The 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party (Part II)

 Read Part I here.

    It had been only about three months since Audra moved out, but it still felt like welcoming visitors when Violet opened the door for her and her new husband. She yelled, “Merry Christmas!” and gave her old roommate a quick hug.
    Then she hurried them both inside to see what Logan was carrying.
    “Don’t show her yet,” Audra said.
    “Do I have to wait until everyone is here?” Violet asked.
    “I hope I don’t have to hold it that long.” Logan pretended the canvas was heavy.
    “Only until Ryan comes out of the kitchen,” Audra said. Then she raised her voice. “Why are you still in the kitchen, Ryan? Don’t you want to wish your sister and brother-in-law a merry Christmas?”
    “No!” he yelled back, though they heard the laughter in his voice, and he stepped out a moment later drying his hands on a towel. “Let’s see the new masterpiece.”
    Logan began to turn it around, but Audra stopped him when someone knocked on the door.
    Violet moved to answer it. “How did you not notice someone right behind you?”
    “It’s probably Trevor,” Audra said. “He obviously didn’t come early with Ryan, and I would have noticed anyone else’s car. Plus, he’s the only one who wouldn’t have called out for us to wait for him. Except maybe Cameron…” The thought she was putting into what had been only a teasing remark reflected the nerves she still felt about showing off her new work, despite the number of times her friends had raved about previous paintings.
    And Violet did find Audra’s brother Trevor behind the door. She waved him inside as the others called out greetings and holiday wishes.
    “Now I can show this?” Logan asked Audra.
    She nodded and grinned nervously.
    Violet watched as the front of the canvas was presented. Her eyes tried to take in all the details at once so she could give an informed opinion without making Audra wait in suspense. It depicted a pristinely manicured garden with flowers and shaped hedges along an oval footpath. The side of a castle poked onto one side of the canvas with several gargoyles perched along the top. While the flowers were prominent because of the bright colors, the castle stood out to Violet as different. Audra’s landscapes rarely included buildings or other man-made structures. She’d done an amazing job with the details on the stones and the stern features of the gargoyles.
    Trevor was the first to comment. “I’m surprised it’s not a Christmas picture.”
    “I’ve been trying to get this one right for like four months,” Audra said. “I wasn’t thinking of Christmas when I started.”
    “Oh! The shadows…” Ryan’s eyes popped as he discovered what Audra had done to make her work kooky. “That’s genius!”
    Violet studied the shadows and quickly saw what he saw. The gargoyles’ wings were tightly furled on the ledge, and yet their shadows showed the wings spread as though they were about to take flight. “That is very cool,” Violet agreed.
    Audra soaked up the praise. The others admired the painting as they arrived as well. Although Trevor didn’t offer a compliment directly to Audra – he’d told his sister before that someone had to hold back for the sake of her ego – the way he pointed out some specifics to Alison showed that he was impressed.
    Violet and Ryan heard a few nice things about the meal they prepared. She would have felt bad about asking him to cook on his day off if he hadn’t repeatedly assured her that he enjoyed cooking with her far more than any of his coworkers, and that it was most fun when they sparred over how much fruit to add to certain dishes. As soon as everyone was finished eating, the group worked together to clear the table that was actually two tables pushed together.
    Trevor grabbed one end to pull the tables apart, but Ryan stopped him with a wave of his hand. “We’ll need them together for Grand Seigneur.”
    “What?” Trevor sounded more surprised than confused.
    “You told him!?” Audra stepped closer and gave Violet a friendly punch in the shoulder.
    “You knew I was going to tell him,” Violet said.
    “Yeah, but… but… I thought Ryan would have enough sense to cover for you and pretend he didn’t know.”
    Trevor glanced around the room and apparently saw no one else questioning the situation. He addressed Audra in a dry tone. “Go ahead and tell me your plan so the rest can pretend not to know.”
    “This is the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party with a Full Moon.” Audra took a deep breath before she launched into her explanation of what that meant. “So naturally we have to do something a little different and since it’s not Friday you already had your regular Tichu and Grand Seigneur is almost Tichu anyway and… and this way we all play together, which is a very Christmasy thing to do.”
    Violet expected Trevor to go along with the plan only grudgingly. She expected him to give everyone a hard time for keeping it secret to try to trap him into agreeing. But he surprised her and everyone else when he said, “Let the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Pary begin.”

To be continued...

By the way, did you spot Audra's kookiness on the covers when you read the series?

The 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party

If the title tells you what to expect from the following short story, you can probably skip right to the story.  If it doesn’t, this story takes place a few weeks after The Art of Proposing ends.  I don’t think there are any spoilers aside from who ends up with whom.  But you definitely want to read the entire Romance Arts series first anyway.

