We Need a Little Christmas

“Scott?” she said, knowing he'd turn his head.

She could thank him for being here, for making this past week so much easier than it would have been without him. Or she could just do what she wanted to do.

So, when Scott turned his head, she leaned toward him, hearing the sudden clamoring of her own heart, and it seemed the temperature of the air between them changed. She brushed his lips tentatively with hers, afraid he'd pull away, thinking,
This is how he felt the other night.
It was scary, going out on a limb. Heat shimmered through her as their lips connected, and she hung suspended, waiting to see if she was about to be humiliated. Whether she'd get back what she'd given him the other night.

Instead, his arms fit easily around her, as if he were catching her from a fall. He pulled her closer, his lips meeting hers, joining them together. So gentle, yet so wonderfully solid. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his arms folded more firmly around her, and now her heart pounded not from fear, but something else entirely. He deepened the kiss, and Liv forgot all about the cold. All about the attic. All about anything but the way it felt being in his arms and letting time stop . . .

NO CHRISTMAS LIKE THE PRESENT

 

DO YOU BELIEVE IN SANTA?

 

WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

 

 

We Need a Little Christmas

SIERRA DONOVAN

ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

 

Copyright © 2016 by Sierra Donovan

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

 

Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

ISBN: 978-1-4201-4150-4

ISBN-10: 1-4201-4150-3

 

eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-4151-1
eISBN-10: 1-4201-4151-1

 

We Need a Little Christmas
is a love letter to my family. While it reflects the jumble of feelings you tend to find in a roomful of women, it's also a work of fiction. Any attempts to take the characters and events literally will only lead to confusion.

However, just for the record, anyone reading this book should know:

But we really did have one of those silver aluminum Christmas trees. I still love them, in all their kitschy glory.

Chapter 1

It shouldn't be hard to recognize her own sister.

But as Liv Tomblyn scanned the faces in the crowded baggage claim area, she was starting to have her doubts.

She couldn't find Rachel in the post-Thanksgiving throng of travelers at the airport. Maybe she'd gotten a haircut, or changed the color, or something else to throw Liv off. She found herself trying to picture Rachel's Facebook photo, wondering how recent it was. Her clearest mental image was the way her sister had looked four years ago, the last time Liv had come back to California. Rachel had been straightening the curl out of her strawberry blond hair then . . .

When you tried to picture your little sister from her Facebook photo, you'd been away too long. And it shouldn't take your grandmother's memorial service to bring you home.

Liv checked her phone again for messages or texts. Nothing. Giving up for the moment, she turned to the baggage carousel as it made another round. She sighted the larger of her two red suitcases—she'd chosen the luggage because it was easy to spot—and stepped forward to reach for it.

“Here, let me get that.” A male voice spoke behind her, to her left, and a hand reached past her to snag the suitcase.

“Hey—” she began, then followed the hand up its arm to the face of the owner. It was a long way up, but she recognized the face, the sandy brown hair and the blue eyes that regarded her with what looked like mild amusement.

“Hi, Liv.”

“Scotty?”

She hadn't seen him since graduation, but there was no mistaking Scotty Leroux, the class clown for all her years growing up in Tall Pine. The fact that he was about six-foot-five helped. Which meant he must have just gotten here, because he would have stood out even in the holiday mob. His eyes held the same glimmer, as if he were about to laugh at something. Back in the day, Liv had never been sure whether the joke was on her.

“Rachel sent me.” His resonant voice cut through the rumble of voices around them. “She hit a snag on her way out the door.”

“What—”

“Nothing major. Let's get out of this mess and I'll tell you about it. How many bags have you got?”

“Just one more.” A frown creased her forehead. “Another red suitcase. But—”

Setting the first bag on its end, Scotty shifted his focus over her head and past her to the carousel. “That one?”

She followed his nod to the smaller bag now rounding the corner of the conveyor belt on its way toward them. Yes, sir, red luggage did the trick. Liv stepped forward. “I'll get that one.”

Scotty passed her with one easy stride, taking advantage of his longer arms to reach the suitcase before Liv could get to it. “Whoa.” He hefted the bag. “The little one's heaver than the big one. What have you got in here?”

She answered reluctantly. “Shoes.”

“What are you, a centipede?” Scotty's mouth lifted in the teasing grin she recalled from nearly ten years ago.

She tried to ignore the embarrassment that rushed in. Why did she feel the urge to explain herself? “I like having options.”

