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I’M DEAD. I’VE DIED and am lying on the ground, just like Hank the Handyman, only I hit my head on the way down and my brains are spilling out to join with the red lights I was hanging.
“Holly?”
And now I’m being celestially chastised for being too graphic near the holidays.
My eyes were squeezed shut as I braced for whatever came for people who accidentally smashed themselves preparing for Christmas and may or may not have uttered a lot of unflattering things on the way down. Then I realized I wasn’t actually on the ground. I hadn’t crashed down onto the grass but was being held in someone’s arms.
Perhaps my guardian angel had been slacking just a bit but had gotten himself together fast enough to scoop me out of the sky before I turned into a really unfortunate Christmas-season newspaper headline.
I opened my eyes and looked up at the face looking down at me.
“Holly?”
This time I saw his lips moving at the same time I heard him say my name. Maybe I actually had hit my head on the way down. There was no way a gorgeous man with perfect facial hair and sparkling green eyes saw me about to fall, snagged me out of midair, and happened to already know my name. That was not my luck. My luck was my guardian angel was too busy spiking his eggnog to notice that I was tumbling off the roof like Thelma and Louise going over the canyon.
And yet, here he was, gazing at me like there should be music playing and maybe small children having a snowball fight behind us. In the no snow. At least I had that going for me this year. I wasn’t having to deal with slush and cold and scraping windshields and shoveling and all the other things that came with wintery precipitation everyone else seemed to anticipate with such excitement.
The man slowly set me to my feet, and as I felt the cold ground under my boots, I realized that, in fact, I was not dead. I was very much alive. And very much embarrassed.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“No problem,” he said. “Are you okay?”
I brushed myself off and nodded as I looked up at the man suspiciously. How did he know my name? Why was he impossibly handsome? How did he know I was going to fall? Why did he look like every guy in those terrible Christmas movies dominating just about every TV station right now, with his beanie and scarf and boots that didn’t look like he’d picked them up on the clearance rack at the discount store.
(I did that. That was me. It occurred to me I was going to need them at some point and grabbed them on a whim. Add that to the list of bad decisions Holly made on a whim.)
The thing was, those men didn’t really exist. They were actors, playing a part and otherwise living in Hollywood and probably sipping on fruity drinks in eighty-degree weather right now. They also didn’t call me by name, ever. Maybe in my nightmares when I was questioning all my life choices, but not in real life. So unless this was a meta version of one of those movies during which I had gotten sucked into one and had to live it out, he couldn’t be a seasonal hero.
Yet, here this man was, decidedly real and standing in front of me. It was the slightly expectant expression on his face that was getting to me a little. The beanie on his head was pushed forward a little bit, probably from catching me, but otherwise, he looked... perfect. Too perfect. Like the rest of the damn town the second November first showed up.
But that expression said he was waiting for something. It was the kind of expression people got when you ran into them and then realized you were supposed to be meeting them, or that you forgot a birthday or anniversary, or they thought you should know something and were waiting for you to say it, but you had no idea.
The more I stared at him, the more awkward the silence got, but at the same time the more familiar he looked. I was trying to figure out who he was, because if he knew me, I must have met him before. But I would certainly remember him checking in.
“It’s Lawson,” he finally said, pointing at his chest. Clearly this was the thing I’d forgotten, and he was waiting for me to remember. “Lawson Lane.” Another pause. “From high school?”
At first, it didn’t ring a bell. He might as well have said he was King Rudolph from Christmas-hell-dovia. But then it started to come to me. He was taller now and most certainly had filled out in ways I never would have expected for the artsy, quiet kid I remembered. He looked like he might have eaten the kid I remembered from high school as part of a protein shake that did really fantastic things for him.
“Lawson?” I asked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Well, that wasn’t very seasonally appropriate.
Or professional.
Or grateful.
I was really going for it.
He laughed, his wide grin stretching across his face in a way that somehow made him even more attractive.
“Catching you,” he said.
I blinked at him a few times before I realized he was telling a joke.
“Oh. Ha,” I said.
He laughed again. “I have a reservation at the bed-and-breakfast.”
“You do?” I asked. “I thought you lived here. I mean not here, here. I know you don’t live at the bed-and-breakfast. I thought you lived in Snowflake Hollow.”
“I used to,” I said. “But not anymore.”
