Spoonful of Christmas (3 page)

But as she drew closer, she also saw that the beautiful wreath with pinecones and shiny gold balls that Nathaniel had put on the front door was also missing.

Worse, Rachel stood in front of the Creative Cupcakes window tossing her head like a red bull. Kim, the least likely one to show emotion, waved her clenched fists in the air.

“What’s wrong?” Andi asked, quickening her pace as she made her way to them.

“Creative Cupcakes has been vandalized!” Rachel exclaimed.

Andi gasped. “What!”

Rachel and Kim stepped away from the window, and instead of Kim’s pretty paintings, a new image decorated the glass.

A big, hairy, green, sharp-toothed Grinch.

Chapter Three

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.

—Roy L. Smith

A
NDI STARED AT
the green monster, wishing it were a weekday when Mia and Taylor were in school, but being a Saturday, they were right behind her.

“Grinch!” Taylor cried. “I’m scared of the Grinch!”

Taylor hugged Andi’s legs, almost tripping her. But Mia drew closer to the storefront wreckage.

“The Grinch hurt Frosty,” Mia said, pointing to the pile of white vinyl.

Andi glanced at the doorknob, where a long string of jingle bells had dangled, and the top of the window, where they had strung Christmas lights. What did the thief do with them?

“If I catch whoever did this,” Andi growled, “I’m going to wring his little neck.”

“Not if I get to him first,” Kim said. “He painted over everything I did yesterday.”

Rachel pursed her lips. “You have to admit the vandal is a pretty good artist. Although whoever did this got his Christmas stories crossed.”

“What do you mean?” Mia asked, coming over to investigate.

“See the words painted beneath the face of the Grinch?” Rachel explained, tapping her fingernails against the glass. “ ‘Bah humbug’ is a famous saying from
A Christmas Carol,
you know, the story about Scrooge.”

Kim bent toward the Grinch and looked more closely. “Looks like he started to use spray paint but then switched over to brushes.”

Andi went and stood next to her and studied the artwork. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s angry,” Kim assured her, “but notice the intricate brushstroke design, the detail he put into the facial expression? I think deep down inside, he’s also an artist who cares about his work.”

Andi frowned. “At least he cares about
something.
”

“So there’s still hope for him?” Mia asked, turning to face her.

Andi nodded. “There’s always hope.”

W
HEN
O
FFICER
I
AN
Lockwell arrived at the shop, he helped Andi review the security camera footage shot the night before. Unfortunately the lens faced into the shop and not toward the outside.

“I don’t understand,” Andi grumbled. “Why would anyone do this?”

Mia stopped taping red and green strips of paper into a chain to answer her. “Because his heart is too small.”

Rachel laughed. “Yes, in the story the Grinch needed a bigger heart.”

Andi pulled out a new three-ring binder decorated with flying reindeer—which Mia had picked out—and spread it open on the front counter.

“Our new Cupcake Diary,” she announced.

On page 1 she had recorded the recipe for Mistletoe Magic cupcakes. Taking a pen, she wrote on page 2,
How to catch a Grinch.

“A trap?” Rachel suggested.

“Another security camera?” Kim offered.

Mia shook her blond braids back and forth. “
Love
. Didn’t you see the cartoon on TV? You have to catch the Grinch with love.”

Ian chuckled. “How do you do that?”

“I’m going to make him a present,” Mia declared.

Andi exchanged smiles with Rachel and Kim as Mia took out her crayons and began to color a picture.

“I’m going to make a present for Max, too,” Mia added.

“Who’s Max?” Andi inquired.

“He’s the boy under the table.”

Andi glanced at Taylor. “Did you see a boy?”

Taylor shook her head, and Andi bit her lip.

After her divorce, Mia had been upset and developed an imaginary friend to help her deal with her emotions. Was this Mia’s way of covering her fear of the vandalism?

Mia’s eighteen-year-old babysitter, Heather, who doubled as one of their employees, walked through the front door. “Sorry I’m late for work. Traffic was terrible. Everyone’s Christmas shopping.”

Guy Armstrong, the white-ponytailed tattoo artist from the building next door, entered the shop behind her. “Carolers are strolling the streets singing and carrying on about glad tidings of joy and whatever. I’ll be glad when the whole holiday season is behind us.”

