Silver Bells

by Ev Bishop

  Also by Ev Bishop

  River's Sigh B & B

  Wedding Bands

  Hooked

  Spoons

  Hook, Line & Sinker

  Silver Bells

  Reeling

  River's Sigh B & B Vol. 1 - 4

  Standalone

  Bigger Things

  EV BISHOP

  Silver Bells

  River’s Sigh B & B, Book 5

  A Christmas Novella

  SILVER BELLS

  Book 5 in the River’s Sigh B & B series

  Copyright © 2018 Ev Bishop

  EPUB Edition

  Published by Winding Path Books

  ISBN 978-1-77265-012-9

  Cover image: Kimberly Killion / The Killion Group Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews, the reproduction or use of this work in whole or in part in any form, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Winding Path Books, 1886 Creek St., Terrace, British Columbia, V8G 4Y1, Canada.

  Silver Bells is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Sign up for Ev’s News here

  Follow Ev on BookBub, visit www.evbishop.com for more titles and release dates, find Ev on Facebook, or tweet and twitter with her. She’d love to hear from you!

  To my plentiful siblings, with so much love.

  Thank you for being nothing like Bryn’s family and for making every holiday crazy, yes, but very fun!

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Excerpt from Reeling

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoy Silver Bells as much as I enjoyed writing it. River’s Sigh B & B is my own dream getaway. If you love visiting it as much as I do, you’ll be happy to know you can “book” getaways with each of the other books in the series: Wedding Bands, Hooked, Spoons, Hook, Line & Sinker, and One to Keep.

  Click here to sign up for my newsletter to learn about upcoming books, and/or visit evbishop.com, find me on Facebook, follow my Tweets, or drop me a line at evbishop@evbishop.com. I’d love to hear from you! And on a similar note, reviews really help authors. If you would leave a few kind words anywhere you like to hang out when your nose isn’t in a book, I can’t thank you enough.

  Wishing you love, laughter and cozy nights,

  Ev

  And now, happy reading . . .

  Chapter 1

  Bryn checked the road behind her in both side mirrors, then glanced in her rearview. Nothing but darkness beneath a churning blizzard of white. The view ahead was similarly void, but instead of streaming away from her in frantic billowing swirls, the heavy snow pushed toward her windshield in precise, mesmerizing lines. It reminded her of the opening crawl in the original Star Wars movie. She half-expected yellow lettering to appear. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

  Bryn’s head bobbed—and the movement jolted her awake. She blinked hard and jerked the wheel, pulling her car back into what she hoped was her lane, though the centerline was impossible to see. Shoot. This was no good. Steve, who was curled into a ball on the passenger seat, lifted his head and whined.

  “I know, baby, I know. We’re almost there.” She wanted to give the little terrier’s ears a reassuring scratch, but couldn’t risk taking her concentration off the road again.

  The problem was, they weren’t close enough to there yet. She hadn’t made a hotel booking for Greenridge because she’d originally planned to push straight through, but even if she had, the small town was thirty to forty minutes away. Rupert, her destination, was three hours. The weather and road conditions had seriously slowed her progress.

  Her Corolla’s belly caught a thick ridge of ice and careened toward the snowbank on the highway’s shoulder. Bryn fought the natural impulse to hit the brakes, knowing that would make the slide worse. In the nick of time, her wheels found purchase on the nearly indiscernible road. There was no good choice. She couldn’t go any faster; the roads were too treacherous—but she couldn’t go much slower either or her vehicle wouldn’t have the power needed to push through the ever-deepening snow.

  She turned off the old CD of Christmas tunes that had been crooning away the past hour and clicked the radio on, letting it search for the local station. A croak of broken voices and static met her ear. Rats. She was still out of the radio station’s range.

  A blast of wind slammed the side of her car and the whole vehicle shuddered. A snow-covered sign, marking what looked like a small rest area, appeared briefly, then was lost to the whirling white and deep shadows. It was increasingly impossible to see her surroundings. The clock on her dashboard read 8:14 p.m., but the sky was so dark and the traffic so sparse it seemed more like 2:00 a.m.

  If her car kept high-centering on the unplowed highway—and if another vehicle happened by when she was out of control—it would spell disaster. Bryn decided to take the sign as a sign and turned on her signal light.

  The rest area was to her immediate left now. She shoulder-checked yet again and pulled over as far as she could, noting with mild curiosity that the small clearing seemed to narrow at one end and become a one-lane road that wound away into nothingness.

  She debated turning her four-way flashers on, but decided against it. She didn’t want to attract attention to herself alone in the night. This way, if anyone passing by on the highway did happen to spot her dark vehicle, they’d just think some smart person had abandoned his or her car until the roads cleared.

  She unclicked her seatbelt and reached into the backseat to retrieve her bulky winter coat from where it lay covering a pile of wrapped Christmas gifts and seasonal goodies. She also had a blanket, a candle and a lighter, water and nuts, and dog food. She’d wait until the storm lightened, dawn arrived and/or a plow truck came by, whichever came first. You can never be too prepared was her motto—something she found ironic, seeing as despite all her preparations for life, the things she wanted most seemed to allude her.

