A Mistletoe Miracle

by Emma Jackson

Genres: Holiday books; Humor & Satire; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Don't miss Emma Jackson's new holiday romance: Summer in the City coming out June 8th! At the Everdene Hotel, snowflakes, romance and mayhem are in the air... A cosy hotel in a sleepy, snow-covered village should be the perfect setting for a Christmas to remember... But for Beth, returning to her childhood home after a disastrous break-up looks more like a festive fiasco. With her mum stranded in a blizzard and most of the hotel staff off sick, Beth is forced to take the reins, impress a mystery hotel reviewer, and somehow find a way to work with Nick, the very grumpy - and very gorgeous - pilot who is staying for the holidays. Between mince pie emergencies, deadly decorations, and two dozen disgruntled guests, Beth might just find a miracle under the mistletoe this Christmas... Heartwarming and hilarious, this is the perfect festive romance to curl up with this winter. Perfect for fans of Heidi Swain and Sue Moorcroft.

Release date: November 25, 2019

Publisher: Orion Dash

Print pages: 258

Sample

Little did I know, when the Christmas tree in the lobby of my mother’s hotel attacked me, that it was a metaphor for how the next week of my life was going to unravel.

There I was, minding my own business, heading for the door, when a jingling swarm of itchy green branches descended upon me. Throwing my hands up as shiny white baubles and silver bells showered down, I still wasn’t quick enough to stop the ceramic angel landing with a decisive thunk on my head and bouncing off.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ my mother called out, her strawberry-blond hair just visible through the foliage. I searched for the metal trunk of the artificial tree and gave it a good shove towards being upright again while my mum came around the side to help. ‘Oh, thank God for that, it’s just you.’ Her panic-stricken expression cleared when she realised it was her one and only child and not a guest preparing a case to sue her.

‘Yeah, I’m fine thanks, Mum.’ I rubbed at the tender spot on my forehead where the angel had head-butted me.

She tilted her head to the side examining me, tiptoed up and pressed a quick kiss to my forehead.

‘You’ll survive.’ She patted my shoulder, and then picked up the angel from the parquet flooring and pouted: its cherubic cheeks and nose were caved in, wings hanging off. ‘More than I can say for her. Are you going down into the village?’

‘That was the plan.’

‘Could you pop into Lydia’s for a replacement, please? She had some nice angels on the counter the other week.’

‘Well…’ I pretended to think about it ‘…I suppose I could squeeze that into my busy schedule…’ I swiped at the glitter now dusted all over my jeans and jacket ‘…but only on the condition that you stop fiddling with the decorations after that. They look fine. They’ve looked fine for over a month.’ When I arrived at the beginning of November, with my hastily packed holdall – after the argument that finally ended mine and Peter’s four-year relationship – my old bedroom had been floor to ceiling with boxes of decorations, labelled and numbered ready to dress the hotel for Christmas as soon as the last sparkler on bonfire night went out. She didn’t like to waste a moment of the festive period.

‘Thank you.’ She scooped up a couple of the escaped baubles and started examining them for defects too. ‘But I just want to make sure everything is right before the last guest arrives tomorrow.’

‘Are we fully booked now?’

‘Yep, last-minute booking.’

‘Did you warn them the high street will be blocked off from mid-morning because of the Christmas fayre?’

She nodded, her focus back on the tree as she searched for the perfect spot to place a bauble that had escaped damage. I started for the door thinking there was no more to be said now she’d returned to the Christmas-tree-zone.

‘Could you be back by two o’clock, Beth?’ she called after me, proving that – as always – Rosie Keenan was paying more attention than she appeared to be. ‘I need you on reception this afternoon.’

‘Sure, see you in a bit.’

I stepped outside, pulling up the hood on my jacket and zipping it right to the top, burrowing my chin inside the collar. There were fairy lights wrapped all around the pillars of the porch to the hotel and lining the long gravel driveway, dripping from tree to tree in delicate arcs. They glowed valiantly through the drizzly rain, despite it being early afternoon. As far as I knew, the only time the Christmas lights were turned off in December was between two and five o’clock in the morning. If you stood still for too long near my mum at this time of year, there was a high likelihood she would wrap you in tinsel and pop a star on your head.

I checked the time on my phone as I walked through the grounds: just gone one o’clock. I had no real errands of my own to run in the village, although I probably should’ve been trying to buy Christmas presents but, with the exception of the bookshop, there was very little in the village that a person with my meagre budget could afford to get friends and family for Christmas. Loganbury was very pretty, all ramshackle Tudor buildings leering like drunks over pavement barely wide enough to fit one very small person and their handbag, which was great for tourists – and therefore my mum’s hotel – but it was genuinely like living in a time warp. In addition to the bookshop, there was an art gallery and an antique shop aimed at the more affluent visitors, one of the oldest pubs in Britain, a tea room, a greengrocer and Lydia’s florist shop. You know, all the essentials.

