A Coldwater Warm Hearts Christmas

Book 3: Coldwater Series

by Lexi Eddings

Genres: Humor & Satire

Synopsis

“Readers of sweet romance will fall in love with Coldwater Cove.”
—Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling author

  It’s hard to be the new girl in town, especially around the holidays. But when the town is Coldwater Cove, Oklahoma, there are plenty of folks willing to welcome you—and lovingly meddle in your
life . . .
 
High school English teacher Angie Holloway has been in this little Ozark hamlet for a few years, but she still feels like an outsider. And with no family of her own and single to boot, she’s rusty when it comes to opening her heart. Nevertheless, she’s been drafted to direct the annual Christmas pageant—whether she likes it or not. As for her assistant, that job’s been handed to Seth Parker. He may be smoking hot, but the brawny construction engineer is definitely not her type. After all, she loves literature, he “reads” blueprints . . .
 
While Angie tries to put a new spin on the show, and Seth tries to tolerate her correcting his grammar, they both resist the locals who insist on pushing them together. But when Seth finds her copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—marked up with her revealing comments—he can’t resist trying to romance her using his newfound knowledge. And Angie is surprised to find that this big, handsome lug can read her like a storybook hero . . .
 
“Eddings’ Coldwater series will delight readers looking for a sweet small-town romance.” —Booklist
 
 “Will whet readers’ appetites for a return visit to Coldwater.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Sure to appeal to fans of Debbie Macomber or Susan Wiggs.” —Shelf Awareness, STARRED REVIEW

Release date: September 25, 2018

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Marianne Dashwood, you little idiot. Angie shook her head and closed the dog-eared copy of Sense and Sensibility. Why are you mooning around over a jerk like Willoughby when Colonel Brandon would walk through fire for you?

Tucked into the big corner booth at the Green Apple Grill, Angie set the book aside and took a sip of her coffee. The rest of the Coldwater Warm Hearts Club would be wandering in pretty soon for their weekly breakfast meeting, but ever since Angie had joined the group, she’d always been the first to arrive.

Punctuality was next to godliness in her last foster parents’ home. Probably because that foster dad had been a railroader. He’d been such a stickler for being on time, she’d occasionally thought she’d rather be caught pregnant out of wedlock than turn up late someplace.

As if my getting pregnant wouldn’t require a miracle of biblical proportions anyway. Kind of need a guy for that.

Lester Scott ambled by and topped off her coffee without asking if she wanted more.

“Say, Teach,” the old Vietnam vet said. “You oughta try the new breakfast special.”

Lester was one of the Warm Hearts Club’s success stories. Before the club members got hold of him, he’d been a homeless alcoholic. Now he was employed, sleeping indoors, mending fences with his estranged family, and had been sober for nearly a year and a half.

Of course, that had all happened before Angie joined the group. During her time in the Warm Hearts Club, she hadn’t helped anyone yet.

But I’m working on it, she told herself. She just hadn’t found the right project.

“What’s the new breakfast special?” Angie asked.

“Well, it’s sorta my idea, you see.” A proud smile turned up the corners of Lester’s mouth. “You know how it’s kinda popular nowadays for folks to say they’re vegetarians?”

“Yeah.”

“So anyways, I figured the Green Apple menu needed a Vegetarian Omelet.”

Angie glanced at the plastic-covered menu. “I don’t see it listed here.”

“Oh, that’s ’cuz it’s new. You get a three-egg omelet made with onions, peppers, cheese, and your choice of ham or pork sausage.”

“Ham or sausage?” Angie arched a brow at him. “Vegetarians don’t eat meat. You know that’s the definition of the word, right?”

“That’s what I thought, but I also don’t think folks around here would like a meatless omelet so much,” Lester said with a frown. “How’s about this? We could call it the Hypocrite’s Vegetarian Omelet.”

Angie laughed. “I love it when words mean things, Lester. That’s exactly what you should call it.”

