Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking
    All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking
    All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking

    By amy o'connor

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Erik did not want to do the Christmas run. But, since it was either listen to Santa whining about the cold, or delivering the gifts – what choice did he have? He put on the red suit and drove not-so-merrily off into the night. Being mistaken for a thief and hit over the head with a crystal candlestick during the last delivery of the night did nothing to improve his mood. He may have been Santa Claus's son, but he was also an immortal Viking warrior. To be laid out cold – by a woman, no less! – was simply not acceptable. Getting his revenge would be fun, more so since she was a lawyer and willing to do pretty well anything to avoid being sued by the Claus family. And Erik had all sorts of interesting ideas about just what the green-eyed minx could do for him…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereXtasy Books Inc
    Release dateAug 27, 2019
    ISBN9781554102297
    All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking

    Related to All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking

    Related ebooks

    Romantic Comedy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Sunrise Manor Routine

      Jun 1, 2019

      The Sunrise Manor Routine
      10 min read

    • Article

      Glad Tidings

      Apr 10, 2024

      I unwrap my grandmother’s tinkling candle carousel without incident. We’ve used the same bubble wrap for years, and I’m not sure what good the airless plastic does to protect it, but anyway, the metal is tarnishing. Next, I arrange the poinsettias my

      12 min read

    • Article

      Plan of ACTION

      Oct 3, 2023

      Plan of ACTION
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Money Box

      Jun 10, 2022

      This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story. It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He

      19 min read

    • Article

      The Education of Mrs. R.

      Sep 6, 2022

      An adolescent shriek woke her. Cockerels, she thought, cockerels, with a wry twist to the word. She lay in the dark listening. There was no use in covering her head; the screaming still came through. The soloist was suddenly submerged in the chorus.

      13 min read

    • Article

      Australia Reads At Home

      May 18, 2020

      Australia Reads At Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Planof Action

      Oct 5, 2021

      Planof Action
      6 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Best

      Oct 29, 2022

      Best Of The Best
      8 min read

    • Article

      Jason the Heat Guy

      Jan 11, 2021

      Jason the Heat Guy
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Wolf

      Nov 6, 2018

      The Wolf
      12 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      HELLO It’s Halloween

      Sep 18, 2018

      HELLO It’s Halloween
      10 min read

    • Article

      Lech

      Feb 8, 2022

      Lech
      4 min read

    • Article

      Echo

      Jan 10, 2024

      Once, during a depressive episode, Stanley cut out thirteen small paper stars and taped them to the ceiling of his cluttered bedroom. They were made from the construction paper left over from his youth, stored away in a basket on a shelf in the basem

      14 min read

    • Article

      A Temporary Arrangement

      Oct 2, 2023

      A Temporary Arrangement
      19 min read

    • Article

      Murder Most Fowl

      Mar 12, 2023

      Murder Most Fowl
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Idiots

      Feb 26, 2021

      The Idiots
      18 min read

    • Article

      Cricket Ceague

      Apr 1, 2019

      Penelope Berkeley, age 9 Mars Hill, NC Night had fallen, and Luna awoke from where she had been sleeping in a cornfield. She moved steadily through the stalks with barely a sound, keeping her eyes on the glittering glass rooftop of the greenhouse in

      7 min read

    • Article

      My First Pet

      Feb 2, 2020

      My First Pet
      9 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      Memo To Self: Don't Tell Bernard Manning Gags

      Nov 15, 2023

      ‘Do you reckon,’ I enquired on a visit to my wife in bucolic Dorset, ‘that this is an early sign of frontal-lobe dementia?’ Rebecca, who underscored her high intelligence and flawless judgement by vacating the marital home 13 years ago, pondered this

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Letterbox

      Apr 1, 2022

      Dear Cricket, Your magazine was first given to me by an older friend of mine, and now I’ve bought a subscription for another friend’s birthday. Your magazine will now bring joy to three people through a chain of giving—wow! I just wanted to thank you

      7 min read

    • Article

      Otterly Wonderful

      May 25, 2022

      Otterly Wonderful
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      All I Want for Christmas is a...Viking - amy o'connor

      All I Want for Christmas is... A Viking?

      ‘T was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...

      Bah! Humbug!

      Holly shifted restlessly, crossing and uncrossing her legs before taking another moody sip of the hot rum punch, swirling the milky sweetness over her tongue several times before finally swallowing.

      Was she mixing her metaphors? Nah. Just mixing her Christmas stories.

      Who cared anyway?

      And that was another thing... She hated—hated—her name. It was bad enough to have been born on Christmas Day, but how insane had her parents have been to decide ‘Holly’ was a good name for a Christmas baby?

      Her birthday.

      Huh!

      In approximately—she glanced at the clock above the mantle—three minutes she’d be thirty-eight years old. Thirty-eight! She snorted. And what did she have? Nothing! Couldn’t even get laid on her own damn birthday...