“I guess so.” He raised his eyebrows, looking from the two suitcases on the floor back to Liv. “How long are you staying?”

“Through Christmas. There's a lot to do.” Liv steadied her voice. “Mom and Rachel and I need to sort through Nammy's whole house. And she lived there for sixty years.”

“I know.” Scotty's voice softened, and this time there was no trace of kidding in his expression. “I'm sorry about your grandma. She was a nice lady.”

“Thanks.” Liv's eyes prickled, but no way was she going to break down in an airport. Breaking down wasn't something she tended to do anyway. It never did any good, and there was always something more useful to do.

Scotty surprised her by giving her arm a quick squeeze, and Liv tried to figure out this strange new world she appeared to have landed in. She'd known Scotty the way everybody knew everybody at Tall Pine High: this one's a brain, this one's a cheerleader. She remembered him as lean and gangly, on the goofy side. Not a grown-up, and certainly not someone to call in a sudden emergency. He'd filled out physically, gotten more solid. And for some reason, her sister had called him.

What was the emergency? A
snag
, he'd called it. She needed details.

She opened her mouth to ask again, but he turned to lead her through the automatic sliding exit doors, carrying the small suitcase in one hand, pulling the large one along on its wheels with the other. Liv followed as she tried to formulate her questions. She wondered how well he'd known her grandmother. Why her sister wasn't here.

And why, of all people, had she called Scotty Leroux?

Outside, he came to a stop next to the wall of the building and set her suitcases on the sidewalk. There was somewhat less confusion out here; the jumble of voices gave way to the sound of cars and their doors as people pulled up to the curb to load and unload.

“So what's going on?” Liv asked.

Again, no trace of teasing in the usually-laughing blue eyes.

“Your mom fell,” he said. “Rachel says it's not a big deal, and not to worry. She wanted me to make sure you understood that. She didn't call or text you because she didn't want you to have extra time to stress before I got here. She says your mom just landed hard on her knee, and she couldn't put any weight on it. So Rachel took her to the walk-in urgent care center and called me to get you.”

“She fell? How?” Random falling was what old people did. Her mom was only fifty-seven. Her grandmother had been eighty-three, and she'd never fallen once.

Not that Liv knew of, anyway.

“I didn't get all the details. Rachel just kept saying for you not to worry.”

“Okay.” Liv took a second to close her eyes and re-assimilate.

Don't worry
sounded like a surefire cue to worry, especially when your grandmother just died, you were already rattled, your mom fell, and your sister sent a former classmate instead of coming to pick you up at the airport herself.

Liv pulled out her cell phone and dialed Rachel's number. It went straight to voice mail. She considered leaving a message, reconsidered and hung up. Rachel probably had her hands full. She lived in San Diego, a three-hour drive from Tall Pine, so she'd been staying with Mom while they waited for Liv to join them. It had taken Liv two days to get here. Booking a flight the week after Thanksgiving hadn't been easy, and she'd been trying to tie up loose ends at the office before she left Terri to handle the business for four weeks.

Still, she should have gotten here quicker.

“The hospital might have made her turn off her cell,” Scotty said after she hung up without speaking. “Plus, the reception is always hit-or-miss in Tall Pine.”

He was trying to reassure her.

Don't worry
, her sister had said.

She faced him again, tilting her head back to look up farther than she felt comfortable doing. Liv was taller than average, but Scotty's extra height made her wish she'd worn shoes with some kind of heel, rather than the practical sneakers she'd worn for traveling.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's get up the hill and see what's going on.”

* * *

Scott had run out the door when Liv's sister called, aware that Rachel was already behind schedule to pick Liv up at the airport. He hadn't thought to grab anything as he left. If he had, he might have tried to find a CD labeled
Music for Driving Down the Freeway with Someone You Barely Know.

Not that Liv seemed like she was starving for conversation. At the moment, she sat with her head turned toward the window of the passenger seat of Scott's faithful, battered F-150.

She ran a hand through her hair, still the same rich chestnut color. It tumbled past her shoulders in disorderly waves that were all the more attractive because she obviously wasn't thinking about it.

He
shouldn't be thinking about it.

Liv's eyes, when she'd been looking at him, had worn a preoccupied, slightly out-of-focus look that made perfect sense in a woman who'd just lost her grandmother. He needed to respect that. And he felt that loss as well. Olivia Neuenschwander had worked her way into his heart. He knew he wasn't alone. Eighty-three years old or not, her absence left a hole, and the rest of Tall Pine would miss her, too.

