…
Jake made it from the MCR terminal to his pickup truck in less than thirty seconds. He had to punch his glove compartment twice before it flopped open. It had been stuck for years. As he flung the potpourri of contents onto the front passenger seat, he urged fate.
“Be there. Please be there.”
He worked his way past various registrations, service receipts, ice scrapers, an old cracked leather instruction manual, and a long-expired coupon for ten dollars off an oil change at Super Lube. And, just as his heart began to sink, as he was about to give up hope…there it was. It was hidden there in the bottom, beneath the years of accumulated crap. He picked it up as if he’d just pried open an oyster and removed the shimmering pearl. “There you are,” he said with a grin. “I sure hope you still work.”
Less than a minute after finding his old plastic entry card in his cluttered glove compartment, Jake jerked his pickup truck to a stop at the runway security gate. He could see the plane was almost done taxiing. Take-off was moments away. Jake reached out his open window and swiped the card. He waited…three seconds…four, and then, with a click and a hum, the old metal gate started to swing open.
“Yes!” he said. “It’s show time!”
…
Ally looked out the window, taking in the gloriously snow-capped Colorado mountains. It had become something more than just a place she wanted to fly over. This beautiful country had found a niche in her heart. She closed her eyes and imagined Bethlehem one last time. There it all was in her mind’s eye. Charlie’s Diner. Peggy’s festively decorated house. The hill where they went sledding. The luminous Christmas tree in the square. The community center. Robbie and Amelia walking hand-in-hand, their first dance. Her first glimpse of baby Chelsea Rose. A surprising kiss. Late-night snowman building. Jake. Jake. Jake.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are number one for take-off,” the pilot said over the loudspeaker. “Actually, we’re number one-and-only for take-off. Flight attendants, please be seated.”
Ally knew the plane would soon lurch into motion, then gather speed. In a moment, it would be wheels up. Then, if she looked out the window, she would see Bethlehem below, growing smaller and smaller as the plane ascended, taking her away from the best Christmas she’d ever had. Is this what you really want? she asked herself. Ally reread the fortune in her hand, then looked up at the flight attendant call button above her head. She stared at it for a moment, studying it as if waiting for it to speak to her. Then she smiled, and there was no longer any doubt.
Ally reached up and pressed the button. Just as she heard it ding, the loudspeaker crackled again.
“Sorry, folks. You’re not going to believe this, but…there’s a pickup truck on the runway.” Ally suddenly felt the blood rush to her cheeks and ears and then a flood of joy that made her nearly swoon when the pilot added, “And, if I know my trucks, I’d say that’s a 1968 cherry-red Ford F100 pickup.”
Epilogue
“Just a slight bend in your elbow…good. Breathe. Always breathe. Never stop breathing.”
Ally sat in the middle of her prenatal yoga class. She was surrounded by eight moms-in-waiting, all in varying stages of pregnancy. Sue was due in two weeks, Laura was in the first trimester. Ally beamed as she looked around the room. This was her favorite class. “Okay now, ladies, let’s transition into Supta Baddha Konasana.” The women eased their backs down on the mat in rhythm with Ally.
As she lay there, Ally glanced out the window. She could see all the way across to Charlie’s, where Jake was spraying another coat of faux frost on the diner window. December again. Had it really been four years since she’d first rolled into town? Her mind flashed back to a singular moment, a moment right out of the movies. The moment she reached up for that call button, the moment Jake drove his pickup truck out onto the runway to stop her from leaving. One moment, one crazy moment that changed everything.
Her thoughts flickered across the events that followed like a flip-book.
“Excuse me, but I think that’s my ride,” she told the familiar flight attendant. “I need to get off.”
“Off? Seriously?”
“Yes.” Ally started gathering her backpack from beneath her seat. “When your knight in shining armor rides up, you don’t question it. You just go.”
“Damn straight you do,” said the woman in 14C. “Go get him, honey.” The flight attendant smiled and raised her voice to be heard above the murmur.
“Folks, hope you don’t mind. But we need to take a quick trip back to the gate. Looks like one of our passengers left her heart behind.”
Dozens of faces were pressed against round plane windows when Ally descended the stairs like a queen to find Jake standing at the bottom waiting for her. As she navigated the last step, Jake took her hands in his, and she felt a rush of warmth shoot through her. His touch gave her goose bumps.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“I know,” Jake said. For a moment they just looked at each other, drinking one another in, reveling in the moment. A new beginning. So much of life ahead, as the song said. So many dreams to come true.
“Buddy, would you mind kissing her? We’ve got a schedule to keep.” Jake and Ally looked up to the top of the stairs. It was Captain Kendall the pilot who was speaking. She was huddled with her crew. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the little drama.
“I guess we should,” Ally said. “For our fans.” She glanced up at the cabin windows, where eager passenger faces were watching.
“You’re right,” Jake said. “Wouldn’t want to let them down.” Then he took Ally’s face in his hands and put his lips on hers. The kiss began slowly and sweetly, his lips caressing hers, first the top, then the lower, both at the same time. And then they began to kiss harder and more passionately, their bodies leaning in, and Ally reached her arms around his head and drew him even closer. And she forgot about the cold and the tarmac, the audience watching them from the plane. It was a kiss that felt like something, a new beginning, a new life, a second chance at love.