      She took another unsteady gulp, eying the glass suspiciously when she had to tip it right up to catch the last smooth drop. Holly reached for the nearby jug, trying not to wince when it clattered unsteadily against the glass. Empty? She shrugged and slumped back into the soft leather of her sofa.

      Thirty-eight years old, and what did she have to show for it? For fifteen years she’d kicked and scrambled her way to the top of her field. She could safely say she was a successful lawyer—with a paycheck her friends envied. A shame they didn’t consider the huge hours and lack of a decent man in her life when they were cooing over her latest pair of Jimmy Choos. Decent man? Any man would do right now!

      Huh!

      She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the roiling fireworks that suddenly headed in all directions behind her lids. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk the whole jug of punch after all... Just because that miserable, scum-sucking pig of an excuse she’d called ‘boyfriend’ for the past six months had been running late for their dinner date, then had phoned—phoned, mind you!—to tell her it was all over. Dinner, relationship, everything. And on Christmas Eve, no less!

      Legs curled up, she settled more comfortably into the corner of the lounge, clenching her eyes more tightly shut as the world spun. Dammit! She’d known from the beginning the relationship was bound to fail. They all did. If she’d been a man, she’d have said it was penis envy. There was probably a term for the way men couldn’t cope with her paycheck being so much larger than theirs. Kind of childish, but there it was.

      The world spun crazily, the fireworks loping off in opposite directions, and she shuddered. It got worse. Definitely shouldn’t have drunk the whole jugful.

      Her body may have been drooping, but her brain was still racing around in circles. There was always something to be organized, or a new goal to achieve. Tiring, but true. Holly smiled. Maybe, just maybe, the alcohol would knock her brain out too, then—for once—she might wake up feeling like she’d actually had a decent night’s sleep, rather than thinking that she may as well have just spent the night at her desk.

      Even as the hopeful thought popped into life, her brain skittered off on a different track. She was taking three days off for Christmas, so that would leave her with an extra three days of work to cram into the following week. Then there was her new paralegal who’d already clashed with her long-time personal assistant... Would the flowers she’d ordered for her mom be the right ones? There was the holiday picnic catering to be confirmed, and the marketing budget still to be finalized...

      Holly sighed and snuggled her face deeper into the faux-fur cushion. No matter what she did, her brain didn’t seem to have an off-switch.

      ERIK STOOD SIX-FOOT-four in bare feet, had linebacker’s shoulders, and—so he’d been told—had a chest that was enough to make a full-grown woman swoon. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do it on purpose. But with his sort of build, if he didn’t keep working out regularly, and make a point of keeping fit, he’d turn into a disgusting tub of Jell-O.

      Still, he was big, and he was imposing. And he knew it.

      He had no problem dealing with the elves. The reindeer respected him. Even the bloody Ice Giants at the other end of the valley were relatively polite when he pounded by on his daily run. At least, they didn’t throw axes at him. He’d often wondered why not—hell, they attacked anything that moved!—and he’d eventually settled for the theory that they liked him. Maybe.

      Yet there was nothing like a petulant twelve-hundred-year-old to make him lose every ounce of his hard-earned self-composure.

      Erik Claus spent his days researching market trends, setting—and achieving—production targets, and managing the elvish workforce. He produced a ridiculous number of toys every year and consistently stayed within budget, yet his father couldn’t get his head around the fact that Erik had once been a mewling baby in diapers.

      You’re my son. Santa’s bottom lip trembled. If for nothing other than filial respect—

      Respect! Hell, the Ice Giants gave him more respect than his dad did!

      His father’s voice quavered, and Erik stared pointedly at his watch. Filial respect, the old man repeated. Just once I ask you to do something for me. Just one night of the year. It’s too cold out there for an old man...

      Cold! Of course it’s cold. You’re the one who chose to live at the frigging North Pole!

      The soft plupping sound of snow falling from heavily laden branches outside the window interrupted, and his father looked at him reproachfully. Perhaps he shouldn’t have roared quite so loudly...

      Erik tried not to look guilty. He knew from a lifetime’s experience that his father would gleefully grab the smallest sign of weakness and wring it for all he could. He knew the jolly old man in the red suit rather better than all the sweet little boys and girls eagerly awaiting his arrival. If they knew Santa Claus like he did, they’d be hiding deep under their covers and shivering in dread rather than excitement. Santa Claus was a bad-tempered old coot who’d only taken on the job because it was either that or cleaning lavatories in the furthest hall of Valhalla. The fact that he didn’t like kids hadn’t factored into his choice.

      He shrugged the thought away. Bunch of brats. Going by the number of requests for Game Boys and Play Stations, they were probably all square eyed from too many computer games anyway. Things had been different when he was a child...

      I thought you said you’d reinforced the snow spells? Santa demanded sharply.

      Erik sucked in a calming breath. I asked Al to do it, and he said you’d refused to give him the key to the spell cupboard.

      "You could have diverted some of the magic from the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1