Snowfall Kisses (Mistletoe Christmas Book 2), page 1
part #2 of Mistletoe Christmas Series
Snowfall Kisses
A Christmas Romance
CHARLENE BRIGHT
Snowfall Kisses
Copyright © 2019 by Charlene Bright
All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
To Kelly and Kim, choir practice would
never have been so much fun without the two of you.
What readers are saying….
This is a really sweet second chance romance. The characters are very likeable and you can't help but root for their HEA.
I love cute love stories… ...and this is the cutest. It is a believable story about second chances and about the heart wanting what it wants.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One
S harla Jenkins stood against the gym wall, tasting the chocolate frosting from her fingers as she looked out at the dancers on the floor. Many were dressed as Santa or elves. She smiled, tapping her toe to the upbeat Christmas song blaring from the speakers set up on the bleachers.
“Why don’t you just have a cupcake?”
She looked over at her sister Tiffany who was holding a half-eaten French Vanilla Chocolate cupcake, the frosting dyed gold, with little peppermint swirls.
Sharla pushed off the wall. “You know why,” she said, gesturing to the table in front of her. It was filled with cupcakes, with a sign that read “The Frosted Cupcake” embossed in silver across the front.
“That’s silly, and you know it. You’re not going to run out of cupcakes if you eat one.”
Sharla stared at her older sister. “Fourth of July Picnic. I ate a Strawberry Shortbread cupcake, and ten minutes later we were out. Thanksgiving Parade. Peanut Butter and Pecan Butter cupcake. We ran out three minutes later. I’m not taking the risk with this one.”
“There are twenty minutes left at this thing. And if you don’t eat a cupcake, how are you going to have enough energy to go snag a dance?” Tiffany wiggled her shoulders, and Sharla rolled her eyes.
“I’m not snagging a dance from anyone,” Sharla replied, handing cupcakes to two sugarplum fairies. Then she froze. Oh dear God, she thought, when did my sister and I switch roles?
“Since when do you pass up a chance to flirt and dance with a hot guy?” Tiffany asked, as if reading her mind.
Sharla stared at the dance floor, moving a long lock of blond hair—the same blond as her sister’s—out of her face and considering her response. Yeah, since when did I become this fuddy duddy? She grinned, thinking about what her best friend Jyl would say if she could see her now.
But Jyl was hundreds of miles away, living her dream as a writer in a small Colorado town. Her life, too, had taken a very dramatic turn after she lost her soldier husband, Josh, in Afghanistan. Jyl had used her grief to face a new life without a father for her four-year-old son, Gabe, and find out who she was as a single mother and widow in a new world without the love of her life. And in her brave new journey, she found new love.
Wasn’t Jyl’s model the whole reason she’d given up her fancy job as an editor for a national magazine in fast-paced New York to explore who she really was and what she really wanted? That discovery entailed moving back to the small town just outside Columbus, Ohio, near her family.
“The point of this thing,” Sharla said, pressing her palms against the table and turning to her sister, who was dancing to the beat, “is to give out cupcakes. That’s what I was paid to do. That is why I am here. Not to snag someone.”
Tiffany shrugged, looking across the dance floor. “Well the Sharla I know would have been able to give out cupcakes, do her job, and have some fun.”
Funny, Sharla thought, the Sharla I know, or knew, would have done the same thing. So what’s changed?
A little girl dressed as an elf came running across the floor, stopping just in front of the table.
“Auntie Sharla, can I have another cupcake?” she asked, grinning wide enough to show her two missing front teeth.
“I don’t know, Em. You’ll have to ask your mom.”
Sharla looked to Tiffany, who put both hands on her hips. “Did your father say you could have another one?”
The little girl looked over her shoulder. A man dressed as Santa Claus was sitting on a barrel of hay, and the line for his lap wrapped all the way around to the back of the gym.
“He’s kind of busy being Santa and stuff, Mom.”
“Ah. So he gets to make all the little kids’ dreams come true and I’m left being the meanie on ‘no-cupcake’ duty. Nice.”
Sharla sighed. “It’s Christmas, Tiff.”
Em smiled wide. “Pleaaaasseee, mom?”
Tiffany rolled her eyes and nodded, and Sharla handed her niece a Vanilla Peppermint Swirl.
“Thank you!” the little girl squealed, bounding away and joining her friends on the dance floor.
“It was actually really nice of Clark to agree to do that. I heard the original Santa totally bailed,” Sharla commented, watching as her brother-in-law hoisted another little boy onto his knee.
Tiffany rolled her eyes again, but Sharla saw the smile on her lips. She knew she’d married a good one. They all did. Clark and Tiffany had one of the best marriages she’d ever seen. Jyl had managed to get a great guy twice. It gave her hope that there were still good ones out there for her.
