Hating Christmas (Holiday Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

agent.
    Huddling her thin coat around her as best she could,
Holly reflected that neither California nor Africa had prepared her
for the wardrobe necessities of Minneapolis in December.
    It was different for Levi, who apparently had gotten
the memo about needing snow gear. Although she’d been coming here
on holidays with her mother for years, she’d completely forgotten
how damn frigid the place was. Friggin’ snow.
    Levi, on the other hand, had come out of the house
this evening wearing a heavy anorak and a scarf. He still must not
have heard about Mac Toledo agreeing to appear in her documentary.
She had decided that much when the subject never came up during
their argument, which—having come to know Levi—she was certain it
would if he’d known about it. He’d have accused her of being just
another woman out to screw a man over.
    Her little documentary couldn’t pay Mac nearly what
producers were ponying up for the actor these days and Levi’s cut
would be very, very much less than he usually made of Mac’s
time.
    Her mother rushed through the Christmas trees spiked
into the ground at the lot, grabbing Holly in a giddy hug.
    “Don’t be a crab, Holl. We need a tree for the family
room. You know I have extra ornaments.”
    “You have extra ornaments every year,” Holly pointed
out with resignation. “And you keep buying more every year.”
    Her mother giggled. “Come on. There’s one over here
that looks like it may be perfect.”
    Holly watched her mother traipsing through several
staked rows of trees.
    “Can’t you stop this?” Levi said under his breath as
he joined her, his father following behind.
    “I tried,” she responded, her voice as low as his. He
was a pain in the ass, but she couldn’t help sharing his reluctance
to be here.
    They began wading through the rows of trees that had
been hacked down and hauled in for this silly ritual. For as long
as Holly could remember, her mother had delighted in the holiday
season, draping the house in garlands and playing Christmas songs
until Holly dreamed about them in her nightmares. Ever since her
dad had died in December, the Christmas spectacle had lost its
luster for her. She just couldn’t see the point. Even as a child,
it had seemed like a reason for people to do stupid things and
watch silly movies. What they found so entertaining about a kid
left by himself to face burglars when his family left him behind,
she had never understood.
    And she wasn’t all that fond of snow, either, she
remembered as she trudged through the white mass, feeling it melt
through her sneakers. The only thing it was good for was sledding,
but she could do with a lot less of the white, cold stuff now. No
need for snow boots in California.
    “So we buy another dead tree for the family room?”
Levi said, coming up behind her. “Can we go back to the house
then?”
    Muffling a giggle, Holly told him sternly, “First we
have to strap the thing to the top of the car, silly, and then
someone—I’m voting for you and your father because I don’t want to
do it—has to cut off part of the trunk—“
    “Damn.”
    “—and then it’ll be hauled into the house for my
mother to string lights and hang ornaments—“
    Levi groaned. “I think I feel myself coming down with
pneumonia.”
    “It won’t do any good,” she told him kindly as she
struggled through another mound of snow between the next row of
trees. “My mother will just make a bed on the couch in the family
room so you can suffer your fatal illness while listening to Bing
Crosby.”
    She paused between the rows, hearing her mother’s
cries of pleasure as she located another “wonderful tree”, to shake
snow from her now-wet shoe.
    Levi stopped beside her. “Why aren’t you wearing
boots? Those shoes looked soaked.”
    “They are soaked.” She didn’t try to keep the
irritated note from her voice. “I really haven’t had any need for
snow boots most of the time, thank you very much, and the