“What’s the matter, Guy?” Kim teased. “Don’t you like Christmas?”

“No, I don’t. It’s all a bunch of commercial nonsense, everyone spending all their hard-earned money on gifts they don’t even need. And there’s no sense putting up a tree and making a fuss when I’m all alone.”

Mia’s mouth popped open. “Guy, are you the Grinch?”

Guy laughed. “No, and I’m not Santa Claus either.”

Mia made a face. “I know that. Of course you aren’t Santa. You’re silly, Guy.”

“So now I’m a silly guy?” he joked.

“No,” Andi told him, as she took one of her newest baked treats out of the glass display case and handed it to him. “You’re just in desperate need of a Mistletoe Magic cupcake. And we’re in desperate need of another set of eyes on our shop at night.”

“Sure,” Guy agreed. “What am I looking for?”

Andi smiled. “Anyone who wants to steal Christmas.”

R
ACHEL DIDN’T REALIZE
Mike had come up behind her in the kitchen until he pulled the long scroll of yellow notepaper out of her hands.

“Are you making a list and checking it twice?” he teased.

“You aren’t supposed to see!” she squealed as she tried to get the paper back.

“Why not?” Mike grinned. “There shouldn’t be anything for me on there since we agreed not to get each other Christmas gifts this year, right?”

Rachel hesitated. “A fun gift under five dollars wouldn’t count, would it?”

Mike frowned. “Rachel—”

“Okay, okay, no gifts,” she agreed. “There’s no extra money anyway. Mike, I think we’ve made a mistake. We should never have decided to get married on Christmas Eve.”

A look of uncertainty flashed across his face. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“Not about marrying
you
,” Rachel amended. “But about the date. I didn’t realize we’d have to budget money for the wedding
and
Christmas at the same time.”

“We could elope.”

“Mike, I’m serious.”

“So am I. If we skip out of town, you won’t have to worry about your crazy cousin Stacey ruining the wedding.”

“Good point,” she said and grinned. “But my mother spent countless hours sewing my wedding dress, not to mention the dresses of my bridesmaids, and she wants the whole town to see. Besides, that doesn’t solve our dilemma over Christmas gifts. What are we going to get Grandpa Lewy?”

“Easy. All he ever wants is cupcakes.”

“We can’t give
everyone
cupcakes for Christmas.”

“Why not?”

Rachel laughed. “All right. Cupcakes it is.”

Mike pulled her into his arms, glanced up at the mistletoe hanging above them, and gave her a warm kiss. “Selling ‘Cupcakes’ to that businessman would be the only other way to pay for everything on your list.”

“If it were up to me,” Rachel whispered, her eyes on the double doors of the kitchen, “I’d take the money and run.”

“You would?” Mike asked, surprised. “I would, too.”

“You think we should accept the offer?”

“Yeah, but it’s not
my
business, so I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Rachel winced. “But how do I tell Andi?”

“You could stick a note into the Cupcake Diary,” Mike suggested.

“Andi would
kill me.
She’s got her heart set on keeping Creative Cupcakes, and together, she and Jake own half the shop’s business shares.”

“One-fourth of one-point-two million is three hundred thousand.” Mike gave her a mischievous grin. “With my salary and the extra money, we could move to Hollywood, closer to the studios I work for, and you wouldn’t have to work at all.”

“What
would
I do?” She pursed her lips as she considered. “Get my nails done? Shop for new furniture? Audition for a TV commercial?”

“We could start a family.” Mike brushed the side of her face with his finger. “Wouldn’t you like to be a mom?”

“I—I don’t know. I’d like to concentrate on the wedding first. You know, make sure I don’t trip down the aisle in my high heels and fall flat on my face.”

“If you trip, I’ll catch you,” Mike promised. “You know I will always be there for you.”

Even if she didn’t want kids right away? She loved Mia and had recently gotten to know Taylor, but she’d never done much babysitting. And changing dirty diapers was not her idea of fun.

Maybe it was a good thing Andi wanted to keep the shop. While money would be nice, she wasn’t sure she was in sync with Mike’s idea of what they should do with it.

