“Overload me with gratitude?”
Her mom eased it from the box. “What else?”
“Read, play Solitaire, meet strange men in conspiracy theory chatrooms.”
Jane Daring almost smiled. “I can probably manage at least one of those.”
“Oh, one more thing,” Cordelia said. “This time next year I’m going be a mother. Officially.”
Mrs. Daring lifted a shotgun brow. “You pregnant?”
“No. I’m adopting Isaiah.” From the corner of her eye, she caught Will’s doubletake of surprise.
“Who’s Isaiah?” her mother asked.
“The other kid we left in the car.” Cordelia rolled her brown eyes. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“Huh.” Mrs. Daring’s gaze traveled to the baby sleeping in the carrier that hung from Will’s arm. “So I’m gonna be a grandma.”
“Yeah,” Cordelia said. “So you know what you’re gonna do next Christmas?”
“Buy another deadbolt for the door?”
“You’re going to get that baby a present. And you’re coming over to my house for Christmas dinner.”
Mrs. Daring picked at the glittery bow. “We’ll see.” She pointed a finger at Will. “Is he going to be there?”
“Yes.” He answered for Cordelia. “I’ll be there.”
“Huh,” said Cordelia, echoing her mother.
Jane stood up and gave the baby a soft pat on the head. “You two get on out of here. Watch the roads and don’t get frisky in the truck.”
Cordelia followed Will to the door, pausing as her mother hollered one more time. “Cordelia Joy!”
“Yes?”
“I was cleaning out some stuff in the attic last week.” She let that miracle statement have a moment all to itself. “And I found something you might want to see.” Her mother’s eyes focused on a spot over their heads and over the door.
Will looked up.
And there hanging over them was a yellowed mistletoe, twisting in the blow of the heat vent.
“I better go plug this gadget in.” Her mother clutched her tablet to her chest. “Probably has lots of instructions I need to read. In the kitchen.”
She left them standing there in the entry, a woman wide-eyed with hesitation, and a grinning Will, holding Isaiah like a football in his arm.
It wasn’t easy to kiss a woman while holding a baby, but a man could overcome. Will leaned down, his lips dipping toward Cordelia.
“Hold it right there, buster.” She halted him with a hand to his Santa chest. “Explain yourself.”
“I intend to kiss you.”
“I see that. Why?”
“Because your mom told us to.”
“Not good enough.”
Will yanked out the pillow from his shirt and tossed it on the floor. “Because I’m crazy about you, Cordelia Daring. Look, I don’t have everything all worked out in my head yet. I know I have a long way to go to move on from what happened in Afghanistan. And I’m not sure what that whole healing thing’s gonna look like. I’m hoping it’s not a wacko therapist and some poetry.”
“What?”
Will trudged on, afraid if he didn’t say this now, he’d never get it all out. “I’m sorry for the things I said yesterday. You’re so full of life and just charge right into it, and it knocked me off balance from the moment we met.”
“Even if I choose to be an accountant?”
“Even if.”
“Well, I don’t. Choose that, I mean. I called my boss this morning and . . .” She took a deep breath. “I quit.”
His grin widened. “Atta girl.”
“I think Daring Designs can make it. And if it doesn’t, we can get by for a while. I want to try it, but it’s scary.”
“Changing course is definitely hard.” He fixed Isaiah’s hat. “Or so I hear.”
“Would you like to follow my example and say no to that morning show?”
“The spray tan life just isn’t for me. I had an offer a few weeks ago from network news I’m gonna take. Political correspondent. Part-time until I get my sea legs back under me.”
Cordelia preened at that. “Wow, I’m such a good role model.” She brushed a hand over Isaiah’s little clenched fist. “I hope he remember that fact when he’s sixteen.”
“You’re going to make an incredible mom.”
“Thanks. As long as we’re talking about things that scare us, that’s pretty high on my list too.”
“Maybe we can walk through some of these hard things together.”
“What are you saying, Will?”
“I’m saying I’d like to ask my fake girlfriend and her son out on a date.”
