Jessica laughed, but the laughter wasn’t filled with humor, it was dry and bittersweet, touched by longing for the old days. For Dennis’s patient touch, his understanding of kids, his year-round love of the holiday season. He was the one who had embodied Christmas, not her. She’d gone on last year, for his sake, his memory, but she hadn’t had his ability to create the same magical spell. To pull something out of nothing. “Yeah. Dennis and I always said that when this stopped being fun, that was when it was time to hang up the red suit and white wig.”
She slipped her hand into the space beside the register and withdrew the pamphlet she’d picked up at Olive’s Outlandish Travel that morning. Even Olive had given her a look of disappointment as she’d handed over the round-trip ticket and the brochure, but Jessica remained resolute.
“This is where I need to be for Christmas,” Jessica said, further cementing her resolve to leave town. “Pristine white sand. Gentle, lapping waves. Hot sun baking on my skin. Cabana boys bringing me drinks with little umbrellas.” She pointed at the picture of a Caribbean paradise, then ran a finger along the words printed at the bottom of the resort’s advertisement. “And especially this. ‘No small children allowed.’”
“But you love kids. You love Christmas.”
Jessica shook her head, refusing to be dissuaded from her plan. Next thing she knew, she’d be handing out candy canes and posing for pictures. The adults in Riverbend might miss the extra entertainment at the Winterfest, but Jessica wasn’t fooling herself into thinking the children would notice one way or the other. The town seemed to have lost its sparkle—or maybe she had. Either way, playing Mrs. Claus wasn’t on her agenda, not this year. Maybe not ever again, especially without a Santa by her side to add that extra spark of magic. “My mind is made up and my bag is packed. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Mindy rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing I can do to talk you into staying? To being Mrs. Claus one more time?”
Jessica laid a hand on Mindy’s and looked her best friend straight in the eye. “Honey, I wouldn’t be Mrs. Claus again if the big guy himself came all the way down from the North Pole and got down on his knees to ask me.”
Christopher “C.J.” Hamilton had only one purpose for his visit to Riverbend, Indiana—to give his daughter, Sarah, the best damned Christmas ever.
Whether she wanted it or not.
To that end, he’d brought along a whole bunch of presents, and a determination to create a holiday she’d never forget.
Even if he had no idea what he was doing. Holidays weren’t his forte. He had about as much experience with Christmas as most people did with camel jockeying. But he had a little girl who needed a miracle and that was motivation enough.
The problem? He barely knew Sarah. She didn’t know him at all. The last time she’d seen him, Sarah had been three days old. And C.J. had thought walking away was the best decision.
Actually, the only possible decision. Kiki had sat in her hospital bed and told C.J. with a straight face that he wasn’t the father, breaking his heart even as he held Sarah’s precious, talc-scented body in his arms, then watched another man walk into Kiki’s hospital room and be pronounced Daddy.
He’d been stunned when the lawyer had tracked him down on location in Costa Rica last week, telling him Kiki had died in a car accident…and lied about her child’s DNA roots. He was the father, and he was expected to come get his daughter, create instafamily and take one more problem out of the lawyer’s hands.
C.J. had started by calling Sarah, thinking he’d ease into the dad thing. She’d refused to come to the phone. He’d tried to call her twice more on the trip from California to Indiana, and both times, she’d been as mute as a roll of gift wrap.
Then, he’d stopped by to see her at LuAnn’s apartment, and Sarah had run and hidden, refusing again to talk. “Maybe pick her up a little present,” LuAnn, the babysitter, who lived in the apartment next door to Kiki’s and who had taken Sarah in while the lawyers looked for a blood relative, had suggested. “Ease into it. She’s really a darling girl.”
A darling girl who’d already made it clear she wasn’t interested in having C.J. as a dad.
C.J. stopped the truck outside the small toy shop in downtown Riverbend. In the window of Santa’s Workshop Toys was a tiny, hand-lettered sign that read Home of Mrs. Claus.
Perfect.
This place, he’d been told, was where the heart of Christmas lay—and not to mention had become a favorite hangout of Sarah’s. “You talk to Jessica Patterson,” LuAnn, a lifelong resident of Riverbend, had told him, “and you’ll get your Christmas. She is Christmas in Riverbend.”
C.J. was counting on it. His experience with the holiday was about nil. He needed an expert.
C.J. got out of the Ford F-250, then went inside the shop. The bell overhead let out a soft peal announcing his arrival.
Once his eyes adjusted to the interior, he stopped and gaped. The toy shop had to be every child’s dream. Stocked floor to ceiling with bright, colorful dolls, trucks, blocks, games and every imaginable plaything, it sported a rainbow of decor, hanging mobiles of planes and animals, and had a Santa’s workshop theme running throughout, with little elves perched on the shelves and an entire North Pole village painted on the far wall. It looked…magical.
His Hollywood trained eye admired the care in the details, the imagination in the design. No wonder Sarah loved the place. If C.J. had been twenty years younger, he’d have spent all day here, too.
“I’m just about to close up,” said a voice in the back.
C.J. paused among a bunch of Slinkies and rubber dice. He toyed with a gyroscope, spinning the little wheel. “I’m not here to buy anything,” he called back. “I’m looking for Jessica Patterson.”
“You’ve found her.”
He looked up. Hoo-boy. If this was Mrs. Claus, then he definitely needed to revisit a few of those Christmas tales. Jessica Patterson was tall, with long blond hair and green eyes that seemed to dance with light. She had a lush, red mouth and a curvy figure that redefined the word hourglass.
She was, in other words, very hot for someone who was supposedly hailing from the most northern region of the world.
“You’re Mrs. Claus?”
“Only at Christmas,” she said, laughing, and putting out her hand to shake his. “And not anymore.”
He took her palm with his own, feeling her warm skin against his own and decided that there was nothing cold at all about this woman. “What do you mean, not anymore?”
“I am officially hanging up my Mrs. Claus suit this year. But if you need a stuffed bear or a jack-in-the-box or—”
“No. I need you.” C.J. looked around the shop and realized a toy—hell, a whole truckload of toys—wasn’t going to do it. To win Sarah over, he needed something big. Really big. And according to LuAnn, there was nothing bigger than Mrs. Claus, at least in Riverbend.
She dropped his hand and moved back. Wariness filled her features, dimmed the friendly light in her eyes. He might as well have stamped his forehead with Serial Killer. “You need me?”
“In a purely professional sense. As Mrs. Claus.”
“Sorry, but I can’t—”
“You have to. I’ve got a reindeer on order and everything.” Okay, now he really was sounding crazy. C.J. drew in a breath. “Let me start over. My name is Christopher Hamilton. Also known as C.J. the Set Construction Wizard.” He turned and pointed out the window at the bright-red script written across the door of his pickup truck, saying the same thing along with a California address.
“And what does a set construction wizard want with a Mrs. Claus?