A Cleopatra Hill Christmas: The Witches of Cleopatra Hill, #7

By Christine Pope

Connor and Angela Wilcox return to Angela's hometown of Jerome, Arizona, to spend the holiday with the McAllister witch clan and attend Lucas Wilcox's and Margot Emory's wedding. But complications arise as they try to juggle new parenthood, busybody relatives, and romantic disappointments in this lighthearted holiday novella.

 

Note: This story takes place approximately a month and a half after the end of Sympathetic Magic, and is a short novella of 22,000 words, or around 100 paperback pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dark Valentine Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519922151

Christine Pope

A native of Southern California, Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family’s Smith-Corona typewriter back in grade school and is currently working on her hundredth book.Christine writes as the mood takes her, and so her work includes paranormal romance, paranormal cozy mysteries, and fantasy romance. She blames this on being easily distracted by bright, shiny objects, which could also account for the size of her shoe collection. While researching the Djinn Wars series, she fell in love with the Land of Enchantment and now makes her home in New Mexico.

Book preview

1

Connor leaned up against the dresser in our bedroom and watched me, worry clear in his green eyes. Are you really sure you want to do this?

I kept on folding my clothes and stacking them neatly in my suitcase. Completely sure. Besides, I already told everyone we’d be there.

But the twins aren’t even three weeks old —

After setting a pair of jeans down in the suitcase, I turned back toward him. His forehead was creased with a frown, so I abandoned the packing and went to my husband, then put my arms around his waist and pressed myself close.

I know how old they are, I said softly. And both Dr. Ruiz and Eleanor say they’re fine and that taking them down to Jerome shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Connor brushed a kiss against the top of my head. Warmth flowed through me, welcome, telling me I was almost ready to be with him again. Actually, I’d felt ready several days ago, but my ob-gyn recommended waiting at least four weeks before attempting to have sex, despite my miraculous recovery from the C-section I’d had on December first.

Well, it probably seemed miraculous to her. But of course I couldn’t explain to a civilian doctor that my recovery had gotten a little assist from Eleanor Garnett, the Wilcox clan’s healer. If she’d wanted to, she could have healed my incision all at once, but since I’d been getting regular checkups from the doctor in addition to seeing the clan healer, explaining how my surgery scars just went poof! might have been a little awkward. Instead, Eleanor was quietly coaxing the healing process along, making it seem as if I was recovering very quickly, but not so quickly that my ob-gyn would think it suspicious. At least, that was the plan, although I could tell from the speculative look Dr. Ruiz had given me at my last appointment that she knew something wasn’t quite on the up and up, even if she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Okay, Connor said. If you’re sure.

I’m sure, I told him, then backed away slightly so I could gaze up at his face. I would have really liked to know his secret for avoiding dark circles after being kept up by the twins’ midnight feedings. Some mornings I looked as if someone had punched me in both eyes. Thank the Goddess for concealer. Anyway, the entire Wilcox clan has gotten to see Ian and Emily, so it’s only fair that the McAllisters should get their turn.

He couldn’t really argue with that. True, my Aunt Rachel and her S.O. — all right, fiancé, since she’d finally agreed to get married after seeing him for years — had come up to see the twins, and so had a few more of the more adventurous among my extended family, including my cousin Kirby, who’d been among my babysitters after it became clear that Damon Wilcox, the former primus of the Wilcoxes, had unhealthy designs on me. But the majority of the McAllister clan, although outwardly accepting of the changes that had taken place over the past few months, still didn’t seem too keen on venturing into Wilcox territory. And they had just as much right to see their prima’s new babies as the Wilcoxes did.

Anyway, I went on, Rachel and I went to all that trouble to put together a nursery in the house there. We need to use it. We did promise everyone that we were going to try to split our time evenly between the two places.

All right, all right, Connor said with a laugh, holding up his hands in mock surrender. As long as we’re back in Flagstaff for the pinecone drop on New Year’s. Eleanor already promised to babysit.

It’s a date. I went on my tiptoes so I could kiss him, and he kissed me back soundly, mouth opening, the two of us tasting each other, wanting more. The connection between us, which had seemed as if it had been sleeping these past few weeks, flared into open flame once again. My whole body thrummed with need. In the face of that desire, I thought I could ignore my sore and aching breasts, the not-quite-healed scar on my abdomen…everything.

The baby monitor on the dresser came alive in that moment, the thin wail I’d come to recognize as Emily’s, followed by Ian’s lustier cry.

All right, so I couldn’t ignore everything.

Rain check? I asked Connor.

He gave me a rueful smile. Sure.

I had to give the twins credit for one thing; when they went off, they went off in tandem. At first I’d been worried that they would take turns crying, would trade off who needed to be fed or changed or even simply cuddled and kissed. For whatever reason, though, they seemed to sleep at the same time, get hungry at the same time. It had made life a little easier than I’d expected, although I couldn’t help wondering if this was a twin thing, or just an Ian and Emily thing. Either way, I’d take it.

So the packing was interrupted while I breastfed Ian and Connor bottle-fed Emily. We tried to alternate, although Emily did seem to prefer the bottle. I’d given Connor the evil eye when he made a crack about Ian obviously being a boob man, but that did appear to be the case.

Eventually, though, the twins were both sated and put back in their cribs, and we could finish getting all our stuff together for the trip down to Jerome. And since we were traveling with a pair of newborns, that meant we were packing a lot of stuff. More than an hour had gone past by the time we had everything loaded into the Cherokee, but that was all right. We’d told everyone we’d be down on the twenty-second, but we hadn’t given an exact time, since it all depended on how cooperative the twins decided to be.

My birthday was the twenty-first. Connor and I had spent it quietly at home, since we knew we were going to be gone for the next few days anyway. I’d said I didn’t want anything — didn’t I already have everything I needed? — but Connor would have none of that. Instead, he’d hidden presents for me all over the house — a new pair of cowboy boots, some garnet earrings I’d admired in one of the local shops, a new iPad — and waited for me to find them. And then Connor’s cousin Lucas, bless his heart, sent over a chef friend of his to cook me a birthday dinner. The twins didn’t even wake up until we were almost done with dessert,