Read Online Jenny Lopez Saves Christmas by Lindsey Kelk - Free Book Online Page A

bird out of its box and into my arms was not the most graceful manoeuvre I’d ever performed, but once I had a hold of it it wasn’t so bad. ‘Ten minutes’ walk, tops,’ I told myself, turning towards the house on the horizon. ‘And then Sadie can come and help me with the rest of it.’
    The thought of Sadie trekking through the snow lugging groceries was enough to keep me going for the first five minutes alone.
    *
    Driving out into the sticks, as Angie would call it, was teaching me all kinds of stuff about myself. One, that I needed to check the gas gauge before I left the house, and two, that my sense of distance was not great. It turned out the house wasn’t ten minutes away, and the reason I knew that was because fifteen minutes after I had left the car it seemed farther away than ever. It also turned out that the little hand weights we used at Soulcycle were not enough to build the muscle it took to carry a turkey through three feet of snow. It had only taken five minutes before I was dragging it through the snow on the end of a makeshift lead fashioned out of the elasticated belt of my sexy Santa costume. Glancing behind me, I saw the saddest sight of my life. Haphazard footprints run over by a nonsensical turkey trail. It was like an alternative version of
Frozen
where they all died in the end.
    I pulled my phone out of my pocket again to check for messages but there was nothing. This was just great. Here I was, dragging my dinner through the snow up the side of a deserted country road, dressed like a whore and freezing to death, and I was
still
more worried about a boy not texting me back. Maybe something bad really had happened to him, I mused. Or maybe, just maybe, he was a smooth Manhattan asshole like all the rest of them and he never had any intention of calling me again. I stared up at the bright, twinkling stars and pondered the options. Unannounced earthquake in Florida or regular asshat? I couldn’t decide which was more likely, given my romantic luck – either I’d been lured into bed by your average douche nozzle or I’d found the only good guy in all of Manhattan and he had died in an incredibly rare natural disaster.
    I was still considering potential fates of Joseph C. Davies while trying to work out whether to keep going or head back to the car and wait for the sweet release of death when a set of headlights turned round a bend and flashed me. I held a hand over my eyes, blinking into the bright golden light as they dimmed and the car slowed down. Either these were my friends, here to save me, or it was a serial killer and I was about to die ever so slightly sooner than anticipated. Still, better to be murdered by a serial killer than die of exposure holding a twenty-five-pound turkey. Actually, was it?
    The car rolled to a stop, snow chains wrapped around the tyres, and the window whirred down slowly.
    â€˜Hi, are you okay?’
    It wasn’t my friends, it was just a dude. In the shadows of the car, all I saw was a nice, normal-looking dude. So definitely a serial killer. Glancing down at my frozen bird buddy, I wondered how good a weapon a frozen turkey could actually be.
    â€˜I’m fine,’ I said, my chattering teeth saying otherwise. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜You sure?’ he asked, leaning out of his window to take a look at my situation. ‘Just taking the turkey for a walk?’
    â€˜My car broke down,’ I replied, edging away from the road. A serial killer with a sense of humour, lucky me. ‘I’m okay.’
    â€˜The Chevy?’ He nodded, smiling at my inventive turkey transporter. ‘I passed it around the bend. You broke down?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said with complete certainty. There was no need for my murderer to know how dumb I was. ‘But I’m fine. My house is right there and my friends are already on their way to meet me.’
    â€˜You sure?’ The guy shrugged. ‘Really,