Read The Valentine Grinch Online
Authors: Sheila Seabrook
Tags: #romance, #romantic comedy, #womens fiction, #contemporary, #valentines day, #humorous
The Valentine Grinch
THE
VALENTINE GRINCH
Home For The
Holidays
Book One
By Sheila
Seabrook
Copyright 2012 by Sheila
Seabrook
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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of this author.
Hearts, cupids, and diamond rings … bah humbug!
Amanda Goodwin inherited her Valentine
grinchness from her Grandpa George, so when she returns home for
her Grandma Elvira’s Valentine’s Day wedding, it’s bah humbug all
the way. Until, that is, she encounters her grandpa’s ghost.
Fortunately, she’s not in this alone.
Long time friend, Dane Weatherby, totally
gets her grinchly attitude. Between Grandpa’s demands for her to
stop the wedding, Grandma’s inability to let go of her dearly
departed husband’s urn, and Amanda’s parents acting friskier than a
couple of newlyweds, she’s ready to give in to her grinchness and
head back to the city.
Only true love can stop Amanda. And if Dane
has his way, he just might convince her to say
I do
instead
of
bah humbug
.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Rick.
You are my Valentine, today and forever
after.
Table
of Contents
Chapter One
When Amanda Goodwin turned left at the Cranberry
Cove Community Hall, and saw the front yard had already been
decorated with heart shaped ornaments and cupids holding bows, she
reacted with a mean and grumpy, “Bah humbug.”
It wasn’t that she disliked Valentine’s Day so much
as she hated the pressure of living up to the romantic madness.
Even now, three days before the big day, the radio in her yellow
Beetle blared out the holiday’s excess.
Spend one hundred dollars and enter your name to win
our Valentine’s Day thousand dollar shopping spree!
This Valentine’s Day, give the one you love the most
expensive piece of jewelry on the market!
And on and on it went. Amanda turned off the radio
and inched the car over the town’s slippery streets.
Outside, fog swirled through the air and dimmed the
glow of the vehicle’s headlights, while enormous white flakes
drifted down from the sky and covered the ground in a fluffy
blanket of snow. The tiny west coast village of Cranberry Cove
rarely had snow in mid-February, but a cold front had settled in
the region to give the Washington residents one last blast of
winter.
Okay, so all she had to do was get
through the next three days. Once her Grandma Elvira’s Valentine’s
Day wedding was over, she could return to Seattle and forget about
cherubs and chocolates and men who’d crushed her heart.
Amanda steered the car up to the curb in front of
her parents’ two-storey house and sat there, arms braced against
the steering wheel, her frown so tight she was sure a smile would
crack her face.
There was only one person who really understood her
aversion to the holiday and he was gone.
With a grumbly grunt, she shouldered the car door
open and stepped out onto the icy street. The next thing she knew,
she was flat on her back. Her head bounced once, twice, then
settled.
Fat snowflakes landed on her face and melted down
her cheeks. Her ears rang with — was that laughter? — and something
familiar glided out of the fog and floated in the air above
her.
“Get up,
bumpkin.
”
“Gramps?” She pushed up on her elbows and the image
morphed into swirls of fog and snow. A dull pain throbbed at the
back of her head. The cold from the ground seeped through her
clothes. She scrambled to her feet and turned in a slow circle.
“Who’s there?”
But the street was empty, she was alone, and there
was only one explanation for what she’d seen. Wishful thinking.
She’d inherited her grinchness from her Grandpa George, so it
seemed appropriate she’d want to see him at this time of year. He’d
hated Valentine’s Day as much as she did.
All that lovey-dovey stuff and for what? A rejection
of the epic kind? Been there, done that. Humiliation warmed her
cheeks.
Gramps had always told her that it was what a person
did all year long to show their love. It wasn’t about showing it
for that one day of the year and spending a fortune on diamonds and
chocolates.
Although, truth be told, the chocolates would’ve
been nice. Amanda suspected her grandpa was part unromantic and
part tightwad.
Careful now, she maneuvered across the slick ice
beneath her feet. She pulled her suitcase out of the trunk of the
car, gingerly lowered the lid so the sound wouldn’t make her head
explode, and headed toward the front door of her parents’ house. A
gust of wind hit her in the face and sucked the breath from her
lungs. She bent her head and shivered against the cold.
Along with the decidedly anti-cupid-like mood, now
she had a headache. She stepped carefully up the cement steps so
she wouldn’t fall again, set her suitcase down beside her, and
rapped her knuckles against the front door. Through the etched
glass window on the door, she heard the romantic croon of her
parents’ favorite music from the seventies.
Another shiver went through her and she reached into
her coat pocket for her keys.
“Pssst.”
Amanda jumped back from the door and squinted
through the fog toward the front flowerbed. “Who’s there?”
The top of a camouflage colored toque popped out. A
snort came from deep within the greenery, and then the rest of the
toque appeared, followed by a familiar grizzled and worn face.
“It’s been so long since you visited me, bumpkin, it’s no wonder
you don’t recognize your own grandpa.”
Amanda stumbled backward on the porch landing and
nearly slipped on the ice coated surface, stopping only when her
back end hit the wrought iron rails and she could escape no
further. “Gramps? What the hell?”
