Getting In the Spirit: a Sapphire Falls novella (3 page)

Phoebe grinned. “Well, yeah,
now
. But I had to teach him to scrape and shovel. He grew up in Vegas.”

And he’d been darned cute the first time he’d tried to maneuver the snow blower. Phoebe grinned, remembering him banging into the house, proclaiming he was about to die of frost bite if she didn’t warm him up immediately. They’d been naked and very, very warm within minutes.

“So get on a plane and go somewhere with snow,” Phoebe said. “If that’s all you need to feel better about the best holiday all year, then that’s easy.”

“Oh, it’s not just the Hawaii and snow thing,” Kate said. “The past three Christmases, I’ve had boyfriend issues. This year, I’m staying inside. Away from Christmas and guys and any thoughts of combining the two. I’m going to hunker down with junk food and Marvel until New Year’s is past. Then I’m going to get up, go back to my regular routine and forget there even was a Christmas this year.”

“You can’t do that,” Phoebe protested. She loved Christmas. Everything about it. And Sapphire Falls did Christmas big. It was like every holiday movie, song or story ever told. She hated the idea her friend would be down on Christmas.

“I can,” Kate assured her. “I’ll be okay.”

“Tell me about these guys that have ruined Christmas for you.”

Kate sighed. “Three years ago, I caught my boyfriend kissing one of the girls I work with at our Christmas party. Cliché, I know, but it hurt.”

“Of course it did,” Phoebe said sympathetically.

“The next year, my boyfriend dumped me on Christmas Day. We were supposed to have dinner with his family, and at the last minute, he decided that he wasn’t serious enough about me to introduce me to his parents. We’d been dating exclusively for six months at that point. I decided if he wasn’t serious by then, he wouldn’t be serious.”

“I think that was a good choice.” Phoebe mentally thanked Heaven for Joe. She’d found the man of her dreams and she was never going to have to be back out there dating ever again.

“And then last year, my boyfriend stole two of my credit cards and my car. On Christmas Eve.”

Phoebe gasped. The two women in the aisle with her—one of them the mother of one of Phoebe’s students and the other her aunt Karen—both looked over. She gave them a smile and a wave.

“Wow, honey, you have had a rough few Christmases.”

“I’ve never had a good Christmas.” Kate sounded totally dejected. “I can’t handle watching it all happen around me. People are walking along the sidewalks, holding hands, picking out gifts. I turn on the TV and it’s all these movies about falling in love at Christmas. I turn on the radio and it’s all about it being cold outside—which it’s not here—and how people are rocking around the Christmas tree. While I’m here alone wishing I could be rocking
under
the Christmas tree. I can’t take it.”

Phoebe snorted. “You have a Christmas tree fantasy?”

“I do,” Kate said with feeling. “I really do. The room’s dark, the only lights on are from the fireplace and the lights on the tree…” She trailed off. “But I don’t even have a fireplace.”

Phoebe stopped with a bunch of bananas in hand. “Tell me you have a tree, Kate,” she said. “Please tell me you have a tree.”

“Nope. No tree. I told you, no Christmas here this year.”

Well, that was unacceptable.

“You need to go buy a plane ticket,” Phoebe decided. “I have snow, a tree, a fireplace and…” She thought fast. She couldn’t let this sweet woman spend the holiday alone ignoring that there even was a holiday. What Kate needed was Sapphire Falls. No one could
not
be in the Christmas spirit in Sapphire Falls. “And I have a nice, sweet, cute country boy to make you feel all better.”

Her wheels were turning. She needed to set Kate up with someone. Someone nice. Someone who would be a gentleman. Someone who could give her a good romantic Christmas memory to erase all the bad ones.

It wouldn’t have to be true love. A fun holiday fling would be perfect.

“You do?” Kate asked. “Are you kidding?”

Phoebe was
really
glad they weren’t on Skype where Kate might be able to tell that Phoebe was making this up as she went. “Yes, of course. You can’t breathe the air or drink the water here without getting in the Christmas spirit,” Phoebe said. “And I was wondering what to get you as a gift.”