Before I put my phone away, I decided to risk a look at my notifications. Two of my best friends from London had been tagged in a new photo. In contrast to the soggy grey landscape surrounding me, Geri and Lisa were on a white, sandy beach, with an eye-achingly blue sea behind them. Geri was down on one knee…

I almost tripped over my own feet.

She’d finally done it!

I’d gone with Geri to find the ring months ago, scouring boutique jewellers for something that Lisa would like. We finally found a slim silver band with an enamel heart, a swirl of pretty colours that encapsulated Lisa’s optimistic personality. Geri bought it and then promptly chickened out of asking.

To begin with I’d tried to give her encouragement to go ahead and propose – I knew there was no way Lisa would turn her down. But my own issues with my (then) fiancé Peter distracted me. Over the last eighteen months of our relationship small problems – things that had been niggling at me but which he assured me weren’t issues – became big problems. And those rapidly morphed into illusion-shattering revelations.

I doubt I will ever forget that moment, standing at the head of a table full of perfect strangers, when he’d called me stupid and told me that I couldn’t be trusted with anything, all because I’d served a dinner to his client that had given him an allergic reaction. I’d already felt awful – even though I hadn’t been told the man had allergies – and Peter, who was supposed to love me, hadn’t thought twice about humiliating me in front of everyone.

I’d heard that word ‘stupid’ like an echo of all the times he’d insulted me like that before. As soon as the guests had left (they’d hot-footed it out the door pretty quickly after that scene), we’d erupted into an argument of EastEnders-level proportions and every ugly truth of our relationship had been aired. It’s funny how the phrase ‘cheated on’ refers only to a significant other having sex with someone else…because there are a lot of ways people can cheat on you.

I wish I could say that I still felt excited for Geri and Lisa, as a good friend should have done, but that afternoon I just felt numb and it was nothing to do with the icy rain.

Still, one beautiful thing about social media is that I was able to hit the heart button and type ‘congratulations’ without the sentiment being ruined by the existential crisis written all over my face.

When I got to Lydia’s I stood on the doormat inside, shaking off all the drips and wiping my face. The intense perfume from all the different flower displays infiltrated my lungs and made me feel like I was breathing in my childhood. After getting off the bus from school, I would often come straight in here to wheedle hot chocolate and a biscuit before I walked back up the hill to the hotel.

A radio played softly out the back and not a soul manned the shop but they didn’t really need to. Loganbury wasn’t exactly rife with master criminals planning to make off with bouquets of carnations. A bunch of decorations were set out on a round table near the counter but there was only one angel left. I picked her up and was surprised by how heavy she was. She was wearing an off-white crochet smock, like a repurposed doily, and she had a round white face with very red cheeks and an old-fashioned butterfly kiss of a mouth, giving her a rather shocked expression. I guess I’d look shocked too if my purpose in life was to spend the majority of December with a Christmas tree shoved up my dress. She was a misfit angel, last to be picked for a festive team, and I kind of liked her all the more for it. Mum would think she was hideous.

I leaned across the counter to call out before I walked straight through. My mum and Lydia had been best friends for over a decade and I knew I was welcome to make myself at home, but after the incident when I was fifteen where I caught Lydia in a clinch with one of her delivery drivers, I always made sure I announced my presence in advance.

‘Lydia?’

There was a pause and the music on the radio lowered. A middle-aged woman with an iron-grey topknot and a bright yellow apron poked her head around the door behind the counter.

‘Beth, honey. Come on through.’ She disappeared, and the volume of the music rose again. I stepped into the back room just in time to see Lydia put her hand on her hip and execute a single-girl shimmy over to the big wooden table where she was making up a flower arrangement. I snorted and joined her at the table, setting the angel down next to a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. She nudged me and tutted. ‘Go on then, if you can do any better, why don’t you show me how?’

‘I don’t need to show you anything, Lyd, you know you’ve got all the best moves. And I’m in retirement from dancing at the moment.’

She fixed me with a disapproving sideways look, then pointed her shears at the angel. ‘What are you doing with that? You can’t want her? I’ve been thinking of taking her out of the shop. I reckon she’s been putting off the customers.’

‘Mum needs an angel for the tree. Can you put it on the account for the hotel, please?’

