A Heartwarming Christmas: A Boxed Set of Twelve Sweet Holiday Romances

by Melinda Curtis

  No one would be confused by their decision to split.

  He’d go. And Ivy would be free to build her Christmas tour empire, complete the museum-slash-tourist trap she was determined was the next phase of Coming to Town tours. If she got her way, he’d never see her. They’d also never leave this place.

  Maybe she was right that Christmas Town was home and they couldn’t be happy anywhere else, but he wanted her to prove it.

  “Rick called me worse than Crash. He’s got to take my shift tomorrow.” Josh shrugged a shoulder.

  “Why do you always have to be the first one out, Josh?” Ivy asked with a weary sigh. “You climb the roof first, volunteer for every rescue, take the riskiest jobs. Couldn’t you one time let someone else lead and keep your feet on firm, safe ground?”

  “It’s just a sprain,” he repeated slowly, the angry simmer ready to overflow. “And you act like you’re Mrs. Voice-of-Reason. You and I both know that a little bit of risk makes life worth living.” He cleared his throat. “Or we both used to know.”

  She blinked slowly. If they could somehow find the common ground they were both comfortable with, this Christmas could be exciting and filled with anticipation for the new year. Ivy set her jaw and Josh knew he’d pushed as far as he could for one conversation.

  “What time does the first tour start?” Josh checked the clock on the wall. It was in the shape of a gingerbread house. He hated it. She loved it. It had been her mother’s, so it stayed.

  “About fifteen minutes ago.” She peeked out the window at the dog. Her laugh was as beautiful and sweet as it had been the time she giggled at him while he balanced on one foot on top of the wall that had bordered one side of Christmas Town High School.

  Josh ignored the ache in the center of his chest as he joined her at the window.

  The dog was making himself at home. Snow was flying as he dug in one corner of the yard.

  “What is he after?” Ivy asked.

  “No idea. Maybe he’s crazy.” Josh took a chance and wrapped his hand around the nape of Ivy’s neck. Since they’d been fighting so hard and so often, touching her was an almost certain escalation in hostilities.

  This time, it was nice. She slipped her arm around his waist. “That would be my luck. Take a chance on the first crazy dog to cross my path.”

  Josh studied her face. Was she making a big statement about their marriage and how she’d taken a chance on the first crazy boy to cross her path? Or talking about the dog?

  “What should we name him?” Ivy asked as she pointed at the dog who was now running in widening circles. “What about Dasher?”

  Everything had a Christmas theme with Ivy. It was a part of her blood.

  “Have you forgotten the Fisher rule?” Josh asked. “Whoever names him has to take care of him.”

  Ivy shrugged a shoulder. “We have to take care of him, at least for a few days, anyway.”

  Josh rubbed his forehead. This was a change of tune from Ivy. “Dash. We’ll call him Dash.” Josh wondered when it would annoy her that he’d named the dog when he had no intention of sticking around.

  “It certainly fits him.” She touched the bandage on his wrist lightly. “Are you going to be okay tonight? With the dog?”

  Josh considered lying. If she stayed here instead of heading off to work, they might have a chance to hash out all the problems.

  Asking her to miss the biggest night of the year would be a complaint she pulled out the next time they blew up.

  “Sure. We’ll be fine.” Josh motioned at the boxes stacked up. “Put out a few more decorations.”

  Her smile faded. “There’s no need to do that, not for me. I know you don’t enjoy it.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m going to stay at the office tonight. I just… I think I need some quiet to think. Okay? And tomorrow, after dinner at your parents’, we can figure out what happens next.”

  The urge to reach for her was strong, but Ivy’s arms were crossed over her chest. She expected an argument. “What will spending the night apart solve?” He waited for her to answer.

  “Maybe nothing, but I need some…time. Until after Christmas,” Ivy said, “let’s make sure everyone thinks we’re okay.”

  Josh nodded. There was no need to ruin his family’s holiday because he was miserable.

