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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Yes, Virginia, Here Comes Santa Claus

  Copyright ã 2005 Celine Chatillon

  ISBN: 1-55410-604-4

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2005

  Look for us online at:

  www.zumayapublications.com

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  Dedication:

  Thanks to Stef and Tina for giving me the thumbs up on this story. Merry Christmas to all and to all… a ‘good’ night. J

  ’Twas the Month Before Christmas…

  “Please, don’t do it… No, not that. I’ll do anything but that!”

  Brad Rudner wildly waved the thick stack of crayoned manuscripts above his head in a vain attempt to fight off his attacker. “Please, I beg you. I actually have a brain inside this handsome, athletic body that I’m trying to keep from disintegrating in this godforsaken hellhole. I’m really not cut out to do this kind of thing, Marsha. Have a heart, will ya?”

  “I’m an editor—I don’t have a heart, remember?”

  The tall, middle-aged woman who looked like his sainted mother but acted more like a devilish sadist tossed yet another rubber-banded pile of unopened letters onto his desk. “You said I had no heart this past week when I assigned you to pick up the slack covering the school board meetings. I took your comment personally. Now I’m seeing if you really have one.” She tossed another bunch of letters into his lap. “Enjoy.”

  Why me? Why the fuckin’ hell does it always have to be me?

  Brad’s cries for justice reverberated through his skull. Nine months on the job at the West Texas Courier, a small, award-winning daily, and already he’d made an enemy of his editor and many of his co-workers.

  It wasn’t the fact that he acted like a prima donna at times that got their goats. No, that wasn’t it, Brad realized now. People pretty much expected the occasional outburst from a pretty boy from the suburbs of Fort Worth who graduated cum laude from U.T. What seemed to irritate them more than anything was the fact that he had casually mentioned within the first two weeks of accepting the sports desk that he considered it only a stepping stone in his sports journalism career. Next stop? Why, anchor of ESPN’s SportsCenter, of course.

  Damn lousy economy. Who knew he wouldn’t even be able to land a sports broadcasting job covering the legendary Odessa Permian/Midland Lee high school football rivalry at KMID? And why did everyone who interviewed him ask him if he had ‘experience’? Hell, it had taken him almost a year and a half after graduation to land this position… What kind of journalistic experience did they think he’d garnered in so short a time?

  Too bad they didn’t ask about my experiences with the ladies.

  Brad slapped his palm down on the desk, causing the children’s letters to Santa to jump and scatter. He had to stop thinking along those lines. The timeline for his sports broadcasting career was a bit off because of the slim-pickings in the job market, so he didn’t have time to start anything serious, and satisfying one-night-stands seemed to be a thing of the long distant past. The backwater bars were full of country-western beauties, but none seemed willing to take their clothes off without extensive documentation that he was free from any and all sexually transmitted diseases.

  Damn satellite dishes! Who knew people living in the middle of the Oil Patch were up on current events? Heck, they even talked and dressed pretty much the same as folks from Fort Worth… Imagine that.

  Bragging that he was a former high school football star didn’t impress the honeys he’d tried hitting on at the Rusty Bucket on Saturday nights, either. His reputation as the sarcastic sports editor at the Courier had gotten around town fast—a little too fast to be coincidence. Someone had started a smear campaign on him even before the high school football season had begun.

  He had to get out of this place. He had to get back to civilization—or at least Midland.

  Brad sighed, wiped a candy-bar-sticky hand across his weary face and turned to start on the mountain of unopened letters.

  “Everyone has to chip in during the holidays,” he mimicked his ever-nasal editor as he sorted through the latest bunch of children’s missives. Marsha really could stand a sinus operation and a stick-up-her-buttectomy. “Everyone is expected to answer his or her fair share of letters to Santa and type them in so the special Christmas Shopper edition can go to press before Thanksgiving. Yada yada yada…”

  His shoulders slumped. Maybe if he wrote a letter, Santa Claus would grant his Christmas wish and find him a decent position and a beautiful woman to love.

  Suddenly the back door to the editorial area blew open, bringing a gust of dry, chilly air. A lilac-colored envelope toppled out of the stack and landed squarely in his lap.

  “Say, what the…”

  Brad put the other envelopes aside and carefully picked up the letter. Hmm… He sniffed it—lavender-scented, expensive linen paper. This was no ordinary ‘Please bring me a bicycle and a police special with armor-piercing bullets’ type of Santa Claus letter. No, this note definitely came from a female. A grown female, by the looks of the delicate handwriting on the outside…

  He took a quick glance around the newsroom to make certain he was alone then grabbed his letter opener to gently pry the envelope apart. He carefully unfolded the single piece of flower-bordered stationery and blinked twice—three times—cleared his throat nervously and leaned back in his desk chair. He couldn’t believe what he read…

  Dear Santa,

  I know this is stupid, but I can’t seem to help myself. I know y’all print these things in the paper so people can ooh and ah over them, but please don’t print mine. My request is a different, more personal one.