Not that all of Sharla’s relationships had been terrible. There was King, or Kusagra Black Elk, who had held her interest for a short while. She had met him while visiting Jyl four years ago. In the end, they both felt they were better as friends, given the distance and their personalities. While the connection had seemed strong at first, it had passed like a fever and they realized they cared a great deal for each other as friends, and as part of Jyl and Grant Underwood’s circle.
King had actually called Sharla this week to invite her to his wedding. He had met someone who had recently moved to Shiloh Falls and their connection had not fizzled into friendship but had grown into something much more.
Sharla looked out across the dance floor. Their town, Stonebrook, always went all-out for Christmas. It had always been her favorite time of the year, growing up. And she had loved how Stonebrook celebrated the season from the very first time she experienced it when her family moved from New York to be closer to her ailing grandparents. She’d been fifteen at the time and at first had been bitter about having to leave her friends, especially Jyl, but she had managed to maintain close ties with her best friend and, until last year, they had not failed in spending some of the Christmas season with each other every year.
The Ho-Ho-Ho Down was one of the first festivities of the season in Stonebrook, and she looked forward to it each year. The Stonebrook Student Government turned the school gym into a replica barn, filled with Christmas lights and covered in cotton blankets that looked like fake snow. As if there wasn’t enough of the real stuff outside. When they were teenagers, she and Tiffany, who was not quite two years older, would wear matching gold cowboy boots and carry mistletoe in their jean pockets, though neither of them ever had enough nerve to pull it out.
Sharla crossed her arms as she looked out at the dance floor. Kids giggled as their parents led them in a two-step, and she couldn’t help but smile. She might be a little less enthusiastic about Christmas nowadays, since her best friend had moved so far away and since last year …, but this event could always make her grin. Even if it was just a little bit.
She stopped when a familiar face caught her eye. A beautiful woman with dark-red hair and a black button-up shirt stood on the opposite side of the gym, a cup of hot cocoa in her hand. Sharla grimaced. Marjorie Blackwell was the last person she wanted to see right now—okay the next to the last person. Marjorie was Evan’s sister. They talked. They were close. So unless Sharla was running in to Marjorie while holding the hand of a gorgeous neurosurgeon, she was not anxious to have a chat with her.
She turned to her sister. “Can you take care of this while I run to the restroom?”
“You know, if I’m manning the booth, that technically counts as me working for you, doesn’t it?” Tiffany asked.
“Yeah,” Sharla responded, looking apprehensively at her sister.
A smile spread across Tiffany’s face. “Well. I don’t work for free, you know. The cost of my assistance will be one Chocolate Mousse Surprise.”
Sharla snorted. “I am not paying you in cupcakes. ”
“Fine. Then tell me why you’re hiding from Marjorie Blackwell.”
Sharla’s head snapped up and she met her sister’s bright-green eyes that mirrored her own. “How did you know—”
“That you got upset the minute she walked into the room?”
Sharla didn’t respond.
“Well, the Sharla I know is fearless and never rendered speechless by anyone. So when you tensed up the way you are now and stared hard at someone, it didn’t take CSI to figure out who had caused you to react. I mean, you’ve been in love with her little brother since you were sixteen—”
“What? I never—”
Tiffany held her hand up. “Sharla, for as long as I have known you, boys have never scared you. You were wrapping them around your little finger even when you were three years old. And that’s been true about every single man in your life, except one. And his sister happens to be standing right over there.” She turned her head toward Marjorie.
“Psshaw,” Sharla said, swatting the air in front of her while she turned her head away from her sister. “Evan Blackwell was a little high school crush. I think you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
“I think it’s more like a regular hill, a big one, where you have a hard time driving a stick shift up it,” Tiffany countered.
Sharla and Tiffany usually talked about everything, except this. It was rare that something was too painful to talk about with Tiffany or with anyone—Sharla was normally an open book—but this was it. She hadn’t even told Jyl what happened last Christmas, though Jyl had wondered why Sharla was staying home that season. It was the first Christmas in twenty years they hadn’t spent together. Sharla had made it up by coming out there for a long weekend at Easter. This would make the second Christmas the two best friends hadn’t spent together. But Jyl’s new family would need her, and Sharla’s new business was still a baby, with the holiday season being the busiest of the year.
Sharla feared this would become a new trend with her best friend and was determined not to let them grow apart. Thank God for Facetime and Facebook. She still talked with Jyl at least three times a week and spent plenty of time blowing kisses to Gabriel via the phone.
Maybe last year’s events were more mortifying than painful. Sharla still couldn’t believe she’d let such a childish thing get the better of her. She’d had a crush on Evan all through high school and throughout college. Didn’t most women outgrow their childhood crushes? She was thirty years old for crying out loud. Memories of high school heartthrobs were supposed to be funny. Sharla wanted to be able to laugh at hers, to pull out old yearbooks and point and talk about how silly she had been. But something about Evan Blackwell stuck to her, and she’d made a fool of herself for it. She’d always kept him very close to her heart, not ever really talking about him with anyone, especially not after their brief romance the previous year.