K
IM PICKED UP
one of the green wreaths piled around the greenhouse at Sjölander’s Nursery and breathed in the strong, fresh pine scent. “I love the smell of Christmas.”

“I have over one hundred wreaths if you have the urge to sniff them all,” Nathaniel teased, reminding her of the day they met.

She’d mistaken his backyard for the local park and had vowed to sniff one hundred roses, one for every item on her to-do list. “No, I can smell them all from right here.”

Nathaniel finished tying the last of the red velvet bows on the wreaths he’d put together that night, then handed her a box wrapped in brown paper from his table. The stamps on it indicated it was from Sweden.

“My sister sent you a Christmas gift,” Nathaniel told her. “Go ahead, open it.”

Kim had made friends with Nathaniel’s sister, Linnea, when they visited his family two months before. His mother, however, still held a grudge against Kim for smashing the beautiful cupcakes at Fredrik and his bride Maria’s Astoria wedding. The forbidding woman didn’t understand that she’d had to find Andi’s engagement ring, which had fallen into the batter during preparation.

“God Jul . . . Och Ett Gott Nytt Ar!”
Kim read off the gift tag. “What does it mean?”

Nathaniel grinned. “Merry Christmas . . . and a Happy New Year.”

She tore off the brown paper, then opened the box and lifted the gift from its soft tissue wrapping. A small round plate held four white taper candles. In the very middle was a mobile of bells and angels.

“Angel chimes,” Nathaniel explained. “A traditional Scandinavian holiday decoration.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kim said, appreciating the intricate detail.

“Let me show you how it works.” Nathaniel took a lighter from his pocket and lit the candles. “The heat from the candles spins the top, causing the angels to tap the bells.”

Kim watched the metal angel cutouts turn under the small bells and listened to the tinkling sound they made. “All the angels are shown blowing horns.”

“The chimes symbolize the noise of the heavenly host trumpeting the news of the Christ child’s birth to the shepherds.”

“This is wonderful,” Kim told him. “I’ll call your sister to thank her. But—”

“But what?” he asked, sitting down on a wooden crate beside her.

“Don’t you want to fly home for Christmas? Without me?”

“My family understands you are in a wedding and that I want to be with you.” He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, then gave her a hug. “I thought we could go to Sweden for New Year’s.”

“Rachel will be away on her honeymoon,” Kim said, shaking her head. “I’ll need to stay and help Andi run the shop.”

“What if I buy tickets for the week after?”

“Is that what you plan to get me for Christmas? Tickets?”

Nathaniel pulled back to look at her. “Is that what you want?”

Kim’s throat tightened. Why was it so hard to explain to him what she was feeling? Instead, she asked, “What do
you
want? For
us
?”

Nathaniel laughed. “I want to travel the world . . . with you for a whole year straight.”

“Didn’t we already travel the world these past six months?”

“There’s so much more to see and do and experience.”

“We’d never be able to afford such a trip.”

“You’d never leave the shop for that long, unless . . .” He grinned.

“Unless?” she prompted.

“Not unless we sold both our businesses,” Nathaniel said. He gave her an expectant look. “Can you imagine?”

Kim shook her head. “No, I can’t. You know I love to travel, but lately . . . I’m longing for more.”

“Like an underwater dive into the canyons of the deep?” he suggested.

Kim frowned. “No.”

“Or like a rocket ship ride to the moon?”

He laughed, and she realized he was teasing her. She smiled back. “No. I had something different in mind.”

“How about one hundred kisses?” he asked, drawing his face near.

“Only a hundred?”

She expected him to close the distance between his mouth and hers, but instead he whispered, his tone serious, “What do
you
want for us, Kimberly?”

She hesitated, unable to conjure up the courage to tell him for fear he’d break up with her. And she couldn’t lose him. Not before Christmas.

“One hundred kisses sounds perfect,” she replied.
For now.

Chapter Four

Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.

—Janice Maeditere

M
AX SPOTTED A
man in a blue sport jacket knocking on the door of the square, white, one-story cottage he shared with his foster parents and skidded the rusted bicycle he’d borrowed to a stop.

“There’s no one home,” Max called over to him. “They left this morning.”

The man turned around, and Max sucked in his breath. It was Mia’s new stepdad, the one she’d pointed out at the cupcake shop.