His Christmas Gift ; Decadent Holiday Pleasures Read online

  HIS CHRISTMAS GIFT

  Two years ago, Alia Youngblood’s husband was taken prisoner on a top secret military mission. Now Adam Braithwaite is back and nothing like the confident physicist she married. This Adam is guarded, mistrustful...and still evokes a passion Alia can’t deny. She vowed “for better or for worse” and she won’t give up now. But when Alia’s new business assignment exposes Adam’s emotional scars, will holiday magic reignite love’s fires and make them whole again?

  DECADENT HOLIDAY PLEASURES

  Executive chef Elise Jennings is eager to prove herself at her new job. But when Giovanni Castillo, sexy heir to the Hamptons polo club, saunters into her kitchen, she’s tempted to taste forbidden fruit. An affair with her boss’s son could ruin her professional credibility. But Giovanni’s seductive caresses are impossible to resist! When their secret fling leads to not-so-secret gossip, will Elise get the man and career for Christmas...or be left outside in the cold?

  Janice Sims

  and

  Pamela Yaye

  His Christmas Gift

  &

  Decadent Holiday Pleasures

  Table of Contents

  His Christmas Gift by Janice Sims

  Decadent Holiday Pleasures by Pamela Yaye

  Excerpt from Her Christmas Wish by Sherelle Green

  His Christmas Gift

  Janice Sims

  Adam joined her in the kitchen a few minutes later. She was preparing a salad on the counter next to the farmhouse sink. She was going to make grilled chicken breasts and spicy brown rice, too.

  Adam came up and hugged her from behind. “Thank you for keeping all my stuff,” he said next to her ear.

  His body’s warmth and the tender tone of his voice made her all gooey inside. She also appreciated his kind words. She’d been so anxious about how he would react to a new space. The apartment they had been living in before he left had been his own. It was hard giving up something you were used to, even if you logically knew you couldn’t hold on to it. Adam probably knew that she couldn’t continue to live in his apartment with him missing. But she couldn’t guess what a visceral reaction he would have to the reality of his place being gone.

  She put down the lettuce she’d been tearing into chunks, and in the circle of his embrace, she turned and faced him. Looking into his eyes, she said, “There were some decisions I had to make without you. But I made them all with you in mind.”

  Janice Sims is the author of over forty titles ranging from romance to romantic suspense to speculative fiction. She won two Romance in Color awards: an Award of Excellence for her novel For Keeps and the Novella of the Year Award for her short story The Keys to My Heart. She won an Emma Award for Favorite Heroine for her novel Desert Heat. She has been nominated for a Career Achievement Award twice by RT Book Reviews. Her novel Temptation’s Song was nominated for Best Kimani Romance Series in 2010. Her novel Safe in My Arms, the second novel in the Gaines Sisters series, won the 2014 RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Kimani Romance. She was the 2016 recipient of the Francis Ray Lifetime Literary Award from B.R.A.B., Building Relationships Around Books. She lives in Central Florida with her family.

  Books by Janice Sims

  Harlequin Kimani Romance

  A Little Holiday Temptation

  Escape with Me

  This Winter Night

  Safe in My Arms

  Thief of My Heart

  Unconditionally

  Cherish My Heart

  His Christmas Gift

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to senior executive editor Glenda Howard, line editor Rachel Burkot and the rest of the staff at Harlequin who make sure the book you’re reading is an enjoyable experience for you. Also, I have to thank my husband, Curt, for his support. I couldn’t do this without him.

  Writers get their inspiration from all kinds of places. This book is dedicated to my dear, sweet mother, Lillie Jean, and her mother, my feisty grandma Ester Jean, both of whom reminded me of Adam’s mother in this book, Ramona Kingsley-Braithwaite, who was fiercely protective of her family and one of the most honest, funny characters I’ve ever put in a book.

  Dear Reader,

  When I dreamed up the idea of newlyweds Adam, physicist, and Alia, marketing manager, being separated because he’d been kidnapped while working on a government project in the Middle East, I had no idea what a challenge writing such a story would be. But that’s how it is when I write a book. I’ll come up with the idea and let the story unfold. I had my research cut out for me, and a lot of late nights ahead of me, and ended up with a twisty, suspenseful, humorous and passionate story.

  I enjoyed every minute of writing Adam and Alia’s story. I hope you enjoy reading it. Let me, and other readers, know how you felt about their story by posting your feelings online. Look up my page on Facebook for updates and feel free to email me at [email protected], or, if you’re not online, write to PO Box 811, Mascotte, Florida, 34753.

  Blessings,

  Janice Sims

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  October in New York City. The day was cold, gray and blustery, but in her Harlem loft, Alia Joie Youngblood-Braithwaite was warm and toasty. She lit a candle at the makeshift shrine to her husband, Adam, on the fireplace’s mantel. She hadn’t thought of it as a shrine in the beginning, only as a way to sort out her feelings about Adam’s kidnapping over two years ago. At that time, it had been a photo of him in a frame. A photo she’d talk to and sometimes scream at when her emotions got out of control. Now there were several framed photos of her and Adam at various stages of their relationship, fresh flowers and candles in decorative candleholders. The longer Adam was gone, the more it felt like a permanent shrine to his memory.

