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This was my world. It was all I wanted. This town. These people. My father and family.
And I knew everything would work out, things always did. It was just a matter of time and patience and moving the chess pieces around the board. But this…the farm, the inn, Dad…it felt big. Bad. Dire. What if this was the one time I couldn’t move the pieces around?
The one time I couldn’t make things work out?
We were going to need a Christmas Miracle.
I put my hand to my chest and felt the lump of a cheap plastic ring in the inside pocket of my coat. I’d been carrying it around for a year—for no good reason, really.
That night was still mostly absent from my memory but I remembered bits and pieces, and those bits and pieces were hotter than the hottest night I’d ever experienced.
But she didn’t call…I reminded myself. A woman like her had probably moved on while I was stuck carrying this ring around.
I told myself it was just a reminder that not everything was predictable. Not everything was in my control. That surprise could be good.
“Ethan!” Danny, my assistant was in the square with his clipboard. “I need your help.”
“Coming!” I shouted back.
4
“This cannot be the Christmas Miracle,” I said, sitting with my sister outside baggage claim at the airport wearing my brother’s fucking hockey sweater. “Kill me now, Kristen.”
“Sorry, brother dear,” Kristen said, through her smile. “You’re going to have to live through this with me.”
Around us were dozens of photographers and camera crews. People were gathering their bags and lingering with their phones out because it looked like something big was going to happen at baggage claim 12.
And that something big was Matt the Mountain Kringle.
The outside doors kept swishing open, letting in blasts of cold air and snow, and the PA crackled to life announcing the arrival of baggage from the Chicago flight.
By some miracle Jasmine, who Kristen had hired to help save the inn and farm, had convinced Matt to come home. She and Matt had dated briefly in high school before Matt went off to be a superstar.
Whatever string she’d pulled worked. And my brother was coming home to do a bunch of appearances for the inn and farm. I wanted to scoff and say there was no way this was going to work, but it was going to work.
People loved Matt the Mountain Kringle.
Even, reluctantly, me. And I was annoyed, but part of me was happy to see the Neanderthal.
But being a prop in his press conference made my skin itch.
It’s good for the inn, it’s good for the farm, and it’s good for the town.
I had to keep repeating that to myself.
“Why are you smiling?” Kristen asked, trying to tuck the sweater she was wearing tighter around her body. Angling herself in front of the camera.
She and I shared mom’s genes. We were tall. Thin. Had good teeth and excellent hair. Hers was brown and curly while mine was blond. Extremely photogenic. I wasn’t bragging, it was just a reality. Matt looked like a bigger version of Dad when he was younger. Tall, wide, barrel chested, and with a beard that could home a dozen woodland creatures. In every picture he looked like he’d just finished burying bodies.
“Because I’m not making this easy for him,” I told my sister. “He doesn’t get to come home the hero after doing nothing for years.”
“Can you please just get along?” she asked, giving me her evil eye. “Until Christmas. Three weeks. Three little tiny weeks.”
“Have we ever?” I asked.
“I remember a sweet spot around third grade.”
My phone was buzzing in my pocket and I reached for it just as the doors to the gates opened and out walked Matt. Camera flashes exploded and people rushed him for autographs.
Matt saw us and gave us a chin nod.
Hidden by my sister I gave him the finger.
Yeah, this was going to work, any idiot could see it. But I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
5
Lexie
This was. The. Worst.
Just the absolute worst on about a million different levels.
First—I wasn’t rehearsing the Christmas extravaganza with the girls. Which killed me. Those girls were talking shit about me right now. I could feel it. And some girls lived for the show—the spotlight and whatever. But I loved the rehearsal.
All of us all together. Stretching out and sweating on the floor afterward, making plans for drinks or going out. Oh god, they were going to go out without me. Probably to that club on 4th with all the Elvis impersonators behind the bar.
I loved that club. And all my friends were going to go. So, clearly, that was the second worst thing.
And second…they were probably picking Secret Santa names. Right. Now. And I’d either get Heidi from Denmark who had no sense of humor, or worse, no one.