“Are you going to watch the cupcakes or not?” asked Sharla, putting her hands on her hips. “I can always find someone else to watch and I’ll make sure they don’t let you have any!” She started to march away.
“Fine, but this doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, little sis. Your day of reckoning is coming. Something happened to you last Christmas. You haven’t been the same since, and I’m not gonna stop until I find out what it is.”
Sharla sighed. “Okay, last Christmas, Evan and I … dated.”
“What?!” Tiffany asked, practically screeching. Sharla reached down and grabbed her sister’s hand, squeezing as hard as she could.
“Keep it down! Geez!”
“How could you not tell me that? Sharla! Evan? He’s been your one since like … puberty!” Tiffany covered her hand with her mouth, and Sharla shook her head.
“I didn’t say anything because it lasted two weeks. Two weeks and two days, to be exact. And it all feels so damn childish. You know how I don’t get flustered by men. I’m embarrassed, all right?”
Tiffany stopped. “I should have known something was up when you missed caroling last year. You never miss caroling,” Tiffany said in wonder, as though she could finally put the pieces together. “So?”
“So what?” Sharla shot back.
“That doesn’t explain the Marjorie aversion.”
Sharla nodded. “She was the only one who knew about us.”
Tiffany’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “Hold up. She knew? She knew, but not me, your wise, kind, sweet, amazing sister? How–”
“She walked in on us,” Sharla said quietly, and Tiffany’s mouth dropped open.
“What?” she asked conspiratorially, but Sharla waved her off.
“Okay. That’s enough. That’s all.”
“Clearly, that’s not all,” Tiffany shot back.
“Clearly, it is, because he and I didn’t talk again. So …”
Tiffany looked like she was going to push it, but stopped when she saw the look on Sharla’s face. Whatever had happened, she could see that it hurt her sister deeply. She nodded. “I wish you’d told me. Even if it was just so we could go Saran Wrap his car or something.”
Sharla smiled, though there wasn’t really humor in it. “It’s over, you know? No harm, no foul. I just kind of want to let it die. Which is why I don’t really want to see Marjorie, okay?”
Tiffany nodded. “That makes sense. Well, then.” She looked around. “Go ahead and go to the bathroom and make yourself scarce. Maybe grab some punch or something. I’ll come get you when the coast is clear. Or, you could just go home. I mean, this thing isn’t going to go on forever.”
Sharla looked across the dance floor. She couldn’t see Marjorie anymore but didn’t want to take her chances.
“Thanks, sis. I’m not ready to go home, but I could stand a break.”
Tiffany nodded, and Sharla walked down the hall and out the side doors. She’d take the long way around to the bathrooms on the other side of the gym—the cold air always helped her clear her thoughts. A light snow was falling, its flurries catching the streetlights. She smiled at the sight. This Christmas had been rough. Every snowflake, every cup of hot cocoa reminded her of him.
It reminded her of the night they first really talked, and while it was one of her favorite memories, it was also one she desperately wanted to forget. She pursed her lips and walked faster, her boots crunching in the snow as she rounded a corner.
It was not fair that the winter now reminded her of Evan Blackwell. It didn’t seem fair that someone could come into your life for just a few days and taint something that had always been lovely. She rolled her eyes, feeling like she was being too dramatic, again. It was two weeks, she reminded herself. If she could convince her mind that it was overreacting, sometimes the memory of him didn’t sting so much.
She let out a sigh of relief when she saw the bathroom door. With one pull, she wrenched it open—and almost ran smack dab into Marjorie Blackwell.
She was just as gorgeous as Sharla had remembered, with her sage-brown eyes and auburn hair. Her red lips were flawless, and her eyes widened when she saw Sharla.
“Oh, my gosh!” she said, throwing her arms around Sharla. “Sharla! How are you?”
“I’m good,” she whispered, smiling back at Marjorie.
“I saw your cupcake stand! Everyone’s talking about you and The Frosted Cupcake! That’s so incredible!” She stepped back quickly. “Oh, my gosh, look at me. You came in here to pee and here I am blocking your path.”
Sharla slipped into one of the stalls. She thought Marjorie would leave, but she kept talking as Sharla took care of business.
“So where exactly is The Frosted Cupcake? I would love to stop by!”
“It’s over on Main. Next to the Old Java Bean.”
“Wow! Prime real estate! You must be doing well for yourself!”
“I’m doing okay. A lot of events like these like to invite me, so I have a good time.”
“I still can’t believe you left the glam of that magazine in New York to come back to this place and bake cupcakes. But I have to say I admire it. It takes some guts.”
“Yeah, well, having the stress of putting out a magazine each month and yelling at writers who miss their deadlines can take a toll.”
