We Need a Little Christmas

Book 2: Evergreen Lane Novels

by Sierra Donovan

Genres: Holiday books; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

"Sierra Donovan captures the magic of Christmas in this charming and romantic tale. I smiled the entire time I was reading it!" --Shirlee McCoy, author of Sweet Surprises The best Christmas present? The unexpected romance that brings two former classmates together for a lesson in holiday magic. . . With its festive Snowed Inn and year-round Christmas store, the pretty town of Tall Pine knows how to do the holidays right. But this year, Liv Tomblyn's homecoming trip may be bittersweet. Liv's grandmother died soon after Thanksgiving, leaving a lifetime of belongings to sort through. Soon Liv is surrounded by memories, including a retro silver Christmas tree. And there's Liv's old friend Scott Leroux--the one-time class clown who's become the town's go-to handyman. Scott enjoyed helping Liv's Nammy with little fix-it jobs in recent years, but now he's wondering if the crafty grandma had a much larger project in mind. Everything--from Nammy's mysteriously malfunctioning heater to that silver tree--seems to be conspiring to throw Liv and Scott together. Not that Scott objects. For though Liv insists she'll leave Tall Pine when the holidays are over, he's hoping their holiday kisses might thaw her resolve and make this Christmas truly unforgettable. . . "Donovan keeps the magic going. . . Christmas cheer and sense of love will melt the heart of any reader." --Publishers Weekly "Sentimental and sweet with a touch of melancholy, the third installment of the Evergreen Lane Christmas romances will appeal widely to small-town romance fans. . . Flawless execution and warm, real-feeling characters will have readers turning the last page before they know it." --RT Book Reviews , 4 Stars Praise for Sierra Donovan's Do You Believe in Santa? "This story is like the perfect cup of hot chocolate: sweet, warm and nostalgia-inducing." --RT Book Reviews Praise for No Christmas Like the Present "A charming holiday story that combines the magic of It's A Wonderful Life with the warmth of A Christmas Carol ." --Donna Alward "Donovan packs this contemporary romance full of all kind of Christmas magic." --Publishers Weekly "A stand-out story." --RT Book Reviews

Release date: September 27, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

It shouldn’t be hard to recognize her own sister.

But as Liv Tomblyn scanned the faces in the crowded baggage claim area, she was starting to have her doubts.

She couldn’t find Rachel in the post-Thanksgiving throng of travelers at the airport. Maybe she’d gotten a haircut, or changed the color, or something else to throw Liv off. She found herself trying to picture Rachel’s Facebook photo, wondering how recent it was. Her clearest mental image was the way her sister had looked four years ago, the last time Liv had come back to California. Rachel had been straightening the curl out of her strawberry blond hair then . . .

When you tried to picture your little sister from her Facebook photo, you’d been away too long. And it shouldn’t take your grandmother’s memorial service to bring you home.

Liv checked her phone again for messages or texts. Nothing. Giving up for the moment, she turned to the baggage carousel as it made another round. She sighted the larger of her two red suitcases—she’d chosen the luggage because it was easy to spot—and stepped forward to reach for it.

“Here, let me get that.” A male voice spoke behind her, to her left, and a hand reached past her to snag the suitcase.

“Hey—” she began, then followed the hand up its arm to the face of the owner. It was a long way up, but she recognized the face, the sandy brown hair and the blue eyes that regarded her with what looked like mild amusement.

“Hi, Liv.”

“Scotty?”

She hadn’t seen him since graduation, but there was no mistaking Scotty Leroux, the class clown for all her years growing up in Tall Pine. The fact that he was about six-foot-five helped. Which meant he must have just gotten here, because he would have stood out even in the holiday mob. His eyes held the same glimmer, as if he were about to laugh at something. Back in the day, Liv had never been sure whether the joke was on her.

“Rachel sent me.” His resonant voice cut through the rumble of voices around them. “She hit a snag on her way out the door.”

“What—”

“Nothing major. Let’s get out of this mess and I’ll tell you about it. How many bags have you got?”

“Just one more.” A frown creased her forehead. “Another red suitcase. But—”

Setting the first bag on its end, Scotty shifted his focus over her head and past her to the carousel. “That one?”

She followed his nod to the smaller bag now rounding the corner of the conveyor belt on its way toward them. Yes, sir, red luggage did the trick. Liv stepped forward. “I’ll get that one.”

Scotty passed her with one easy stride, taking advantage of his longer arms to reach the suitcase before Liv could get to it. “Whoa.” He hefted the bag. “The little one’s heaver than the big one. What have you got in here?”

She answered reluctantly. “Shoes.”

“What are you, a centipede?” Scotty’s mouth lifted in the teasing grin she recalled from nearly ten years ago.

She tried to ignore the embarrassment that rushed in. Why did she feel the urge to explain herself? “I like having options.”