  I want to know if there really is such a person or thing as Santa Claus. I’ve become jaded this past year since my fiancé left me. No, I don’t hate him or myself; it’s just that circumstances beyond our control prevented us from being together and now he’s found a good woman working beside him and… You get the picture.

  Santa, I just want to know if you really exist. The only thing I want for Christmas is an honest, hard-working, decent and kind man to love me. A sexy, vibrant man who can make passionate love to me from dawn to dusk and all through the night…a man who can make me feel like a woman instead of a mistake. That’s asking for a lot, I’m sure, but hopefully you can see where I’m coming from.

  Virginia

  “Hmm…Virginia. Nice name. And she sounds like a nice girl.” Brad stroked his whiskerless chin and chuckled. “Ho, ho, ho… Maybe ‘Santa Claus’ ought to pay this Virginia a little visit? Give her the lovin’ she’s asking for in her letter? Why not?”

  He eagerly rubbed his hands together. “Yes, Virginia, there’s a Santa Claus—and he’s more than eager to slide down your sweet, silky chimney, baby. God, I hope you’r
e a leggy blonde, or a feisty redhead. Or just plain tall, dark and seductive with the lung capacity and suction of a Hoover and libido that just doesn’t know when to quit… That kind of action would certainly brighten up ol’ Brad’s holiday season.”

  The tightness in his pants made him quickly cross his legs just in case Marsha or any of the other reporters walked into the newsroom and started wondering about him sporting a hard-on while reading children’s Santa letters.

  “Yee-ow! Mr. Winky needs to get out and stretch himself in the shower when we get home.”

  Brad picked up the purple envelope and searched in vain for a return address. Damn! She’d left it off, along with her last name. The only telling detail was a local postmark. She must live somewhere nearby.

  “Hell, it shouldn’t be impossible to find her. I mean, how many ‘Virginias’ could there be in this zip code? There’s only forty thousand people in the entire county. How difficult could tracking her down be?”

  Her Stockings Were Hung By the Chimney with Care…

  Virginia ‘Ginny’ Sanchez Chin carefully duct-taped an old fishnet stocking to the mantelpiece. What the heck? It was good for a laugh—particularly after she penned that silly letter to the editor about Santa Claus. What a crackpot idea that had been! She promised herself never to drink alone again.

  The black crisscrossed legging stood in stark contrast to the cute little red fuzzy sock with her name printed on the white fake-fur trim next to it. Bless Glenna’s heart. Her nursing supervisor really enjoyed decorating the maternity ward for the holidays, and she had insisted Ginny take her stocking home immediately after their early December party.

  “No use in your stocking getting lost with all the little ones we’ll make for the newborns this month,” Glenna had told her. “Besides, I have a feeling you’re a little low on Christmas decorations. Am I right?”

  Ginny had nodded. “Yeah, you hit that nail on the head. I’ve got a few things, but not many. It’s only been two years since I graduated nursing school, and I always spent the holidays with my folks while at college. Bobby and I were saving up to buy a house so neither one of us felt like spending money on frivolous things…”

  Her voice had trailed away at that point. It hurt to think of what Bobby did to her. Their love was gone, destroyed forever. She still worried about him serving overseas in a war-torn part of the world, but she knew he was doing okay. He occasionally emailed her, along with his millions of friends and family members, to let them know what he was up to and how he and Ingrid were getting along working in the Army field hospital.

  Ingrid. The other woman. Another nurse—but an Army nurse. Not a maternity ward/pediatric nurse living in small town Texas in the middle of nowhere. Not a boring, stay-at-home, loves-children type of woman who didn’t want to enlist in the reserves alongside her fiancé after they finished nursing school.

  What did she expect? He wouldn’t get called up and he wouldn’t get lonely for female companionship while serving abroad?

  “Dumb, dumb, dumb!” She pushed the haunting memories away. “Ginny Chin, you are one dumb-ass, mixed-up Mexican-Chinese American girl, but it’s time to get on with your dumb-ass, mixed-up life.”

  She stomped away from the fireplace and paced her living room. The small, plastic tree in the corner looked synthetic, but the homemade paper chains and snowflakes the kids on the block made for her hid its lack of verisimilitude. Only the twig of genuine mistletoe—which flourished high in the mesquite tree boughs—gave her home even the remotest of holiday cheer. Alas, it hung above the kitchen doorway as a silent reminder she had no one to kiss beneath it.

  “There is no Santa Claus,” she announced to no one in particular. “And once more, there is no more Bobby and you. No more dreams of a little cottage with a white picket fence and two point five children and a dog. There’s just you—boring old you. Get over it. Get used to it.”

  Ingrid. Ginny gritted her teeth. The name conjured up images of a leggy blonde Swedish model with a sex drive like a rabbit. No wonder poor Bobby had fallen for the woman’s charms. What guy would want to spend the rest of his life holed up with a straight-laced, boring person like herself? The two of them probably had huddled together during the latest rash of suicide bombers and kidnappings of foreigners and comforted each other… Uh-huh, ‘comfort’ was the word for it.

