Free Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River by Fiction River Page B

number of hours, knowing it was going to take Carson some time to get off the mountain and then drive to Boise. He might stop and change at his apartment on the way here. Finally, she decided that she needed to make a salad and cook herself a light dinner, then make some cookies.
    She loved working around the mansion in the modern kitchen. And even though the day outside was a cold December day, the house remained warm and inviting. Even more so with the wonderful Christmas decorations.
    She understood why Carson had built this wonderful place way back in time. It was a joy to live in and it seemed to make her feel at home, like she had always lived here.
    Then, as she focused on the second batch of cookies, there was a knock at the door.
    She glanced at her watch. Six hours and ten minutes from the time he arrived back in this time in the cave. It might be him. It might not be.
    She took a deep breath, wiped off her hands, took the cookies out of the oven, and made herself walk calmly to the door. Part of her had thought that meeting Carson was all a dream. Part of her knew that for her it had been months, but for him only a matter of hours since they kissed.
    But even more importantly, a large part of her didn’t really believe she could have someone special in her life, have a relationship like Bonnie and Duster’s.
    She made herself take a deep breath before pulling open the door.
    There stood Carson, about her age in his early twenties. His chiseled face just as handsome as ever and those wonderful, dark-brown eyes of his showing pure joy and laughter.
    He still had on the same clothes he had changed into in the mine under an open ski parka.
    He bowed slightly and if he had had a hat he would have tipped it. “Miss Sherri, I got here as fast as I could.”
    She couldn’t control herself any more. She flat jumped at him, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him harder than she had ever kissed anyone before, doing exactly what she had wanted to do the moment he answered the door for her in 1898.
    He held her without strain, kissing her even harder.
    Finally, they came up for air and he lowered her gently to the front porch.
    She looked up into his beautiful eyes. She could lose herself in those eyes every day.
    “You want to see what I’ve done to your home?” she asked, smiling at him. She really, really hoped he liked it.
    “Our home,” he said, smiling at her. “Our home.”
    With that she kissed him again on the porch, her heart soaring higher than she could have ever thought possible.
    And then she kissed him again in every room of their home and under every piece of mistletoe she had hung in every doorway, as she gave him a tour of the house they had both built.

 
     
    Introduction to “Christmas, Interrupted”
     
    The marvelous short story writer, Lisa Silverthorne, can write in any genre she puts her mind to. She has published more than fifty short stories, many of them extremely romantic. Like me, she combines a love of fantasy with a love of romance. Her story, “When The Sea Gives Up Her Dead,” which you can find in her collection, Shipwrecks in Sea Minor, is one of my favorite romantic ghost stories.
    About this story, she writes, “Some of my best and worst moments have been spent on San Juan Island [in Washington State]. Enduring my first Christmas without my grandmother and breaking up with my boyfriend. Taking my first ferry ride, discovering sea glass in hidden coves, and singing to a super-pod of orcas with friends and locals at the lighthouse. Rowan and Mallory came from a difficult Christmas I spent on the island. A time where love had tempered loss, and grief was softened by the island’s magic and spirit.”
    She captures the romance, magic, and spirit in “Christmas, Interrupted.”

 
     
    Christmas , Interrupted
    Lisa Silverthorne
     
    Something didn’t feel right about the new apartment. From the first day Mallory Winter moved into the hundred-year-old house, she