“I guess so.” He raised his eyebrows, looking from the two suitcases on the floor back to Liv. “How long are you staying?”

“Through Christmas. There’s a lot to do.” Liv steadied her voice. “Mom and Rachel and I need to sort through Nammy’s whole house. And she lived there for sixty years.”

“I know.” Scotty’s voice softened, and this time there was no trace of kidding in his expression. “I’m sorry about your grandma. She was a nice lady.”

“Thanks.” Liv’s eyes prickled, but no way was she going to break down in an airport. Breaking down wasn’t something she tended to do anyway. It never did any good, and there was always something more useful to do.

Scotty surprised her by giving her arm a quick squeeze, and Liv tried to figure out this strange new world she appeared to have landed in. She’d known Scotty the way everybody knew everybody at Tall Pine High: this one’s a brain, this one’s a cheerleader. She remembered him as lean and gangly, on the goofy side. Not a grown-up, and certainly not someone to call in a sudden emergency. He’d filled out physically, gotten more solid. And for some reason, her sister had called him.

What was the emergency? A snag, he’d called it. She needed details.

She opened her mouth to ask again, but he turned to lead her through the automatic sliding exit doors, carrying the small suitcase in one hand, pulling the large one along on its wheels with the other. Liv followed as she tried to formulate her questions. She wondered how well he’d known her grandmother. Why her sister wasn’t here.

And why, of all people, had she called Scotty Leroux?

Outside, he came to a stop next to the wall of the building and set her suitcases on the sidewalk. There was somewhat less confusion out here; the jumble of voices gave way to the sound of cars and their doors as people pulled up to the curb to load and unload.

“So what’s going on?” Liv asked.

Again, no trace of teasing in the usually-laughing blue eyes.

“Your mom fell,” he said. “Rachel says it’s not a big deal, and not to worry. She wanted me to make sure you understood that. She didn’t call or text you because she didn’t want you to have extra time to stress before I got here. She says your mom just landed hard on her knee, and she couldn’t put any weight on it. So Rachel took her to the walk-in urgent care center and called me to get you.”

“She fell? How?” Random falling was what old people did. Her mom was only fifty-seven. Her grandmother had been eighty-three, and she’d never fallen once.

Not that Liv knew of, anyway.

“I didn’t get all the details. Rachel just kept saying for you not to worry.”

“Okay.” Liv took a second to close her eyes and re-assimilate.

Don’t worry sounded like a surefire cue to worry, especially when your grandmother just died, you were already rattled, your mom fell, and your sister sent a former classmate instead of coming to pick you up at the airport herself.

Liv pulled out her cell phone and dialed Rachel’s number. It went straight to voice mail. She considered leaving a message, reconsidered and hung up. Rachel probably had her hands full. She lived in San Diego, a three-hour drive from Tall Pine, so she’d been staying with Mom while they waited for Liv to join them. It had taken Liv two days to get here. Booking a flight the week after Thanksgiving hadn’t been easy, and she’d been trying to tie up loose ends at the office before she left Terri to handle the business for four weeks.

Still, she should have gotten here quicker.

“The hospital might have made her turn off her cell,” Scotty said after she hung up without speaking. “Plus, the reception is always hit-or-miss in Tall Pine.”

He was trying to reassure her.

Don’t worry, her sister had said.

Right.

She faced him again, tilting her head back to look up farther than she felt comfortable doing. Liv was taller than average, but Scotty’s extra height made her wish she’d worn shoes with some kind of heel, rather than the practical sneakers she’d worn for traveling.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get up the hill and see what’s going on.”

Scott had run out the door when Liv’s sister called, aware that Rachel was already behind schedule to pick Liv up at the airport. He hadn’t thought to grab anything as he left. If he had, he might have tried to find a CD labeled Music for Driving Down the Freeway with Someone You Barely Know.

Not that Liv seemed like she was starving for conversation. At the moment, she sat with her head turned toward the window of the passenger seat of Scott’s faithful, battered F-150.

She ran a hand through her hair, still the same rich chestnut color. It tumbled past her shoulders in disorderly waves that were all the more attractive because she obviously wasn’t thinking about it.

He shouldn’t be thinking about it.

Liv’s eyes, when she’d been looking at him, had worn a preoccupied, slightly out-of-focus look that made perfect sense in a woman who’d just lost her grandmother. He needed to respect that. And he felt that loss as well. Olivia Neuenschwander had worked her way into his heart. He knew he wasn’t alone. Eighty-three years old or not, her absence left a hole, and the rest of Tall Pine would miss her, too.

Almost as if she’d heard his thoughts, Liv turned to him. “I didn’t know you knew my grandmother.”

“Everyone knows Nammy.” He felt her double take at his use of the nickname and wished he could rewind. Olivia had been her grandmother, not his, even if Liv had moved away.