  “Don’t forget to let the dog in,” Ivy said softly as she let herself out of the house.

  It was a good thing she was out the door before the surge of anger at her and the whole situation hit. He wasn’t sure what he might have said, but it would definitely have been something he regretted.

  Josh opened the door and whistled. The dog, who was covered in white powdery snow from nose to tail, bounded in and slid across the tile floor onto the carpet.

  Half a second after Josh realized he should have gotten a towel, the dog shook melting snow all over the boxes littering the floor and then sat with a happy grin.

  “No tags. No manners.” Josh sighed as he sat next to the dog. “But now you have a name.”

  Dash immediately clambered into Josh’s lap, his feet icy cold against his jeans. “Wonder how long she’ll let you stay, first crazy dog.” He brushed more snow off. “Crash and Dash. We should not get too close. I’m leaving, you know. Ivy says I am and she’s never wrong.”

  The dog rested his chin on Josh’s shoulder.

  He’d wanted a dog five minutes after he and Ivy had moved into their first house. After three years of living in an apartment, this fixer-upper had seemed grand, the perfect place for the two of them to make their mark.

  Her arguments about the mess and expense and the way the dog would keep them from hopping a plane for their adventure vacations had all been impossible to ignore.

  So he’d backed down. Like he did every time they disagreed.

  Because he loved her more than he hated gingerbread clocks or wanted messy dogs or wished for freedom to figure out who he could be away from this town where everyone knew his father and brothers. Measured against them, he never had a chance.

  The dog swiped a pink tongue across Josh’s cheek, shaking him out of the worries that weighed him down. He scratched the dog’s ears.

  “A perfect example of why a little mess, some doggy chaos, can make life better, Dash. Good boy.” Having a dog to talk to would be a relief. This was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 3

  “And coming up on the left is the place that local legend says is the birthplace of Merry White.” Ivy waited for the expectant silence to build as she surveyed the clear road in front of her. This was her sixth and last tour of the evening. Sometimes the midnight run was dull because everyone had left all their energy in town, but this group was good.

  If Ivy had a favorite tour, this was it. The streets were less crowded and the beautiful lighted snowflakes on the street lamps made her think of magic and the promise of Christmas.

  “Who is Merry White?” the little boy in the first seat asked. He’d stopped kicking her seat as he waited. That was a nice break.

  Ten more minutes. You’ll drop them in front of Dockery’s and go collapse on the couch. Finish strong.

  “You might know her better as Mrs. Claus, the most important helper Santa has.” The little guy stared hard at the cabin that had been in this clearing for as long as Ivy could remember. To him, it must seem ancient.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Nah. Important place like that would be guarded.” Another hard kick to her seat made his opinion clear.

  He made a good point. She’d tried to convince her father to approach Christmas Town with a proposal to build a tiny museum somewhere. They could start with her mother’s collection of ornaments and décor centered on Mrs. Claus, add a small parking lot, put in some gift items, and capitalize on an underserved audience.

  But that was outside of their “brand.”

  Where her father had even heard that particular phrase was beyond Ivy.

  “You’re right. An important person like Mrs. Claus would h
ave a statue or a marker or something, but that’s the story I heard. You know the guys hanging out at the hardware store?” Ivy asked as she turned onto Jack Frost Avenue. “One of those guys knew her cousin.”

  She peeked in the rearview mirror to see the little guy was concentrating pretty hard on that. He glanced at his father who shrugged.

  Ivy rolled to a stop and opened the door. Every adult standing to disembark had a small smile on his or her face. Her doubter was shaking his head.

  “Maybe someday we’ll build a museum or something right there. I’m starting a list of people who will visit.” It also served as the Rudolph bus’s guest book. Across the top, it read “Good girls and boys.”

  She waved it at the boy. “Will you sign it?”

  “First name and last name?” He tipped his chin up. This was a test. He didn’t want to commit any further than he had to. Someday, he’d make an impressive politician.