‘How can she need another one? Do we need to hold an intervention for her decorating addiction?’ Lydia snipped at the end of a spray of tiny white buds, then laid it down to the left of the arrangement of red and white flowers she was working on.

‘Says the woman selling Christmas decorations…’

‘Which was your mother’s idea. Use the opportunity for extra sales, she said. And the idea of some extra money in my holiday fund did appeal. I just didn’t realise she’d be the one buying most of the stock from me.’

‘Mercenaries, the pair of you.’

‘I think the word you’re looking for is “businesswomen”.’ She unspooled a length of satin ribbon with her permanently tanned hands and wrapped it around the bunch of flowers. ‘Finger.’ I pressed my finger on the knot while she finished tying off the bow and all the disparate stems and lonely petals drew together to make a bouquet in the shape of a heart.

‘Wedding?’ I asked, unable to hide the note of grim inevitability creeping into my voice.

She nodded and twisted at one of the stems at the bottom. ‘Tomorrow. Won’t it be romantic for them if that snow we’re forecast comes early?’

‘It’ll be cold. And half their guests will probably get stranded.’

‘Oh, Beth darling. You’re far too young to sound so bitter.’

‘I beg to differ.’ I crossed my arms over my chest. ‘I think twenty-six is the perfect age to start sounding bitter. I’ve been sarcastic since I was a kid. Now I actually have some life experience, bitterness is the next logical step.’

‘And what comes after bitterness?’

‘Crabbiness. Then meanness. I’m looking forward to that one. When kids kick their ball into my garden, I’ll puncture it. Then I’ll go inside and feed all thirty-two of my cats.’

Her mouth quirked at the corner, but she didn’t laugh.

‘That’s not going to happen to you.’ She picked up the bouquet with two hands, like it was a sleeping newborn, to place it in a small polystyrene crate.

‘You’re crushing my dreams, Lyd.’

‘This is a just a hiccup.’ She patted my cheek as she walked past towards the kitchenette area behind her, skirting a stack of holly wreaths, which must’ve been for all the houses with doors opening out onto the high street. She donated them every year for the Dickensian festival, Loganbury’s annual Christmas fayre, along with a bunch of mistletoe, which the villagers liked to hang in the prettiest spots that most lent themselves to a romantic moment. ‘Men fall over themselves to get a date with a pretty girl like you.’

‘Men with a basic lack of co-ordination you’re saying? Seems about right.’

‘Oh, you’re hopeless.’

I laughed even though the word snuck between my ribs and needled at me.

I knew she didn’t mean it. That she was just exasperated with my defensiveness when all she wanted was to boost me up and send me out to meet my Prince Charming. But still. ‘Hopeless’. If the boot fits.

‘Are you staying for a cuppa?’ She picked up the kettle and waved it at me.

I flicked a glance at the clock on the wall behind the table, even though I had no intention of staying. Tea with Lydia would only mean more well-meaning but soul-destroying pep talks.

‘No, I better get going. I want to pop to the bookshop before my lunch break’s over.’

I gave her a hug before picking up my misfit angel. On my way back out through the shop I rummaged under the counter for a bag to put her in, but all I could find was enormous cellophane sheets and paper bags. I wedged her in my pocket instead and tucked her shocked face under my elbow to protect her from the rain as I left.

The bookshop was right at the opposite end of the high street. I liked it because – obviously – it was full of books but also, vitally, it was run by a man who’d only moved to the village a couple of years ago and therefore did not know me or feel the need to console/advise me about my life.

Of course, between the florist and the bookshop was a landmine territory of people who did know me. Despite the rain, there were plenty of villagers making last-minute preparations for the fayre: fixing up strings of coloured lights and Santa signs pointing out the direction of the grotto, or marking out the spaces for the stalls and the stage. I suddenly wondered why I’d thought it was a good idea to come down to the village in the first place – although I knew the answer to that: I’d wanted to get out of the hotel before I went stir-crazy.

Living and working in the same place had never been a problem when I’d been a music tutor from Peter’s flat in North London. But then I had only dealt with one pupil at a time, according to my own schedule. Not a horde of guests, changing every three to seven days – that took some getting used to again. I couldn’t argue with one of Peter’s parting shots: I’d had it easy with him supporting me financially. Tutors don’t earn a lot – not if they want to keep their rates competitive – and boy, did he never miss an opportunity to point that out to me towards the end. I’d given up my music tutoring the last year we were together, because I was so tired of his jibes, and I’d taken a job as a sales assistant in a music store instead, to ensure a steady income.

