The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Carrie (9 page)
Read The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Carrie Online
Authors: Lori Wilde
Her heart pounded so hard she feared it would explode. She could hear the throb, throb, throbbing in her ears. Her entire body vibrated with the force of it.
Carrie looked down and saw a black velvet box clutched in his hand. He thumbed it open and the biggest diamond engagement ring she’d ever seen caught the light and sparkled.
“I told you when we got married the first time that one day I would buy you the kind of diamond ring you deserved.” His voice quavered. “Here I am, keeping my promise. Carrie MacGregor, will you do me the honor of becoming my bride? This time forever and always?”
“Mark,” she whispered. “Oh, Mark.”
Then tears were flowing down her face, and she was out of the chair and into his arms and kissing his face all over. His eyelids, his nose, his cheeks, his chin.
Mark laughed and wrapped his arms around her, still on one knee. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes.” She slung her arms around his neck and squeezed so tightly they both had trouble drawing in breath.
He stood up, taking Carrie with him. Then with his arm around her waist, he turned to face Iris Tobin and the camera. “Looks like this is one myth that has just been confirmed. In Twilight, Texas, true love really does conquer all.”
C
arrie MacGregor loved Christmas.
She adored the carolers on the street corners, even though a couple of them were singing off-key. She treasured the artificial Douglas fir her friends had put up in the window of her shop for customers and the passing tourists to enjoy. She cherished the wreath hung from every intersection on the town square and The Sweetheart Tree in the park, hung with paper Christmas angels. She loved wassail and peppermint candy canes and popcorn garlands.
Yes, okay, she was a Christmas cliché—the fanatic who wasn’t happy until everything was gift wrapped or covered in tinsel. Every family had one. Merry Christmas!
Her only goal for the next month was to enjoy every single minute of the holiday with her new fiancé. Yes, Carrie loved Christmas, but not half as much as she loved Mark.
They walked hand-in-hand through the town square, taking in the annual Dickens-on-the-Square event. Street vendors sold food from carts—roasted chestnuts, turkey legs, spiced apple cider. Reenactors were dressed in Victorian grab from Beefeaters to English bobbies to Charles Dickens himself. The courthouse square hosted Santa’s workshop and children ran giggling about. The air was cool. A right nice fifty degrees.
After the interview in which Mark proposed to Carrie on the camera, the
Fact or Fantasy
crew had packed up and left Twilight. They still had no idea whether Burt Mernit was going to run the episode or not. They didn’t care. Mark was home to stay, and for once Carrie believed he was right where he was supposed to be.
With her.
He led her down the street to the walkway leading to Sweetheart Park. White twinkle lights decorated every tree in the park. They traveled along the wooden bridge spanning a narrow creek that was an offshoot of the Brazos, and they ended up in the middle of the park where the statue of Jon Grant and Rebekka Nash locked in a passionate embrace graced the flowing stone fountain.
“Got a penny?” Carrie asked.
Grinning, Mark fished in his pocket and produced a copper coin.
Carrie plucked it from her fingers, made a wish for a happy-ever-after love, and tossed it into the fountain. It hit with a merry splash.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you look right now?” Mark murmured, drawing her close.
She nuzzled his neck. “You say the sweetest things.”
“Only because they’re true. I’m so sorry that it too me so long to get here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. You’re here at last.”
“I had to come back.” He smiled. “We were fated after all.”
“Joined from the first time we laid eyes on each other in study hall.”
“Linked for life.”
“There’s no escape.”
“If this is prison,” he said. “Lock me up and throw away the key.” Then Mark dipped his head and kissed her, proving once and for all that the sweetheart legend lived on . . .
To learn what happened
to the Twilight bridge,
go to Lori Wilde’s
The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club
From Avon Books
More holiday fun in Twilight, Texas!
DON’T MISS THE NEXT TWO INSTALLMENTS OF
The Christmas Cookie Chronicles
By
New York Times
Bestselling author
Lori Wilde
The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Raylene
on sale November 29, 2011
The Christmas Cookie Chronicles: Christine
on sale December 13, 2011
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Excerpt from
THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES: RAYLENE
D
own at the Horny Toad Tavern off Highway 377 in Twilight, Texas, Elvis Presley was singing, “Blue Christmas.”
The jukebox music sounded tinny and far away as it bled through the door into the crisp night air. Weather reports predicted temperatures would slide below freezing by morning and listeners had been urged to bring in plants and pets. No holiday lights decorated the building as they had in previous years. Other then Elvis’s mournful tune, the establishment gave no hint that Christmas was on the way. Only a few cars sat in the parking lot, sparse for a Saturday night, but most of the hamlet’s denizens were out celebrating the annual Dickens on the Square.
In the thick of darkening shadows from the cedar copse rimming the outskirts of the parking lot, a silent figure in a red suit, long white beard and shiny black boots waited, watching the back entrance of the tavern, hungry to catch a glimpse of one person in particular.
After an interminable half-hour, just shortly before midnight, the rear door to the Horny Toad opened, hinges creaking in the cold and letting out the strain of the Eagles singing “Please Come Home for Christmas”.
The watcher tensed, heart pounding and wind-burned hands fisted inside the pockets of the Santa costume.
A woman appeared. Once upon a time she’d possessed beautiful blond hair, but now it had grown steely gray.
The watcher’s breath caught. She had stopped dying her hair.
She carried a black garbage bag, heavy with clanking bottles, and started toward the Dumpster, her movements graceful as always. Years ago she’d been a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and she’d kept her slender, hourglass figure even into her sixth decade of life. But instead of the mini-skirts she usually favored because she had the most sensational legs of any woman in town no matter what their age, she wore oversized blue jeans and a gray wool sweater with a saggy hem.
The watcher’s tongue moistened parched tips. Wishing. Wishing for so many things. Wishing, but unable to make those dreams come true. You couldn’t turn back the clock, no matter how hard you might try. Redemption was so close and yet so far away.
The garbage bag made a muffled thumping sound when it landed in the Dumpster. The air smelled of juniper and wood smoke. She dusted her hands and turned toward the bar. Her breath came out in frosty puffs. The moonlight caught her face. Her eyes were worn thin, exhausted.
The watcher shifted in the darkness, gut twisting.
Don’t go. Stay. Stay so I can see you for just a little while longer. One last time.
She paused and looked out into the darkness, her face a portrait for abject bleakness.
A lump blocked the watcher’s throat.
The woman shook her head, pushed open the door. Roy Orbison was singing “Pretty Paper”. Sad songs. All sad Christmas songs. She stepped inside, the door snapping shut behind her.
A single chilly tear tracked down the watcher’s cheek.
Gone. Everything once loved and taken for granted was now forever gone.
LORI WILDE
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of more than fifty books. A former RITA finalist, Lori has received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Holt Medallion, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice, and numerous other honors. She lives in Weatherford, Texas, with her husband and a wide assortment of pets. You may write to Lori at PO Box 31, Weatherford, TX 76086, or e-mail her via her home page at www.loriwilde.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES: CARRIE
. Copyright © 2011 by Laurie Vanzura. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition November 2011 ISBN: 9780062116949
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