by Lisa Plumley
“—but I’m not ready to give up,” Vanessa went on, “so—”
“So you might as well get ready to give up,” Olivia said, appearing just as let down as Michael did. “Because about half an hour ago, my mom agreed to get back together with my dad.”
The B&B’s transport vans were nowhere to be found. Neither was Reid’s rented Subaru or any of the other vehicles he’d expected to find.
Standing near the snow-filled driveway of The Christmas House, Reid scratched his head in puzzlement. Come to think of it, he realized, the entire B&B had been curiously empty as they’d come downstairs. He hadn’t seen any guests. The staff hadn’t been hanging holiday light strings or serving eggnog. Even his busybody cousin hadn’t been manning the front desk.
Beside him, his grandparents and daughters came to a stop.
“We didn’t like Arizona much anyway,” his grandfather was saying. “The weather’s too same-y. Never changes. Always sunny.”
His grandmother nodded. “They put Christmas lights on the cactus and call it festive! It’s better that we’re back here. Kismet is where we belong.” She stopped, as though realizing they weren’t all piling into a van and speeding toward downtown Kismet. “What’s the matter, Reid? Don’t say you like cactus with Christmas lights on them. They’re practically sacrilegious!”
“No, it’s not that.” Reid shook his head. He pointed at the empty driveway. Only tire tracks and a few oily spots in the snow marked the places where the gift-wrapped transport van should have been. “The vans are gone. We’re not going anyplace.”
The five of them scoured the driveway with squinty gazes. Then they examined the newly plowed street. Nada. What the hell?
“My rental car is gone too.” Undaunted, Reid turned. “I’ll call a taxi.”
“On Christmas Eve?” Robert said. “You’ll never get one.”
“Especially with the Christmas parade going on,” Betty agreed, adjusting her golf visor. “It’ll be crazy downtown.”
“Getting to Karina’s hotel will be tough,” Nicole said. “Even for an adventure travel guide like you, Dad.” Sadly, she adjusted her mittens. “We sure can’t walk that far in the snow.”
Alexis scoffed. “Yes, we can! We can’t give up now. I didn’t put that GPS tracker in Karina’s purse for nothing!”
Silence fell. Reid frowned at her. “The what?”
Defiantly, his daughter faced him. “The GPS tracker. I put one in Karina’s purse, just in case we all got separated. When Josh realized he’d accidentally stolen his mom’s purse, I took it and rigged it.” She put her hands on her hips, chin jutting with pride. “It was a stroke of luck, really. Not like when I—”
Abruptly, Alexis snapped her mouth shut.
“Not like when you…?” Reid nudged in his sternest voice.
“Not like when she fixed Karina’s phone so the college students she advises would quit bugging her on vacation,” Nicole volunteered, ignoring her sister’s killing look. “Olivia asked her to do that. Also, probably not like when she had the idea to scheme with Great Grammy and Great Grandpa Sullivan in the first place. I mean, how else were we going to get out of Australia?”
Scheme? Astonished, Reid glanced from Nicole to Alexis.
Belatedly, he remembered Nicole’s earlier confession.
We’ve been conspiring! Together!
“Argh! Geez, Nicole!” Looking aggravated, Alexis rounded on her sister. “If we got caught, you were supposed to put a good spin on all this! That’s your specialty! Sweet talking people into going along with you.” She smacked her head. “Duh!”
After a moment’s thought, it all seemed clear to Reid. His daughters had concocted some sort of plan with his grandparents. If he didn’t miss his guess, that plan had been designed to bring him home for the holidays…and get his kids out of Oz.
He turned. His grandparents were examining the Christmas yard decorations, ostensibly unaware of what was going on.
“What scheme?” Reid asked them. “You never did explain exactly what kind of ‘conspiring’ you four were doing together.”
His grandfather whistled, peering at an icicle on the eaves. His grandmother plucked a handwritten card from one of the porch pillars, where it had been pinned with a thumbtack.
“Oh look!” Cheerfully, Betty waved it. “Vanessa left a note to say that she’d borrowed the vans—and your rental car—and would be back later!”
