All I Want For Christmas Is a Reaper

  Table of Contents

  All I Want For Christmas Is A Reaper

  All I Want For Christmas Is A Reaper

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Other Works

  Meet Meredith Kriesmas, forensic accountant who sharpens numbers the way killers sharpen knives—Chicago's very own Grim Reaper of the business world. Whole divisions close in her wake, and her clients pay handsomely for it. But ten minutes into a three-day weekend, Merri craves a new job to sink her teeth into.

  A call from an old friend saves Merri's sanity. Can she visit the winter wonderland at Cozy TV studios—known for its heart-warming holiday movies—and take a look at the books? Horror movie mill Slasher Corp just bought the studio—and Cozy might not make it to the final credits.

  Merri must dodge the mistletoe, dismember the finances, and disappear before dawn—all while avoiding the Cozy Curse, where no one gets off set single.

  No problem there. For Merri, business always comes first. At least, until she meets hot horror hipster CEO Seth Morana, and uncovers the secret he hides...

  A sensual stand-alone paranormal romance for everyone who believes people should be loved exactly as they are.

  All I Want For Christmas Is A Reaper

  LIANA BROOKS

  www.InkprintPress.com

  AUSTRALIA

  This is for everyone who is happy they aren’t where they used to be.

  ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A REAPER

  Three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in April, and I had an unplanned three-day weekend. In Chicago, my favorite city in the world. There were thunderheads gathering over Lake Michigan with the smell of rain in the air but, for now, downtown was a delightful playground of rushing cars, stressed commuters, and the bitter tears of lives I’d ruined with a pink slip.[1]

  With nowhere in particular to be, I meandered, crossing Clark Street at the light to reach a small city park with maple trees that wouldn’t reach maturity in this century, a little playground with a sun shade, and a recycled rubber tire running track that crossed through the limited greenspace like a drunken snake trying to bite its own tail.

  It was too early for school to be out and too late for lunch, which meant the park was populated by a muddy handful of toddlers, their attendant adults, and me. I kept to the outside track, crossing a stone footbridge over a shallow dirt ditch that might become a small pond if it rained. Tulips bobbed in the wind. The forsythia was out.

  Little flowers and cheeky sparrows.

  I enjoyed it for about four minutes before I could feel my brain scrabbling around like a trapped rat desperate for escape.

  Natural vistas had that effect on me. I needed something to think about. A job to focus on. Numbers. Problems. City things.

  At the sound of a jogger approaching, I stepped to the side so they could sweep past and catch the running track.

  And sweep past he did. A gloriously muscular runner with olive-toned tan skin, a shock of silver-white hair shaved on the sides and long on top, a well-defined back and legs, and a black shirt sliding out of his waistband and dropping to the ground.

  Well then.

  It wasn’t quite the young Miss Bennet dropping her gloves so a militia man could retrieve them for her, but it was possibly the twenty-first century equivalent. Even if it wasn’t, it was only polite to collect the handsome man’s shirt and return it to him.

  I picked it up, shook off the dust and grass clippings, and held the sandalwood-scented shirt up for inspection. The owner was broad shouldered and the shirt was lean cut, meant to hug him and give everyone looking an excellent view of his well-defined muscles. Slightly more interesting was the word KILLER written across the front of the shirt in the font of the well-known horror brand, Slasher.

  The jogger was a scary movie fan.

  Not a lot to work with as openings went.

  Scary movies weren’t my cup of cocoa. No movies were, most days. Sitting still for hours on end listening to other people talk made me restless.

  Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

  I folded the shirt neatly, and when I looked up the jogger was watching me from the bend of the running track only a few feet away, one white earbud hanging off his shoulder, the other still in his ear. He was younger than the white hair suggested, maybe twenties or early thirties, with dark brown—nearly black—eyes, high cheekbones, a well-defined jaw line, and a sharp, straight nose. He looked exceptionally intense and unquantifiably captivating.