  Lots of things had changed after Adam had gone missing. She’d moved out of their old apartment and purchased the building she was living in now. She’d had it fully renovated, taken the top floor for herself and rented the other apartments on the remaining four floors, to artists mostly. There was an elderly couple on the fourth floor who were not in the artistic community but had needed an affordable, safe place to live in the neighborhood. Alia was able to provide that place because she was fortunate enough to come from an independently wealthy family. Her family owned Youngblood Media, a company with interests in television, publishing and the internet. Alia was the company’s marketing director. These days she worked her own hours, many of them away from the office, and devoted a large amount of time to her artistic endeavors. She was a talented painter and was working on a series of paintings that were scheduled to be shown at a Manhattan art gallery a month from now.

  Tonight her girlfriends were taking her out to celebrate her birthday, which had been a few days ago. Before she left to meet them, she wanted to get in one more therapy session with Adam’s shrine.

  Alia was a tall, attractive woman with warm dark-chocolate skin and golden-brown eyes. She wore jeans that fit her shapely body as if they’d been designed specificall
y for her and a red cashmere square-necked sweater. On her feet were black leather boots. Her natural dark brown hair was in glossy braids that fell to the middle of her back.

  She paced the hardwood floor as she poured her heart out to Adam’s photo. “Two years! You said you’d be back before I missed you! But where are you? Still missing! I know I shouldn’t be angry at you, but I am. I’m angry because you’re too trusting. You’re a big man with a big heart, and it never occurred to you to say no when the military came calling. Maybe you were flattered that they knew about your research, which was supposedly being kept secret. Did it ever occur to you that if the government wants to find out something, they have ways of finding it out? I’m so mad, I don’t know what to do!

  “Now here I am, alone, getting ready to reveal my heart, my soul, to the world in the form of my paintings, and you’re not here to share it with me. I don’t care if I sound selfish to the universe. You should be here holding my hand. Holding me!”

  And with that, she burst into tears, grabbed one of Adam’s photos off the mantel and hugged it to her chest. Taking a deep breath, she held the frame away from her and peered at his face. When the photo had been taken, he’d had a full beard, dreadlocks down to his waist and a devastatingly beautiful smile. His milk-chocolate-brown eyes sparkled. He had a square-jawed face underneath that full beard. His skin was reddish brown with golden undertones. An island boy from the Bahamas, he loved the sun, and his skin tone changed from season to season. She could almost hear his voice, a mix of standard English with a proper British accent, to Bahamian English when he lapsed into the way he had spoken when he was growing up in Nassau. He was a big man, at six foot four, and through hard work had built up muscles that rivaled professional athletes’ toned bodies.

  But it was his vibrancy that had won her heart. He had a zest for living that spoke to her soul. Just being around him made her feel more alive.

  Did she miss him? With all her heart!

  Alia put Adam’s photo back on the mantel and sighed sadly. That was enough wallowing in misery for one day. The fact was, she didn’t know whether her husband was dead or alive. She’d paid a detective to try to find him, with no results except for the warning from the government to stay out of it. The official rationale was that the people who were holding Adam might do something drastic and violent if they found out civilians were trying to stick their noses in their business. The government assured her they were in negotiations with Adam’s captors. They would eventually get him set free. She had to be patient. What was more, she and her family had to make sure nothing about Adam’s situation was leaked to the media.

  In other words, for over two years, Alia had been helpless to do anything to alleviate her husband’s suffering. And she knew he had to be suffering. Knowing Adam, he was doing everything in his power to get back home to her. Her rants in front of his shrine were not an indication that she had lost faith in him. They were simply a way to get her frustrations out. She loved him, and would always love him.

  * * *

  Sylvia’s, the soul food restaurant that was a Harlem landmark, was alive with the sound of its patrons enjoying themselves: silverware on fine china, glasses clinking, voices buzzing like bees and tinkling laughter. Alia looked around the table at the lit-up faces of her dearest girlfriends: Macy Harris, her best friend, a security company owner; Diana Winters, a lawyer; and June Stratton, a surgeon. She’d known Macy since childhood and Diana and June since college.

  June, a redhead with light green eyes, raised her glass of white wine. “To Alia,” she said brightly. “Thirty-three today, but you look twenty-three. I don’t know how you do it, girl. But keep doing what you’re doing because it’s working for you!”

  The other women raised their glasses and laughed. Macy, a petite beauty with caramel-colored skin and dark brown eyes, clinked her glass’s rim with Alia’s. “Unless, of course, you’ve made a Dorian Gray–type pact with the devil and have a portrait of yourself in an attic somewhere that’s aging while you stay young. In which case, I say, repent at once so that your soul won’t burn in hell!”

