Her Wish Before Christmas (Holiday Hearts)

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  Her Wish Before Christmas

  Copyright © 2013 by Kimberly Quinton

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-621-2

  Cover art by Tibbs Designs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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  ~Dedication~

  This one’s for my wonderful family and the writers I am blessed to call friends. Heather, Nikki, and The Lit Girls—Thank you!

  Her Wish Before Christmas

  By

  Kimberly Quinton

  Chapter One

  “I swear to God, if Prissy tells us to move this tree one more time, I’m out of here.” Lena raised her voice enough to be overheard by any and all ears in the vicinity.

  Genny Ridgeway laughed at her cousin’s ultimatum. “Let’s finish before she marches up here and gives another order.”

  They scooted the six-foot delicate, white-tipped Christmas tree into the corner. Perfect.

  Her older sister Priscilla, Prissy when in a mood, Cilla any other time, stepped outside the office door nestled to the side of the front room. “I’m not deaf, you two, and I don’t appreciate the childish nickname one bit. Nona is watching.” Wearing vintage pearls and a cashmere sweater set, she projected sophistication as if granted at birth.

  “Look, we need a break. Christmas in the Square isn’t until Friday, and the store already looks as if St. Nick threw a house party with a couple hundred tipsy elves,” Lena said from where she arranged empty boxes decoupaged with vintage holiday wrapping paper. Even in frustration, her pout, artfully lined with the hottest trendy color, looked photo ready.

  “Surely we’ve unpacked every Christmas box by now.” Genny blew out a quick breath, ruffling the bangs out of her eyes. “The store looks just as I remember but bigger somehow.” She brushed white glitter off her forest-green cable-knit sweater and blue-black jeans. She considered her wardrobe classic, and Lena’s stylist once told her green was a good color for her.

  As the youngest of Nona’s four granddaughters, Genny used to cry about not being born with the more exotic Ridgeway characteristics. No raven hair and symmetrical features like Lena or the amber curls and sea-green eyes of Jacqui. Cilla spent the time and money to turn her hair into a shimmering, glossy blonde that fit her so well no one would suspect she wasn’t a natural goldilocks.

  Thanks to the last few months spent on a yacht, daily sunshine had added some natural highlights to Genny’s brown hair, brown eyes package.

  “Nona turned this place into a wonderland, and we will, too. We owe her that much.” Cilla eyed the tree as if inspecting their work. “And you two owe me. I have a dozen more boxes of handwritten files to go through. I’ll be gray and wrinkled by the time I get everything into a workable database.”

  Their grandmother’s store was a fixture in the Laurel Cove, Massachusetts Christmas In The Square festival. The celebration wouldn’t be the same this year without Nona Camilla. Left adrift after her death the week before Thanksgiving, Genny agreed to stay in town through the holidays. Teaming up with her sister and cousins to catalog the stock and clean out her office was the right thing to do. Their grandmother had kept tight rein over the place when she was alive, and the treasure-filled rooms had been the focal point of the Ridgeway girls’ childhoods. As sole owner of Camilla’s Collectibles upon their grandmother’s death, Cilla was determined to carry out her traditions to the smallest detail. If anyone knew the exact place each decoration should be stationed, it was her, and the rest of the granddaughters followed her orders.

  The ornaments and decorations they had put on display over the last week held so many memories. They would turn the shop, stuffed with all the furniture and knickknacks she had collected over the years, into the highlight of the town’s annual Christmas festival.

  “Looks good.” After another sweeping glance around the front room, Cilla headed back into the office.

  Holiday tchotchkes, from garland to glass figurines to baubles of all kinds, decked every surface. The bright glass beaded ornaments that hung from every cabinet and drawer handle were Genny’s favorite. As a child, she would pretend they were princess jewelry and would spend hours playing with them. Nona had left them to her in her will, but she didn’t feel right not putting them out as they had been every year since she was five. The newer ornaments were displayed in clear vases and antique bowls set out on the tables and shelves and hung on the lower halves of the four Christmas trees placed amongst the wares. The older, more delicate items were kept behind the many glass-doored cabinets and on the upper branches of the trees. The shop encompassed three large square rooms connected by low arching passageways, and the only way through the mini-islands of furniture lay along narrow paths linking the rooms.

  “I’m heading out to Tinker’s. I’ll save you a seat,” Lena leaned over and whispered.

  She took the string of silver bells off the door and laid them in a basket of antique doilies, somehow managing to jingle only one. The door was closing behind her before the wheels on the office chair squeaked. Cilla peered around the doorway and stuck her tongue out, making a face that reminded Genny of the arguments they used to have as kids. They’d try to see how many times they could get away with it before their grandmother caught them and made them sit and hold hands.