  “Oh, come on,” she muttered aloud. “Don’t go there. Go to sleep. Take a nap.”

  Steve grunted from his seat as if in agreement.

  But it was too late. Her brain, as ever, was already “there”—and the dangerous exhaustion that made her nod off on the road had evaporated. She felt wide awake. Great, just great. She’d known she’d have the blues this week. It almost couldn’t be helped as she contemplated the solo road trip and the big family Christmas—but this? No, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d get stuck on a remote piece of road in the middle of nowhere with only herself and her spiraling thoughts for company.

  She sighed and Steve echoed her, which made her smile the tiniest bit. At least she had Steve.

  Yeah, Steve, a three-year-old mutt, your one—and only—true love.

  Bryn’s smile died.

&
nbsp; Why did you even come? Every year you promise yourself you’ll do your big visit in a less poignant season, yet every Christmas here you are…

  It was funny to Bryn—and by “funny” she meant the furthest thing from—that even eight years since their divorce, her inner critic at its meanest still spoke in her ex-husband Brad’s voice.

  You know your family couldn’t care less if you don’t show up, right? Christmas is for people with kids, Bryn, not old maids.

  Okay, so the last insult was something she used on herself, not really Brad’s line, but the rest of the comment was pure him, verbatim. He’d said it one year when he wanted them to go to Mexico for Christmas instead of to the big family gathering Bryn used to love so much.

  Bryn reached into her glovebox and withdrew a package of bacon dog treats. Snoozing Steve was suddenly as awake as she was. She gave him one snack, then another, and put the package away.

  “Of course, my family wants me there. They love me,” she whispered defensively, feeling every bit of how pathetic she was: thirty-five years old, stranded alone in the dark in the boonies a week before Christmas, arguing with her long-gone ex that her mummy and daddy do so love her.

  And they did—just maybe not quite as much as they loved her three sisters with their busy, happy hordes of kids and loyal husbands. Spinster Bryn, with her condo in an adults-only complex and full-time career focus, was out of the loop. It didn’t matter that Bryn was a homebody, who loved to bake and cook and decorate, her mom and sisters acted like she had nothing in common with them, nothing to add or contribute to conversations…

  “Of course, you ‘love’ to cook—because you don’t have to, day in, day out,” her sister Sasha had laughed at Thanksgiving once, when Bryn chimed in on a discussion about recipes and volunteered to head up the bulk of the cooking.

  “It is different when you’re cooking for a family instead of one person,” Bryn’s mom had agreed gently.

  It was just one stupid exchange, but one of so many similar ones over the years that it became symbolic to Bryn of all the ways she was the outsider, the odd woman out—barren and husbandless in her close-knit, progeny-producing family. It wasn’t hard to pick out the instance of unintentional insensitivity that had hurt her most, however. Hands down it was when she’d broken the news to her mom and dad, still shattered and reeling from the unforeseen blow, that Brad was leaving her because she couldn’t have kids and it was important to him to have his own biological children.

  “I know it’s hard, honey—but it’s nature, you know? Men want to leave a legacy.”

  That had been her mother’s idea of sympathy. That. What about Bryn’s nature? What about her disappointment? She had always, always, always wanted kids. Some people weren’t sure or could go either way, especially when they were young, but all Bryn’s fantasies had centered around house and home: one husband to love her for all her days—and a handful of kids. It was embarrassing how traditional and mumsy she was at heart—and she’d tried hard to downplay it at university. Having or not having children was supposed to be a rational, intellectual decision these days, not a craving from some deep, ancient part of your body and blood, not taken as a given conclusion, the way you expect your arms and legs to work, your heart to thump, your blood to automatically pump. But that’s how she’d been when she thought about the children she’d have—that they would just… be. The idea of anything else had never occurred to her.

  Bryn tucked her coat around her more securely and reclined her seat. Although she hadn’t been parked for long, the windshield was completely covered in snow. Bryn sighed again; Steve sighed again.

  Just for kicks, Bryn turned the car on briefly and let the wipers clear her front and back windows—not that there was anything to see. She rechecked the radio—still nothing. Powered her cell phone on—no service, but she hadn’t been expecting any.

  Her head was loud and whiney and sad and she was sick of herself. Outside the car, the silence was a heavy, breathing presence.

  “Your life is lovely,” she whispered. “You’re healthy. You have friends who love you. You have work that matters to you and that supplies all your needs. No one gets everything.”

  Her gratitude wasn’t feigned. It really wasn’t. It was just that Christmas, the season that celebrated new life and family from its very roots, was a raw reminder of things she didn’t have but had always longed for.

  A distant rumbling registered in her consciousness. Something about it put her on alert, though she couldn’t say what exactly. Maybe just that until now the whole world had been devoid of sound, muffled in snow, like she was the sole inhabitant of the isolated road she found herself on.

