Deadly Christmas Secret (Book 3: Peach Blossom Romantic Suspense Series) ebook

I’m April Carlston, and I never imagined celebrating my milestone birthday alone, let alone with a car crashing through my living room wall days before Christmas. The driver, a stranger, is dead on arrival, but what really sends chills down my spine is the note addressed to me on his passenger seat and a blood-stained trinket that looks all too familiar.

Life has been hard since my dreams faded, and I’m just getting by on a meager income. Then there's Assistant Regional Medical Examiner Ethan Smythe, who’s too absorbed in his own ambitions to risk another romance. Yet, fate has other plans.

Ethan and I collide in the aftermath of this bizarre accident, and against all odds, an unexpected spark ignites between us. As we team up to solve this shocking mystery, the danger escalates. We soon realize that our survival depends on relying on each other and our faith to outsmart a desperate murderer.

As we dig deeper, uncovering family secrets and unraveling a sinister plot, the thrill intensifies. Sparks fly between us, binding us together in a thrilling quest for truth and justice.

If you enjoy suspense-filled mysteries with a touch of heartwarming romance, join us in the icy embrace of Peach Blossom. Get your copy of Deadly Christmas Secret now, and follow our journey as love emerges from the shadows.

Perched on a wooden stool at the kitchen island, April Carlston lit the three candles she stabbed into a cupcake she had purchased before leaving work at the Peach Blossom Market. Two red wax sticks represented her decades alive, and the green commemorated her twenty-first year.

“Happy birthday to me.” Her singing wobbled, then faded at the end. With a forced smile, she blew out the flames, watching the smoke curl upward and inhaling the paraffin scent. A lone tear slid down her cheek when memories from happier days floated into her mind. That was when her mom was still alive and before her dad never came home from the funeral.

Her phone rang, and she tried to sound upbeat to answer.

“Hi, Carol. What’s up?”

“Just called to wish you a happy birthday, sugar.”

“That’s nice of you. Thanks.”

“If I remember correctly, today kicks o$ what your mama used to call Aprilmas.”

“Yeah.” The word came out as a whisper. April fought against the mist forming in her eyes. Aprilmas was a tradition her parents created to celebrate April every day during the week between her birthday and Christmas. Her parents had invited all of April’s childhood friends to celebrate with them.

“Did your friends call today?”

April wiped the moisture from her cheek. “They’ve moved on. I don’t blame ‘em.” She kept it to herself that her friends got a taste of city life at college, then got jobs as far away as they could get from Peach Blossom, Oklahoma. That included her worthless boyfriend, but she wouldn’t bring up Kyle to anyone ever again. Not after he broke up with her in a text message.

Besides, she’d vowed to stop crying over the past and what might have been if she hadn’t had to postpone her education to help care for Mom.

She shook her head and let out a hard exhale to bring her mind back to the present. Hope would be her word for the new chapter in her life, which she launched earlier by applying for a promotion to the position of accountant at the market Carol owned.

After removing the candles from the cupcake, she couldn’t resist licking the sweet frosting from the wax and capturing the pointy top with the tip of her tongue. A firecracker boomed outside, eliciting a shaky laugh.

“What was that, sugar?”

She’d forgotten Carol was still on the phone and blew out an amused huff of air. “Firecracker, I guess. We Okies love our fireworks.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

A shiver snaked through April, filling her with the familiar numb coldness she’d never understood—a sensation she equated with something disrupting the Force in a Star Wars movie. Seconds later, a crash jolted her. The phone and the three-dollar cupcake ended up on the floor.

A brown sedan burst into the living room—right through her mom’s maroon accent wall. Debris flew everywhere, sending April to seek shelter behind the island, her jean-clad knee squishing the cupcake. Her insides devolved into a hollow ache—akin to a rupture in the Star Wars Force.

Carol’s yells returned her attention to the phone. Bringing it to her ear, she peeked around the island to see that the airbag had deployed and deflated. The driver slumped over the steering wheel.

“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”

“What?”

“There’s…” The sentence got stuck in her throat at the sight of the guy’s ginger waves. On instinct, she smoothed her own mass of ginger curls.

Carol’s repeated demands to say what happened only half registered in her brain as she tiptoed toward the driver. At his window, she squeaked out, “Hello?” His unfocused blue eyes lacked the sparkle of life, causing her to cringe back a step.

“What happened?” Carol’s shout finally pierced through her stupor.

