Meet USAF Engineer Master Sergeant Briggs. The poor chap thought he was in for a dull birthday off-duty, but then he gets a mysterious gift from Area 51. Before he knows it, he's got Madison and her loquacious parrot, Sir Rupert, literally falling out of time and into his lap. Talk about a surprise party!
Today seemed like a good day to revisit my lone Christmas story. The idea for it was born when Genie Davis and I had a chance to visit in real time.
We were talking writing stuff and then got to wondering why we’d never written anything together, even though we’d been friends for a long time. Somehow, out of that discussion, the idea for Open With Care was born.
So inside the book, you’ll find two novellas:
Unexpected guests come bearing gifts. This interstellar Christmas will be one for the ages…
Gini won’t let her bickering family or the incoming blizzard dampen her holiday spirits. But nothing could prepare her for the uninvited houseguests. She’s not sure if she’s ready to exchange gifts with the man who broke her heart or the little green aliens on the roof.
But the intergalactic visitors have a gift for Gini… a taste of the youth and love she left behind…
Jane MacKenzie has never opened a Christmas gift that transformed her world. At least, not until she accidentally opens a box to find a man who was lost in a blizzard over 100 years ago. Jane isn’t sure how to handle the strange visitor and his otherworldly agreement…
But the Christmastime encounter may just open her heart to a love that can stand the test of time.
Open With Care contains two sci-fi romances inspired by the spirit of gift giving. If you like simmering chemistry, snowy Wyoming settings, and family drama, then you’ll love Genie Davis and Pauline Baird Jones’ festive story set.
Buy Open With Care today to discover why love isn’t alien on Christmas!
Read an excerpt from “Up on the House Top,” my story in the duet:
They needed help, but who were they gonna call, assuming they could find the phone and it worked? Alien busters? How did they explain this? Who would believe them? Isaac had taken their transition to peer okay, but what kind of authority would any of them have over Daphne? Assuming she could be convinced they were who they said they were. Gini didn’t believe it. At least she wasn’t willingly believing it. Why should Daphne believe them? “We should call their—we should call Bif.”
He wouldn’t believe them, but he’d have to come. Might already be on the way, she thought with scant hope. Like Dex, she found herself wondering if their emergency might be related in some way to this alien contact—which was pretty much the only emergency at NASA she could imagine. Not that she believed yet. She could still wake up wondering what she ate last night to bring this on. Couldn’t she?
“And how do we do that? I hit no bars on my cell about five miles from here.” Dex suddenly looked more his physical age as the enormity of their problem began to dawn on him.
There was no land line up here. “Mom has some kind of phone phone service through the dish.” Gini wasn’t sure how it all worked.
She looked at Desi, who was still “writing” patterns on the wooden floor, her thin arms outstretched. As far as she could tell, her mom’s brain hadn’t gotten younger, just her body.
“For emergencies. It’s got to be here somewhere. Pleasance wouldn’t bring her up here with no way to get help, particularly this time of year. I think we have to sweep the snow off the dish though.” She glanced toward the window.
Piled up snow had collected on the ledges, blocking about half the view. The remaining glass was fogged over. She crossed over and rubbed a circle into fog and peered out. Huge white drifts filled what was usually a meadow or clearing in the summer. Snow weighed down the branches of the pine trees that raggedly surrounded the clearing, giving it a picture postcard perfection—
She gasped and jumped back.
“What?” Dex hurried to her side, glanced out, then wrenched open the door to the back porch.
In the deep snow from last night’s storm, they clearly saw the pattern of really, really small footprints going across the rear porch, down the steps and then around the side of the house. As if on cue, they heard the click of something walking across the rooftop.
Gini looked up, like she could see through the ceiling, then looked at Dex. “Reindeer paws?”
#####
So I hope you enjoyed the excerpt! I had a lot of fun writing this Christmas story. If you want to check it out, just click here.
Perilously yours,
Pauline
And don’t forget! —->
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