The old fellow beamed down at her. “So, you want one or not?”

Usually, Angie made do with cream cheese and a bagel, but today was an in-service day for the teachers at Coldwater Cove High. Since there was no cafeteria when classes weren’t in session, she’d probably be noshing on vending machine cuisine for lunch at her desk.

“Sure,” Angie said. “Bring me a Hypocrite’s Vegetarian Omelet.”

Lester whipped out his order pad. “Ham or sausage?”

“Both! If I’m going to be a hypocrite, I may as well go all in.”

“Sure thing, Teach. Why go hog when you can go whole hog?” Lester headed back to the kitchen, whistling tunelessly through his teeth.

Angie opened her book again, but glanced up when the trio of bells jingled over the door to the Green Apple. She recognized the pair of high school kids who hurried in, the brisk wind sending a dry leaf or two swirling after them.

Shivering in the sudden draft, Angie pulled her old cardigan tighter around herself. The sweater was so worn it would have looked at home in the Matrix movie, but it was too comfortable for her to trash. Plus, it was warm. Early November mornings in Coldwater Cove always started with a breath of winter.

The newcomers were students of hers, Emma Wilson and Tad Van Hook. She was a JV cheerleader and he was a power forward on the Fighting Marmots varsity basketball team.

The jock and the cheerleader. Clichés exist because there’s truth in them.

Emma was pretty in a windswept prairie sort of way, with long sandy-brown hair and a dusting of freckles over her pert nose. Despite the blustery weather, she wore a flirty short skirt and a gauzy tank topped by a pink denim jacket. Her small feet were snugged into turquoise cowboy boots. Rawboned and handsome, Tad was head and shoulders taller than Emma and had three years on her to boot.

Angie’s lips drew into a tight line. She’d seen this play before.

A senior and a freshman. It hardly ever works out.

But things seemed to be going well for young love at the moment. They were both laughing and holding hands as they settled into the booth behind Angie without noticing her.

She picked up her book again and tried to concentrate on the foibles of Miss Austen’s heroines. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Even though nosiness was akin to an Olympic sport in Coldwater Cove, Angie wasn’t the gossipy sort. It wasn’t her fault she could hear the conversation going on behind her.

“This is so sweet of you, Tad,” Emma said, a smile making the pitch of her voice drift upward. “You’ve never actually taken me out on a date, you know.”

There was a longer pause than there should have been.

“It’s just breakfast, Em.”

“Well, it’s sweet, is all. Sort of takes our thing up a notch.”

Tad cleared his throat. “Um . . . what do you mean . . . our thing?”

She giggled, sounding even younger than she was. “You know, silly. Us. You’re my guy. I’m your girl. We’re a thing.”

The silence was deafening. Angie caught herself reading the same sentence over and over. Sense and Sensibility just couldn’t compete with the real-life drama unfolding in the next booth.

“We’re a couple, right?” Emma insisted.

“Um, I mean . . . well, sort of, I guess. I mean, we have fun. What we got . . . it’s like casual, you know. We hang together . . .”

“Hang together?” A tiny bead of fear shimmered in Emma’s tone.

“Yeah,” Tad said with disgusting cheerfulness, willfully ignorant of her distress. “Hang.”

“But . . .” Emma’s voice dropped to a shaky whisper. “Don’t you think of me as your girl?”

Angie cringed for her. This conversation was sounding all too familiar. But instead of being a JV cheerleader, Angie had been several years older, an English major finishing her freshman year at Baylor. And the guy hadn’t been a jock. He’d been about to graduate summa cum laude, bound for law school.

Several states away.

“Look, Em . . . It’s . . . well . . . no,” Tad admitted. “I don’t think of you like that.”

This time the silence blared from Emma’s side of the booth. Finally she found her voice. “How do you think of me?”

“Um . . . as a friend. Someone I hang with?”