“Oh.” She pressed her lips together. “We say yes.”
“How would you feel about the occasional dinner in D.C.?”
“I’d love to redecorate that Oval Office.”
“I’ll call in some connections.” He stepped closer and eyed the dangling mistletoe again. “Now about this kiss.”
“Wait.” Her fingers to his lips stopped him again. “What changed?”
“I had a fight with my brother. He knocked some sense into me.” Quite literally.
“What did he say?”
“He said I needed to do whatever I could to get you back.”
Cordelia slipped her arms around Will’s waist. “I like him. He seems really smart.” She tilted her head back. “You may kiss me now.” She leaned toward him.
Will shook his head. “Wait.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, just kiss already!” her mother hollered.
“I’m afraid there’s plenty more charm where that came from,” Cordelia whispered.
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Daring!” Will yelled, then reached for Cordelia’s hand and led her outside under the eave as snow whisped and shimmied beyond them. “After one pretend relationship, I want to be sure this is real. No mistletoe required.” His free hand came up to cradle her face, and Will lowered his mouth to hers. The weight of two lifetimes lifted from his shoulders and drifted away in the December air. He feathered his lips across her cheek, smiling as Isaiah stirred.
“Let’s give this holiday thing a try,” Will said, leading a happy Cordelia to the truck. “I vaguely recall the way it goes.”
She hopped inside and took the baby. “This will be so fun. First, we take cookies to all the neighbors. Then, we walk up and down the street caroling. Next—”
“Nice try, Daring.” He leaned in and kissed her again. “How about we go see my family and make a few new memories?”
“Will there be pie?”
“I can guarantee it.”
Her eyes held a promise of so much good. A light where he had seen only dark. Joy where he’d known the prison of grief.
“Then let’s go,” Cordelia said. “But keep the suit.” She patted his now-flat belly and gave him a wink. “It’s not every day a girl gets to kiss Santa.”
Nearly five years ago Will had wished for an end.
But on this sweet Christmas, in a small creekside town, Will Sinclair had found his beginning.
Engaged in Trouble Preview
Ready for more Sylvie and Frannie? Come on back to Sugar Creek, Arkansas, for Engaged in Trouble, book 1 in the Enchanted Events romantic comedy mystery series!
Paisley Sutton shot to stardom as a teenage rock sensation, but ten years later that star has fizzled out, just like her bank account. When she unexpectedly inherits her aunt’s wedding planning business, Paisley leaves the glamour of Los Angeles for a charming small town in Arkansas. She’s got two months to keep Enchanted Events afloat if she wants to sell and rekindle her music career with the profits.
When a Bridezilla’s found facedown in her cake, all fingers point to Paisley as the prime murder suspect. This former pop princess will need the help of her gun-toting, ex-CIA grandmother and her handsome neighbor, Beau Hudson, to unravel the mystery and clear her good name.
Love is in the air this wedding season, but before
Paisley can help the ladies of Sugar Creek say, “I do,” she’s got to unveil a killer. Or find herself the next target.
Chapter One
They say home is where the heart is.
I say home is where my cheating ex-fiancé is, so I really hadn’t ever planned on making a move anywhere near the same time zone as Evan Holbrook.
But then that certified letter came and changed everything.
Sugar Creek, Arkansas, hadn’t been home to me since I’d left town just two weeks shy of high school graduation on a plane to Los Angeles, fueled by the promises of a talent agent and my own youthful arrogance. That had been ten years and many failures ago. And at some point, the failure gets so big, you can’t fit it all in a suitcase and bring it home. So you stay away, promising to return when the favorable winds shift your direction once again.
Sure, I’d been back to Sugar Creek a few times. Like when I let my fiancé talk me into holding our wedding here for some small-town charm and good press.
How was I to know he intended to practically light that press on fire, using my good name as kindling?
