A Kiss at Halloween

By Elizabeth Myles

This Halloween, lose your heart in Hillingham Hollow...

Welcome to Hillingham Hollow, the wholesome Texas suburb where romance abounds and real magic is rumored to be in the air.

Book 1: A Kiss at Halloween

Come volunteer at the carnival, Kaelin, she said. It’ll be fun, she said...

When Kaelin’s friend Pauline suggests building a booth together for the upcoming Halloween carnival, Kaelin has doubts. Sounds like a lot more effort than Kaelin feels willing to expend these days. But then Pauline reminds her that, not only is the carnival part of her friend Joy’s big wedding celebration, it’s also for charity.
Kaelin caves, thinking at least the project might distract her from her usual worries—the ones about being a twenty-year-old still living at home with her parents, jobless, skill-less, and without any sense of direction in her life.

Then, at the last minute, Pauline skips out on the booth-building business, leaving Kaelin high and dry.

Worse yet, she leaves Kaelin paired with a different volunteer, altogether: Max Yang, the hot metalhead mechanic with whom she kinda-sorta used to flirt back in high school.

Sure, Max is a cool person and great to look at—and he might even be willing to spin Kaelin’s whole world around with a few passionate kisses over the weekend—but there’s no way he, a guy Kaelin hardly knows, and who’s so different from anyone else in her life, can hold the key to breaking her out of her rut. Or to unraveling her entire, bewildering future.

Can he?

Content advisory for Book 1: A Kiss at Halloween: sexual references, sensual kissing
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SERIES DESCRIPTION:
Welcome to Hillingham Hollow, Texas, the wholesome Houston suburb where romance abounds, and magic is rumored to be in the air...

Twenty-year-old Autumn Joy Alejandro is getting married.
Somehow, the former Hillingham Hollow High homecoming queen and recent Harvest Festival Pumpkin Princess has managed to land one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, twenty-eight-year-old Gothic rock singer Corvin Covarrubias. When the tall, dark, and extraordinarily handsome star escorts his new bride-to-be back to the suburbs for their highly publicized wedding, all of Hillingham Hollow is immediately entranced.
Autumn Joy is sweet and friendly, known for her almost angelic levels of kindness and generosity. Corvin is just the opposite, a worldly international celebrity with a dour image and devilish reputation, rumored to be a real-life vampire. The unusual pair captures the locals’ imaginations, and soon speculations about their alliance are swirling.
According to many hopeful Hillingham singles, the “marriage of light and darkness” taking place in the heart of their community will be a charmed event, guaranteeing every guest their own happily-ever-after.
Follow along as the weekend’s Halloween carnival extravaganza unfolds, and passion ignites throughout the ’burbs. Some couples will reunite after years apart, while others will meet for the very first time. All will be unexpectedly thrown together for one fun—possibly enchanted—wedding weekend, in which supernatural forces may or may not play a part, but romance is certain to manifest...
MORE ABOUT THE SERIES:
•Halloween Hearts is a New Adult small-town romance series. Some of the books contain fantasy/paranormal elements.
•Each novella is approximately 50,000 - 60,000 words in length and can be read as a standalone book.
•The stories range from sweet (kisses only) to a bit more sensual (see individual book descriptions for details)
•These books can be enjoyed in any order. The titles are as follows:
1.A Kiss at Halloween (Max and Kaelin)
2.All I Want for Halloween is You (Clark and Iris) Available June, 2022
3.Halloween is the Time to Say I Love You (Reese and Jessye) Available July, 2022
4.I’ll Be Home f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Myles
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005423834

Elizabeth Myles

Elizabeth Myles enjoys reading and writing lighthearted romance. Her favorite stories feature sweet heroines and noble heroes. She is a graduate of Lone Star College-Tomball and the University of Houston. Her prize-winning short fiction appeared several times in Inkling: The Creative Arts Magazine of LSC-Tomball, and her novel, Fear and Laundry, received a notable entry honor in the teen category of Shelf Unbound Magazine's Writing Competition for Best Independently Published Book. Shelf Unbound subsequently included Fear and Laundry in a special contest issue spotlighting the work of “some of today’s best indie authors.”Elizabeth’s other works include the paranormal romantic comedy series The Sharpest Kiss and the contemporary/paranormal series Halloween Hearts.Elizabeth and her handsome husband, Steve, live and run together in Texas. When she is not writing, Elizabeth can be found reading, cooking, or baking, often while listening to Nine Inch Nails and other rock music. She enjoys watching sci-fi and horror movies, and her favorite television shows are Supernatural and The X-Files. Connect with her at elizabethmyles.com, and for alerts about new releases, please sign up for her mailing list here: https://elizabethmyles.com/mailing-list/

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A Kiss at Halloween copyright © 2022 Elizabeth Myles

Cover and other images by Steven Myles using photos from Unsplash and Pixabay. Big Set of Dividers by starline on Freepik.