Almost as if she'd heard his thoughts, Liv turned to him. “I didn't know you knew my grandmother.”

“Everyone knows Nammy.” He felt her double take at his use of the nickname and wished he could rewind. Olivia had been
her
grandmother, not his, even if Liv had moved away.

Olivia. It occurred to him, belatedly, that Liv must have been named after her.

“I did some repairs around the house for her,” he explained. “It's what I do. I'm the local rent-a-husband.”

He paused. Usually when he told people that, it was an opening for
Insert Wisecrack Here
, but she didn't bite. Then again, Liv Tomblyn hadn't been the wisecracking type. More the student-council, straight-A, overachiever type. After graduation, she'd lit out for college somewhere out of state, and he didn't think she'd been back much since.

He didn't really know her, but the aura of quiet radiating from her told him she might regret her long absence.

“Your grandmother talked about you a lot,” he said. “She was really proud of you. You would have thought you were a Fortune 500 mogul.” He glanced over to make sure she was still with him. “Although I'm not quite sure what it is you do. Something about home remodeling?”

“Not quite. Terri and I are home organizers. We help people manage their storage, their clutter, sometimes their schedules.”

Scott frowned. “I wonder how she got
remodeling
out of that.”

“Well, I specialize in closets.”

He almost swerved the truck. “Closets?” he repeated.

It was hard not to laugh. He managed to keep a straight face, but he sensed her stiffen beside him.

“Seriously,” she said. “It's a real business.”

Scott bit his lip and kept his eyes on the road.

“It's a service,” she insisted. “When your living space is jumbled, your life is jumbled. Your stress level goes up, you lose valuable time looking for things . . . it even affects people's concentration.”

Sounded like a serious first-world problem to him. “Well, anyway. From what Namm—what your grandmother told me, it sounds like you've done really well with it.”

He didn't mean to sound patronizing, but he did, even to his own ears.

She crossed her arms. “What about you? Rent-a-husband?
You
sound like a gigolo.”

A little late, but a wisecrack after all. Scott didn't miss a beat.

“Only when business is slow. A guy's gotta eat.”

A moment of silence. Then a short burst of laughter escaped from her, and he felt the tension diffuse. A step in the right direction.

“Okay,” she said. “You've used that one before, haven't you?”

“There are no old jokes,” he said. “Only old audiences.”

He glanced sideways at Liv as the truck continued up the hill. Her job still sounded ridiculous. Granted, Liv's skills might come in handy for the work her family had ahead of them, but he wondered if they'd be getting a consultant, when what they really needed was a daughter and a sister.

Then he detected a flaw in the picture.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Your job is helping people deal with their clutter, and you brought along a whole suitcase just for shoes?”

From the corner of his eye, he caught an embarrassed smile. “I never said I was consistent.”

* * *

After an hour and a half of mostly-silent driving, they made the turn off the highway onto Evergreen Lane. The street was decked out in its customary Christmas finery, with arches of lights stretching from one side of the street to the other, garland wrapped around all the lamp posts. Scott wondered if the festive decorations felt incongruous to Liv for this rather somber homecoming, but if so, she didn't comment on it.

However, within a block, he saw her back straighten. Soon she was craning her neck, taking in the shops on either side.

“Oh, gosh, there's the pizza place . . . and the T-shirt shop . . . they painted, didn't they?”

Scott grinned. “
I
painted, actually.”

He wasn't sure she heard him. “And the Christmas store's still there. And the Pine 'n' Dine . . .” They passed a vacant space, and Liv stiffened. “Is the ice cream shop gone?”

Scott almost chuckled at her near alarm. “No. They just moved. It's another block up, on the left.”

When Scott pointed out the pink-and-white awning of Penny's Ice Cream Shoppe as they drove by, he could have sworn she visibly relaxed.

“We've got another important landmark coming up,” he said. “Coffman's Hardware.”

She frowned. “Why's that important?”

“For one thing, I'm there about twice a day to pick up something for a job. For another thing, it's one of our most dependable cell phone hot spots. Well, a warm spot, anyway.”

He'd seen her peeking at the phone in her lap ever since they lost reception on the highway that climbed up the mountain. Scott saw that look all the time on tourists in Tall Pine—checking for signal bars as if they were stranded aliens hoping for communication from the mother ship. If Liv was going through similar withdrawal, she'd have to get used to it. For now he gave her the benefit of the doubt. The last she'd heard, her mother was in urgent care. Watching for some word from her sister would be the natural thing to do.