My green eyes now lingered on every familiar sight as I drove through this town I’d avoided. The elementary school where I broke my arm in the third grade, attempting a master-level double Dutch move. The two-story Victorian home with a manicured exterior as uptight as the owner, Mrs. Mary Lee Smith, whose claims to fame included being a descendant of Robert E. Lee and surviving five years of me in her cotillion classes. (She told my momma a Lee never had it so bad.) The vacant field near the VFW where they held the summer fair, and where I stood on a flatbed trailer at the age of ten and sang Beyoncé songs to a corndog-eating crowd and knew I’d found my life’s work. Then the Sugar Creek Chapel, a beautiful glass structure that had landed in every bridal magazine as an ideal, quaint wedding location. It had certainly been ideal to me once upon a time.
But then Evan decided to throw some drama into our wedding, leaving me at the altar and bringing shame down on my head, heavy as that ugly veil his momma talked me into wearing. Half the town had been invited to those nuptials. Evan and I had pretty much been the Will and Kate of Sugar Creek. But my prince stopped our ceremony mid-vow, let go of my hand, told me it was over before God and gape-mouthed man, and walked away. The only wedding gift I kept was a chrome toaster—with aspirations of tossing it into Evan’s bathwater.
Fed up with the Southern-drawled whispers and speculative looks, I’d hightailed it back to my beloved LA.
Two years later I found myself back in Sugar Creek. Desperation was the only thing that could slip its hold around my neck like a lasso and drag me back. And desperate I was.
Snap out of it and focus on where you’re going, I told myself, shoving aside memories and broken dreams, bitter as unripe berries. I sounded like the therapist I could no longer afford.
My car, named Shirley, was an old Camry that was a daily insult to the Mercedes convertible I’d had to surrender. Shirley was loud and sassy and liked to shimmy at inappropriate moments, but I guess she got me where I wanted to go. Or in this case, where I didn’t want to go.
The old car shook with a rusty palsy while I did a loop around the square. The heart beating beneath my cotton T-shirt warned me that Sugar Creek was where people dropped by for a visit and never left, buying themselves the corner lot and the picket-fence dream they hadn’t even known they’d wanted. Like many downtowns across this fine country, Sugar Creek had recently begun the process of a restoration, rejuvenating the ghostlike, boarded-up ruins of the past into a bustling community that looked like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The square and its surrounding streets were dotted with small shops, a few bed-and-breakfasts, a bank that still passed out lollipops to your kids.
“Come on, Shirley. You can do it. Just a few streets more.” Perhaps it was my weary imagination, but the car seemed to rally.
A familiar house came into view, a marshmallow-white Queen Anne with a wraparound porch, and a smile lifted my lips.
I might not want to live in Sugar Creek forever, and I might be resentful of why I was there, but nothing compared to finally returning to the sweet, gentle embrace of your beloved grandmother.
Wondering at the cars lining the street, I parked in the driveway of 105 Davis Street, hopped out of Shirley, and ran to the door. Oh, grandmothers. They bake cookies. They play pretend. They tell bedtime stories and sing lullabies and slip you a five-dollar bill when nobody is looking.
And then there’s my grandma.
“State your business,” came a voice from the shrubs. “Or I activate the home security yard gnomes. They’ll shoot pepper spray from their hats and Taser darts straight outta their knickers.”
“Stand down, Agent Hot Stuff.” I grinned. “It’s your beloved granddaughter. I’ve returned to kiss your wrinkled brow and make your life complete in your golden years before we ship you off to Shady Acres.”
Sylvie Sutton, the woman who refused to let me call her grandma to her face, stepped from the shadows. “I’ve paid good money to make sure there are no wrinkles in this brow.” She held out her toned arms. “Come here and give us a kiss, Paisley.”
I ran into her embrace like our own reenactment of The Notebook: Grandparents’ Edition. “I’ve missed you,” I said.
“You, too, shug.” Sylvie stepped back and took a measured study. “Are you eating? Sleeping? You look a little peaked.”
“I look a little broke.” And brokenhearted.
“You’ve come to the right place.” Sylvie slipped her arm around my waist and drew me onto the porch. “Come on inside. You’re just in time for book club.”