Kate laughed. “You’re giving me a sweet country boy as a Christmas gift?”

“I’m giving you one perfect Christmas. We have it all here, honey. You’ll feel like you stepped into a movie.”

Who was she going to set Kate up with though? She thought through the single guys in town.

“You’re going to make a guy take me out for Christmas?”

“Oh, yeah,” Phoebe scoffed. “What a hardship. I bring a beautiful, classy, smart, sweet girl to town and ask him to take her to the Christmas formal. I’m sure he’ll never forgive me.”

“Well…”

Phoebe detected a definite note of interest. Kate wasn’t shooting her down anyway.

“I do love snow. So much. And I’ve never been to a small town at Christmas.”

“I’m telling you, it’s like falling into the North Pole here,” Phoebe said. She unloaded her cart onto the conveyor belt at the checkout and smiled at the cashier. She’d had Tiffany in class last year.

“So who’s the guy?” Kate finally asked.

Yes, who indeed? The most eligible bachelors in town forever had been the Bennett boys, but Travis was definitely no longer single, and TJ was way too grumpy to give a girl a nice sweet Christmas.

Which left…

Phoebe felt her smile spread. He was perfect. He was sweet, cute and romantic but wouldn’t take it too seriously if Phoebe told him her friend was in town for only a few days and for the formal. Hell, he’d probably love to romance Kate, have a fling and then say goodbye.

“His name is Tucker Bennett,” Phoebe told her.

She heard Kate take a deep breath. Phoebe held her breath, waiting for Kate’s decision.

“I can be there in a couple of days.”

Phoebe breathed and grinned. “Awesome. This will be so fun. We can make cookies and go for a sleigh ride and—
dammit.
”

Tiffany looked up, startled.

“What?” Kate asked.

Phoebe swiped her debit card through the machine and sighed. “We’re going to be out of town for the next few days. DC parties.” She frowned. “Hey, why aren’t you going to DC to the parties?”

“I backed out,” Kate said. “Told my boss that the holidays bring up lots of negative emotions and I couldn’t handle the parties. He and his wife are going. He’s actually thrilled.”

Phoebe hated the idea of Kate staying in California. She was afraid if Kate got her takeout and got the movie marathon going there would be no getting her out of her apartment, not to mention on a plane. “Come anyway. I can give you directions to the house. We leave a key under the ceramic frog next to the porch.” She had no problem saying that out loud in the middle of the grocery store. The few people in Sapphire Falls who did lock their doors had similar ceramic creatures near their porches sitting on their spare keys. “You can come, make yourself at home, enjoy the tree and fireplace. You can watch Netflix here. We’ll be home in a few days and it will all be good.”

Kate was quiet for a long moment.

Phoebe nodded when Hunter, the kid who was bagging groceries, asked if she wanted him to carry her bags to the car.

She was opening her trunk for Hunter when Kate finally said, “That sounds really nice.”

“Awesome. This is going to be the best Christmas, I promise.”

Kate laughed. “Well, it wouldn’t take much.”

Chapter Two

If a hundred of Santa’s elves had eaten too many Christmas cookies and thrown up all over, the town square in Sapphire Falls would have been the result.

Levi sat behind the wheel of his rented Maserati coup and stared.

There were four Christmas trees, one on each corner of the square, fully decorated. There was a gingerbread house—big enough that three or four young kids could fit inside. There was a life-sized sleigh. At least a dozen five-foot plastic candy canes lined the sidewalk. Plastic ornaments in various shapes, all about the size of car tires, hung from the branches of the non-evergreen trees in the square. A gazebo with a huge throne-like chair and a banner that read
Welcome to Sapphire Falls, Santa
occupied the center of the square. And, no shit, there was a penned-in area next to one of the trees that had two real, living, breathing reindeer munching on hay.

As if even Mother Nature was conspiring for a perfect Christmas scene, there was also a slight dusting of powdery white snow over everything.

