The Christmas Wish

by Maggie Marr

  Brinn tilted her head. What about Tyler? While Brinn was aware that she and Tyler were finished and Tyler was most likely aware by now—if his lack of an appearance at Ma’s party was any indication—that their relationship was finished, she’d not shared anything with anyone but Deborah and Nonna. She glanced across the room to where Deborah was standing across from one of Ma’s friends from canasta.

  “What did Deborah say?”

  “Deborah?” Alison took a sip of her eggnog and crinkled her brow. “Deborah didn’t say anything. I meant with Charlize showing up and spending Christmas morning with the Emerson family.”

  Brinn’s heart dropped from her chest. A hard pain rushed through her. She closed her eyes. Charlize was in Powder Springs? Wow. Just wow. Spending Christmas with Tyler and Charlotte? A lump threatened in Brinn’s throat. Yeah, looked like they were over. The Tyler that Brinn knew and loved would have at least texted or called to let Brinn know Charlize was at the house, wouldn’t he? Was she crazy to expect such a thing? Tyler was spending Christmas morning with his ex-wife?

  “I… I didn’t know she was here, in Powder Springs.”

  Alison took a long gulp of her drink. “I’m sorry, Brinn, I just assumed with you over here in the corner looking so glum that maybe you weren’t happy about Charlize being over at the Emersons’.”

  No, she wasn’t happy about it. The drop-dead beautiful and perfect Charlize Dumont hanging with the entire Emerson family? Nope, that didn’t thrill her. But really, that was the least of her worries. She understood that Charlize was Charlotte’s mother and would be a part of Charlotte’s life, always. She had to be okay with that, and she’d thought she was. What she wasn’t okay with, what she couldn’t get past, was the idea that Tyler’s experience with his ex-wife would dictate the rest of his life with her. Their relationship. That their relationship would always be cast in the shadow of his failed marriage. Because with Tyler saying he never wanted to be married again, that’s was how it felt to her. He could never love Brinn enough, trust Brinn enough, believe in their relationship enough, to get past what had happened and marry Brinn.

  She pressed her lips into a line. “Excuse me.” She didn’t want to sit here amongst all the joy and happiness. She didn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel it. She really wanted to be alone. Hans had just arrived with his wife, and they stood beside Ma in the kitchen as she pulled the almond torte from the oven.

  “Brinn!” Hans wrapped her in a hug.

  Brinn nodded and said hello to Hans’s wife but skirted past them when Hans resumed talking to Ma. She needed to find a place, a spot somewhere away from all these people. She couldn’t do this. Not right now.

  Brinn slid though the house that was getting packed fuller and fuller with Ma’s and Nonna’s and even her friends. The laughter, the conversation, the food. How could she stand to be around any of it? She slipped out the side door and onto the porch.

  Silence.

  The sound of winter as the snow fell from the sky. Darkness closed in on the day, but there was still a glimmer of light. Brinn filled her lungs with air. Cool, clean air. The cold wrapped around her but she didn’t want to go inside. Instead, she walked to the porch swing and settled into it. The street was quite, houses lined with lights, like living in a picture postcard.

  “I like it better out here too.”

  She started at his voice. Her heart thumped harder and her entire body seemed unaware that he was no longer hers. Her lips, not yet realizing that she would never kiss his again. Her body throbbed in response to his presence, seemingly unaware that they were a couple no longer.

  He sat on the porch swing beside her, a serious and somber look on his face. “Brinn, I have some things I need to say.”

  Her heart cracked wide. This was it. She could rush in and say it first. Hadn’t she known since their conversation last night? Hadn’t she already checked out in her mind? She pressed her lips tighter and wrapped her arms around her.

  “I’m afraid I hurt you last night.”

  His eyes contained a seriousness, true remorse over the possibility that he’d caused her pain. “The things I said…” His eyes drifted from her to the scene beyond. The streets filled with snow, the tinkling of laughter behind them.

  “I… well… I was afraid.”