Emma sucked in a sharp breath and made a soft sound. Not quite a sob, but more than a snuffle.

Oh, precious lamb. Angie’s chest ached for the girl. At the same time, she wanted to leap up and give her a shake.

Give it up, sweetie, Angie wanted to tell her. He’s not the guy you think he is. He’s not your white knight. He doesn’t know who you really are, and he doesn’t care. You’re a notch on his belt. Don’t look now, but he’s about to bigger, better deal you. In fact, he’s already moved on. If you’d ever read Jane Austen, you’d know he’s a Willoughby, through and through.

If Angie didn’t quit biting her lower lip, she’d make it bleed, but she couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t her place.

Emma kept trying. This time, though, her voice was frosty.

“Well, if I’m not your girl, if we’re not a couple, I’d like to know what you think a relationship is. Because to me, I mean, after all we’ve done . . . well, it seems like we’re the real thing, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“Look, Em. Why are you making this so hard? I like you, okay? I mean, I like hanging with you.”

“And when you say hanging, you mean . . .” Her voice had slipped back into whine mode.

“You know, how we do. We hang. Now and then.”

Lester swooped by to take their breakfast order. “So, kids, what’ll it be?”

“We’re not ready,” Tad said curtly.

No joke. Neither of them was ready for a real relationship. Tad should be considering which basketball scholarship to accept and Emma ought to be working on bringing up her GPA.

Silence reigned again, but Angie would’ve bet her unused vacation days that neither of them was studying the menu.

“So,” Emma finally said. “Are we going to hang at the Winter Dance?”

“Um . . . I dunno. Maybe. Sure. Why not?”

“Great!” The perky cheerleader was back. “I’ve already picked out my dress!” She launched into a steady patter, a running one-sided conversation about the terrible importance of finding the just right shoes to go with the “totally bangin’” dress she was going to wear.

Oh, Emma, can’t you tell he doesn’t care? Not about your dress. Not about your shoes. Not about you.

Angie was suddenly glad Tad wasn’t in her Advanced Placement English class. She would have been tempted to flunk him on principle. She wished he’d just go ahead and dump Emma instead of stringing her along with hopes of the Winter Dance.

Or maybe Emma might somehow find the backbone to walk away from him.

Stand up, Emma. Angie willed the girl to move, but she didn’t hear the slightest creak from the green vinyl seats. Come on. Tell him he’s history. Tell him you’re worth so much more than a halfhearted “why not?” And tell him if he ever grows up enough to figure that out, he’s going to be sorry he let you go.

But Angie knew she wouldn’t.

Emma was probably going through some mental gymnastics. She was trying to convince herself that Tad loved her, really. He just didn’t know how to show it. He’d come around, though. Maybe at the Winter Dance . . .

Angie knew these things because she’d been Emma.

Once. About ten years ago.

She hadn’t wanted to believe that Peter was slipping away, even though he gave her the same signals Tad was sending Emma. Angie made excuses for him. She refused to believe it when her friends warned her. Even after he left for good, she couldn’t accept it. She fantasized about how he’d eventually come to his senses and realize he needed her as much as she did him. He’d come crawling back, a gorgeous ring in hand. Even in her fantasies, she had zero pride. She always fell back into his arms.

Angie was halfway through her first semester of student teaching before she finally admitted to herself that Peter would never come back, never come looking for her. Only one of them had been in love and it wasn’t Peter.

She still wanted to curl up into the fetal position when she thought about it.

Which fortunately wasn’t often.

Because Angie Holloway was off men for the foreseeable future. They turned women into soppy little doormats, and she was done letting anyone wipe their feet on her.

“Hey, you the teacher?”

The rough baritone made her look up from her unread Austen. The rumbly voice belonged to a guy whose dark hair was thoroughly tousled, as if he’d just risen from bed.

Okay. That’s a totally inappropriate thought. No good comes from imagining a guy in a bed. Or freshly out of one either.

“You her?” he asked again.