  “Oh, go ahead. Save me a spot. I can’t start one more spreadsheet tonight without my eyes crossing forever. What Nona had against the beautiful new iMac I bought is beyond me.”

  “I’ll close up. Besides, I need to put up my samples for the day.” Genny flipped the sign hanging in the front window from Open to Closed. “And Lena’s just going to be waiting for Bartender Hottie’s next break.”

  “You’re going to call him that one day if you’re not careful. And what does she see in him anyway?”

  “Have you seen his arms? That’s what she sees in him. I bet all of him is as fine as his biceps, too.” Genny emptied the few remaining cookies from
the lace-covered silver platters into a Tupperware container. Keeping the leftover samples was one of the perks of baking the cookies the store sold.

  “But does he have a brain in his beautiful head?” Cilla snagged the last snickerdoodle. “You know she’s not thinking straight.”

  “Lighten up; she’s not that serious about him.”

  “Hope you’re right. Anyway, your new flavors were a big hit. Mrs. Wilson wants to add six dozen of the cinnamon-orange-clove and the rum-raisin-oatmeal to her Christmas Eve order.”

  “Wow, they might just be keepers then.”

  Cilla slipped her arms around Genny for a quick hug. “I’m glad you’re here to help. I really needed someone. Mom hasn’t set foot in here in months. Nona was behind on bookkeeping, and so many little things snowballed after she died. I’m just now getting caught up on the records.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t visit more often.” Genny straightened from her sister’s embrace. They’d end up in another crying session if she didn’t. Guilt over not being home for her family ate at the edges of her grief. She’d visited less and less in the last few years. Working as a private chef willing to travel abroad meant she went where the jobs were. Even though she lived a near nomadic existence, she had loved the adventure of moving from one little rental to the next wherever one client left and another picked her up.

  But she missed family, and she wanted a place to call home. Her grandmother’s hospitalization had provided the excuse she needed. She’d jumped on the next flight out of Singapore and didn’t look back. Recently, an unfamiliar restlessness had invaded her homecoming, as if something or someone was absent. She’d yearned for a settled life but maybe Laurel Cove wasn’t the place to build one, family or no family.

  “Are you going to stand there and daydream over your cookies for the rest of the night?” Cilla turned off the light in the office and shrugged on coat and gloves. Her eyes were bloodshot and glistening from unshed tears.

  “You go ahead. Order me a pint, huh.” She held what she hoped appeared an encouraging smile and shooed Cilla out to the pub across the street.

  Genny carried the platters to the workroom turned kitchen at the back of the store and washed them. Since childhood, she never felt more at peace than in her grandmother’s store. And working alone gave her a sense of closeness to Nona she didn’t feel when her sister and cousins were present. Once the clean platters were stacked and ready for the next day’s samples, she slipped out of her in-store flats, preferring the boots and thick socks hidden behind the front counter for the walk to the bar.

  The hardest part of closing the store at Christmas was the round of flipping thirty-six switches to the dozen lamps, motion-activated stuffed animals, three train sets, and most of the lights on the six different Christmas villages interspersed throughout the rooms. The cheerful chaos increased by no less than two new glowing, singing, or dancing novelty items every year. These did not include the main overhead lights, which had to be turned off one by one as she finished with each room.

  They left the single tree in the front window lit for evening foot traffic. Its magical glow bounced off every surface of colored glass in the surrounding area but reached only partway through toward the other rooms.

  Nona had loosely separated the adjoined spaces into modern, old, and very old. Anything the neighbors brought her for resale she took, leaving no space unfilled. No formal system was ever implemented, which drove Genny’s organized-tax-lawyer-brain mother crazy. Cilla appreciated the decadence of chaos and helped her with the store.

  Life is crazy. Embrace the unpredictable and you will be happy, had been her grandmother’s usual response to any of life’s ups and downs.

  I’m trying, Nona.

  She flicked the middle room’s overhead light off. Darkness enveloped her.

  Crap, forgot the flashlight again. She wove her way by memory and the glow from the tree toward the main room and the front door. Her knee slammed the edge of an antique glass-front cabinet.

  “Ouch.” She leaned over to rub at her injury, fast enough to smack her forehead on the side of the same cabinet. “Dammit.” Tears burned as pain shot to the bridge of her nose. The scratching sound of a glass pane loosening from its worn-out hold in the door echoed in the quiet space. Frozen, one hand on her head, the other on her knee, she held her breath.

  Whew. Nothing.

  She straightened and took a tentative step. I didn’t hit it that hard. She jumped at the loud crack of shattering glass. Great! Lights out, and glass all over the floor. Only I could do this to myself.

