Christmas Jinx

By Natalie-Nicole Bates

Marnie desperately needs an assistant. As the proprietress of For the Love of Fruitcake, her successful little home bakery, her Christmas orders are piling up. She's had bad luck in the past with assistants, and vows this year will be different, especially now that she will be entering a Christmas Bakeoff competition.

Jinx needs a job and a home for the holidays. She's young, sweet, and eager to please. But she's also a jinx, just like her name.

Marnie is smitten, and hires her on the spot, but soon realizes that everything Jinx touches goes wrong, and threatens not only Marnie's business, but the Christmas Bakeoff as well.

There must be something Jinx is good at, and that is for Jinx to know and Marnie to soon figure out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Perfectly Poisoned Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386678403

Natalie-Nicole Bates

Natalie-Nicole Bates is a book reviewer and author. Her passions in life include books and hockey along with Victorian and Edwardian era photography and antique poison bottles. Natalie contributes her uncharacteristic love of hockey to being born in Russia. She currently resides in the UK where she is working on her next book and adding to her collection of 19th century post-mortem photos.    

Book preview

Natalie-Nicole Bates

CHRISTMAS JINX

First published by Perfectly Poisoned Press in 2018

Copyright © Natalie-Nicole Bates, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Third edition

Cover art by JC Clarke

This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Epilogue

Chapter One

Chapter Separator

It didn’t feel like Christmas season.

There was no joy, no happiness, and Jinx barely held on to the job she hated, waiting tables at the Gingerbread Diner. For a place with such a cute name, in reality it was a dump with a disgusting pig of an owner, who told her in no uncertain terms that one more screw up and she was history.

What did he expect? After all, she was a jinx, just like her name.

She looked up when she heard the pelt of icy rain against the diner windows and door. Where was all the fluffy white snow December promised? The gray skies and rain reflected her somber mood. The diner was predictably short on patrons, so her meager tips would be even less today.

A woman in front of the window caught Jinx’s attention. Long, dark hair was plastered against her face, as she used the glass as a mirror to fix her skirt. As she did, Jinx saw a glimpse of bare thigh above the stocking.

Could the woman see her? No, she could only see her own reflection.

Jinx!

Her body convulsed at the owner’s shrill voice.

There are people waiting for coffee! he barked.

Immediately she sprang into action and reached for the coffeepot, still filled with sludge from early that morning. The cheap son of a bitch wouldn’t brew another pot until every drop was gone. Sometimes when he wasn’t looking, she would purposely pour the old coffee down the drain just to keep customers coming back.

The only person waiting for coffee was an old woman at the back of the diner, drumming her fingers on the chipped Formica table, her straggly dog at her feet. She would sit there for hours sometimes, filling up on the free refills.

Utterly depressing.

After Jinx filled her cup, she spotted the woman who had been fixing her skirt. She was now inside the diner and pinning an index card to the community bulletin board situated on a grease-stained wall near the entrance, above the week-old newspapers, and an aluminum Christmas tree that had seen