  “Your first name will work. If it’s good enough for Santa, it’s good enough for me.” Ivy offered him her bright red marker and waited.

  With careful attention, the little boy wrote out “Jesse” and then handed the clipboard over his shoulder. He’d come to terms with the petition and was on board. “I hope you enjoyed your ride on the Rudolph bus.”

  The red light coming in from the nose on the front made it easy to see his thumbs-up. “You bet. No coal for you.”

  Surprised, Ivy laughed. His father squeezed Jesse’s shoulder. “We better go. Say thank you for the tour.”

  “Thank you.” Jesse jumped down the steps and turned back. “We’ll be back next year. Put some guards on the shack if you want people to take you seriously.”

  Sound advice. Ivy thanked everyone as they filed off the bus. When the last person handed her the sign-in sheet, she counted the signatures she’d gathered. “Almost two hundred people. Not bad.” The other buses would have fewer riders that day, but all in all, it had been a good season. Ivy turned off the red light, closed the door, and slowly made her way through the quiet streets of Christmas Town.

  In the parking lot behind the Coming to Town storefront, Ivy waved at Jim as he pulled out of the parking lot in his beat-up truck. Both buses were parked where they should be, so Antonio had made it in, too. Now they were both able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with their families.

  Ivy rolled her shoulders as she unlocked the door. She pulled out her phone and thought about texting Josh to make sure he and the dog were both resting. Maybe they were up for a late-night snack. The possibility was enough to make her stomach rumble. Skipping dinner had been a terrible decision, especially since Josh’s steaks were so good. His wrist would slow him down, but he’d always been the better cook of the two of them. He’d had to learn in self-defense. Their landlord had threatened to evict them from their tiny first apartment after Ivy set off the smoke detector daily for a week.

  “What are you doing here?” her father asked from behind his cluttered desk. He was in the shadows but bent forward to make sure she could see his face. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Pressing one hand over her racing heart, Ivy slipped her phone in her coat pocket. “Yeah? I’d hate to see what you can do when you’re trying, Pop.”

  He raised a single dark eyebrow.

  That eyebrow had spelled her doom more than once when she was a teenager. Ivy Carstairs had been the most boring kid in school for the first two years at Christmas Town High.

  Then her mother had died and nothing made sense anymore.

  Until Josh Fisher had asked her to a dance.

  Being a little wild had been so much fun and the perfect distraction. If her grades had dropped under Josh’s influence, her desire to make it to the next day had bloomed. Josh had never once been predictable.

  Her father thought he knew about all her misadventures. Growing up in a small town where everyone knew her and her family had made secrets nearly impossible, but Josh had always had good instincts on how to find trouble and enjoy every second of it.

  She was going to try lying again anyway.

  “I wanted to enter the attendance numbers and add the income projection to this year’s earnings file,” she said as she shrugged out of her coat. “That will make meeting with the bookkeeper next week that much easier.”

  Her father braced his elbows on the desk and tilted his head. Patiently. As if he was prepared to wait until she ran out of reasonable excuses and resorted to the truth.

  “We aren’t open tomorrow or the next day, Ivy. There’s not a whole lot to be updated when Sheila comes in. Besides that, I’ll be handling it. You will be vacationing. Or else.” Her father sighed. “You used to listen to me.”

  He hadn’t given her much choice. In the Carstairs house, Gus had made the rules. Her mother, Dora, had happily followed them. Nothing made her mother unhappy. If the joy of the holiday season had taken human form, Dora Carstairs would have been the result.

  “I’m not weak, Ivy.” Her father pointed a finger at her. “I built this business all by myself. I can run it for a week or two without you. A heart attack won’t change that.”

  As long as he was in charge, nothing would change. He would do what he wanted and die at his desk unless Ivy convinced him to loosen his grip. She’d walked in Coming to Town the day after her high school graduation, brimming with ideas on things they could do to expand. She’d done that against his wishes. Her father had saved for years to send her to any university she picked. At eighteen, she’d been unable to face leaving him. Taking over the family business was her dream.