It’d been such a relief not to go back to that store though. It was uninspiring to say the least. I was going to have to think hard about what kind of reliable job with a secure income I could deal with, when I started looking after Christmas.

I stayed on Lydia’s doorstep for a moment as the single-decker community bus swung by me, close enough that I could’ve reached a hand out to write a rude word on its window. Not that I would do that sort of thing. It was the village’s only method of public transport. It stopped at a small island in the centre of the ‘high street’, which was furnished with a memorial cross, a bench, two bricked-in flowers beds and the sorriest-looking Christmas tree I’d ever seen. Its branches were slicked down and it was almost bent in half from the gusts of wind and the rain. Something told me it wasn’t going to make it to the fayre tomorrow night without some reconstructive surgery from the event planners.

With that in mind, I decided to risk walking down the longer stretch of shops on the left side of the road, skirting around the memorial island. I didn’t fancy another altercation with a precarious Christmas tree.

I managed to make it past Victor’s pub and the gallery and was starting to think I might arrive at my destination un-accosted, when two of my oldest friends, Rachel and Ben, stepped out of the tea room on the corner. He fussed over her, untucking her hair from her collar, as she smiled dotingly up at him. I stopped and spun towards the building beside me, hoping to feign interest in a shop window and instead finding a brick wall.

A sneaky glance out the corner of my eye revealed Ben steering Rachel by the shoulders in my direction, her huge belly out before her, like a cannon being lined up on me.

I’d gone to secondary school with Rachel and Ben – they were nice people – but even back then the level of their kissy-wissy-touchy-feely love had the unfortunate side effect of making you feel like the most single person on the planet – even when you were in a relationship. On top of the engagement announcement from Lisa and Geri, I wasn’t sure I could face the reminder of my relatively new relationship status.

I grabbed one of the fliers about the festival that was pinned to the nearest telephone pole and held it up over my face as I marched forwards and ducked down the alleyway between the grocer’s and the tea room they were outside of.

The alleyway was narrow and cobbled. It headed steeply uphill towards the green and the primary school, but I kept up my swift pace, knowing that even if they saw me and were moving in the same direction, there was no way eight-months-pregnant Rachel would be able to catch up. I double-checked with a glance behind me just as I stepped out of the alleyway: all clear. I was home and—

CRASH.

As I stepped out onto the street I body-slammed straight into a man walking across the mouth of the alleyway. We bounced apart, ricocheting backwards from the force. His arms began to flail as the massive rucksack on his back threatened to topple him over. I grabbed the strap across his chest in an effort to stop him from landing on the ground like a tortoise, hauling him close.

I took a big gulp of air and a strong, pleasant scent wafted over me, like the rain had released special chemicals from his skin, the same way it did from the earth: leather, eucalyptus and man. He was tall, so I was still just staring at his chin as I got my bearings again when he spoke, short and sharp.

‘Are you okay?’

I nodded.

‘Good. D’you think you could let go of me then?’

I flushed and unwound my fingers from the canvas strap of his backpack, taking a few hurried steps back. He pushed his Buddy-Holly-style glasses back up his nose with his knuckle and frowned at me like I was some kind of idiot.

I think I might’ve gone into shock because this was the closest I’d come to a man’s body in two months. Longer actually, what with all those nights Peter had been away on ‘business trips’. And when he had been home there’d been enough acreage of bed sheets between us each night to sell off as a smallholding. My body was probably starved for any kind of physical contact: I mean, this guy I’d crashed into looked like he’d been spun around in a washing machine a few times and taken out again too soon; soaked through, dishevelled and cross.

Cross. At me.

‘That’s a strange way of saying thank you.’ I folded my arms over my chest and fixed him with a glare.

‘Why would I say thank you?’ He threw a quick raised eyebrow in my direction and then began scouring the pavement in our immediate vicinity.

‘Because I just saved you from toppling over like a ninepin.’

‘I wouldn’t have lost my balance if you’d been looking where you were going.’ He found what he was searching for – his phone – and scooped it up.

‘Ditto. You obviously had your head buried in your phone.’ I injected the necessary amount of derision into my tone to cover up the fact that I was constantly walking around looking at my phone too. Everyone was these days. But he didn’t even bother to defend himself on that charge; he was too busy examining his screen to see if it was cracked.

I gave an annoyed little harrumph and jammed my hands in my pockets, ready to start walking home again. Our drama was obviously over. Then I realised I shouldn’t have been able to get my hand in my left pocket. The angel. Where was she?

A range of colourful swear words erupted from my lips as I spun around on the spot and tried to find her. She must’ve fallen out of my pocket when we knocked into each other.

