Saturday Sample: The Best Selling Toy Of The Season

I love Christmas. That's why I have two novels set a Christmas time. I've shared some excerpts from The Table in the Window, so today here's an excerpt from The Best Selling Toy of the Season. In this scene my hero meets my heroine.

Finally, his turn came. He thankfully paid for his gag gift and

joined the throngs of people either going out or coming in. He saw

Bill English and lifted his hand to wave goodbye, but he didn’t see the

woman in front of him until he plowed into her. Both he and the

young woman who had helped him find his gift went sprawling to the

floor. Something in her bag broke with a loud crash when Tommy’s

knee smashed into it.

 

All the Super Mart employees in the vicinity came running,

including Bill English. “Are you guys okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Tommy assured him as visions of lawsuits danced in

his head. “Ma’am, are you okay?”

 

To his horror, the young woman burst into tears. “You’ve ruined

everything! Teddy and Michael are going to be so disappointed, and I

guess they’ll stop believing in Santa Claus, but you don’t care.”

 

She jerked her bag toward her and held out two broken toys for

Tommy to see. “These robots are all that my boys asked for this year.

I put them on layaway back in September, and I finished paying for

them today. They’re the best selling toy of the season. You can’t find

them anywhere, and now you’ve broken mine.”

 

She shot Tommy a look of bitter enmity. Wiping the tears from

her cheeks, she scrambled to her feet and stalked out of the store.

 

“Be ashamed,” lectured one of the customers. “You ruined her

boys’ Christmas.”

 

“Yeah,” a man in the crowd contributed. “You could at least have

offered to pay for it.”

 

The Super Mart employee nodded their agreement. “Look at the

way he’s dressed. He’s got money to burn. He won’t even pay for

Nikki’s loss, and it was all his fault.”

The Best Selling Toy of the Season can be found at B&N and at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Selling-Toy-Season/dp/1612350003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385781814&sr=8-1&keywords=the+best+selling+toy+of+the+season