Merry Humbug Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

as she tucked a few
    things into a beaded black bag. There was only so much Joss was willing to do for cheesecake, and wearing red feathers and rhinestones
    . . . not so much.
    “All right then. If you’re sure.”
    “I’m sure.”
    Connie suddenly gasped as an idea seemed to form. “I know! You
    wanna wear my bracelet, sweetie?” She raised her hand and shook it in front of Joss, the bells jingling like a herd of reindeer landing on the deck. “It’s very festive.”
    “Yes, it is, but . . . oh, no . . . thanks. You need to wear that. How else will I know where you are?”
    Connie cackled and then snorted. “I’m not a cat, sugar. I don’t
    need a bell around my neck, do I?”
    “It can’t hurt,” she replied with an arched eyebrow.
    In the elevator Connie gave Joss the good news. “I talked to
    Hadji, and he’s changed your dinner seating to my table.”
    “Hadji?”
    “The sweet little Indian elf we met today. Our room steward?”
    “Oh. Right. Can he . . . do that?”
    “Sure. He can, and he did. You’ll be at my table every meal for
    the whole rest of the cruise! Won’t that be fun? We’ll just have such a good time, Jocelyn.”
    Connie slid her arm around Joss’s shoulder and grinned at her.
    Those are really some white, white teeth you’ve got there, Connie.
    Joss clocked it at half a mile or more from her cabin to the dining room, and she was thankful for wearing flats.
    “We’re at table sixty-seven,” Connie told the penguin suit at
    the door. “Connie Rudolph and Jocelyn Snow. Isn’t that adorable?
    Rudolph and Snow?”
    It sounded to Joss like a crime-fighting duo based at the North
    Pole, a visual the décor of the dining room only encouraged.
    Every table in the place was draped in red or green, with candlelit Merry Humbug Christmas.indd 30
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    Once Upon a Jingle Bell
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    centerpieces that might have been really beautiful if not for the shiny little gift-wrapped packages, reindeer, and candy canes adorning
    them.
    “Isn’t it just like heaven?” Connie exclaimed.
    But to Joss it mostly seemed like a place where retired Santas
    went to entertain.
    If not for the forced Christmas theme in every direction, she
    thought the room might actually have been quite beautiful. Large
    ceramic urns stood on short columns throughout the dining hall,
    lighting fixtures reaching out of them and extending all the way to the ceiling where rounded sections fanned out into white screens
    covered by metallic scrollwork patterns of ivy. The border around the sage green carpet paralleled the leaf design, and the camel-colored walls hosted a barely there green floral imprint.
    “Oh, honey, wait just a doggone minute,” Connie cried. “You
    have to meet the Auberjonoises.”
    “I’m sorry. The whats?”
    Connie dragged her by the arm toward three oddly similar
    humans—a male, a female, and a teenager—all of them dressed in
    black trousers and black turtlenecks with rhinestone wreath pins at the throat, and all three wearing wire-rimmed glasses. They each had varied shades of brown hair, the teen set apart by the crooked black beret atop hers.
    “The Auberjonoises,” she repeated. “Adrienne and Jean-Pierre,
    and their daughter Amberly. They’re French.”
    Three deadpan faces met her as Connie pushed her forward.
    “Hi,” she managed.
    “This . . . is . . . Jocelyn,” Connie announced to them as if they were hard of hearing.
    “Joss.”
    “Right. Joss.” Turning to Joss, Connie added, “They were booked
    on that same cruise you were booked on, honey. And now here we
    all are!”
    Amberly muttered something in French, and the mother nodded
    tentatively.
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    Merry
    Humbug Christmas
    “I was trying to avoid all this Christmas stuff too,” Joss told them with a stale, forced smile. Nodding toward Connie, she softly added,
    “Don’t hold her against me, okay? We only just met.”
    “I’m guessing these are going to be