  That was before she’d come to understand that her role would be answering the phones or selling tickets, not developing exciting new directions for the business. She still had the ideas. Not a single one of them had been implemented.

  But she wasn’t going to give up. Her father loved this business. She would make it shine.

  Ivy perched on the edge of a couch cushion. More than anything, she wanted to get her father moving. Out of the office. The longer she hung around, the more suspicious he’d get.

  “I don’t think you’re weak, Pop.” Old fashioned. Set in your ways. Hardheaded and impossible to change. “But I haven’t spent any time in a hospital bed this year. You can’t say that.” She’d used the same argument several times in order to get Gus to step away from the desk. That was how she’d gotten to drive the Rudolph bus when he’d insisted he could take this shift. Eventually, he might begin to enjoy having some freedom.

  And when she doubled his revenue, he could take some of it and that free time and go sit on a beach somewhere.

  Grumbling the whole time.

  “I told you we’re going to do things differently.” Her father stepped out from behind his desk and motioned that she should scoot so he could have his usual spot on the couch. “This holiday, it should be about family. For us, too.”

  Ivy crossed her arms over her chest, determined not to start a fight with the other man in her life who refused to listen to reason.

  “Why aren’t you hurrying through here, throwing the keys on the hook, and yelling good night? You and Josh haven’t changed tradition, have you?” Gus wrapped his hand around Ivy’s shoulders and squeezed. “When I stopped in at Dockery’s to check for passengers this afternoon, there was not one complaint about you keeping them from closing. Don’t tell me he’s succumbed to your lists.”

  Ivy’s lips curled, even though the memory of racing against the clock to get all their shopping done in one day, the last day before Christmas Eve, with Josh was bittersweet. He’d insisted that made shopping an extreme sport and was the only way he’d play. The shops on the square hated it, but she’d loved racing through town hand-in-hand with her best friend.

  “Yeah, I did our shopping early.” She’d done it by herself. Online. That was the worst. “Josh was scheduled to work tomorrow and I had to work today, so it was the most efficient choice.”

  “Good thing. I heard about his little accident.” Gus yawned wid
ely. “Crash okay?”

  “He hates it when people call him that, Pop. You know that.” He’d always hated the nickname. That made his brothers twice as determined to use it. “I guess he’s okay. It’s a sprain.” She shouldn’t have dumped the dog on him. What if he was struggling with that injury?

  She pulled out her phone and turned it on in case he tried to call her.

  “Kid should stay off the roof. Gonna break his neck one day,” her father said, one eyebrow raised as he studied her face.

  Distracted, Ivy said, “He enjoys helping people around town. We’ve had so much snow, some people need help clearing it. You wouldn’t want Ms. Elkins’ roof caving in.”

  “Yeah, and my daughter should know how her husband was injured. What’s going on?” her father asked as he pried the phone out of her hand. “The truth now.”

  Wishing she’d asked a few more questions, even after he’d insisted it was just a sprain, Ivy licked her lips and tried to find a way to brush off the question without revealing all her trouble.

  “You don’t know. He and the other off-duty firemen were giving lessons out in Reindeer Meadow. Crash collided with that little speed demon Marly. She hit him in the knees. Least that’s the version I got. Want to explain how I know more than you do?” Her father did the patient waiting thing again.

  “That’s about how I heard it.” Ivy cleared her throat and stood up. “Guess I better make sure he’s okay.” She’d leave and circle back. If she stayed here much longer, she was going to confess.

  Her father followed her to where she was propped against his desk and took both hands in his. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She wanted to. For so long, she’d pretended things were fine with Josh, mainly so the rest of this town that had been determined she was going to fail at this marriage would know they were wrong. Meeting her father’s eyes was impossible, so Ivy leaned forward to rest her cheek on his shoulder. “If I tell you, you have to keep it a secret. I don’t want you to get upset because I’m going to be fine. You’re going to take your time off. Everything will go on as I’ve planned it.”