  Brinn nodded. She understood fear. Hadn’t she been afraid to believe that Tyler cared for her? She’d been afraid to trust a man again. She’d been hurt too, in the most wounding of ways, and yet… And yet her love for Tyler and his warmth and her need for him had pushed her beyond her boundaries. She’d been willing to risk everything for him. Her heart, everything, but he didn’t feel the same way. Perhaps that was what hurt the most. That she trusted their love more than he did.

  His eyes met her. “But I’m not afraid anymore.”

  Her heart pounded in her chest. He slipped to the ground and was before her on his knee, his eyes wide, a scared but loving look on his face. He slid the velvet box from his jacket and opened it.

  “Brinn Bartoli, will you marry me?”

  Tears streamed down Brinn’s face. She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. Oh my God, her Christmas wish would come true.

  “Yes, Tyler—a thousand times yes.”

  His lips were on hers and he was up and pressing himself to her.

  “Oh Brinn, my beautiful Brinn. Thank you. I love you. I can’t live without you, and last night, after you left and I thought about me with you… I knew we were right together and that I was afraid of something that had nothing to do with you. I can’t imagine life without you. I can’t imagine the Landry place without you in it. God, you’ve made me the happiest man on the planet.”

  Brinn smiled. Christmas wishes did come true.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  They didn’t wait. They didn’t wait for spring, they didn’t wait for renovation on the Landry place, they didn’t wait for anyone or anything. Instead, they planned a wedding. A small wedding for immediate family and friends.

  Brinn wore Nonna’s dress. Ivory lace and satin. Nonna, too, had gotten married in this very courthouse, in this very chamber. Different judge, different year, same outcome.

  Brinn handed her bouquet of white roses to Deborah. She held out her hand and Tyler slipped the thin gold band onto her finger. Her heart flipped in her chest. How was this possible? She looked up and met the eyes of her husband.

  “I now present to you Mr. and Mrs. Tyler Emerson.”

  The cheering was loud as Ma and Dom and Nonna clapped. Charlotte jumped up and down. She stood right between Brinn and Tyler for the entire ceremony. Her dress was a confection of white with a red-and-green-plaid sash. Lucy rushed to the front of the judge’s chambers. Carol and Roger and the entire Emerson family was upon them, even Kent.

  Her heart was filled with absolute joy. They would go to the Grande now for a wedding luncheon. With the people she loved and her heart filled with joy. Everything had happened just right with a Christmas wish and some Christmas magic.

  The End

  About This Series

  Thanks for reading The Christmas Wish. I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews help other readers find books and I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative. Please take a moment and write a review for The Christmas Wish.

  You’ve just read the second book in the Powder Springs Series. The first book in the Powder Springs Series is Courting Trouble. I hope you enjoy it as well!

  Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at http://maggiemarr.blogspot.com/p/maggies-newsletter.html.

  Follow me on Twitter at : http://twitter.com/maggiemarr, or like my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maggie-Marr-Books/168071873226783?ref=ts.

  Visit my Website at http://www.maggiemarr.blogspot.com.

  You may also enjoy my Eligible Billionaire Series.

  Can’t Buy Me Love

  One Night For Love

  A Christmas Billionaire

&n
bsp; Last Call For Love – coming soon

  Click the link if you'd like to read an excerpt from the third book in the Eligible Billionaires series, A Christmas Billionaire.

  Click the link if you'd like to read an excerpt from the first book in the Powder Springs Series, Courting Trouble.

  Acknowledgements

  First, thank you to my readers. Thank you for buying my books and for spending time with the characters that I love. I promise to keep writing as long as you keep reading!

  Thank you to Kristin Nelson and everyone at NLA. Kristin, your pep-talk meant everything to me and my career. Lori Bennett, thank you for your tireless work on my behalf with formatting and metadata. Anne Victory, my editor, you are amazing. Thank you for going above and beyond on this book. Thank you to Kim Killion who created the beautiful cover. Angie Hodapp, thank you for the layout for my paperback interiors. Sarah Altman, you are an amazing assistant—I couldn’t get nearly the number of words written if not for you.