  “Ignore the preacher’s daughter,” Diana advised Alia. She turned sober eyes on Alia. “Seriously, though, how are you holding up? No news about Adam?”

  Alia took a deep breath. She’d been wondering when the subject of Adam’s absence would come up. Her friends were well-meaning, but she’d grown tired of discussing it. All they knew was that he’d gone missing two years ago. A sad occurrence, but one that happened to many people every year. Her friends weren’t privy to what was really going on. Only her family was aware Adam and his colleagues had been kidnapped.

  “Nothing at all,” she said softly, eyes downcast because she didn’t want her friends to see she was fighting back tears. Macy, who was sitting beside her, reached over and gently squeezed her hand. Emotions under control, Alia smiled and glanced up at her friends, who were looking at her with sympathetic expressions in their eyes.

  “I’d much rather talk about your upcoming wedding, June,” she said.

  June grinned. “Two doctors getting married is a logistics nightmare. We can’t decide when to get married, where to get married. Our schedules are booked up. I suggested we just elope and forget about an elaborate wedding. Maybe go to the courthouse and get it over with. But my guy says his Italian mother would kill him, literally!” She laughed. “I’ve met her. I don’t think he’s exaggerating.” Everyone laughed at that.

  “It’s the marriage that counts, not the party,” Macy said. “You and Tony love each other and have for a long time. Do what you two want to do and don’t worry about anyone else.”

  “I don’t agree,” Diana said. “You only get married once, hopefully, and it should be celebrated. Memories should be made. I don’t mean go broke getting married, but have a party for friends and family. They should be there on your special day.”

  “I didn’t know you were so sentimental,” Macy countered. “You treat men like playthings. You haven’t been in a committed relationship in years.”

  Diana rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t mean I don’t eventually want to get married and have children. It means I’m still not finished having fun.”

  “The trouble with people who think like you do is when you get married, you look at it as something boring. You’re having fun now. What will you have when you have a husband? Will he satisfy the fun girl in you? Or will you lose interest in a matter of months?” Macy asked.

  Diana frowned at Macy, and Alia wondered if this was going to turn into another slugfest between the two of them. Diana was very opinionated and liked thinking of herself as a truly liberated woman who behaved like a man when it came to relationships. That is, she juggled men, used them and tossed them aside when she’d had enough of them. Macy, a preacher’s daughter, believed love was sacred and hearts were not to be played with.

  “Girls...” June, who acted as mediator when Macy and Diana got into arguments, cautioned. “We’re here to celebrate Alia’s birthday, remember? Not to discuss the merits of breaking or not breaking men’s hearts.”

  “Your problem,” Diana said to Macy, ignoring June, “is you’re still looking for Prince Charming, that perfect man who was born only for you. Listen up—he doesn’t exist. He’s a fictionalized character created by greeting card companies, rom-com movie producers and romance writers to satisfy their customers. You’ve never fallen in love or lust with anyone!”

  Alia was well aware that Diana’s assertion that Macy had never been in love was untrue. Macy was in love with Alia’s brother, Brock. But that was a secret she’d shared only with Adam, and he wasn’t going to tell anyone.

  Macy only smiled. Alia hoped that smile meant Macy’s temper was held securely in check, because Macy could be dangerous when provoked. She owned a security firm for a reason. A third degree black belt in karate, she’d joined the Marines right out of high school and earned the rank
of gunnery sergeant by the time she was twenty-five. She’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan. She could probably kill Diana with her little finger. Diana knew all of this, yet she seemed to get a kick out of sparring with Macy. Alia didn’t believe Macy was a killer. But still...

  “Girl, you were born to be a lawyer. That tongue of yours can be vicious when you want it to be, and your heart as cold as ice,” Macy said. “But I know you’re hurting and that’s why you lash out at people who love you. And I do love you, even though you like to draw my blood at every opportunity.” She continued to look Diana in the eyes, her smile never wavering.

  Diana sighed heavily. “Your daddy did a number on your brain. You actually do turn the other cheek.”

  “I’m no saint,” Macy said. “I’ll probably beat the hell out of my sparring partner at the gym tomorrow. But just so you know, Diana, I’m the one who controls how violent I get. So don’t think you’re going to provoke me into whipping your behind, because it’s not going to happen.”

  Alia was amazed by the look of relief on Diana’s face. Was that what Diana was trying to do? Goad Macy into physically attacking her? That made her wonder just how psychologically damaged Diana was inside. Who had hurt her? Diana had never spoken about it. She had said she became a lawyer because she wanted to help abused women. Could she have been an abused woman in the past?

  “Are we done?” Alia asked hopefully. “No more hurting each other with cutting words.” She saw their waiter across the room and called for him. “We’d like to order dessert!”

  Her friends started to protest, but she insisted. “You’ll just have to work out a bit more tomorrow,” she said. “But you’ve stressed me out so much that I need dessert tonight. So shut up and order something decadent.”

  Her friends’ protests promptly ended when they saw the array of goodies on the dessert tray as the waiter wheeled the cart next to their table.