“Oh. Oh!” I said, slapping my forehead with my palm. “That’s right, there was someone who hadn’t checked in yet for today. Right. I’m sorry. That must be you.”
“Yes,” he said, looking a little confused himself now. “Are you working here?”
“Kind of. I own it,” I said. “I apologize for not being ready for you. Hank the Handyman was over here doing all the lights and... he... fell. Broke his leg. Very terrible. Now I have to handle an insurance claim, which I guess makes me a real business owner now. Oh. And he’s hurt, which, of course, is terrible. But... I’m babbling, so I’ll just wrap this up.”
“That’s... a lot,” Lawson said, grinning. “He broke his leg?”
“I think so. Unless he has some pretty exceptional flexibility that extends to his bones and joints going in the wrong direction,” I said, trying desperately to stuff the words back in my mouth. Why couldn’t I stop talking? “That’s why I was up there. On the roof. With these.”
I gestured vaguely at the lights now strewn over the ground nearby. They were tangled in tiny balls of hatred and electricity. One of them was responsible for wrapping around my foot and causing me to fall.
“That’s awful,” Lawson said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I probably should have taken more warning from Hank. But I didn’t. Thanks for catching me, by the way. That probably wasn’t what you had in mind when you were thinking about checking in for your relaxing holiday getaway.”
“Not exactly, but I was happy to do it,” he said. “I’m just glad I got to you in time.”
“How lucky,” I said. “I mean, I’m lucky. I mean... let’s get you checked in. Come on,” I said. “These can wait.”
For all eternity.
“Great,” Lawson said.
“Do you need help with your luggage?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I can get it. Just give me a second. I left it in the car.”
He headed for his car, and I took the time he was rummaging in his trunk to chastise myself. This was not the kind of first impression I should be making with guests. Owning a bed-and-breakfast might not be the most well-thought-out plan I’d ever come up with in my life, and it definitely wasn’t going as smoothly as I would have hoped, but it was where I was in life.
This was what I was doing now. Forget all those things I used to say when teachers would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was now the smiling face of hospitality. And I needed to make it work because I didn’t have anything else going for me. It wasn’t like this was some sort of passion project I was doing on the side while I kept up with a regular career like a sane person. I threw everything into getting this place off the ground, and now it was my only option.
Lawson got back to me, and we headed up the front steps onto the porch. I opened the door and stepped back to let him in first. He gestured for me to go ahead.
“After you,” he said.
I didn’t know why that gave me a little flutter in my chest, but it did. I went in and led him into the small alcove where I set up the desk. I went around behind it and got the computer system up and running so I could get him checked in. Scanning through the reservations, I found his.
“Yep, there it is. Lawson Lane. I don’t know how that name didn’t jump out at me when I was going over the reservations,” I said.
“It’s been a while,” he said with a forgiving shrug. “And I’m probably not the only person in the world who has that name.”
“I would venture to say you are the only person with that name who will ever stay in this bed-and-breakfast,” I said, looking at the screen. “Alright, so it looks like you’re going to be staying with us for a couple of weeks.”
“Yep. Home for the holidays.”
I looked up at him and gave a tight smile. “Very sweet.” I took the guest book out from under the counter. This was one of the things I’d found with my grandmother’s plans for the bed-and-breakfast. It was a large leather-bound logbook ready to be filled with the names and comments of guests. I opened it on the counter. “Would you mind signing this for me?”
“Sure. Do you have a pen?”
I opened the drawer beside me, and as I reached in, I heard some of the other guests who had come down and are gathered in the parlor off to the side of the foyer. I usually put out some snacks in the afternoons, but today things had gotten a bit out of hand, so I threw together a basket of packaged options and plopped it on the table before heading outside to tackle the lights.
“I was really hoping for more than this,” one of them said. “The pictures made this place look like it was going to be the most amazing Christmas ever.”
“I know,” another responded. “I was expecting decorations and music and for the whole place to smell like cinnamon. And there’s just... nothing.”
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.”
They were talking in hushed tones like they didn’t actually intend on anyone hearing them, but one of the things about houses like this was they had great acoustics. Fantastic for the occasional thrown-together string quartet concert. Not so great for being subtle and keeping secrets.
I took the pen out of the drawer and held it out to Lawson with a sigh.
See? The house should smell like cinnamon.