  Thank you to my Beta Readers! You guys ROCK!

  Thank you to RWA, LARA, Girlfriends Book Club, and WFWA. These organizations and their members provide me with insight on craft and friendship.

  Thank you to my friends and family: Margaret L. Marr, Nancy Veskerna, Nealie Harrison, Lauren Harrison, Gavin White, Linda and Bill Henderson, Lindsy and Mark Henderson, Joyce and Tom Leahy, Nancy and Tom Henderson, Chris and Jim Leahy, Eloise and Dixie Marr, Garrett Marr, Paula and David Glasscock, Gayle Leftwich, Peggy Cafferty, Victoria and Karl Makinen, Amy and Brent Zacky, Sheryl and Steven Ross, Lea and Aaron Pfau, Christine Ashworth, Maria Seager, Sylvie Fox, Cami Bright, Sarah Vance-Tompkins, Melissa Lamoureaux, Beverly Diehl, PEG, the entire PEG Family, and Bob.

  To Chad and the kidlets, thank you for every kiss, every hug, every smile, and every single moment that we spend together, I am grateful for it all.

  About the Author

  Maggie Marr is an attorney, author, and producer. She began her career in the entertainment industry pushing the mail cart but rose to the position of motion picture literary agent. She has written for TV, film, and celebrities. Maggie has been featured on KCRW's The Business and reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Romantic Times. She lives in LA with her family.

  Maggie is eternally grateful for the graciousness and support of her readers.

  Please visit her Website at: http://www.maggiemarr.blogspot.com.

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/maggiemarr

  Facebook:

  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maggie-Marr-Books/168071873226783?ref=ts

  Also by Maggie Marr

  The Hollywood Girls Club Series

  Hollywood Girls Club

  Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club

  Hollywood Hit

  Box Office Bomb – coming soon

  Hollywood Girls Club the Series

  The Eligible Billionaires Series

  Can’t Buy Me Love

  One Night For Love

  A Christmas Billionaire

  Last Call For Love – coming soon

  The Powder Springs Series

  Courting Trouble

  The Christmas Wish

  The Glamour Series

  Hard Glamour

  Broken Glamour

  Fast Glamour

  Easy Glamour

  Luxe Glamour – coming soon

  An Excerpt from A Christmas Billionaire

  Book three of the Eligible Billionaires Series

  Chapter 1

  Once upon a time, Nick North had believed in love. He’d believed in Christmas. He might, if asked, have told you he even believed in happily ever after. But the Nick North who wanted to believe in a future that contained a wife and children and a happily-ever-after was gone. Killed by a dream that had died. His heart had frozen solid on a Christmas Eve night long ago.

  People who knew Nick, with his tall, muscular body and his eyes the cold gray of a cloudy winter sky, might even be able to pinpoint the moment that carefree young man who had been unencumbered by heartbreak had died, though the people who knew the details wouldn’t have dared discuss such a topic in front of Nick. If anyone ever missed the old Nick, the warm and jovial man he’d been before that frozen Christmas Eve, before the night that turned his heart to ice, they never uttered the words of their distress in front of him.

  Some people, those who didn’t know about Nick’s heartbreak, determined that his final semester of B-school had changed him. The work, his studies, his drive to succeed, his dogged determination to make billions of dollars and fulfill his family’s desires, killed the carefree Nick North. Nick became a hard-carved, heartless, cold-blooded capitalist. A man who saw only black and red, dollars and zeroes, profits and losses. A man who could quickly assess any business and whittle it down to its essence, squeeze out every penny, and just as easily toss the business aside, workers be damned. According to Nick North, there was no human side to business, there was nothing personal, there was simply business.

  Other people knew the truth of what had happened that long-ago December night. Those people—Nick’s inner circle, his mother, his now-deceased father, his sister, a couple of B-school classmates—realized the sad details of what had happened to Nick and his heart on Christmas Eve. An event that had turned a warmhearted, loving young man on the cusp of a bright and brilliant future into a cold-hearted son of a bitch.