“Don’t swear, bumpkin. You know how your grandma
hates blasphemy.”
Dizziness swirled in her head. She closed her eyes,
forced herself to breathe deep, stay calm.
This wasn’t
possible
.
She opened one eye, opened the other, then gaped as
the apparition floated out of the shrubs and hovered in the air
like part of the fog.
Amanda pressed back against the railing. “No, no,
no. You’re dead. I was at your funeral.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.” He cupped
his hands around his eyes, pressed his nose to the window and
peered inside.
“Seriously dead. Dead as a doornail dead. Dead,
dead, dead.”
“I agree, I’m dead. Can we get past this, bumpkin?”
With a sigh, he dropped his hands to his sides and turned toward
her, the ghostly vision slowly settling into something more solid.
Tall. Shoulders slightly stooped. Gray eyes twinkling. Definitely
her grandfather. “I need your help.”
Amanda covered her eyes, then peeked through the
space between her fingers and saw him still there, floaty and real
and impossible to believe. “It’s the holiday stress. All of the
cupids and cherubs and Grandma’s wedding—”
“That’s why I’m here.” Grandpa stretched to his full
five-foot-ten height, and shuffled out of the bushes and onto the
sidewalk without leaving a mark in the snow. “To stop the
wedding.”
Her legs trembled beneath her and she put out a
shaky hand to ward him off. “Go away. You’re just in my
imagination.”
“Here, I’ll pinch you.”
Before she could blink, he was on the landing before
her, reaching one bony hand toward her, thumb and index finger in
the pinch position. Amanda yelped and pressed against the front
door.
Gramps let his arm drop and his bushy eyebrows
lowered into a frown. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Uh, yeah.” Amanda let out a nervous laugh. With her
gaze fixed on the vision before her, she backtracked through the
last few hours of her road trip, almost positive that nothing had
gone wrong. Until she’d slipped on the ice. The bubble of laughter
caught in her throat. “Am I dead, too?”
“No, bumpkin. Now about your grandma—”
“Am I in the hospital? Unconscious?” She leaned
forward and swiped one hand through the foggy image. A cold shiver
raced up her arm, forcing her back against the door. “Maybe I’m
fast asleep and when I wake up, you’ll be—”
He reached out and pinched her cheek. “Real enough
for you?”
“Ouch.” She rubbed the side of her face and gave him
her best glare. “That hurt, Gramps.” With one hand, she rubbed at
her forehead. “I need some time to think. This is so ...
unexpected. And you’re so ... not supposed to be here.” She looked
around the snow covered front yard, the flakes still drifting down
from the sky, her car parked on the front street.
Okay, what she really needed to do was go inside,
have her mom check her head, then take an aspirin and go to bed. In
the morning, she’d wake, realize it was all a dream and forget all
about it.
She turned and through the glass
window, saw her mom glide toward the front door, flick on the
deadbolt, then head back to the kitchen.
Amanda pounded on the door and her mom turned back,
a frown on her forehead. The porch light flickered on, then off
again, and out the corner of her eye, she saw Grandpa disappear in
a swirl of fog, jumping off the steps like he was forty years
younger, slipping through the azalea bush and cedar trees,
reminding Amanda of those spy penguins in the Madagascar movie.
Except they were only animated and her grandpa was ... most
definitely dead.
The front door squeaked open and through the screen
door, Amanda saw her mom frown up at the outside lamp before she
returned her attention to her youngest daughter.
Dora Goodwin unlatched the screen door, pushed it
open, and gestured Amanda inside. “Honey, what are you doing here?
We thought you were coming tomorrow. Where’s your key? Is the front
light burned out again? Come in, come in, before you freeze to
death.”
Amanda glanced back at the
flowerbed. The fog had lifted and she could see quite clearly now.
There was nothing there, but the bushes covered by the new snow.
Not a single footprint on the sidewalk, except for her own. Not a
whisper of her grandpa’s voice in her ear, only the
wind.
With goose bumps spreading across her body, she
grabbed her suitcase by the handle and stepped into the warmth of
the house.
“Tom, Amanda’s here. And the outside light is burned
out again,” Dora called as she closed the front door behind her.
“Oh, honey, you have snow all over your back. What happened?”
Amanda plunked her suitcase on the rug. “I slipped
on the ice.”
Dora took Amanda’s coat and shook the snow onto the
front rug. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m okay, Mom.” She could live with the throbbing
head. It was the vision of her grandpa that had her worried. As she
heard the soft soled sound of her dad’s slippers approach from the
kitchen, she pushed away the thought.
“Babycakes,” she heard him call out. “I found the
whipping cream.”
“Oh dear.” Her mom nudged her out
of the way, hung up the still snowy coat and with more emphasis
this time, called out again, “
Tom,
Amanda’s here
.”
“I’m ready to lick this—” He came around the corner,
a bright yellow can in his hand, a naughty gleam in his eyes, and
froze.
Her mom poked her in the back. “Your father’s
hearing is getting worse.”
Amanda chose to ignore the can and shucked her
boots. “Hi Dad.”
Despite the ruddy flush working its way into his
cheeks, he thrust the bright yellow can into his sweater pocket and
approached her. “Welcome home, kiddo. You’re early. How are the
roads?”