There. Her little white hand signalled to me in distress, the rest of her submerged in a great dirty puddle that had formed in a crack between the pavement and the cobbles of the alleyway.

‘Nooo, no, no, no.’ Poor misfit angel, winding up with only me to look after her. I’d been her guardian for all of ten minutes and she was drowning in a muddy puddle.

I crouched down to pull her out by the arm, streams of filthy water cascading out of her now grey and overstretched woollen dress.

‘What is that?’ he asked, vaguely disgusted, and even though I knew the angel was nothing much to look at before she took a dip, it still irritated me. She might be a misfit, but she was my misfit. An evil thought occurred to me.

‘What she is, is irreplaceable. She’s been in our family for generations. My great-great-great-grandmother made her, and we bring her out every Christmas. It’s a family tradition.’

He blinked at me and cocked his head to the side slightly, then his expression cleared.

‘Ohhh, it’s a fairy for the Christmas tree,’ he said, like he’d finally figured out a major puzzle.

‘It was. Now I’ll have to take her home and show my mother – she’ll be heartbroken.’

His face fell and his cheeks, which were pink with cold, paled beneath. I almost felt bad.

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ He unzipped the top of his jacket so he could reach inside and pull his wallet out but when he checked the contents, he bit his bottom lip and winced at me. ‘I’ve only got a couple of pounds left in English money. I doubt that would cover it?’

His accent was definitely from somewhere in the south east of England, so he must’ve just got back from his holidays. Everyone was either on holiday, coming home from holiday or planning one, it seemed. What I wouldn’t have given to be on a desert island at that moment. Just me, a good book and a bottle of rum. Perhaps I should give Granny Caroline a call in Jamaica, see if she fancied putting up her granddaughter for a couple of weeks…or months?

Instead, I started wringing out the angel’s smock dress as best as I was able. ‘Of course it won’t. I told you. She’s irreplaceable.’

‘Well. Here. At least let me give you something to take her home in, so she doesn’t get any more water damage.’ He swung his backpack free and let it fall to the pavement in between us with a thump.

As he undid the toggles and rummaged around inside, a lock of his saturated hair fell free from the rest. It hung there, twisted in a perfect little curl, begging me to pull it down just to see if it would spring back. I have issues with compulsions like that, so I tightened my grip on the angel. When he straightened back up, it settled on his forehead and he unfolded a white T-shirt and extended it towards me.

I wasn’t sure how it would help at all, but it seemed like I’d made him feel sufficiently guilty; he clearly needed to do something to make it up to me, and if ruining one of his T-shirts would ease his conscience then so be it.

I gave the angel a last gentle shake and moved closer again to put her in the centre of the T-shirt so he could wrap her up. There was a strange intimacy to the moment as his long fingers showed an excess of care when folding over the left side of the shirt. He paused before covering her with the right.

‘Are they plastic wings?’

Oh. Whoops. Guess I’d added too many ‘greats’ to my list of fictional grandparents.

‘She’s over a hundred years old – she’s needed some modernisations over the years.’ I tugged the rest of the T-shirt over her and hugged her to my chest. ‘Guess she’ll need even more now.’

‘Look, if you give me your number or address, I can drop some money in to help with her repairs, once I’ve had a chance to get some more sterling.’

‘Please don’t trouble yourself any further.’

He rifled in his wallet again and produced a business card. ‘In case you change you mind.’

I jammed it in my back pocket and turned on my heel, throwing a sarcastic ‘Merry Christmas,’ at him, over my shoulder. I needed to get this angel home and figure out a way of avoiding giving her to my mum until she was fixed. I couldn’t even be trusted to buy a Christmas decoration and deliver it in one piece.

When I got back to the hotel, I bypassed the front door in favour of the side entrance that led straight into the kitchen. That way I had a good chance of dodging my mum who should be setting up the bar round about now.

The kitchen was warm, full of the creamy aroma of tomato soup, bread and coffee. I put my soggy parcel of T-shirt and angel on the island in the middle of the kitchen and shrugged out of my wet jacket.

Henry, one of our chefs, stepped out of the walk-in fridge, his arms laden with cheese and milk.

‘That soup smells amazing,’ I said, hanging my jacket on the back of a stool at the island. ‘Any chance there’s some left over?’

Henry grunted and took his dairy products to the other side of the island.

‘Didn’t you just come back from your lunch break?’ He slammed a slab of mature cheddar onto the chopping block.

‘I did, but I didn’t have time to grab anything. I’ll sort it out if there is some – I wasn’t expecting you to warm it up or a. . .