  Nick avoided those who had known him before, those who understood his heartbreak, his change, his loss. Once his father passed, Nick purposely avoided his mother. His mother and his sister never spoke of Nick’s heartbreak. His B-school classmates who knew of his loss were scattered to the wind, tossed about on foreign corporate shores.

  And the woman? The woman who shattered his heart and dashed his hopes for a happily-ever-after? She was gone, and Nick hoped to never see her again. To see her those emerald eyes and that amber hair would drop him to his knees. He’d loved beyond what he’d thought himself capable of, and she’d left him, abandoned him, turned her back on his love. Gone was his future and his plans. His heart had split wide, and the cold, frigid air of a Chicago Christmas had seeped into the still-beating inner chambers and frozen him from the inside out.

  Nick North would never love again.

  With a frozen heart he focused on business. The coldness, the calculations, the dollars, the pursuit of profit engaged his brain. The hard, cold world he created with his own bare hands. Building after building after building, added to the immense portfolio of North Industries. Nick stood atop North Tower, hands grasped to hips, the Chicago skyline lay before him a slain beast at his feet. North Tower was the newest skyscraper to decorate Chicago’s skyline. Taller than Willis Tower, prettier than Trump, and soon to be better known than Hancock. This floor was reserved for him and his life and his work. Wind blasted the building and created a tiny sway beneath his feet. A blast of arctic cold could cause any one of the skyscrapers that graced the Chicago skyline to sway six, seven, as much as ten inches at a time.

  Let the cold wind blow.

  Nick preferred the frigid to the warm. The ice to the puddle. The gray to the sun. Cold was Nick’s dominion.

  The phone on his desk rang and he pressed the Bluetooth in his ear. “Is it done?”

  The long pause and the sigh from Frederick indicated that the one thing Nick wanted accomplished was still unfinished.

  “No, sir, it is not.”

  His jaw muscle tensed. Were Frederick not his most brilliant and trusted advisor, and a man Nick had been lucky to have in his life since he began North Industries, the heat building in his chest would rage forth. His frozen heart had not tamped down the heated fury that could warm his belly in a second.

  “Who the hell is this woman?”

  “Sir, she’s an activist who came to visit her grandmother for the holidays. When she discovered your plan to demolish Winter Pines and replace it with the Shopping Extravaganza, she went into action. And that, sir, is when the proverbial shit hit the fan.”

&n
bsp; “It’s been a week, Frederick. You should have assessed her weaknesses and her desires so that we might capitalize on those.”

  Beyond the wall of windows thick gray clouds with bruised, purple bellies rolled in from the west. Sleet sliced from the sky toward Michigan Avenue, where the ants of humanity scurried below.

  “Are you slipping, Frederick?”

  “Slipping, sir?”

  He turned toward his desk, which was sleek and hard and made of steel. “Yes, slipping.” His fingers curled around the black leather back of his chair. “Or do you have a soft spot for these people? Perhaps this woman whom you’ve failed to properly assess?”

  “No, sir,” Frederick said in his even, measured tone. So impudent that Nick could hear a smile in Frederick’s voice. “Not slipping, sir, merely trying to hold this deal together until Christmas.”

  “Christmas?” He might pierce the leather back of his seat with his fingertips. “You’re treading water until Christmas? My timeline dictates that we break ground this week. My intentions are to have that entire geriatric home demo’d by Christmas Eve. I want a hole where Winter Pines is by Christmas Day. Have I not been clear, Frederick?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  Frederick was as smooth as ice and as old as a glacier. Few emotions ran through the man and that included fear, which was the primary reason he’d been in Nick’s employ for so long. Aside from Nick’s mother and sister, and of course the woman—the one woman whose name Nick refused to think or to say—every other person on the planet seemed to tremble in trepidation at Nick’s approach. He did not court the fear, he didn’t want the fear, nor did he need his employees and business associates to fear him, although it did help maintain the cold, frosty perimeter that surrounded him at all times. Distance, absence of warmth, created a safe distance from human contact, feelings and even the remote possibility of love.