Celebrate the holidays with The Christmas Laughbox, a collection of FIVE holiday novels and short stories, plus one ALL NEW NOVELLA you can’t find anywhere else.
Cozy holidays by the fire, with your hot (book) billionaire, featuring office romances, small towns, enemies-to-lovers conflicts, and of course, that perennial favorite – springing your girlfriend from jail on Christmas Eve after she’s been arrested for lewd acts.
Heartwarming baby’s first Christmases (ignore the cat who sets the tree on fire). Beautiful treks into a winter wonderland amidst New England snow with your boyfriend(s). Hilariously chaotic extended family gatherings with “secret Santa” games so competitive they turn into bloodsport.
You know. Everything you’ve come to expect from a Julia Kent romantic comedy. 🙂
Each series is wildly different from the others, with varying heat levels, different hijinks, but always, always – a heartwarming world you want to live in, with heroes who make you swoon and heroines who make you laugh – and cheer on in their quests for happily-ever-after endings.
This boxed set includes:
Christmas Shopping for a Billionaire
Christmasly Obedient
Shopping for a Baby’s First Christmas
Shopping for a Yankee Swap
Random Acts of Christmas
And an ALL NEW NOVELLA! Featuring Luke and Kylie from Love You Again – this one is called Love You Christmas!
Sink into six fun stories that leave you with all the feels, loads of laughs, and strange looks from people around you as you read, giggle, and fall in love.
Note: All of these books are parts of ongoing series and are not standalones, though some can be read as such. Each is set during the holiday season from Thanksgiving through New Years. Full, up-front transparency for readers.
Read Chapter One from Love You Christmas, an all-new holiday romance featuring Luke and Kylie from Julia’s bestselling Love You, Maine series:
Luke
“WE GOT ourselves a drunk Santa at Love You Harder, and he’s throwing glass ornaments from the tree at Harlow.”
Rusty’s words didn’t make any sense whatsoever, but then again, their entire town didn’t make much sense.
Luke stared at his radio as if it could decipher for him. The inside of his cruiser smelled like a peppermint chocolate heart from Love You Chocolates, and as Luke was guilty of eating three in a row just now, the rush of holiday happiness making him savor the few minutes of free time before, well – this call.
“What?” he sputtered.
“Santa. Some dude in a Santa costume got all butthurt at Love You Harder, and he’s doing a D&D.”
Drunk and disorderly.
On December 23.
Great.
Love You Harder was the town’s adult bookstore and strip club. No liquor license, thank goodness, but it was within walking distance of Bilbee’s Tavern, though Luke’s cousin Kenny had created a shuttle service for the drunks who didn’t want to hoof it the 1.4 miles from their liquor to their fun on country roads.
Kenny made bank.
Luke licked a speck of chocolate off his lower lip and checked his face in the mirror. The red collar of his uniform peeked out under his thick winter work coat, framing a face that was alert, but tired.
Tired of men with fragile egos making more paperwork for him two days before Christmas.
“Butthurt means…”
“His feewings got hurted by duh nice way-die who rejected him.” Baby talk wasn’t Luke’s thing, but his deputy got the point across. Drunk Santa wanted sex at the closest thing in town to a brothel and got shot down.
Jolly Old Saint Nick’s candy cane wasn’t getting licked.
“I’m on my way there,” Rusty said, siren loud on the radio. “Pulling into the parking lot now.”
“Any idea who it is?”
“Nope. Could be a local, could be a tourist.” Rusty signed off, and Luke rolled his tongue in his cheek, an acrid taste blending with the chocolate mint. He really, really didn’t want to deal with a D&D right now, but he worked in law enforcement. If he wanted a job where everything was predictable, he’d have gone into accounting.
Flipping on his lights, Luke increased his speed and raced through downtown to get to Love You Harder as fast as possible. The place had started in the late ’60s as a head shop, with hippies coming into town. “Free love” meant something different back then, and by the 1980s it was the go-to place for porn rentals on VHS cassette tapes. A few years later, they added a strip club.
Rumor had it this addition was expressly created to piss off the more conservative members of Town Committee. A spite strip club, you might call it.
Two days before Christmas in the town named after his Luview ancestors, but now known as “Love You, Maine,” the little mountain hamlet was normally filled with tourists looking for Christmas cheer.
Sometimes they drank it all in a little too much.
BANG! The sound was muffled, but Luke knew damn well what he heard coming from inside Love You Harder, the pink and white house so calm, so quaint, so unassuming compared to what brewed between its walls.
“SHOTS FIRED!” Rusty broke in suddenly as Luke was parking. Empty nip bottles and a few full glass fifths dotted the edge of the parking lot, a testimony to customers who were a bit more frugal than knocking them back at the local tavern and paying full-service rates. He dodged a Jack Daniel’s bottle filled with a suspicious yellow liquid, jumped over a six pack of empty beer bottles, and sprinted toward the crime scene, hand on his weapon.
Luke’s muscle memory kicked in as he opened the door to the foyer and ran straight for the front right window, ducking as he tried to gain visibility. A rush of red and white, all fluffy and soft and covering a barrel-chested man made Luke instantly spot the perp.