  “Is that my shirt?” he asked in a deep voice as delicious as he was. I could listen to that man read the dictionary and I’d love every moment of it.

  I held the shirt up, letting it unfurl over my dress. “I don’t know, do you think it’s mine?” I let him get a good look at me. Large, dark reds curls that looked a century out of date, a pink flower tucked behind my ear, pink lipstick, pretty smile, A-line green dress with pink flowers embroidered on it and a crinoline underneath for volume; I looked like a piece of walking history.

  Twee. Sweet. Friendly.

  Stupid.

  I’d heard every verdict, but the dress made me look fabulous and I loved bringing a pop of cheer to people’s otherwise blighted lives.

  “It’d look good on you. Killer.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a sexy smile.

  Oh. No. I did not like that.

  Actually, I did, very much, but I knew where sexy smiles led. It would be hot nightclubs, wild parties, and then a trip to the suburbs as Mr. Sexy waxed lyrical about ‘getting away from the city.’ Pretty soon he’d be browsing baby name websites and talking about getting a dog.

  No. If a Timberwolf Town[2] werewolf couldn’t tempt me, then a yappy little dog suitable for the suburbs didn’t stand a chance.

  I held the shirt to my shoulders and tried not to notice how good it smelled—sandalwood with an undertone of mint. The scent was too light for a cologne—probably a soap. “It looks like my size, too.” Assuming it was supposed to be worn halfway to my knees. Jogging, dark, and handsome was also tall, dark, and handsome.

  “I’ll let you borrow it some time.” The man had dark, hungry eyes that promised to make my flirtation worth my time.

  “Sure.” That was never going to happen. I tossed the shirt to him. “Enjoy your run.”

  The smile turned to a smirk. “Enjoy the view.” He secured the shirt to his waistband again and took off with a wink.

  Confidence was always sexy, and I was very tempted to continue my little stroll around the park and see if the jogger wanted to join me for a post-workout snack somewhere.

  I was great at first dates. Lots of confidence and a big smile got me everything I wanted.

  Second dates?

  No one had tempted me enough to schedule a second date since college.

  I glanced at the jogger again. Maybe no one had tempted me?

  He looked familiar in that we–met–once–in–passing sort of way.

  My memory for names and faces was legendary, but I couldn’t recall being introduced to him before.

  It was going to bother me all afternoon if I didn’t pursue it.

  As if the office had a psychic link,[3] my phone rang, the quick staccato tattoo reserved for my boss. Work was there again, to rescue me from my worst impulses and save me from the kind of heartbreak ice cream couldn’t fix.

  “Hi, Amara.” I moved toward the crosswalk, dodging a little green car that nearly swerved into me. Chicago drivers. So charming.

  There was a tiny community garden space across the street, a safe distance from the sexy jogger.

  “Merri, I just heard the good word from Windy City Security, you’ve officially slayed the w
icked witch of the upper west side. Did you break seven minutes?” Amara Rosa Park[4] was just as competitive as I was and she’d had my back in the office betting pool.

  Sloan and Markham is the name in corporate accounting in Illinois. Amara is the head of the forensic accounting unit.

  Really, we’re a bunch of math nerds who read too many mystery novels and decided we’d grow up to fight white collar crime for a six-figure annual salary. And in the land of the nerds, I’m the big, brutal boss, the final, unconquerable hurdle.

  “Six minutes,” I said with a killer smile.[5]

  “You make me so happy! Did Dulcie cry? I met her when I went in for the initial contact and...” Amara sighed. “Some people just look evil, you know?”

  I pictured Dulcie Waterhouse in her gray pantsuit with a black silk shell under the jacket, two silver studs in each ear, a professional, asymmetrical cut for her dark brown hair, and dark red lipstick on a mouth pouring out more cuss words than could fit into a Monday morning commute when the trains were down. “She didn’t cry, but you may need to give the interns a bonus for reading my emails for the next few weeks.”

  “More death threats?” Amara sighed again. “What is it about you that attracts so much venom?”