She wondered how he could’ve made it in the door, set off the bells, and stomped up to her table without her noticing before now. She must have really zoned out.

It’s Peter’s fault. Even remembering him for a little bit turns me into a mess.

Angie couldn’t decide what color this new guy’s eyes were. A cross between dark gray and deep blue. Despite the brisk day, he was wearing no jacket. His jeans looked like they’d been worn by hard work instead of coming from the factory pre-ripped and faded. She could barely make out the words “Parker Construction” sewn in red thread over the pocket of his washed-out black T-shirt.

“Lookin’ for an English teacher,” he said, more forcefully. “Angie Something-or-other. You her?”

“It’s Holloway, not Something-or-other. And yes, I am she.” His poor grammar was like an itch she couldn’t scratch. “Do you ever speak in complete sentences?”

He shrugged. The man’s shoulders were massive. “If I have to.” A smile curved his mouth. His teeth were so white he belonged in a toothpaste commercial. “I’m Seth Parker. Heather sent me for you.”

As what? A present?

Her friend, Heather Walker Evans, was always trying to set her up with someone. Heather and her husband, Michael, had trotted out computer nerds and local shop owners, a few ranchers and one emergency medicine resident at Coldwater General who couldn’t keep from talking about the gory details of his day over dinner. Angie had lost count of how many awkward double dates she’d squirmed through.

Through which I squirmed, she corrected her own ungrammatical thought. Grammar was order amid chaos. It was her touchstone, her safety net. She fell back on it with gratitude.

But Seth Parker was still there, standing by the booth. This was the first time Heather had ambushed her with a Neanderthal—albeit a smoking hot Neanderthal—who probably wouldn’t recognize a dangling participle if it smacked him in the face.

Still, something about the logo on his shirt niggled at her memory.

Parker Construction.

The company had just won the bid to build an addition to the high school. They were known for tackling big projects all over southeast Oklahoma with a reputation for delivering high quality and on time completion.

Could this guy be that Parker? She doubted it. The strong, silent type had a lot to commend it, but this man spoke in monosyllables. How could he run a successful company?

“Come on now.” He turned and headed for the door. When she didn’t follow, he stopped, and cocked his head at her. “You coming?”

“I am not in the habit of going off with strange men.”

“Nothing strange about me, miss. I’m common as an old shoe.” He opened the door and held it wide for her. “Meeting’s been moved to the courthouse. Like I said, Heather sent me for you.”

So it wasn’t a setup. The Warm Hearts Club meeting had just been moved. Feeling foolish, Angie rose, and headed for the door. “Oh. You might have said so.”

“Thought I did.”

“Wait up, Teach!” Lester called after her. “Don’t you want your omelet?”

“Sorry, Lester. I have to go.”

“I’ll take it,” Tad Van Hook spoke up. “I need to eat and get out of here. Emma’s waffles are going to take forever.”

Emma slumped a little in the booth, but Tad didn’t seem to notice.

“I can put it in a to-go box for you, Teach,” Lester said.

“No, that’s okay. Give it to Tad,” Angie said as she swept past Seth, who was still holding the door for her. At least, he was a well-trained Neanderthal.

And no one deserves a Hypocrite’s Vegetarian Omelet more than Tad Van Hook.

Heather Walker Evans, founding member of the Coldwater Warm Hearts Club, waved to them as Angie and Seth joined the group gathered on the courthouse steps. “I think we’re all here now.”

Angie did a quick head count. Valentina Gomez, Marjorie Chubb, Ian Van Hook, Virgil Cooper, Charlie Bunn, and Junior Bugtussle stood in a semicircle around Heather. Now that she and Seth Parker were there, everyone was present and accounted for.

“Let’s get started,” Heather said, opening the little notebook she always carried. Her husband Michael might be a techno-wizard, but Heather was old school. If she didn’t write it down, it wasn’t real.