Except Santa wasn’t holding the gun.
Instead, he palmed a green glass orb, one eye squinting, the other on Harlow Morningstar, who was dressed as a sexy candy cane. Red and white striped stockings hooked onto a red garter set, her belly bare, bra a lacy red that matched her Santa hat. Her impossibly long eyelashes were alternating stripes of red and white, and peppermint candies were affixed to her bra, covering her nipples.
She was a sweet sight to see.
But sweet didn’t mean weak, for Harlow also had a shotgun, the handle braced against her shoulder, barrel pointed right at Santa’s nuts. A bullet hole in the wall, damn close to where Luke imagined Santa’s nuts had just been hanging, explained the “SHOTS FIRED” call.
“I’ll shoot ’em off, Darren, so help me God!” she said in a low, tight voice.
Luke instantly increased his inner sense of danger because if she’d been screeching, that was one thing. Calm grit when it came to shooting off a man’s balls was quite another. You could placate a screecher. Once they went dead serious, you were in more volatile territory, as paradoxical as that might seem.
Her use of the name Darren gave him pause. The guy had gone all-out on the Santa fantasy, so much so Luke couldn’t see his face.
“Don’t you dare,” Darren said back, the voice familiar, for as sloppy and slurred as his words were. Now Luke knew him. The baritone was unmistakable.
Darren Bilbee. He groaned inside as Rusty gave him a look from the other side of the room that said, You’re in charge.
Darren Bilbee was one of the hundred or so residents of Luview, Maine with the same last name. The Bilbee family had been here long before Luke’s own lineage, and the tavern that bore their name was founded in the late 1700s as an inn.
Now it had a bar. A bar Darren Bilbee was banned from.
By his own cousin, who owned it.
“Harlow,” Luke said softly, his gun in his hand but pointed down. Rusty’s was aimed at her, and Luke measured the moment. A flash of his daughter Harriet and wife Kylie, snuggled in bed at home, ran through him.
He couldn’t die two days before Christmas. He couldn’t do that to them. There was no way horny Santa and an armed candy cane were ruining their future Christmases. He’d only had four of them with Kylie in his life, and he would be damned if he’d miss a single other one.
Last year had been the best, as everyone at the camp his extended family all co-owned had really settled into their new lives. The Luview family and all their partners, plus the three kids they had between the four siblings, all decorated the evergreen trees around the lodges and the cabins they’d turned into homes. It was like having their very own town common, and as his mother said, “We get to pick all the decorations! No town committee restricting our colors. No busybodies ordering us around and dictating the size of the bulbs. This is glorious freedom!”
It’s not as if they couldn’t have decorated their yards before; it’s just that it felt more special now. More like a community. Family was family but buying old Camp Wannacanhopa and turning it into what Rachel and Kylie jokingly called Camp Luview was a dream come true.
He wasn’t about to let a gun incident at Love You Harder destroy his wife’s and kid’s hearts forever.
“It was a joke,” Darren said in a voice higher than Harlow’s, flop sweat covering his face, the sour scent of a man who’s had too many shots of tequila and lime with a beer chaser coming through his pores. The man was standing, but swayed so badly it was clear why he hadn’t tried to escape. “Can’t you take a joke?”
“You grabbed my ass so hard a finger slipped in and rubbed my appendix, Darren” Harlow snapped.
“And I said I’d tip you extra for that.”
“That’s not how it works. I didn’t consent.”
“You work at Love You Harder, for God’s sake! That is how it works! I come here to get a little something hot and heavy.”
“I’ve got something hot and heavy for you, alright,” she replied, taking new aim.
“You shoot me and I’ll drop another one of these!” he slurred, holding the ornament high, as if the threat would deter her. As if the threat mattered. His stupid little pickled brain seemed to think he had some control here.
“More shattered glass makes it easier to slit your throat,” Harlow said softly, lips curling up.
Darren slowly lowered his arm, going pale.
“Luke,” Darren said, piggy eyes meeting his, the desperation radiating off him in waves, though his eyelids grew heavy. The guy wasn’t going to be vertical for long “Come on. Fix this.”
“You’re the one getting fixed,” Harlow said in that determined voice. “I’ve put up with your crap for way too long.”
I could have gone to law school, Luke thought to himself. Or gone into business with Dad climbing trees. But no. I had to choose this for a living.
“If you shoot him, the town will close Love You Harder for good this time. Remember the stabbing?” Rusty’s words made Harlow freeze. Three years ago, some customer had run into his wife’s boyfriend. Yes – his wife’s boyfriend. A stabbing had ensued, the story hit the local newspaper, and even a television station in Portland covered it for all of fifty seconds.
“It’s not my fault if customers get violent,” Harlow replied.
“He’s not worth it,” Rusty called out, surprising everyone.
“You shut up!” Harlow said, eyes on Darren but words for Rusty. “As if you’re one to talk. You never called me! Slept with me three times and made up some bullshit about how it wouldn’t ‘look right’ in town to have a relationship. I’m tired of being treated like casual trash by men who don’t respect me.”
Rusty was a ladies’ man. The town tom cat. The local booty call. Pick a term, any term, but he was the Love You Lothario mixed with McSteamy.