  Ginny threw herself down on her small sofa in front of the fireplace and picked up the local newspaper. She had to stop thinking about her non-existent love life and keep focused on what was important—like the state high school football championships coming up shortly. Odessa Permian was the favorite again this year, but she was a secret Midland Lee fan.

  “Let’s see what Brad ‘the Rude Reporter’ Rudner has to say about this last Friday’s playoff games…”

  She flipped through the sections and found the weekly sports column by the Courier’s newest sports reporter. ‘The Rude Reporter’, as he had become known around town, always made her laugh. She didn’t care what others thought about him—she found his investigative reporting of the foibles of his fellow Texans’ obsession with high school football fascinating copy.

  And he had a nice smile, too, no doubt about it. His small, black and white column photo flattered him. A bold, white-toothed smile, slightly curly sandy-brown hair, she guessed, strong chin, deep, penetrating eyes… He had once written a column on his years as a high school football star back east. A nasty tackle that tore the ligaments in both his knees had ended his career abruptly.

  He had fought hard to walk again without pain or a limp, and had gone on to study journalism at U.T. He certainly didn’t loll around acting like a crybaby when life dealt him a raw deal like she did. Brad Rudner boldly took life by the horns and got on with things. She could learn a thing or two from him.

  She’d like to meet him someday and talk football—or about anything, for that matter. Too bad her rotating schedule at the hospital made it difficult for her to get out much in the daytime when the rest of humanity did.

  Ginny sighed and punched up the throw pillow behind her head. She chuckled as she read this week’s column. “Hmm…maybe I ought to put out a pair of Bobby’s old socks and ask Santa to fill them up with a hunk just for me?”

  Her hand slid down her nightgown-clad form and stopped at the junction of her thighs. Her legs spread wide, and she rubbed her clit with a practiced motion. The newspaper floated down to cover her face as her other hand took up its usual position, stroking her aching nipples.

  Ah…it feels good, so good. She soon found release, gazing into the dark eyes of her favorite sports reporter.

  You’re a Mean One, Mr. Rude…

  “Give me the ball. The ball—now! Pass the damn ball to me, Rude-man!”

  Brad ignored his teammate’s request and trapped the ball behind him. He pivoted on his outside foot and attempted the three-point shot. Damn! He missed. Half-court basketball wasn’t his forte.

  “Thanks for the game,” their opponents said. “See y’all on Wednesday?”

  Panting for breath, Brad nodded. “Yep, Wednesday at six a.m. sharp.”

  As the others headed for the lockers to get ready to go to their respective jobs, Derek Johnson, Brad’s partner on the court shook his head in disgust.

  “Rude-man, you’re a ball hog. We’re never going to win with that lousy attitude.”

  “What attitude? The YMCA two-man basketball league championship will soon be ours for the taking. And stop calling me ‘Rude-man’. It’s annoying.”

  Brad loped over to his water bottle and plopped down on the side bleachers. Derek followed.

  “You don’t think you have an attitude? The man with a sarcastic retort to everything and everyone?” Derek rolled his chestnut brown eyes and slapped Brad on the leg with his towel. “How come I don’t find that statement a surprise?”

  “Ouch. You big, muscular meany…I’ll tell Mom on you. Are you trying to say that I deserve my ‘Rude Reporter’ nickname?”

/>   “Well, if the athlete’s-foot-ridden size thirteen Converse fits…”

  Brad frowned. More and more it actually started to bother him what people thought about him in this God-forsaken backwater burg. But what bothered him even more was the fact that he couldn’t locate his Virginia in these past three weeks. Why was that? Where could she be? His quest had nearly driven him to distraction.

  Night after night he’d trolled the local phone book—all fifty pages of it. He’d called all sixteen listings for Virginia, but only discovered little old ladies. None of those old crones could be his Virginia, the sex-starved woman of his dreams, could they? A reverse address Internet search hadn’t brought any success, either.

  Derek patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, don’t go zoning out on me, Man. It’s almost seven-thirty. You’ve got to get ready for work, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s okay if I show up late. I’m the sports editor as well as the sports reporter. I’m not forced to rat on myself.”

  “Hmm...the benefits of working for a small town paper.”

  “No kidding. As long as I get my copy in on time, Marsha’s pretty cool.”

  Derek took a long swig from his water bottle, watching Brad’s atypical despondent expression closely.

  “Something’s really bothering you, Rude-ma—uh, Brad. Out with it.”

  Brad shrugged. “It’s nothing, really. It’s just that I’m looking for someone, someone in particular, who lives in this zip code. I can’t seem to find her.”

  “This zip code covers about fifty square miles, you know. You got an address?”

  “No, just a name.”

  One black eyebrow shot up. “Just a name? Where did you meet this honey? The Rusty Bucket?”

  “No, it isn’t like that… She wrote a letter. A letter to Santa.”