“Um. A car … crashed into my living room.” Her nose flared at the burned-rubber scent it emanated as its wheels spun. The vehicle filled up her room, resting on her broken couch, the shattered TV, and its smashed stand. “The driver looks …” She pulled in a stuttering breath. “I think he’s dead.” She warned herself to stay calm.

“I’ll be right over. Call the sheriff.” Carol hung up, but April was still too stunned to drop the phone from her ear. She bent down farther to see through the driver’s window at the entire front cabin. A blood-spattered snow globe lay on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Above it on the seat, a red file folder held a confusing note scrawled on a yellow paper stuck to it. She craned her neck and squinted as if that would help her understand it better.

“Can’t be.” After crawling across the destroyed couch, she stared at the note through the shattered passenger window and confirmed that her eyes hadn’t played tricks on her. Right there on that yellow sticky note, someone had written For April.

While reaching for the folder, a shard of glass nicked her, but a swish outside the hole in her wall scared the pain away. She turned in time to catch the blur of a person running across the dusting of snow on her front lawn toward the right side of the house. What if they came back?

Now in melt-down mode, she ran to the knife drawer in the kitchen, opened it, but stopped when she considered how someone could wrestle it away from her.

“No, call the sheriff.” That’s when she realized she still held the phone to her ear. She dropped the folder inside the drawer to free up both hands. With the folder and its confusing note forgotten, she frantically leaned against the counter, closing the drawer.

Assistant Medical Examiner Ethan Smythe—he constantly had to explain the name was pronounced like Smith—stared at the wall in front of his desk, trying to think ofsome busy work he could do until his boss left for the evening.

He and Dr. Thomas Franklin had finished the last autopsy for the day, but then Dr. Franklin’s desk phone rang. Ethan never left before the doctor, a habit aimed at securing a glowing recommendation for the job of his dreams in Oklahoma City. Besides, his chest tightened at the anticipation of another night alone.

“Dr. Smythe and I should be there in about an hour.” The doctor set the receiver on its cradle and slipped an apologetic half-grin toward Ethan. “Sorry, lad. There’s a suspected murder in Peach Blossom.” Rather than rely on a locally appointed coroner in a small town, Oklahoma law elevated murder investigations to the regional medical examiner. “Are you free to accompany me?”

“Of course.” An adventure to his hometown sounded better than spending another evening alone in his gloomy apartment in Tulsa. “Shall I follow you in my car?” Please say yes. “I might visit my parents afterward, if you don’t mind.” Or one of his four brothers, whoever was free. He grabbed his coat from the hook beside his desk.

“Sounds like a fine plan, Dr. Smythe.” The boss’ light hair, rosy cheeks, and graying beard looked every bit the part of a Scandinavian Viking, the ancestry Dr. Franklin claimed. The doctor clapped a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “I like a man who honors his parents the way you do.”

“Thank you, sir.” Ethan enjoyed the chief medical examiner’s jovial demeanor and frequent anecdotes of growing up the oldest of six siblings in Ireland. “Would you text me the address in case we get separated?”

“You betcha.” The doctor composed the text and waited for Ethan’s phone to signal its arrival.

Ethan glanced at his phone. “Got it.” He fell in step behind the doctor down the hallway that led to the parking lot. “Do you know what we’re walking into at the murder scene?”

“A car crashed through a woman’s wall. County Sheriff Sal Nelson suspects foul play.

“What kind of foul play?”

“We’ll know more after our autopsy and the crime scene tech’s investigation.”

A burst of cold air hit Ethan when he stepped outside. “Looks like we might have a white Christmas for once.”

“It’s in the forecast. My granddaughter would love it.”

Ethan lowered his head and rushed through the frigid air to his car. He entered the address into the navigation app and followed the medical examiner’s van to the freeway. As expected, he lost sight of the heavy-footed Dr. Franklin within a mile. The doctor claimed he drove exactly nine miles an hour over the speed limit for a reason.

“Life’s too short to waste time getting to where you’re going,” the doctor had said the first time he noticed Ethan’s white-knuckled grasp on the armrest. Since then, Ethan fabricated excuses to take his own car to each location.

Not in the mood for the rambunctious atmosphere at the homes of his four brothers, he tapped the button on his steering wheel to call his parents, trying not to sound sluggish. “Y’all available for a quick visit from your youngest son this evening?”

“That would be lovely,” his mother said. “I was about to make dinner, but we can wait for you.”

