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“Hey, do you have plans for the day?”

I turn, shaking my toweled head. “Not really.”

“Want to go somewhere? With me?”

My heart double beats. “I do.”

“Okay,” he says, backing up toward the front door. I’ll be back in a little bit. Make sure you dress warm.”

22

I don’t stop smiling the entire time I get ready. My ear is half trained on the door, waiting for the sounds of Mackenzie’s footsteps on my creaky apartment floor, so when there’s honking from the street below again, it takes a few seconds before I notice it.

It’s not the angry traffic noise of earlier this morning but a friendly beep beep beep beep beep of a horn. I look out my living room window to see Mackenzie across the street. His upper torso is poking out of the driver’s side window of a green hatchback.

I open my window and lean out over the ledge. “When did you get a car?”

He pats the outside with the palm of his hand. “I’ve got it rented for the day. Although now I see why no one owns cars around here. I’ve circled the block twice and still can’t find a parking spot. Any chance you’re ready to go?”

I glance down at my jeans and Uggs. “I think so.”

He grins. “You might want a hat. Mine is hanging on the hooks next to the door if you wouldn’t mind grabbing it for me. We’re going to be outside most of the day.”

I close the window, grab his hat and mine, plus two sets of gloves, and head down to the car. Mackenzie gets out just as I cross the street and opens the passenger door for me, blasting me with a wave of heat.

“Are you going to tell me where we are going?” I ask as I settle in and buckle my seatbelt.

He smiles, flipping the left blinker. “If I tell you, then it wouldn’t be a secret.”

I groan, but my smile is wider than his as we pull into traffic.

We head west out of the city. Mackenzie’s earlier “dress warm” plus our texts from last night make me think we might be heading to a tree farm. However, I question that assumption when we hit the hour mark and turn north, passing several signs for various tree farms as we drive through Kitchener into Waterloo. When we reach the city limits and again are back on country roads, it begins to snow. The flakes are teeny tiny, but they soon begin to coat the road, covering it in a layer of white.

“Subarus are good in the snow, right?” I ask, my city-dwelling self suddenly getting nervous as a blast of wind sends a blanket of white from the field next to us straight across our windshield.

“They are,” Mackenzie reassures me with a smile. “Also, my brother taught me to drive in two feet of snow when I was fourteen. If my surprise today doesn’t go over well, my backup plan is to take you to the parking lot of the Valu-mart and impress you with my doughnut skills.”

He winks as he flicks his blinker to turn left.

As we round the bend, the empty country road gives way to buildings. At first, it’s just the odd country home—a cute stone cottage or a ranch-style bungalow—but the farther down the road we get, the closer together the buildings get, until suddenly, we are in the middle of a quaint downtown.

“For the love of all things Hallmark.” My jaw drops as we drive past an adorable bakery with a dainty gold-lettered sign and a lush green garland hanging across its entrance, complete with a giant red velvet bow. Across from it is a flower shop whose sidewalk is covered in silver buckets filled with fresh evergreen boughs and branches with bright red berries. Every store we pass is decorated with lights or bows or gold and silver Christmas balls. There are flower boxes filled with birch branches and twinkle lights. Fully decorated Christmas trees in store windows. There are even carolers on the sidewalk who look like they walked straight out of a Dickens novel and—

“Is that a horse and carriage?”

The black-and-white Clydesdale trots by. Its driver tips an honest-to-goodness velvet top hat in our direction.

“I was joking before, but now I seriously feel like we’ve been dropped into the middle of a Hallmark movie.”

Mackenzie signals and parks in front of the most adorable post office I have ever seen.

“Welcome to St. Jacobs.” He gets out of the car and comes around to open my door. “My mission today is to convince you that Christmas magic actually exists.”

I move as if in a trance. My senses are overloaded as I take in every inch of this tiny, perfect town.

I breathe deeply. “The air even smells like peppermint.”

Mackenzie laughs and inclines his head toward what looks like a zhuzhed-up lemonade stand with a sign for hot chocolate.