Ally and Jake spent Christmas and New Year’s in Bethlehem that year, and Ally had never been happier. With Libby running the diner in his absence, Jake offered to move to L.A. to support Ally while she sorted things out and tried to put the pieces Tim had shattered back together. He stood by her while she navigated the troubled waters.
“Just so you know,” Jake said one winter’s evening as he and Ally took a sunset stroll on the beach in Santa Monica, “if you want to stay in L.A. permanently, then that’s where I’ll be. I won’t be happy anywhere if you’re not with me.” Ally slipped her arm around his waist and smiled when he said that.
“How about a compromise?” she said. “You help me sort things out here, and then we move back to Bethlehem. As a matter of fact, that’s not even a compromise. Because that’s where I want to be. I’ve never found a place that felt more like home.”
It took a little over five weeks for Ally to sell her house in Santa Monica and close up the studio. The yoga studio building owner was able to lease it right away and used the deposit to cover the unpaid rent. Ally was happy when Devyn told her she’d easily found another job managing a gym in West Hollywood.
And, as expected, Ally never heard from Tim again. Her neighborhood cop friend Austin said he did a little snooping and discovered that Tim and Brooke were no longer in the country.
“The credit card trail has them somewhere in Asia. Don’t worry,” the cop said, “karma will catch up to them…eventually. It always does.” But Ally didn’t really think much about Tim anymore. She wished him no ill will, and a part of her was grateful he’d done what he’d done. For, if he hadn’t run out on her, she never would have found true love. And she knew there was nothing in the world like true love.
“I’m going to miss you,” Devyn said at a going-away party for Ally the night before she and Jake drove a moving van back to Bethlehem. “You’re more than just a great yoga teacher and boss…you’re goo
d people, too. A good friend.” Then Devyn leaned in and whispered in Ally’s ear. “And I think Jake’s a keeper.”
…
Jake shook the faux-frost can one more time and heard the little balls jiggling around inside. He gave the diner window a few more shots of spray and stood back to admire it. Not too shabby, he thought. He glanced over at Ally’s Posers Yoga Studio. He still smiled at the name on the window. It was Libby’s idea.
He could see the class going on inside, as well as Ally there leading it. His mind drifted back to that Christmas Day, the day he followed Doc Baker’s sage advice and went for it. And he knew that, even if he made a thousand good decisions over the course of his life, the decision to drive his pickup onto the runway at MCR that Christmas Day to block Flight 1225 would be the best decision he ever made.
“Hey, babe. How was your class?”
Jake had Ally’s coffee ready when she walked through the door of the diner. She came over to him, gave him a peck on the lips, and took it from him.
“It was awesome, as always.” She took a sip. “Mmm. Best cup yet.”
“You always say that,” Libby said as she passed. Ally looked around the diner, called out hellos to the regulars. She knew them all by name, knew their families, their stories. She was a part of them now.
“Need me to pitch in?” she asked Jake.
“Naw, I think we got it covered. Besides, you’ve got to take it easy nowadays.” Jake rested his hand on Ally’s belly. She was nineteen weeks and still just barely showing. “I think I just felt our baby kick.”
“Probably giving you a fist bump,” Ally said with a smile. “Can you take off tomorrow? I want to drive down to Grand Junction and look for a dress for the wedding.”
“Sure thing,” Jake said. “Anything for my wife.”
…
“Amelia, I loved you the first moment I saw you, and I know I’m going to love you until the last moment. You are my one true love. The love of my life.”
Ally dabbed her eyes with a paper napkin at wedding reception table number seven. Jake squeezed her hand and then leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. At the head table, Robbie raised a glass of champagne to toast his wife, looking down at her beside him with a love in his eyes so pure Ally knew they were going to make it. Amelia and Robbie’s love story would go the distance.
This was no happy ending, it was a happy beginning.
Ally picked up her glass of water and joined in the toast. And, as she looked over at her own husband, she realized she had something in common with Robbie. She’d also found her one true love—in a little town called Bethlehem.
Turn the page to start reading A Family for Christmas by Viv Royce!
Like FREE Books?! Download one of Entangled’s bestselling books here!
Chapter One
Snipping the mini marshmallows in halves with her scissors had been a brilliant idea, as they were now the exact right size for the edge of her miniature chocolate mug, but putting them onto a narrow edge with tweezers was rather a tough job.
Emma Miller exhaled in frustration as another little bit of fluffy pink shot in an unwanted direction and, after a bounce on her work counter, even jumped over the edge to the floor. If she kept going like this, she’d be knee-deep in marshmallows before her twenty mini mugs for a new customer were done.
The advice given on a business seminar she had taken echoed in her mind. “Time invested has to be earned back by income derived from the activity.” Well, her time invested here would certainly not be earned back. Nevertheless, doing this made her incredibly happy.
Sometimes she still didn’t believe it. That she had managed to rent a building on coveted Heart Street where all the artisan, often family-owned shops were. She was a stranger to town, an outsider, whom people might have blamed for muscling in on their territory. But everyone had been kind and welcoming.