Olivia. It occurred to him, belatedly, that Liv must have been named after her.

“I did some repairs around the house for her,” he explained. “It’s what I do. I’m the local rent-a-husband.”

He paused. Usually when he told people that, it was an opening for Insert Wisecrack Here, but she didn’t bite. Then again, Liv Tomblyn hadn’t been the wisecracking type. More the student-council, straight-A, overachiever type. After graduation, she’d lit out for college somewhere out of state, and he didn’t think she’d been back much since.

He didn’t really know her, but the aura of quiet radiating from her told him she might regret her long absence.

“Your grandmother talked about you a lot,” he said. “She was really proud of you. You would have thought you were a Fortune 500 mogul.” He glanced over to make sure she was still with him. “Although I’m not quite sure what it is you do. Something about home remodeling?”

“Not quite. Terri and I are home organizers. We help people manage their storage, their clutter, sometimes their schedules.”

Scott frowned. “I wonder how she got remodeling out of that.”

“Well, I specialize in closets.”

He almost swerved the truck. “Closets?” he repeated.

It was hard not to laugh. He managed to keep a straight face, but he sensed her stiffen beside him.

“Seriously,” she said. “It’s a real business.”

Scott bit his lip and kept his eyes on the road.

“It’s a service,” she insisted. “When your living space is jumbled, your life is jumbled. Your stress level goes up, you lose valuable time looking for things . . . it even affects people’s concentration.”

Sounded like a serious first-world problem to him. “Well, anyway. From what Namm—what your grandmother told me, it sounds like you’ve done really well with it.”

He didn’t mean to sound patronizing, but he did, even to his own ears.

She crossed her arms. “What about you? Rent-a-husband? You sound like a gigolo.”

A little late, but a wisecrack after all. Scott didn’t miss a beat.

“Only when business is slow. A guy’s gotta eat.”

A moment of silence. Then a short burst of laughter escaped from her, and he felt the tension diffuse. A step in the right direction.

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve used that one before, haven’t you?”

“There are no old jokes,” he said. “Only old audiences.”

He glanced sideways at Liv as the truck continued up the hill. Her job still sounded ridiculous. Granted, Liv’s skills might come in handy for the work her family had ahead of them, but he wondered if they’d be getting a consultant, when what they really needed was a daughter and a sister.

Then he detected a flaw in the picture.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Your job is helping people deal with their clutter, and you brought along a whole suitcase just for shoes?”

From the corner of his eye, he caught an embarrassed smile. “I never said I was consistent.”

After an hour and a half of mostly-silent driving, they made the turn off the highway onto Evergreen Lane. The street was decked out in its customary Christmas finery, with arches of lights stretching from one side of the street to the other, garland wrapped around all the lamp posts. Scott wondered if the festive decorations felt incongruous to Liv for this rather somber homecoming, but if so, she didn’t comment on it.

However, within a block, he saw her back straighten. Soon she was craning her neck, taking in the shops on either side.

“Oh, gosh, there’s the pizza place . . . and the T-shirt shop . . . they painted, didn’t they?”

Scott grinned. “I painted, actually.”

He wasn’t sure she heard him. “And the Christmas store’s still there. And the Pine ’n’ Dine . . .” They passed a vacant space, and Liv stiffened. “Is the ice cream shop gone?”

Scott almost chuckled at her near alarm. “No. They just moved. It’s another block up, on the left.”

When Scott pointed out the pink-and-white awning of Penny’s Ice Cream Shoppe as they drove by, he could have sworn she visibly relaxed.

“We’ve got another important landmark coming up,” he said. “Coffman’s Hardware.”

She frowned. “Why’s that important?”

“For one thing, I’m there about twice a day to pick up something for a job. For another thing, it’s one of our most dependable cell phone hot spots. Well, a warm spot, anyway.”

He’d seen her peeking at the phone in her lap ever since they lost reception on the highway that climbed up the mountain. Scott saw that look all the time on tourists in Tall Pine—checking for signal bars as if they were stranded aliens hoping for communication from the mother ship. If Liv was going through similar withdrawal, she’d have to get used to it. For now he gave her the benefit of the doubt. The last she’d heard, her mother was in urgent care. Watching for some word from her sister would be the natural thing to do.

At Coffman’s Hardware, he pulled to the curb and tried not to eavesdrop, although that was hard to avoid from less than two feet away in the cab of a truck.

“Rachel?” Liv held her cell phone to her right ear, away from Scott. “How’s Mom? What happened?”

And then there was nothing to hear for a couple of minutes, as Liv sat stock-still and listened. She brought her left hand below her temple, rubbing in small circles. Her breathing was slow, quiet, schooled.

“So it could have been a lot worse,” she said. Then quickly added, “Thanks for taking care of her. We’re not far away. Right by the hardware store. We’ll be there in . . . ten, fifteen minutes, I think.” She glanced at Scott.