“Holy sleigh bells.”

He’d fallen into a fricking Christmas card.

Just like Joe had said.

His brother had used words like idyllic and quaint to describe the place, and he’d sent photos of town events that Levi had, in all honesty, thought were fake. Levi knew it was a small country town that prided itself on its welcoming, homey feel. But…wow.

He parked the car in front of the grocery store and got out. It wasn’t hard to find the businesses in Sapphire Falls. They were all clustered around the square. A block away from the square in any direction took you into residential areas. The one exception was south of the square. A block off of the grassy area was the main highway that went past Sapphire Falls, and along the highway was a gas station, the Come Again bar and the little strip mall area that housed several local businesses, including a homemade furniture shop, a card and stationary shop and Scott’s Sweets, a candy shop and bakery.

Overhead, Levi heard the soft strains of Silver Bells and he glanced up. He couldn’t find where they’d hidden the speakers, but he did see that there were indeed silver bells hanging from the lamp posts that dotted the street in both directions.

There was no way the Ghost of Christmas Future would mess with him here. Levi felt a huge grin stretch across his face. Simply breathing the air here was making him a better person. He didn’t even mind the nearly thirty degree drop in temperature or the fact he could see his breath. It was refreshing. Exactly what he needed. Sweet beyond description.

There was mistletoe around here somewhere. He just knew it.

Grinning like a damned idiot, Levi headed into the store and grabbed shampoo and the other toiletries he hated to pack and headed to pay. He was aware that he was drawing attention from the other shoppers and store employees and he gave them all his most sincere smiles. He had to behave here. This was Joe’s hometown. No hitting on the cute girl shopping in aisle three. No flirting with the beautiful forty-something buying apples. No making the young—very young—cashier blush.

Back in his car, he started toward Joe’s place. He had instructions printed off from Joe’s email. He knew Joe and Phoebe lived out in the country outside of town, and Levi couldn’t wait to see this. Sapphire Falls
was
the country as far as Levi was concerned.

He’d only gotten about a mile outside of town and turned onto the dirt road when he realized that his brother no longer drove a sports car, not because he’d matured and no longer put his self-worth in material things, but because a low-slung coupe was impractical on roads that were gravel and mud and snow.

Creeping along, praying as he went that he wouldn’t get stuck out here where he had no one to call and no idea how exactly to get to Joe’s on foot, Levi made it another mile before there was another road. He glanced at the directions in his lap. He didn’t dare actually stop the car for fear of not getting it going again so he kept moving as he read the tiny type. Why hadn’t he increased the font size? He was supposed to go another hundred yards and he’d find Joe’s driveway.

One hundred yards later there was another dirt road. This was narrower, bordered on both sides by big old trees and with two deep ruts running from the road up to the house he could see in the distance. Deep ruts that were obviously caused by truck tires.

Awesome.

He turned in, grimacing as he heard and felt the crusty snow underneath dragging along the bottom of the car.

He finally made it to the house, pulled over onto a flat slab of cement beside the garage and turned off the ignition. Thank goodness.

At least, he hoped this was Joe’s place. And he hoped that his brother’s truck was here and that they’d left the keys.

The front door key was under the ceramic frog as Joe had said it would be, and a minute later, Levi let himself into the farm house with his suitcase and grocery sack.

He let the bags fall as he took in a big lungful of air. The house smelled amazing. It was neat and homey. There were no Christmas decorations up yet, but it was only the twentieth and Joe and Phoebe were supposed to be home on the twenty-second. They’d all decorate together. Levi felt a surge of happiness. Pure, unadulterated happiness. It had nothing to do with a winning poker hand or a shot of alcohol or a woman’s cleavage. It was about feeling at home, warm, safe, cared about.

Levi Spencer would never ever admit it to anyone, ever, but when Joe had invited him to Sapphire Falls, Levi had felt his heart actually swell. The organ he’d thought shriveled like a raisin long ago had thumped in his chest, reminding him that it was there and working.