Angie sidestepped to position herself a little behind Mr. Bunn. She’d always hated the cold and she was sure the gregarious old man wouldn’t mind being used as a windbreak, even on such a blustery day.

Plus, it moved her a bit farther from Seth Parker. The guy made something inside her quiver in a tingly, it’s-good-to-be-female sort of way, which was ridiculous. She liked polished, well-read, sophisticated men.

Scratch Seth Parker on all counts.

“Any reason we’re meeting on the courthouse steps instead of inside the Grill?” she asked, hoping her teeth wouldn’t chatter from the chill.

“We’re gathered here because this is the site of our next group project,” Heather explained. Each Warm Heart had personal causes they supported. Ian Van Hook ran an anti-bullying campaign at the high school, for example. Heather regularly stepped in to spell a beleaguered caregiver. And Mr. Bunn organized the Royal Order of Chicken Pluckers to raise money for the Lutheran Ladies’ charity fund. Whatever their chosen cause, club members had discovered the great secret of pouring themselves into other people’s lives. Helping others wasn’t just about getting a warm glow in return for do-gooding. Putting someone else’s needs first for a bit brought their own lives into perspective and made them grateful.

“Cheaper than therapy,” Heather had often said, “and someone else benefits, too. Win-win!”

But along with individual acts of kindness perpetrated by the club, they sometimes joined hands to take on larger projects.

“What’s the plan, Heather?” Ian asked. A freshman at Bates College, he was the youngest member of the group and, coincidently, first cousin to the Hypocrite’s-Omelet-eating Tad.

“We are going to organize and present the annual community Christmas pageant,” Heather announced.

Marjorie Chubb, captain of the Methodist prayer chain, scowled at this news. “But Shirley Evans has been running that show for years.”

She didn’t add “with an iron fist,” but they were all thinking it. Mrs. Evans was a stickler for detail, and everything about the pageant had to be just so.

“Well, if we’re doing the pageant ourselves, that suits me better than possum pie for supper. She nagged me half to death last year because I didn’t spread the straw to suit her,” Junior Bugtussle said. “Not that I didn’t lay down enough, mind you, but that I didn’t make the straw look the way she wanted it to. Don’t that beat all?”

“Say what you will, Shirley Evans could herd cats if she had to,” Seth Parker finally put in. “We’ll miss her ability to organize.”

Surprise, surprise. The man can speak in complete sentences.

Angie knew she was being snippy, even if it was only in her own head, but just being near this Parker guy irritated her. It wasn’t that he looked like Peter. Her first love had been a golden Adonis, blond with vibrant green eyes, and Peter was well aware of his striking looks. Seth didn’t seem the sort to trouble with combing his hair if he could cover it with a ball cap instead, let alone primp for hours the way Peter had. But Seth was still attractive in a rough sort of way.

And after Peter, attractive men activated Angie’s self-protective radar.

That must be why my insides are pegging out the “heartache-on-the-horizon-o-meter.”

“Seth is Shirley Evans’s nephew, on his mother’s side.” Mr. Bunn leaned toward Angie and stage-whispered this bit of intelligence as if it were a state secret. “His father married Delcie Higginbottom—that’s Shirley Evans’s maiden name, you know. Delcie was Shirley’s sister. Of course, if you go back far enough, everybody’s related to everyone around here.”

Since Coldwater Cove was her first teaching job straight out of grad school, Angie had only lived there for a few years. She was still trying to untangle the “who’s related to whom” web, so she appreciated the heads-up from Mr. Bunn.

“You can’t sling a dead cat ’round these parts without it hittin’ kin to somebody or other,” Junior pronounced loudly enough for everyone to hear. To those who missed Mr. Bunn’s whisper, Junior’s comment must have seemed totally unrelated to the general discussion and unexpectedly gross. To cat lovers, like Angie, it was just plain offensive. When Angie glared at him, Junior added, “Not that I’d be slingin’ no cats anyhow.”