  “It’s the job.” And the fact that dressing like the lead singer from a retro throwback band made everyone underestimate me. What can I say? I have brains and beauty.

  With a click of her tongue, Amara dismissed the disappointing news. “Well, done is done. I’ll give the interns a heads up.” There was a chime in the background. “Oh, and there’s the first hit on social media. Want to hear it?”

  “It’s not like I’m going to look it up.” I didn’t do social media. Despite having an email assigned to me along with my social security number, I had the digital footprint of a ghost.

  “The headline is ‘Chicago’s Infamous Grim Reaper Strikes Again.’ Good job.”

  “I try my best.”

  Amara made a happy, purring sound. “Did you try your very best with Harry?”

  “Harry?” I stopped in front of a bench. “I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Junior executive in accounting?” Amara dangled the tidbit.

  Mentally I flipped through a detailed list of junior accounting people. “Not ringing any bells.”

  “Henderson account?”

  I shuddered.

  “He sent you a gorgeous bouquet of day lilies—”

  “He was telling me about how his parents were building a new house in Sugar Grove and how the commute was under thirty minutes to the city with the new high-speed trains.”

  There was a stunned silence and then Amara took a deep breath. “So...”

  “So, thanks but no thanks? Give them to someone else.”

  “He left a note too.”

  Stupid man. But it was only polite to read the note and find some excuse for why I couldn’t show up to Domestication Of The Wild Wifey 101. “Leave it on my desk. I’ll deal with it when I get back to the office.”

  “About that....”

  “You have another job for me before the weekend?” If there were gods who smiled fondly on math nerds, I would have prayed. Numbers and patterns were my favorite candy. A weekend sorting through someone else’s finances as just as blissful as a bubble bath.

  There was a hesitant little sigh, which meant Amara wasn’t sold on the job but someone was begging. “This is an odd one. It’s not the bosses calling, it’s an employee, and she asked for you by name because she said you worked here, but she didn’t seem to know what it is you do.”

  Weird. “The name?”

  “Ellen Berry.”

  Someone else would have a hazy memory of a schoolyard friend who they’d met during a game of tag–turned–head–on–collision in kindergarten. My memory was sharper than that, and off the top of my head I could rattle off all the major life events in Ellen’s personal history up until she left for college in New York. We hadn’t kept in touch mostly because I forgot people existed when I was working with math.

  It was great for my bank account, but not for relationships.

  “Merri?” Amara waited. “If I give you the address can you go over and see what’s going on?”

  “Sure. Where am I headed?”

  “Cozy Studios—”

  “Cozy as in Cozy TV with the candy-dipped romances?” Good grief. “Can I fire the writers for their poor plotlines?”

  “Only if they’re embezzling,” Amara said. “Otherwise, give them the quick two-day special. A little workflow advice. A little hiring advice. And then get out of there, because we have the Oretega account to tackle next week.”

  Easy as mud pie in Mississippi. “Got it. In. Out. Tear-free.”

  “If you make it tear-free, I will personally buy you dinner anywhere in the city.”

  “I like expensive food,” I warned.

  “Cozy was just bought out by Slasher Corp,” Amara reported with maybe just a soupçon of glee. “You’re getting called in because Cozy is getting killed.”

  Cozy TV was on Goose Island at the corner of Hooker and Weed.[6] The place had gone through many changes over the decades. There’d been a research park there at the turn of the twenty-first century, a Wild Mile nature reserve that was abandoned during the recession in the twenties, and it was temporarily a swamp before the canals and dams regulated water levels in the thirties.

  The original studio belonged to Whole Sum Entertainment, purveyors of movies and streaming videos for kids of all ages.

  On the ride over I had one of the office minions read me the history. Whole Sum had broken up in the mid-thirties when the original owner was diagnosed with cancer. She broke it into pieces, creating Cozy TV, Chicago Tots,[7] Natural Adventures,[8] and the Whole Sum Learning Channel that featured streaming classes for everything from English basics to college-level science.