The cover image of this novel is used strictly for literary and illustrative purposes, and any models depicted in the cover image bear no relationship whatsoever to this work of fiction or to any of the characters or events depicted herein.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce or transmit this book or any part thereof by any means whatsoever, without written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

HOLLOW HAPPENINGS

From Hollow Happenings, the community newsletter of Hillingham Hollow, Texas

A ‘Joy’-ous Occasion in Hillingham Hollow: Former Hillingham High homecoming queen to wed celebrated doom-and-gloom rock musician in what many are dubbing a ‘marriage of light and darkness.’

By Lenore Shelley (@lshelleyhh, [e-mail])

Local entrepreneur, multi-industrialist, and noted philanthropist, Alistair Banes Alejandro III, held a press conference with his family in attendance on Monday to announce the engagement of his daughter, Autumn Joy Alejandro, age 20, to Corvin Covarrubias, age 28.

Ms. Alejandro, known as Joy, graduated from Hillingham High School in 20-- and will be familiar to Hollow residents not only as that school’s homecoming queen, but also as Hillingham Hollow’s own Harvest Festival Pumpkin Princess, and Miss Kettle Corn Celebration (a.k.a. Kettle Corn Queen) two years running.

Six months ago, Ms. Alejandro made global headlines when her relationship with internationally renowned model/actor/singer, Covarrubias (stage name, Vlad Harker) became public. The couple reportedly met while Ms. Alejandro, a film student at UT Austin, and Mr. Covarrubias, lately the lead singer of gothic rock band, Cold Glass Coffin, filmed a short segment together in the upcoming major motion picture Re-Vamp! The film, directed by up-and-comer Scout Remington, is a musical mash-up of the classic novella, Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and the long-running horror comic book series, Ace Van Helsing vs. The Fiends of Professor Nosferus.

Alejandro III confirmed Monday that his daughter will marry Covarrubias in Hillingham Hollow, and that a three-day festival, featuring a volunteer-run charity carnival and a trio of rock concerts, will mark the occasion of the wedding, taking place in Hillingham Park on Sunday, October 27th, 20--. All events, with the exception of the final concert by multi-award-winning rock group (and personal friends of Covarrubias, the band’s former lead guitarist), How to Make a Wolf Howl, will be free and open to the public.

How to Make a Wolf Howl, who have been on an indefinite hiatus since the release of their Greatest Hits collection in 20--, will play live for the first time in nearly four years on Sunday, October 27th, 20-- at the Vintage Meadow Civic Center. More than five thousand tickets to the show, made available online directly following Alejandro’s press conference, sold out in a reported nine minutes and twenty-two seconds. However, wristband passes, hand-delivered exclusively via horse-drawn carriage alongside Ms. Alejandro and Mr. Covarrubias’ wedding invitations this week, will allow an additional ~600 personal guests (every member of Ms. Alejandro’s high school graduating class, plus one guest each) entry to the event.

**Carnival organizers seek dozens of volunteers to build and run booths for a variety of local charities; please see sidebar for information on where and how to apply. See next page for concert schedule.**

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CHAPTER ONE

Old Pals

Hillingham Hollow, a suburb of Houston, Texas

Friday, October 25th

HAVE YOU EVER seen a solid purple Christmas tree? One that’s over 30 feet tall?

I hadn’t, either, until that carnival announcement appeared in the community paper. When the end of October rolled around, there it stood: a giant plastic spruce the color of crushed violets, towering over the center of my hometown of Hillingham Hollow, Texas. Not a Christmas tree at all, we Hollow residents were soon corrected, but a Halloween tree. The tree’s bare artificial branches stuck out toward the four corners of Town Square, waiting to be decorated with—one could only assume, given the name—Halloween ornaments. What are Halloween ornaments, you might ask? Well, at the time, I couldn’t be sure, but I speculated that they’d be similar to Christmas ornaments, only, you know….spooky. I pictures garlands of vampire bats and strings of miniature tombstones, ceramic ghosts cavorting alongside wooden trick-or-treaters, and maybe a gnarled old witch sitting astride her broom at the top, in lieu of the traditional Christmas star.

Who knew?

Considering the way things had been going around town lately, anything might happen.

Almost as soon as the Halloween tree showed up, rumors began to swirl about it. I heard that a famous goth band was coming to town and buying up the whole suburb, that they would tear down half of Main Street and remodel it, and that when they were done, it would look exactly like Halloween Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Which, honestly, if that had really been what was about to happen to us, I would’ve thought it was awesome. I mean, who doesn’t love Halloween, right? And who around here wouldn’t want to see Hillingham Hollow transformed into a jack-o-lantern-and-candy corn extravaganza?