“Scheme?” Reid repeated, advancing on them. “Conspiracy?”
“All right. Fine.” His grandparents exchanged abashed looks. “I guess we’d better tell you all the details.”
“I guess you’d better.” Reid nodded. If this was going to delay him a moment longer from getting to Karina, it had damn well better be good, too. “From the beginning. I’m all ears.”
At Olivia’s revelation, Vanessa gasped. She turned to Karina, her face stricken. “You’re getting back together with your ex-husband?” she wailed. “Since when? Why? How?”
“Since today,” Michael said, ticking off answers on his fingers. “Because…I don’t know. And over videoconference.”
“Thanks, Michael.” Vanessa gave him a hasty smile of acknowledgment. Then her attention returned to Karina. “I can’t believe it. I honestly thought you and Reid would work things out. I thought if I took you to Reid, you’d kiss and make up. I mean, I might have failed at getting him here today, but I still had hope. I still wasn’t ready to give up on you two.”
Aha. “That explains why you wanted me to get dressed and leave the hotel,” Karina said. “You’re still matchmaking.”
No matter how hopeless those efforts might be.
So were her children, she realized in surprise. They were matchmaking too! Suddenly, their earlier conversation—about calling Vanessa (undoubtedly to conspire and coordinate plans with her)—made a lot more sense.
“I was fully prepared to kidnap you to do it, too.” Vanessa grinned, gesturing at the group gathered there. “We all were.”
There were nods all around. Except from one person.
“Well, this is great. Just great!” Neil interrupted in a tone laden with sarcasm. He stood, throwing his arms in the air with clear exasperation. “I jeopardize my job for the sake of helping put Karina and Reid together, and what do I get as a thank-you? A big, fat ‘don’t bother’! That’s just great.”
“Come on now, Neil,” Rocky soothed. “You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t!” Neil fixed Karina with a frustrated look. “Ten years at Edgware, straight down the drain. And all because I couldn’t stand the thought that my evaluation might have contributed to your split with Reid.” He shook his head. “Your kids were right. I should have saved my breath. But instead, I stupidly blew my cover and told Vanessa who I was.”
“I’m still glad you did,” Vanessa assured him. “When I tell Reid and my grandparents, they’ll be glad you did, too. We needed to know the whole story about the evaluation.”
“I’m not glad!” Neil sighed. “I’ll be lucky if I ever get another assignment. If any of you reveal my job, I’m toast.”
Thoroughly confused now, Karina frowned. She glanced at Vanessa. Helpfully, her friend summed up the situation.
“It turns out, Neil is an Edgware evaluator too,” Vanessa said. “There was some kind of mix-up. Neil was assigned to assess The Christmas House, just like your sister was. He didn’t realize the two of you were filing duplicate reports until the news broke about what you were really doing at the B&B—when we found out that you and Reid had split up over it.”
Everyone in the room nodded. Taken aback, Karina gazed at them. Then she realized the truth. Of course word had spread about her falling-out with Reid—and the reasons for it.
“The duplicate reports were the real basis for Edgware putting the kibosh on the deal,” Rocky explained, casting a commiserating look at his partner. “It was all automatic. Neil’s boss told him the computer system flagged the duplicates and put the wh
ole thing on hold.” He hugged Neil. “Please don’t worry about your job, though. Nobody here is going to tattle on you, I promise.”
A chorus of avowals rang out to reassure Neil. Grudgingly, the (other) undercover evaluator nodded. “Thanks, everyone.”
Tentatively, Karina glanced at Neil. “Does this mean The Christmas House didn’t fail the Edgware evaluation?”
“Officially? No,” Neil said. “It will be rescheduled.”
“So that means I didn’t bankrupt your grandparents and ruin their retirement dreams!” Karina told Vanessa, feeling a sense of relief overtake her. Apparently, she’d been more worried about that issue than she’d realized. “That means there’s still a chance the B&B sale could go through! Right? Eventually?”
“Well…” Vanessa pulled a face. Hesitantly, she nodded. “Yes, that’s true. Technically, the sale of The Christmas House could still go through. Not that any of us want it to.”