Oh, no. The last thing I wanted was to see people and have to make small talk. “I’ve driven a really long way. I just wanted to see you, then grab the keys to the rent house and crash.”
“Uh-huh.” Sylvie held open the screen door. “About that rental . . .”
“Look who’s finally here!” My cousin Emma appeared in the foyer, her eyes bright, her hair perfect, and her hands making little claps of delight. She tackled me in an impressive bear hug. “Run,” she whispered in her ear. “Run while you can. Aunt Maxine’s visiting.”
“I heard that.” Sylvie escorted us past the formal living room and into what she liked to call her parlor. And if parlor meant a place where coasters weren’t required and folks gathered around the giant-screen TV, then parlor it was. “Nobody’s leaving. Paisley just got here.”
“Hello, sweet pea.” My grandmother’s sister, Maxine Simmons, scooped me into a hug, her hands patting all over me as if she were airport security. “Tanned and trim. Could you be any more of a Hollywood cliché?” My crazy great-aunt clucked her tongue. “Someone get this girl a burger. She’s OD’d on salads and tofu.”
“Quit hogging her, Maxine.” Frannie Nelson stood, her lips pulled into a smile that could power the streetlights. “Girl, you bring some of those hugs to me.”
“Hi, Aunt Frannie.”
“You been gone too long.” Frannie could speak five languages, but Southern was her dialect of choice. “It’s about time you got right with Jesus and came on home.”
Frannie and I didn’t share DNA, a last name, or even the same skin color. But she was as family as any blood relative of Sylvie’s. The two shared a unique bond, one that could be trying in the worst of times, entertaining in the best. The two had recently retired from the CIA, having devoted their entire adult lives to intrigue and espionage. To say retirement was going well was like saying World War II was a little historical hiccup. Both women had been mysteriously recruited into the bureau at the age of seventeen under a top-secret program when women were more likely to take care of a home than take a bullet for their country. Sylvie had married her high school sweetheart two weeks before graduation, given him five children by the age of twenty-five, then left most of the child-rearing to her husband. She knew more about bomb detonations than diapers and more about Middle Eastern spies than spaghetti dinners.
And, as Emma had warned me, Sylvie was spending her newfound free time on helping her grandchildren down the aisle. So far Emma had taken the bait, as she was now engaged to the handsome Sugar Creek mayor. But Sylvie would not get me. No, sirree. You could bet your nukes on that one.
“Welcome to Sexy Book Club,” Emma said. “Frannie and Sylvie already have a husband picked out for you.”
“I told Paisley all about him,” Sylvie said. “Have you given my plan any more thought?”
“No,” I said. “I’m still not up for an arranged marriage to an Israeli diplomat.”
Sylvie shared a look with Frannie and Maxine. “Some people just have no sense of romance and peacekeeping.”
The room held a handful of other women of various ages, each clutching tablets or paperbacks in their laps, and all greeting me with familiar warmth or unbridled curiosity.
“You look like you could use some punch and cookies.” Sylvie handed me a plate as I settled onto the couch.
“Thank you.” I blew my limp red hair out of my face. My long locks had started out beautifully straight this morning and were now a hot, humid disaster of curls and frizz. “I really can’t stay, though.”
“What’s brought you back home, toots?” Aunt Maxine asked.
“I’m just here for a little while,” I said. “Home is in Los Angeles.”
“She’s inherited her great-aunt’s wedding planning business,” Sylvie said.
My weird great-aunt Zelda, who’d had no children, had left me and my two siblings all she had. My brother had received money. My younger sister a bunch of stock held in a trust. Me? The woman had strongly disliked me and willed me her dying business. Such was my luck.
I caught my grandmother’s eye. “I’m dead on my feet. Can I just get the keys for the rental and—”
“Let’s talk about Cordero.” Sylvie held up her iPad like a chalice, her voice booming in the room. “Did everyone read the whole book this time?”
Every head nodded.
His Mistletoe Miracle Page 15