  The oak five-shelf curio cabinet was a newer piece she had thought in better condition. It was one of the last pieces her grandmother had acquired on her own and had been meaning to refinish. Going to need more than a new stain now.

  Six small tiptoe steps around the cabinet with fingers crossed she was safe.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” Sharp spasms of pain followed the quick prick to the ball of her foot. The shard pressed against sensitive nerve endings with every move she made. Genny limped toward the wall switch, flooding the room with light, and on to the back room for a towel, leaving bloody half-footprint smears in her wake. It’s going to take forever to get this cleaned up. Resigned to missing a pint and a chance to ogle the cute bartender, she sat on the counter, propped her foot on the sink, and grabbed a paper towel to stanch the flow.

  Hissing between her teeth, she picked the thin shard out of her skin. How could such a small sliver hurt like hell and bleed so much?

  The crunch of glass and a soft curse echoed through the store.

  She hopped down and balanced on one foot as she slipped a pair of her grandmother’s gold-embroidered house shoes. She grabbed the broom hanging from a hook on the wall and pushed open the swinging door.

  “Cilla, I’m about to clean—”

  Not Cilla. A man holding a leg-shaped lamp base like a bat ready to swing at a ball. She backpedaled and threw the broom at him. Unbalanced as she was, with one foot barely touching the floor, she landed with a hard thump on her rear. The air rushed out of her before she could scream.

  “Genny? Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you okay?”

  She was too busy catching her breath to speak.

  “Are you the one leaving bloody footprints in the store? Your grandmother’s going to have a heart attack.” The man stared down at her, holding the door open with one arm, the lamp base in the other. He rested the plastic appendage against the doorframe and took a step closer, his face clear in the light of the workroom.

  “Connor?”

  “Let me have a look.” He knelt and grabbed her foot and held on tight when she tried to tug it back.

  “Ouch.” She pulled her foot away from his prodding.

  “Sorry. Cut’s not too deep. A Band-Aid and some Neosporin is all you need.”

  Connor O’Rourke? The Connor O’Rourke? Twelve years hadn’t changed him much. Except he turned into a man. And one fine man at that.

  Jesus, did he grow after college? His arms and chest sure had.

  Heat blazed a fire across her cheeks when her roaming gaze met his. Same cocky grin. Embarrassment couldn’t stop her from comparing this Connor with the then Connor. His hair was cut shorter, but the rich chestnut color hadn’t dulled. No hint of gray at the temples, no balding either. So that night of drunken cursing for him to grow fat and ugly didn’t take. Figures. What’s the use of gypsy blood if my curses don’t work?

  “I didn’t know you were in town,” she asked, proud she had kept the hysterical out of her voice.

  “I wasn’t until this week. I’m setting up a practice at the new clinic down the street.” He stood and helped her up from the floor.

  Connor F’ing O’Rourke back in town and looking too delicious by half. She licked her lips and swallowed at the sudden dryness in her mouth. The hurt and anger returned with a swift jab to her heart rivaling the sting of glass in her foot. The feelings so fresh, like she was eighteen again and
waiting for the proposal that never came. Don’t go there. You’re over him.

  “Thanks, Doctor O’Rourke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a mess to clean up.”

  Genny slid the old-lady house shoe on her foot and stood, refusing his outstretched hand. How could he waltz in here and expect to talk to her as if he hadn’t crushed her heart and made her hope he’d never return to Laurel Cove?

  “So, are you back for good or just visiting your grandmother?”

  Genny held her hand up, tears stinging her eyes. The town gossip mill had spread the word for her, and she hadn’t had to tell anyone what happened. What the hell were the gossips doing, leaving him out of the loop?

  “I meant to stop by earlier but got caught up at a meeting. I know she’ll have some ideas on what I could use to decorate the waiting room.”

  “Nona passed away a few weeks ago.” She couldn’t get anything more around the lump in her throat. Saying the words brought the sorrow rushing to the surface and, along with his surprise return, pummeled her already bruised soul. I am not going to cry in front of him.

  She tried to skirt past him into the store. He stepped in front of her, and she found herself embraced by strong arms before she could turn away. The feel of his broad chest against her cheek and the warm smell of cologne and the sheer compassion of his hug burst the dam. Small circles stroked on her back and a light kiss pressed to the top of her head were more comforting than she could resist, and tears continued to fall against her will.

  “I’m sorry, Genny. She’ll be missed.” His voice hitched.

  Is he getting choked up about my grandmother? He can’t do this to me. She pushed away and took a step back. Clearing her throat, she brushed the palms of her hands over her face to dry her cheeks and tried to gather control.

  “Better?” He handed her a handkerchief from his pocket. Genuine concern deepened the lines on his forehead. “What happened?” Sorrow tinged his features and stoked a longing in her she thought she’d buried years before.