“No, it might be a while. I’ve just left Tulsa, heading to an accident scene a few miles from you in Peach Blossom. It will take an hour to get there, about thirty minutes to pick up the victim, and twenty minutes to get to your house.”

“We’ll wait.”

He clicked off the call, and Ethan turned onto the street an hour later.

The sun had set during the drive there, making the house numbers hard to read. He spied yellow crime scene tape around a brown sedan that was sticking out of a house at the street’s dead end. A twinge of guilt sped through him when he appreciated that the accident eased his straining to identify the right address. Dr. Franklin’s van sat out front, behind a sheriff’s department SUV and a red Honda. A group of neighbors huddled across the street. A tow truck had backed up to the car in the house, but the driver leaned against his vehicle, staring at the jagged hole in the wall.

Ethan parked on the street behind the Honda and rushed to stand beside the tow truck driver. “What’s going on?”

The guy unfolded his arms. “Been waitin’ on y’all to move the body so I can haul the car off. Rest his soul.”

Dr. Franklin’s rosy face appeared through the hole in the wall. “Ah, there you are, lad.” The doctor waved for Ethan to step through the opening into a room not much warmer than the freezing outside temperature. He turned toward the sheriff. “Now you can introduce us.”

The sheriff led Dr. Franklin and Ethan across a carpet littered with tire tracks, debris, and broken drywall. He approached two women sitting on stools at the kitchen island. Ethan’s background in construction made it impossible to ignore the outdated kitchen linoleum floor curled at the edges in several spots. He lifted his eyes to see a thin, captivating young woman with curly red hair and striking blue eyes. She clung to a fifty-something black woman with anger in her glower. The older woman held a blanket around them both with thick, sturdy arms.

“Doctor Franklin, this is the home of April Carlston.” The sheriff gestured toward the redhead.

The doctor encased April’s hand with both of his. “So sorry about what happened.”

April nodded, and the sheriff continued by placing a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “This is Carol, a close friend who owns Peach Blossom Market.” Even the doctor’s warm greeting didn’t soften the older woman’s glare.

The doctor turned to Ethan. “And this strapping young man is my assistant, Dr. Ethan Smythe. That’s Smith, spelled with a y and an e at the end.”

“I don’t know why the sheriff called y’all out here rather than use our local coroner for an accident like this,” Carol spat out. “That young man committed no crime by losing control of his car like that. With it snowing and as dark as it is outside, he was probably speeding and didn’t see that this house is at the end of a cul-de-sac until it was too late. I’m sorry about what happened to him, but how does that make it a crime scene?”

Ethan let his smile slip. “We’re just here to pick up the body, ma’am. Shouldn’t take long.” He cupped his fingers over April’s. “Nice to meet both of you.” Despite the current that sizzled through him, April didn’t lift her eyes to his. He reminded himself to stay focused on the job. “My condolences for what happened here. I’m sure the sheriff will notify this man’s next of kin.”

April’s single nod reflected a traumatized state that sent Ethan’s emotions on an inexplicable roller coaster ride. He blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. “Looks like you have some construction in your future.”

“I don’t think I can afford it.” April’s voice faltered, and her bottom lip quivered.

“I know a reputable contractor who could be here to repair that wall by the time we finish.” The doctor turned to Ethan and lifted an eyebrow while he waited for confirmation.

Ethan cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course. It’s pro bono.” He believed his service-oriented family would agree to that.

April’s big blue eyes misted. He didn’t mean to make her cry.

“Why would they do it for free?”

“Because it’s my father and brothers, and when I say I met a gor … I mean … you know, that you have a hole in your wall a week before Christmas, they’ll come running.” Pull yourself together, man. You’re a professional. That was not professional behavior. He couldn’t believe he almost said April was a gorgeous redhead, which she was, but now was not the time to say it. Or think it.

April let a smile spread across her full lips. Her face turned a darker shade of pink, which brought out the cutest freckles he’d ever seen. You’re a professional, remember?

Ethan sent a quick text to his father.

“Come with me,” the sheriff said.

Thankful for the distraction from April’s ravishing looks, Ethan followed the sheriff and Dr. Franklin to the driver’s door. “This is why I called you here.” He pointed to a stretch of blood that had radiated from a bullet hole in the white shirt on the dead man’s chest.

The doctor leaned in for a brief examination of the victim. “Yes, I see the problem.”

Ethan glanced at April, who lowered her blue-eyed gaze to the floor, furrowed her eyebrows, and cuddled closer to her friend.