looked at it a hundred times a day and it meant more to him than anything else in the world.

Gus stared at the picture of his mother the way he did every morning. As always, his eyes grew moist and his heart took on an extra beat. He offered up a snappy salute the way he'd always done when she was right about something and he was wrong. At this point in his daily routine, he never dawdled. He sprinted across the lobby to the elevator and rode to the fifth floor where he had his office so he could settle in for the day.