But, whatever. I knew the rumors were nonsense.

What was really happening in The Hollow was a lot less dramatic, and yet in some ways no less astonishing, than the silliness everyone was bandying about.

My former classmate (and still close friend) Autumn Joy Alejandro was getting married. Last year, she had moved to Austin and landed a minor role in a vampire movie being shot out there. Her first week on the set, she'd hooked up with one of the movie’s biggest stars, the lead singer of a band called Cold Glass Coffin, who’d won a handful of major industry awards over the last few years and was now making his silver screen acting debut. His real name was Corvin Covarrubias—which, if you ask me, is a pretty cool name to begin with—but he went by the stage name ‘Vlad Harker.’ I know—into Dracula much? He’d once claimed in a magazine interview that he really WAS half vampire, and, while he’d since backed away from that assertion, the rumor still followed him around. No wonder. He looked like a handsome version of Dracula, what with his being six-foot-three and pale as milk, with vivid green eyes and hair black as a raven’s wing. He wore a lot of black leather and vinyl, boots, chains…You know, that whole deal. Like I said, not really my scene, but…I wasn’t senseless. Even I was aware that he was hot to an almost unimaginable degree.

Ahem.

But I digress.

Getting back to Autumn Joy…Right after the news about her engagement broke, some of the tackier celebrity gossip sites questioned how Covarrubias—brooding, somber, metal musician Vlad Harker—could possibly have fallen for some suburbanite kettle corn queen when he could easily have had his pick of just about anybody else on the planet. Over the years, the press had linked him with models, actresses, pop stars, and even heiresses. Now those same journalists were scratching their heads, baffled by Corvin’s ultimate choice of a wife. But I wasn’t. Miss Alejandro could win over anybody. Anybody. Didn’t matter how dark and dour he was, Covarrubias hadn’t stood a chance once my pal ran into him.

To begin with, no one ever called her Autumn, she went by Joy, and it was easy to understand why. In contrast to Covarrubias, she was like a walking, talking beam of sunshine. Blonde hair, tan skin, warm brown eyes, and straight, white teeth perpetually bared in a friendly smile. It would’ve been annoying—a bit too much to take, honestly—if it hadn’t also all been one hundred percent authentic. Joy was a genuinely nice person. I had been friends with her since kindergarten, when our families had lived down the street from one another, so I ought to know.

One afternoon, when I was five years old and new to the neighborhood, Joy showed up on my front porch with a box of homemade cupcakes in her arms and her mom in tow, to introduce herself to my family. When she learned I was home all alone except for the housekeeper, she asked if I wanted to come over to her place and hang out for a while. A quick phone call to my mom, who was out shopping or whatever, and I had found myself bustled over to the Alejandros’, where Joy’s mom fed us tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, and more cupcakes for lunch. Afterward, Joy and I spent the afternoon playing dress-up in her kiddie castle and running around with her family’s menagerie of rescued shelter pets. We had so much fun, she insisted I stay for dinner, and then I went home to get my pajamas and toothbrush and spent the rest of the night with her, too. As I recalled, the incident upset my father. He questioned Mom’s judgment in letting me trip off for the day with a family she hadn’t yet met face to face. Something about a potential kidnapping? But, in the end, it all worked out. The Alejandros weren’t child snatchers. They were lovely, kind-hearted people, and my sleepovers at Joy’s became a regular occasion. She and I remained friends long after we outgrew pajama parties, and after Joy’s father started yet another successful company, made an even bigger pile of money, and the Alejandros moved into an even fancier house several blocks over from mine.

How can you not love someone after all that?

And it wasn’t only me. Everyone in Hillingham Hollow had a story like that about Joy. Everyone who had ever met her, anyway, and it’s a pretty small suburb, so that’s almost all of us. Certainly everyone we went to high school with, which is probably why she had decided to invite every member of our graduating class to her wedding.

Over the past week, a guy done up in Victorian garb had driven a black, horse-drawn carriage around to each of our houses and delivered our invitations to us on a red satin pillow. A bat sigil, pressed into red wax, sealed the back of each envelope, and inside, carefully folded, rested a pair of black satin wristbands with Joy and Corvin’s names and wedding date embroidered on them in crimson thread. Some people said that Joy only did all of this so she could gloat and rub her good fortune in our faces—only twenty years old and already marrying a rich and famous celebrity!—but I didn’t think so. Like I said, I knew her. I knew that she saw all 300-plus of us as close personal friends of hers, and that all she wanted was for us to share in her happiness. Because that was the kind of person she’d always been. That was Joy.

If anyone deserved a huge, showy wedding, it was her, and her upcoming nuptials were slated to fit the bill.