Karina didn’t understand. “But your grandparents—”
“Agree. They were in on the whole thing, all along,” Vanessa told her. Beside her, Olivia, Michael, and Josh nodded, well versed in whatever was going on. “Let me explain….”
With his mind whirling, Reid stared at his grandparents.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You never wanted The Christmas House sale to go through at all? You set up the whole deal with Edgware as an excuse to bring me home again?”
“And get us out of the Outback,” Alexis put in. “That too.”
Betty nodded. “We missed you, Reid! We missed the girls! Once your grandfather and I realized Nicole and Alexis wanted to live in the states again, we had to help them get here.”
“And we had to make sure we stayed here,” Nicole said.
“That SpaceFace thing was a big help,” Robert agreed. “We just went online, had a few secret chats, and bam! Done.”
Guiltily, his daughters nodded. “You were always pretty busy, Dad,” Nicole explained. “You never noticed a thing.”
“Not even when I sneaked away at the airport to log on at a public Internet terminal and send Great Grammy Sullivan a message. You thought I was getting Minibons for forty-five minutes?” Jadedly, Alexis shook her head. “Get real, Dad.”
Too late, Reid remembered Alexis’s temporary disappearance at the Grand Rapids airport…and the way she’d dodged his questions by offering him mini cinnamon rolls afterward.
“But…the evaluation. The B&B!” Reid protested. “This was a pretty elaborate scheme, just to bring us home again.”
“Well, you’re you!” His grandfather smiled. “We couldn’t make it too easy. You would have guessed our plan right away.”
“Besides,” his grandmother added, “we wanted to make sure you had a chance to feel needed—to fix things and help out around here. We wanted to make sure you felt you belonged.”
“You nailed that one,” Reid agreed dispiritedly. He had felt he belonged at The Christmas House again. He’d felt that old Christmas magic. He’d felt loved. “But what about the Edgware evaluation?” he asked, pondering all the details. “You couldn’t have known the B&B would fail. That’s not possible.”
“Well…” His grandparents exchanged a conspiratorial look with his daughters. “Actually, it is possible….”
“I don’t believe it.” Shaking her head, Karina sat on her hotel room’s bed. “All of you sabotaged the B&B’s evaluation?”
The eager group in her room nodded, headed up by Vanessa.
“Not as part of the plan to bring Reid, Nicole, and Alexis back home,” she explained hastily. “The sabotage part was extra. It happened sort of…organically. One by one, we all took turns introducing little glitches into The Christmas House’s usually flawless holiday routine—just to make sure the sale wouldn’t actually go through.” Vanessa chuckled. “It wasn’t until pretty far into the process that we realized we were overdoing it.”
Suzanne waved. “Sorry about the power outage!”
Karina gaped at her in astonishment.
“Sorry about the spiked cider!” one of the cooks said.
More confessions came, fast and furious. Laughing, Vanessa held up her palms to stop them. She turned to Karina again.
“So Lagniappe at the Lakeshore was never sabotaging The Christmas House at all?” Karina asked. “It wasn’t them?”
“No. It was us,” Vanessa said. “I can see you’re confused, but it all makes sense—honestly, it does. Because The Christmas House is part of Kismet. It’s part of the community. It’s part of the family!” Vanessa gestured wildly, emphasizing the point. “No one wanted to see the B&B change hands. Not really.”
“Someone should have told your grandparents that,” Karina pointed out, her head swimming with all she’d been told. “Before they plunked down a bunch of money on their retirement home.”
Michael gave a nonchalant wave. “Oh, that was a rental.”
“Yeah,” Olivia agreed. “We all knew that.”
“Except Reid,” Josh mused thoughtfully. “Nobody told him.”
At that, everyone appeared stricken…including Vanessa.
“I forgot about that!” she said. “I was so focused on making sure Reid and Karina got back together again that I forgot to fill him in on all this planning and scheming!”
“Don’t worry.” Olivia glanced at the clock. “By now, your grandparents are probably here. They’re probably telling him.”
Josh and Michael nodded. So did Amanda and Rodrigo.