  The noise grew louder and louder—became the roar of a big diesel engine.

  Bryn cracked her door and poked her head out, peering into the dizzying white. She saw high beams and caught the glare of a chrome grill. Then a Dodge truck, black as the night, hurtled past, pushing snow and sending huge plumes of exhaust into the frigid air. The driver noticed the sharp curve looming ahead, too late. The angry red glow of brake lights split the darkness. Bryn had time for only the briefest thought. That truck’s going too fast. It’s going to—

  A spinning carnival ride of lights lit up the night before her shocked eyes. The truck spun donut after donut, totally out of control. There was no screech of metal or rubber on cement, just a heavy whirring shush as the vehicle whooshed through the snow. Then it disappeared off the side of the road in a cloud of powder.

  Into a ditch? Into the river that ran parallel to this stretch of highway in places? Bryn hated that she didn’t know exactly where she was on the road. She had an idea, but any truly familiar landmarks were obliterated by the night and the white.

  A flood of adrenalin made her nauseous. She thought she could see lights level with the highway, glowing almost yellow, from beneath a layer of snow. So not in the river then—please God not, she prayed.

  Bryn sat back in her car and shut her door, fretting. She should check on the person or persons in the truck. What if someone was hurt? She knew first aid. But what if the vehicle’s occupants were as crazy and potentially dangerous as the way they drove? Still, she couldn’t just leave them. She’d bring her phone and as she approached, she’d speak into it, like she’d been able to reach 9-1-1 and there was someone on the way. Even the biggest psycho, upon crashing his truck in a storm, would probably have bigger things on his mind than attacking a would-be helper.

  Not completely happy with her decision, but knowing she’d never be able to live with herself if someone was hurt, then worsened or died when she could’ve helped, Bryn climbed out of her car. She bundled herself up in her long down jacket and fastened its hood securely under her chin. Then she wrapped a scarf around her face, leaving only her eyes peeking out. She put her key fob in her pocket and zipped it up, then, for added precaution, took her extra key out of a hidden change drawer in the car and put it in the ignition.

  “Hold tight,” she told Steve. “I’ll be right back.”

  She closed her door, careful not to lock it, and waded through the deep snow toward the buried truck.

  Chapter 2

  “You idiot,” Sean seethed, banging his palms against his steering wheel in frustrated fury. He’d been speeding, he admitted it. Worse, he’d been totally distracted—and by stupid woe-is-me stuff. He hadn’t even clued in to the fact he was in trouble until it was too late and he’d lost control and couldn’t get it back. “Story of my life,” he grumbled.

  He pressed the gas pedal. The engine revved, but there was no forward movement. His tires didn’t even spin.

  He cut the engine, stretched his neck and rubbed his head, then felt along each of his arms and pushed at his ribs. He didn’t seem injured. That was good at least.

  Outside his truck’s cab, the wind shrieked and whistled. There was nothing to see for miles that he could tell—just a blinding, dizzying flurry of white and swirling darkness. He contemplated what to do next. He
figured he was forty or fifty kilometers from Greenridge, way too far to walk. He rested his forearms on his steering wheel, then dropped his head. This was great, just great. A Christmas holiday to top all the rotten ones of the past five years, and that was saying something, considering how low he’d felt during some of them. Here he’d been congratulating himself on facing the storm strongly and head-on, the way he should be facing the rest of his life, and this was the good it did him.

  Oh, come on. Was he seriously trying to say his stupid driving wasn’t his own fault?

  No, he wasn’t. Being all angst-ridden and depressed by the Christmas spirit tinkling here, there and everywhere, reminding him of his loneliness, was no reason to drive irresponsibly.

  He straightened abruptly, undid his seatbelt, and rummaged for his coat. A jumble of stuff had hit the floor when the truck made impact with whatever had stopped it. He supposed he should consider himself lucky—he could’ve gone off into the river and that would’ve been the end of him—but he couldn’t scrounge up gratitude, only relief. It kind of reminded him of his relationship with Gemma, actually—or his ex-relationship with Gemma, that is. He should be thankful that they weren’t still together, that she’d “cut him loose” to quote her compassionate break up speech—but he couldn’t quite muster it.

  It wasn’t that he was still hung up on Gemma. Yes, she’d only ended it officially six months ago, but he had finally learned his lesson. She didn’t love him. In fact, she had never loved him, at least not according to his “old-fashioned ideals” about love anyway. Leave it to Gemma to think having ideals was old-fashioned, an insult, not something good or worth striving for.

  The end of their ten-year relationship had shocked him by not being a lot more difficult—or any less lonely—than being with her. Often it was even a relief. He was no longer yanked back and forth, caught in a cycle of being dumped because he “wasn’t working for her”—always quickly followed by some variation of, “I’m so sorry. Please come back. This time I mean it. I can’t live without you.”