Jenny Lopez Saves Christmas: An I Heart Short Story. Lindsey Kelk

      

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014

      Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2014

      Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2014; Cover images © Shutterstock.com

      Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      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.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © November 2014 ISBN: 9780007501564

      Version 2017-05-23

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Author

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      ‘I don’t know what your problem is,’ I said, taking a swig of my venti non-fat peppermint mocha latte. ‘What could be more Christmassy than this?’

      My best friend and constant pain in the ass took a terrified look around at the animated bear diorama behind me and shuddered.

      ‘Don’t look now but the bear directly behind you has an axe,’ Angie said with a half-hearted point in the bear’s general direction. ‘I think he’s trying to kill you.’

      ‘He’s chopping down a tree!’ I yelled, arms thrown out wide in exposition. ‘And that guy is bringing in presents and those little baby bears are writing their lists to Santa. Seriously, doll, if these fuzzy motherfuckers can’t bring your Christmas spirit alive, then there’s no damn hope for you.’

      It wasn’t often that I, Jenny Lopez, was prepared to admit defeat, but Angela was testing my limits. We’d spent all morning trudging around Manhattan in the freezing cold, hopping over slushy snow banks and trying to get her psyched for the most wonderful time of the year. Only nothing was happening. It was strange. For the last five years, I’d had to listen to her singing Christmas carols – badly – in her adorable British accent as soon as she’d taken the Halloween decorations down. She was a Christmas-o-holic. As an American, I didn’t even start thinking about holly jolly holidays until the agony of Thanksgiving was out of the way. There was only so much turkey a girl could pretend to be excited about at a time. But this year was different.

      ‘I do quite like the little one in the jumper,’ she offered, nodding towards an especially freaky-looking bear lurching back and forth and seemingly attacking a dead cat. ‘He’s cute.’

      ‘If you’re gonna be this much of an asshole every time Alex goes away on tour from now on, I might have to start going with him,’ I said. ‘There’s no way he can get back for the holidays?’

      ‘We agreed there was no point,’ she said with a rare self-pitying sniff. It wasn’t often she played the ‘poor me’ card, but when your husband takes off on a tour of Asia for three months and you’re stuck in New York, I figure you’re allowed a little leeway. ‘And I can’t go out and meet him because my bollocking bastard deputy quit.’

      ‘The perils of being a media mogul,’ I said, giving her a half-smile and matching eye-roll. ‘Want me to have her killed?’

      ‘It’s top of my Christmas list,’ she replied. ‘I can’t believe she waited until Christmas to do this.’

      I shrugged. ‘I can. The vacation at your magazine sucks ass. It’s like, what, five days?’

      ‘Eight in your first year,’ she glowered. ‘Plus public holidays.’

      I raised an eyebrow, only ever so slightly hampered by my impulsive Botox injections. If I didn’t already have a job, I’d have made a great devil’s advocate. I wondered what his benefits package looked like.

      ‘That’s how it works, Angie.’ I tossed my empty red cup into a nearby trash can, silently whooping as it landed. ‘Most people don’t think too much about other people’s schedules when they’re quitting a job. I guess she wanted to take a nice long break over the holidays before she starts at the new place.’

      ‘There is no new place,’ Angie said, her face like thunder. ‘She actually quit because she got engaged. Can you believe it?’

      ‘Only because I’m so jealous.’

      Standing up slowly, I stretched my arms over my head. They were still aching from my workout the day before. Until someone appeared to yank me off the shelf and drown me in a life of luxury, I was stuck with the pre-dawn Soulcycle sessions. I still couldn’t work out how they had come up with the name: the only thing soul-related about spinning classes was how quickly they crushed mine.

      ‘Maybe I should just let Alex knock me up and go on baby vacay,’ she mused, dropping her own Starbucks