“Why can’t Shirley do the pageant?” Valentina, the dispatcher for the sheriff’s department, asked. She helped find work for recently released cons in her spare time. Usually at Mr. Cooper’s Hardware. “I hope it’s not because of a health problem.”

Everyone knew that last year, Shirley Evans had been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer. She’d tackled the disease as she did everything.

“Like she was killing snakes,” her husband George had said.

After a lumpectomy, Shirley opted to take radiation and chemo treatments at the same time, all while still managing to organize her daughter Lacy’s wedding to Jake Tyler.

Of course, when Lacy and Jake eloped at the last minute, the ceremony had turned into a surprise wedding for her son Michael and Heather Walker, Angie’s friend. But from the over-the-top decorations to the bridesmaids’ dresses that were such a violent pink they’d make a flamingo blush, the event bore Shirley Evans’s stamp of approval. The fact that the bride and groom could be changed ten minutes before the ceremony began, without another single alteration to the proceedings, bore witness to Shirley’s masterful command of details.

One might question her taste or her methods, but no one could argue with the results. Shirley Evans flat out got things done. Every time.

No wonder it’ll take the whole Warm Hearts Club to replace her running the Christmas pageant.

“Shirley’s health is all right,” Seth said to put Valentina’s mind at ease. “She got a good handle on that cancer scare. All her follow-up tests come back great, she says.”

“Then why would she give up the pageant?” Marjorie asked. If pressed, Marjorie would undoubtedly say she wanted to know because she wondered if there was a problem she ought to pass along to her fellow “prayer warriors.”

Angie suspected she was just nosy by nature.

“I don’t think we should be gossiping about Mrs. Evans’s reasons,” Angie said.

“It’s not gossip if you intend to pray over it later,” Marjorie said with a firm nod. “Besides, the pageant won’t be the same without her.”

“I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m kinda counting on that.” Junior Bugtussle beamed. At least someone was happy to hear that Shirley Evans’s holiday reign of terror was coming to an end. “She took a whole lot of pleasure outta bossing me around—I mean, runnin’ the pageant. Sorta makes a body wonder why she wouldn’t want to do it again this year.”

“I can’t say,” Seth said.

“You mean you won’t say.” Marjorie pursed her lips.

Seth shrugged. “Guess Shirley will fill you in when she’s ready.”

Angie shoved her hands into the pockets of her cardigan and wished she’d put on a jacket that morning. They could have just as easily had this discussion tucked into the corner booth at the Green Apple. She’d kill for a warm cup of coffee between her palms. “I still don’t understand why we changed the club meeting place.”

“I thought being here would give us inspiration,” Heather said. Normally, the pageant consisted of a live nativity with the Methodist Church choir singing alongside. Of course, Shirley made a few tweaks to it from year to year. Like last Christmas, when she decided they needed snow, and Mother Nature refused to cooperate. She costumed Charlie Bunn in solid black, which according to Shirley rendered him nigh invisible, and had him stand on a ladder behind Ike Warboy, who was playing Joseph. Then Mr. Bunn was instructed to toss handfuls of borax soap into the air so the flakes could drift down onto the Holy Family.

Lucinda Warboy, who regularly took the role of the Blessed Virgin, claimed it took the kink right out of her naturally curly hair for weeks.

On the plus side, the courthouse steps had never been so clean.

But whatever other changes were made to the pageant each year, Shirley Evans always staged it on the courthouse steps. And on Christmas Eve, the whole town turned out to see what new twist Shirley would wrap around the old story.

It was a Coldwater tradition Angie wasn’t sure they should mess with.

With which we should mess, she mentally corrected.

“I’m hoping we can do things differently this year,” Heather said.

“Like how?” Valentina asked cautiously. She evidently remembered the borax snow, too.

“Well, for starters,” Heather said, “Seth has agreed to build a manger for us on the courthouse lawn, so the main event will already be moved a . . .