  Whole Sum Learning went completely digital and was now a subscriber-based, nationally accredited online school for ages four and up. One of the new hires at Sloan and Markham actually had gotten her degree from there. Overall, it was successful.

  Chicago Tots kept the clothesline but partnered with an international studio. Nothing was left of them but the name.

  Natural Adventures had fallen prey to Darwin’s Law of survival of the fittest, becoming no more than a blip on the radar.

  Cozy TV kept the studio space and survived on a steady diet of cozy shows. Everything from friendly-friendly travel adventures to cooking shows, to politicslite, to their internationally known holiday romances for all occasions.

  Feeling like a St. Patrick’s Day romcom? Galloway Girl’s Night Out.

  A feel-good Fourth of July romance? For Love And Freedom.

  World Baking Day? Bun In The Oven.

  Over the years they’d earned a comfortable profit, nothing too ostentatious, but certainly enough to keep them growing—until they hit an unexpected snag four years ago with no real explanation.

  “Nothing?” I asked Willow Maguire, my team’s go-to research person.

  Over the car’s speaker I could almost hear her shaking her head and adjusting the gold-rimmed glasses she wore for aesthetics. “There’s nothing big. No major industry shifts. The only thing is that there was a rumor of an internal problem with the direction of their big holiday movie, Mistletoe Mischief.”

  I crossed the bridge over North Branch Canal and turned onto Hooker Street. “What did you dig up on Slasher?”

  “Nothing you probably didn’t know,” Willow said. “They’re the Little Indie House That Could. Lots of low-budget horror movies, usually short, mostly streaming until two years ago. But they get rave reviews for the quality. Seth Morana is the CEO, lead creative director, art director, writer, and sometimes actor. His first movie to go to Sundance was a student film he wrote, directed, and acted in. But he was in a couple of big-budget movies too. Scarred and Unforgiven?”

  The posters had been basic horror movie ads: black, white, gray, and a splash of
blood red. Scarred had a hot-as-hell man looking away with six bloody scars on the side of an otherwise-flawless torso. Unforgiven had a sharp-nosed man with burning black eyes glaring directly at the viewer. I’d never watched either movie, but the reviews from my horror-loving friends were positive.

  Another image flicked across my mind: dark eyes and dark hair with a chiseled jawline and a university sweatshirt. “Was he in Timberwolf Town too?”

  “Checking,” Willow said. There was the sound of clicking and then a small laugh. “As always, your memory is excellent. The year Unforgiven came out, Morana had a cameo in the last season of Timberwolf Town.”

  “So, we have one over-achieving horror geek. One romcom studio in need of revival. And one childhood best friend asking me to somehow save her from the serial killer.”

  “But what will you do after tea time?” Willow asked.

  I turned into a gravel parking lot behind some dull gray sheds that looked like they’d started life as industrial warehouses, and sighed. “I’m here. If I don’t check in by six, assume the serial killer from Studio B caught me.”

  “Best of luck, boss.” Willow hung up.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help Ellen, honestly, but I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do. I was a forensic accountant. What I knew about directing and producing movies had been learned off a quick internet search and one too many reruns of Out Of The Spotlight playing in the background during late-night number-crunching sessions.

  The sale had been legal, my team would have spotted it otherwise. Really, the best I could offer at this point was a sympathetic ear.

  Still... Cozy on the corner of Hooker and Weed? I was going be snort-giggling over that for weeks. Someone should have petitioned the city to change the name.

  As I parked, I realized there was one more thing I should have asked Willow about: how to reach Ellen.

  I suppose the office assumed that anyone asking for me by name had already talked to me and given me their contact information, but that’s not how it worked in the rural Midwest.

  Ellen had probably called her mother, who then went to talk to her neighbor, who went to church with my aunt, who saw my parents at Sunday night dinner, who remembered Little Ellen Berry who was so sweet and kind, and then they called mom’s friend, who gave them the number for Mrs. Berry who then passed my work number to Ellen who then had an assistant call my office.