Of course, from his side of the conversation, he didn’t know where they were going. He shrugged. “Close enough.” After all, it was hard to be more than fifteen minutes away from anything in Tall Pine.

When Liv hung up, she turned to Scott. “They’re back at my mom’s house. I can direct you.”

No point in mentioning he’d been there himself. With Tall Pine’s quirky roads, it would still be easy to botch a turn. He sat silently behind the wheel and let Liv’s directions take them to Faye Tomblyn’s house, about three-quarters of a mile off Evergreen Lane. The little clapboard home boasted a nice coat of fresh-looking white paint, with deep green trim. Scott gave a mental nod of approval to whoever did the upkeep or had chosen paint durable enough to withstand the intermittent rain and snow of their mountain winters. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he cared for the creepy-looking plaster gnome that guarded the front porch—

He’d barely come to a stop in the driveway before Liv was out of the truck, rushing up the walkway at a near run.

Her sister, apparently, was like-minded, because the front door opened before Liv reached it, and Rachel burst out.

Watching the reunion between the two sisters, Scott quickly decided he didn’t know Liv Tomblyn as well as he thought.

As Rachel came running out to meet her, Liv’s heart caught in her throat. Again.

Her frantic visual scans through the airport would have been much easier if she’d been able to keep in mind the fact that Rachel was seven months pregnant.

“Liv!” Rachel cried, and crashed into her.

“Rachel!” Liv cried, and crunched her little sister into her arms.

Her big little sister, because Rachel’s pregnant stomach bulged between them, as firm and round as a basketball. Liv giggled and sobbed at the same time as she stepped back.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “My little sister . . .”

“Big as a house?” Rachel interjected, and they both laughed, sobbed, and hugged again.

Words welled up in Liv’s throat and mind, too many to keep up with. I’m sorry I was gone so long. I’m sorry about Nammy. I’m sorry . . . She set the warring emotions aside and went to something useful. “How’s Mom?” As if they hadn’t covered it already on the phone ten minutes ago.

“She said she was in a hurry getting ready and she didn’t see the throw rug in the kitchen and she just—fell. Hard, on the kitchen floor. I know, it’s like one of those bad old commercials. ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up . . .’”

Liv’s stomach clenched. Her grandmother dead and her mother falling down in her own kitchen—it was too much to take in. “But she’s okay?”

Rachel patiently repeated what she’d said on the phone. “It looks like a sprain. But the urgent care physician said she should see her regular doctor for a follow-up next week.”

Liv became dimly aware that Scotty Leroux had followed her out of the truck and now stood behind her, tall and silent as an oak tree. She should thank him and let him know he was free to go, but that felt rude.

She turned and got no clue from his expression. Once again, he looked more serious than she remembered.

“I need to go in and see my mom,” she said. “Want to come in for a minute?”

Like Liv, Scotty seemed unsure. After a moment he nodded, and they went inside. Liv was assaulted, as she had been on the drive through town, with a sensation of the familiar and the foreign. The living room carpet, still dark brown, maybe a little more worn looking than the last time she’d seen it. The walls, that honey tone they’d helped Mom pick out after their father died, when it was important to find something to do that would occupy their minds. Her mom, sitting in the easy chair that had always been her favorite.

Seeing her little sister pregnant had been a shock, an adjustment. Seeing her mother—

Faye Tomblyn sat with her right foot propped up on a kitchen step stool that now served as a makeshift footrest. A pair of crutches leaned against the arm of the couch beside her. She started to stand, but both daughters immediately shouted her back down into her chair.

“Mom.” Liv bent down, engulfing her mother in a gentler version of the crunch she’d given Rachel outside. With her mom’s chin hanging over Liv’s shoulder, she knew her mother couldn’t see the insistent tears prickling at her eyes.

Liv had to get a grip. Half an hour in Tall Pine, and she was turning into a leaky faucet.

But Mom looked so much older than she had when Liv flew out for Rachel’s wedding four years ago. Rachel and Brian lived just a few hours away in San Diego, and Liv knew her sister visited often, so for Rachel, the change would have been more gradual. For Liv, it was jarring. The scattered strands of white she remembered seeing in her mother’s auburn hair had turned into a full-on dusting of gray; it made up nearly half of her hair color now. Her jawline was a little blurred, a little softer, as if the ten or fifteen extra pounds she’d gradually gained over the years had finally started to show in her face. And those crutches, propped against the sofa . . .

Just a silly accident, Liv reminded herself. Mom had been in a hurry. It was a wonder she’d wanted to come with Rachel to the airport at all. Her mom had always hated airports, with all their turmoil and confusion.

Liv blinked hard and pulled back resolutely. She focused on her mom’s familiar gray-blue eyes. They still looked the way Liv remembered, the same way they’d loo. . .