The wedding ceremony would happen in the park gazebo at the center of town, not far from the Halloween tree, which by then would be fully decorated and lit up. For two nights prior to that, seven blocks of Main Street would host a fall carnival for the townsfolk. Each evening, a roster of different rock bands would perform a free concert in the park, and fireworks would light up the sky over the creek. The main attraction would, of course, be the wedding itself, followed by the biggest concert of them all, headlined by none other than How to Make a Wolf Howl, who, aside from Corvin’s group, were Joy’s favorite band. To get into that show, guests would need to have one of Joy’s special wristbands on their arm.

The concert part was a big deal because acts as successful as How to Make a Wolf Howl didn’t come to places like Hillingham Hollow. Sure, they came to Houston, but when they did, they didn’t play personal parties, no matter how elaborate. They played at the Toyota Center, where the tickets went for, like, hundreds of dollars each. In fact, thousands of tickets to this relatively intimate show had been made available to the public and had sold out in less than a blink. Now, scalpers were hustling them online for exorbitant amounts.

So, why was a band hotter than the sun coming to Hillingham Hollow to play at a wedding reception? Because Corvin used to be in the band. He was still friends with the other members, and he’d arranged for them to come out of semi-retirement to play for Joy. Talk about grand gestures. But that was only to be expected, folks said. Covarrubias was completely besotted with his bride-to-be, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

Nothing.

Yeah. Cue the *big sigh* here.

You can probably understand by now that romance and beneficence were in the air in Hillingham Hollow that October. Everyone was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about life, and our behavior was, well…abnormally altruistic. Even mine. I can’t think of another reason I—a notorious hermit by that point—would do something so completely out of character and volunteer to work at Joy and Corvin’s carnival. Under normal circumstances, I’d rather have scooped out my own eyes with a spoon.

Initially, the volunteer gig was my friend Pauline’s idea. There’d been another ad in the community paper, she said, calling for people to come help.

But I don’t like big crowds, I reminded her. I don’t like…leaving my house. Doing stuff.

Yeah, I know, she said.

But she wouldn’t let it go.

There would be all sorts of food trucks and rides and games out there, she informed me with breathless anticipation. A pumpkin patch! A corn maze! A petting zoo! Now, I know that in a big city, these things might seem quaint, maybe even boring, but around here, they passed for grade-A entertainment. And all the fun was for a good cause, too. The proceeds were going to Joy’s favorite animal and children’s charities. If I helped out, Pauline said, I could feel good about myself and what I was doing. Didn’t I want to feel good about myself and what I was doing?

Well, yes. I supposed I did.

You’ll thank me later, she declared. I didn’t believe her, but my arm ached from all the twisting.

And, so, against my better judgment, I’d signed up to help build, stock, and co-manage a merchandise booth for How to Make a Wolf Howl. The band were donating the revenue to a local children’s home called The Kittendorf House. Aww.

The best part was that, unlike the people manning the game booths, I’d only have to deal with the public for one day instead of three. On Friday, Pauline and I were scheduled to put together the booth, on Saturday we would stock the t-shirts and stuff inside it, and on Sunday afternoon we would sell everything and collect the profits for the kids’ home. Monday morning, we would report back to Main Street one last time and tear down the booth and pack it away. After that…everything in town would return to normal, I guessed. All I knew was that it was supposed to be me and Pauline hanging out together for four days, having a few laughs, and helping other people in the process, only…

Pauline isn’t going to be here.

Excuse me?

Yeah, she isn’t going to make it.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon on the Friday before Joy’s wedding. I was standing in the middle of the brick-lined street while all around me, construction teams were hard at work assembling carnival and merchandise booths. The sun was too bright for late October, and the humidity was higher than I would have liked for…well, ever, but especially on a day when I was expected to perform physical labor. I was wearing baggy cargo shorts and a loose, sleeveless Houston Zoo t-shirt over an old, faded sports bra. My bleached-blonde hair, which was showing about a quarter-inch of brown roots, was slicked back into a ponytail, and my bangs, which I kept forgetting to trim, were clipped back with a barrette to keep them out of my eyes. Despite my lightweight clothing, I could feel myself sweating. For a second, I thought it might be my physical discomfort making me hear things. I couldn’t possibly have been told that my partner in all this—the person who’d called me up and relentlessly pestered me to sign up with her in the first place—hadn’t shown up today.

Maybe she just wasn’t here yet.

Yeah, that had to be it.

Surely, she was on her way and would arrive any minute now. I mean, Pauline would never just ditch me like this. Right?

I blinked and tilted my head, urging the balding, middle-aged volunteer coordinator I was talking to, who’d said his name was Nino, to ease my fears, confirm my hopes.

Instead,