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    Violet looked at her phone flashing on the counter. “It’s your sister,” she said.
    “Go ahead.” Ryan nodded at the phone. “I’ll finish cleaning up while you see what she wants.”
    Violet smiled at his exasperated tone as she answered the call.
    “I have the best idea ever,” Audra said.
    “I thought the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party was your best idea ever.”
    “I thought of a way to make it even better.” Audra squealed into the phone. “But wait… Is Ryan there? He’s not supposed to know yet. Don’t tell him about this improvement. Is he there?”
    “Yes, he’s here,” Violet said.
    “Can he hear me!? Go somewhere he can’t hear me.”
    Violet was watching Ryan and saw him nod when Audra asked if he could hear her. She wasn’t on speaker but tended to talk loudly when she was excited. Violet sent him a look that said she was going to humor Audra as she moved out of the kitchen and towards her bedroom. “Okay. You can speak freely now.”
    “So I was thinking about plans for the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Pary and then… I looked at a calendar.”
    The pause was long enough that Audra seemed to want a prompt.
    “And what did you see on the calendar?”
    “Do you know what happens on Christmas Eve this year?”
    Violet could look at a calendar herself – though she didn’t know what it might say other than Christmas Eve – but she could tell that despite the questions, Audra wanted to be the one to tell her. “I don’t. What happens on Christmas Eve?”
    “A full moon!”
    “Oh. I guess that’s cool,” Violet said. “How does that change the plan though?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?” The excitement in Audra’s voice was building.
    “No. You’ll need to tell me.”
    “It means it’ll be the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party… with a Full Moon!”
    Violet laughed. “That part is obvious. But what’ll be different other than adding extra words the guys will refuse to say?”
    “Instead of separate games, we can combine to play Grand Seigneur.”
    “That’s what a full moon means?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you think the guys will agree to that?”
    “Sure,” Audra said. “Logan’s already on board because I told him he’s on board. But you have to get Ryan on board without telling him exactly what’s going on because he’s more likely to tell Trevor and he really can’t know yet. If he doesn’t have time to think of arguments, he’ll be more likely to play along.”
    “Well, I think it sounds fun,” Violet said. “I’ll play along.”
    “Great! I’ll let you get back to hanging out with your brand-new fiancé.”
    “See you soon.” Violet put the phone back on the counter as she rejoined Ryan.
    He had her kitchen back in order and was waiting for her. “What am I not supposed to know?” he asked.
    “I’m not supposed to tell you.”
    “Are you really not supposed to tell me or is Audra being Audra again?” He came a step closer and took both of her hands in his.
    The proximity made her brain foggy so it was good that Violet already knew the answer to his question. She also knew that Ryan was going to enjoy the 2nd Annual Christmas Eve Tichu Party with a Full Moon as much as he enjoyed getting the information out of her. And that he’d groan at the new name.

To be continued...

Part II now available here.

So Many Lessons

I figured out something important this week.  Don’t laugh.  I figured out why writing a book is hard.  Practice makes perfect, right?  The more you do something, the easier it gets.  I was thinking about these maxims while staring at a blank page making no progress on book 4 in the More Love in Andauk series.  I’ve written enough books by now that it should be easy for me.  Some aspects of it are easier.  I’ve learned quite a bit in the years I’ve been doing this whole writing thing.  Let’s not talk about how many years or I’ll have to pretend I’m sensitive about my age.  I’m not.  I just can’t tell anyone because all the people who keep trying to give me a senior discount will feel bad if they find out how many years I am from qualifying.  Seriously, it’s more than a few.

Next week I will figure out how to avoid tangents.

I was staring at the page where my new book was supposed to appear, and it occurred to me that all the practice I have writing books involves different books.  I don’t have any practice with this book.  It’s perfectly reasonable that it still feels like hard work from time to time.  I haven’t had any practice figuring out why this particular character is having so much trouble with her love life.

On a related note, I haven’t had any practice writing this particular post.  Because it’s related, it’s not another tangent.  It’s called “making an excuse.”  And I haven’t had any practice writing the short story I’ll start posting next month even though I should have had practice last year.  Someone gave me an idea for a Christmas story.  Somehow, I forgot to write it.  I can’t say much else about it yet, only that it will involve some familiar characters.  This is called “building suspense.”  I’m sharing a ton of lessons this month, one of which is called sarcasm. 

Let’s hope next month’s lesson isn’t “Don’t tell people you’re going to post a story you haven’t written yet because you might have to admit you didn’t figure out how to write it in time.”