Emma glanced through the open door of her workspace into her shop where a small imitation Christmas tree sat perched on the counter, decorated with miniature golden balls and fake snow. A present from all business owners to celebrate her first three months on Heart Street. With Christmas on the calendar in just two weeks’ time, her order list was full, and every minute put into making more sweet treats to deliver to customers in the run-up to the holidays.
What was that? Something seemed to move behind the glass counter. It stirred there, red and black.
Emma angled her head to look better. The bell over her door hadn’t jangled, but then again, she wasn’t 100 percent sure that she would have heard. She’d been too busy telling those pesky little marshmallow snippets to stick. It can hardly be a customer unless they’re crouching on hands and feet.
Putting her tweezers down on a plate by her side, Emma straightened up and walked through the open door in the shop’s space. Through the display case the shape took on a more solid form. And as she halted and leaned down over the counter, it fully materialized into a snow-drizzled little girl. The flakes rested tenderly on her black hair, which hung in long curls down her narrow shoulders. The cute red coat she wore was snow splattered as well and her feet, sticking in red boots, were moving as if she wriggled her toes to get the December cold out.
Big blue eyes gazed earnestly into hers. “I stood outside a little,” the girl said in a chirpy, nervous tone. “To think it over. But I have to do it, you know. I have to.”
She moved her feet again, maybe not to dispel the cold but her apparent nerves.
Emma had no idea why her shop or her person would be intimidating to a little girl, but nevertheless put on an even more welcoming smile. “You could have come in right away,” she said. “You can have a look around if you want to. You don’t need to buy anything.”
The leader of the business seminar would cringe, as he had drilled into them that every opportunity for a sale should be taken. But Emma didn’t particularly care for taking money off little girls who probably didn’t have all that much on them anyway. She remembered her own days of being seven, or eight, like this little one, and pushing her nose against shop windows to gaze inside and dream of everything on offer. In a house full of foster children there hadn’t always been the financial means to give presents. Birthdays and Christmas had been made special by handcrafted gifts and lovingly handwritten postcards, but still Emma had sometimes just longed for the talking doll or the puppy on a leash you could walk.
She smiled even wider. “Is there anything here you really like? I could, uh…” She glanced around as if to see that no one overheard them. “Let you try some.”
“Oh, no.” The girl’s cheeks turned as red as her little coat. “I don’t want any. It’s for Daddy.”
“For your father?” Emma asked, a little surprised. Her customers were mainly women who bought the treats for other women—mothers in law, sisters, friends—or who wanted to impress guests at a party.
The girl said, “You have to make them especially. Grandma said it. She said that you can make people fall in love.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “That I can do what?” she asked.
The girl hung her head and said something in a whisper.
Emma rounded the counter and squatted beside the girl. “What’s that? You can say it in my ear.” She tucked the white cotton of the protective cap behind her ear as if to hear better.
“What’s that for?” the little girl asked, eyeing the cloth on Emma’s head.
“It’s for when I work with the chocolate. To prevent any hairs from falling into it. That wouldn’t be nice for the customers. I also wear plastic gloves when I take bonbons out of their tray and put them into a box. So I don’t leave any fingerprints on them.”
The girl giggled. “You’re smart.” She looked Emma over. “I think you can really make people fall in love.”
“Why did your grandmother say that?”
“I don’t know. But it was about chocolate. And you have a chocolate shop here. You can help me to…” She fell silent and eyed Emma as if she
was suddenly reluctant to share. She wore a mitten and, turning her palm up, she opened her hand. On the wool rested a few coins, probably not making two dollars. “I don’t know if you sell them like Grandpa sells plants,” the girl said with a weighty frown. “They go one by one or by the dozen. I’d really like a dozen, because then I can be sure Daddy will really fall in love. You see, I don’t think he wants to.”
“I see,” Emma said, furiously trying to process everything.
“Last week Aunt Fay was watching a movie where they kiss, and she asked Daddy to come and watch with her. But he said he didn’t want to see it. And when he noticed I had overheard, he told me that he doesn’t like kissing. That he thinks it’s stupid.” She laughed. “He asked me if I think it’s stupid too and he tickled me all of the time. I had to laugh and laugh until I fell on the floor. Then he carried me to bed.” She became serious again. “Then I thought about kissing. I don’t know if it’s stupid. Grandma and Grandpa kiss all the time and they’re happy. I want Daddy to be happy.” She put her mitten on Emma’s arm. “Please help me make Daddy happy again.”
Emma’s heart clenched at the tone of the little girl’s voice. She had to clear her throat before she could say, “But I don’t really understand what I should do. What’s your name?”
“Casey. Casey Galloway.”
Of course. Now the reference the girl had made to plants clicked into place. Galloway Nursery was well known in the entire region. They delivered plants and trees, mostly Christmas trees at this time of year. So, the elderly man Emma had seen around town with his white beard, as if he was Santa himself, and with a matching deep belly laugh was this little girl’s grandfather.
It must be great to have a big extended family and get together for Christmas.
The Christmas Layover Page 21