And it was about to bite him in the ass.
Or the sac.
“I – I’m sorry for not respecting you more, Harlow.”
Her shoulders sagged slightly at his words.
“But you can’t just shoot a man because he touched you wrong,” Rusty argued with her. “You’ll go to jail.”
“If he loses his balls, he loses testosterone. That shit poisons you men.”
“Ah, gawwwwd,” Darren groaned. “A feminist.”
She aimed higher.
“Harlow,” Luke said, taking a step closer. “You’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“And I see you.”
She snorted. “Of course you do. I’m a human candy cane. Good thing the colors fit Love You town regulations. Hate to piss off Anne Petrinelli.” Anne was the town busybody, focused on making sure everything in Love You, Maine – where every day was Valentine’s Day – met their very specific code.
Red, white, and pink, in detailed shades, were the approved building colors. Luke knew damn well that didn’t spill over into what a person wore inside the businesses and buildings, though. He suspected that Finola Shaughnessy, the owner of Love You Harder, had ideas of her own.
Like making Harlow look nice and lickable for the clientele.
Speaking of Finola, a rustle at the top of the stairs made all the men look up, though Luke had one eye on Harlow, who ignored everyone, the shotgun her best friend.
Maybe her only friend.
Darren might very well walk out of here singing Christmas carols as a soprano if they didn’t de-escalate the situation.
“Chief Luview,” Finola said with a smile, her cool demeanor in stark contrast to Darren, who had started to shake like he was touching a too-intense electric fence. The beer gut that wrapped around his waist like a spare tire shook like a bowl full of jelly, for sure. The dude really was a great Santa.
But last Luke checked, Santa wasn’t into strip clubs.
Or if he was, parents kept that very quiet.
“Good to see you. How’s Kylie? Harriet?”
“Both are fine. And Jack?”
She smiled wider. “He’s coming home tomorrow from Middlebury. About to start his final semester. Can you believe it?”
Harlow rolled her eyes at the chitchat, which was a good sign.
“I can. Good kid. Still pre-med?”
“Oh, yes. He plans to spend a year doing clinic work overseas, then apply for med school.”
“Amazing. I feel like he’s just that seven year old playing soccer who puked on my shoes.”
Rusty, Finola, and Luke laughed.
Darren cut in. “Could you cut the chatter and arrest the crazy chick, Luke? She’s going to slip a finger and cause a problem.”
“That’s what you did,” Harlow shouted at him.
“This is bullshit. Do your damn job!” Darren insisted, yelling at Luke.
Rusty bristled, but Luke took it in stride. Part of being a good law enforcement officer was having a thick skin.
“I am doing my job, Darren. Best outcome here is for you to have your testicles intact.”
“Then quit talking and do something!”
“Harlow, what’s it going to take to get you to put the gun down and let Darren here leave with his boys still tuckable?”
Harlow broke her gaze on Darren’s balls for the first time, looking up at Finola. “He broke the rule.”
Finola walked down the steps, crossed the line of sight Harlow had on Darren, and hauled off with an enormous face slap that made Darren drop the green glass ornament in his hand. It hit a patch of thick cotton on the floor, the kind that simulated snow. Darren rippled, as if his skin were nothing but a ribbon of rubber.
For a petite woman with an hourglass figure and then some, Finola’s swing was mighty. Darren flew to the left as she hit him, staggered a few feet, then crashed into the eight-foot Christmas tree in the foyer.
The rule? Luke wondered. What in the hell was ‘the rule’?
“We can do this two ways,” Finola said calmly as she stood over Darren’s groaning body. “I can have Luke and Rusty arrest you and charge you. Charges might not stick, and you’ll spend the night in jail.” She looked at Luke, who raised his eyebrows and let her go with whatever scheme she was concocting.
“Might even have to be over Christmas,” he suddenly said, deadpan. “Let you out on December 26.”
“I got kids at home,” Darren pleaded, sitting up with a big red mark on his cheek. The tree was so sturdy it handled the blow of a burly drunk man being slapped by the closest thing the town had to a brothel owner. “And I didn’t do anything I didn’t already pay for.”
Finola started to say something, gave Luke side-eye, then pursed her lips, exhaling out her nose slowly. A good ten years older than Luke – maybe even a well-preserved twenty – she’d been in town for twenty-five years, starting out as one of the establishment’s girls and turning into a long-time town resident. She’d given birth to Jack twenty-one years ago, and while no one knew the identity of the father, people had suspicions.
No one had ever won the betting pool at Greta’s, though.
“Put the gun down, Harlow,” Luke insisted. “I don’t want to have to take you in, too.”
He’d played the whole situation just right, going on instinct. Come in with too hard a hand and she could have blown. Come in too soft and she could have taken advantage. As the young woman dropped the barrel of the gun, Rusty stepped forward, hand outstretched.
She shook her head, glaring at him. “You can’t order me around, you asshole.”
Instead, Luke took it away, secured it, and glanced at Rusty, who gave Luke a look that said, What now, Boss?
What now, indeed?
Get your copy of The Christmas Laughbox at your favorite retailer.