Apparently, Karina realized, everyone was in on this.
Everyone, that is, except her…and Reid.
“We have to make sure!” Karina jumped to her feet, looking for her borrowed winter boots. She found them, then stuffed her stockinged feet into them. “We have to tell Reid everything!”
She turned. Everyone in the room stared balefully at her.
Karina looked down. “If this is about my pajamas again,” she said defensively, “I swear I’m boycotting pants altogether.”
But Vanessa only folded her arms. “Why do you care about what Reid knows? You’re reuniting with your ex-husband.”
Yeah! said the combined, betrayal-filled gazes aimed at her—including those belonging to her children. Discomfited, Karina made herself quit searching for a sweater and scarf.
Somberly, she looked at her children. Their expressions made their feelings pretty plain. But just to make sure…
“You three think I’ve made a huge mistake, don’t you?”
As though they’d been on mute until now, Olivia, Michael, and Josh spoke up at once, not caring who else heard them.
“I used to want you and Dad to be together again,” Olivia admitted in an urgent voice, “but not anymore! Not since Reid.”
“I just like it better when you’re both happier,” Josh said. “There’s less crying. And more boogie-board riding.”
“I prefer having two bedrooms, twice as many toys, and all the Flamin’ Hot Doritos I can eat at Dad and Chelsea’s condo!” Michael said, rubbing his belly. “Don’t worry about me, Mom!”
Awed, Karina gazed back at them. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing, then,” she said, feeling another overwhelming surge of relief. “Because I didn’t get back together with your dad.”
Olivia widened her eyes. “You didn’t? Really?”
“Nope.” Karina shook her head. “I was tempted, for your sakes. But then I realized that I wanted me to be happy too. And being with your dad wasn’t going to make me happy.”
In a singsong voice, Vanessa hinted, “I know who would….”
Grinning at her friend’s unstoppable matchmaking, Karina opened her arms. Michael was first to run into them. Olivia and Josh weren’t far behind, piling on for hugs. “I’m sorry about the divorce, you guys. But we’re making this work, right?”
All three of them nodded. “Don’t worry, Mom,” Olivia said.
Touched by her daughter’s reassurance, Karina hugged them all more tightly. “I love you.
You’re the best kids ever.”
“We love you, too, Mom,” they chimed in heartfelt unison.
At that, Karina would swear everyone in the room awwed.
Olivia gave her an inquisitive look. “But, Mom, what about that text message you sent to Chelsea? You said, ‘I hope we can always be friends.’ I thought you were apologizing because of their breakup—because you were taking Dad away from her.”
Michael and Josh nodded. They must have discussed this.
At that imaginative interpretation, Karina smiled. Her children might be smart, but they were still children. “I was apologizing for accidentally getting a snag in one of the sweaters Chelsea lent me.” When I was jumping on top of Reid. “That’s all. And I was telling Chelsea that, even if she and your dad didn’t work things out—but I think they will—I want to stay friends with her. It turns out, ‘C’ is all right.”
“Oh.” Josh smiled. “I’m glad you’re friends now.”
“Me too. So, you see? I’m still pretty helpful sometimes, to some people,” Karina said. “Even if the college students I advise don’t need me quite as much between semesters this year—as evidenced by all the student phone calls I’m not getting.”
“Um, Mom?” Wearing a guilty expression, Olivia cut her off. She traded glances with her siblings. “About those phone calls from your students…There’s something we have to tell you.”
“So,” Betty Sullivan said, “everything is all right now.” She clapped her gloved hands with an air of satisfaction, surveying the festive B&B with evident pride. “We’ll keep on running this place ourselves, just the way we love to do—”
“Although you don’t seem to have done such a bad job of things,” Robert put in, slapping his hand on one of the garland-wrapped porch pillars, “during our brief absence.”
“—you and the girls will move back here to the states—”
At that, Nicole and Alexis beamed, high-fiving each other.
“—and everyone will live happily ever after,” Reid’s grandmother concluded. Her eyes sparkled. “I’m so happy for you, Reid. The minute you told us what happened while we were gone, I knew we’d been completely right to conspire behind your back.”