Ginger (Marrying Miss Kringle)

by Lucy McConnell

  Layla had disappeared into her book once again. Timber rested his head on her knees, leaving Joseph to stew. A moment later, he scuttled back to the kitchen and snatched up the chocolate temptation, shoving it into his mouth and chewing happily. Pulling a glass out of the cupboard, he filled it with milk and sat at the counter, where he proceeded to eat two star cookies. The sooner he got rid of all reminders of Ginger, the better. Since he couldn’t see himself throwing out perfectly good cookies, he’d have to do this the hard way. Snatching up a gingerbread man, he bit the head clean off, feeling a sense of childlike glee. Cookies for dinner. He’d never had the pleasure.

  The pleasure was short-lived as his senses were overloaded with Ginger. The smell of cinnamon and other spices that clung to her skin invaded his nose, and now he had the taste of her on his lips. A glass and a half of milk later, she lingered, and Joseph dropped his head to the counter in defeat. He was falling for Ginger. Like sliding down a frosty hill, he had no way to stop himself. The only option left was to hold on tight and pray he didn’t end up broken.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I don’t understand why you had to go at all!”

  Ginger hurried through the house, getting ready for her date with Scooter, as Lux dogged her every move. Ginger changed into a navy-and-white-striped sweater that hugged all the right places and a pair of skinny jeans. “I promised Layla, and Santa doesn’t break promises to children.”

  “Right, but you should have been meeting the other men on your list, not hiding away in a secluded cabin with a single guy.”

  “And his niece,” threw in Ginger. Adding navy boots to her ensemble, she stomped into the bathroom to do her hair, only to have Lux continue with her fifty-reasons-to-avoid-Joseph diatribe. “Besides, the guys found me anyway.” Steve Rob had asked her out for Saturday, and William Yazzie for Sunday. Both men had come right to the house and knocked on her door. Her countdown to Christmas calendar was quickly filling with dates—all with preapproved Kringle possibilities.

  “You spent way too much time with him.”

  “What’s too much time, and how do you know that?”

  “Because the power went up and then leveled off, and I put a tracker on your phone.”

  Ginger glared. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

  “I’ll take it off,” Lux grumbled.

  “So why is it bad that the power leveled?”

  “Because you can’t take him home—he’s an excluder.”

  Ginger paused with the brush halfway through her hair. “An excluder?”

  “Yeah, took himself off the list at six—six, Ginger!”

  “There has to be a reason for that.” Layla had been an excellent source of information. She talked on and on about her mom, Ruth, and the fun things they did for Christmas. She’d explained about Ruth’s new job and how she couldn’t have kids there, so Layla stayed with her uncle. From Layla’s perspective, things were peachy in the Bear family, except there had been no mention of grandpa or grandma or any other relatives. The Bear clan was a small, tight-knit group of three. Ginger wondered what had happened to Joseph’s parents and if that was why he’d excluded himself from Santa’s list. “Kids don’t just drop off the list for no reason,” she reiterated.

  Lux pressed her lips together. “They don’t—but we don’t have time to play detective. We are on a schedule.”

  Ginger checked the clock. “If I don’t hurry, I’ll be late to meet Scooter.”

  Lux sighed. “That wasn’t the schedule I was—you know what, never mind.” Lux’s laptop beeped, and she hurriedly pressed keys. “I had Stella run a backlist on the doctor.”

  “A backlist? Really?” Perhaps she should have Stella run one on Joseph—see if she could shed some light on his childhood.

  “Yes, really. I’m not giving up on Doctor Patrick Greggory Scott no matter how bad you messed up that meeting.” Lux looked up. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

  “Yes. In fact, I rolled them so hard, I think I sprained something.” Ginger used a flat iron to get the hat-kink out of her hair. “I do not want to talk about Patrick he-is-now-dead-to-me Scott ever again.”

  Lux laughed. Easy for her to do; she wasn’t the one who had a whole town discussing her female organs.

  She flicked a hair band at her sister. “If you are still holding out for the doctor, maybe you should date him.”

  Lux pinked. “Moving on. Scooter Stevensenson,” she read from her screen. “A believer until age nine.”

  “Nine? That seems kind of young to drop off the lists. It was only three years after Joseph …” She let statement hang there like a big ol’ don’t judge him sign.

  Lux squinted at the screen. “There is a difference between having an older sibling slip the news and deciding not to believe.”

  “Yeah—people can change their decisions.” Ginger swiped rose lipstick across her bottom lip.

  “Why are you defending him? Please tell me you’re not falling for Joseph. Please. Please. Please. I can’t take another variable into the equation.” Lux sat on the edge of the bed and flopped back. “You’re worse than Stella.”

  “Not likely,” Ginger muttered. “Will you quite dramatizing and read the rest of the report?”

  Lux rolled onto her side. “Wow—Stella has some mad skills.”

  “What do you mean?” Ginger plopped next to her and turned the screen so she could read it better. “Patrick Greggory Scott, MD. Thirty-four, never been married, no children, graduated med school cum laude. Son of Greggory and Grace. Youngest of six boys. Current address, phone number, college transcripts, loan application for mortgage …” Ginger exchanged a look with Lux. “I thought we only kept naughty and nice records,” Ginger clarified.

  “We do.” Lux pulled the computer back. “Stella must have run a background search on him.” Lux clicked a few buttons, and Stella’s face appeared in the video conference app.

  “Hey! Sistas. How goes the man hunt? Man, I wish I was with you girls instead of up here. You’re killing me with those incomings, Ginger.”

  Ginger smirked. “I don’t think I’m keeping you busy enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lux jumped in. “You ran a complete background on Patrick Greggory Scott, and I don’t even know how you came up with his mortgage application. That’s supposed to be encrypted information.”

  Stella scoffed. “Hey, when you meet guys online, you have to figure out how to weed out the liars.”

  “By reading their financial statements?” Lux glared.

  “Guys will claim they make all sorts of money when they’re really drowning in debt. I’m not about to take on the financial repercussions of someone’s midlife crisis.”

  “Midlife crisis? You shouldn’t be dating anyone old enough to have a midlife crisis, for crying out loud.” Ginger wanted to reach through the screen and give her sister a good shake.

  “They lie about their age too.” Stella shrugged.

  “There’s no reasoning with her.” Ginger warned Lux. “Just block her Internet access.”

  Lux positioned her hands over the keyboard.

  “No! Wait!” Stella panicked.

  “No more private information?” Lux lifted an eyebrow.

  “None, I promise.” Stella crossed her heart.

  Lux nudged Ginger. “What’s your radar say?”

  Her radar screamed naughty, but Stella’s eyes pleaded I’ll be good. “She has good intentions.”

  Lux threw her hands into the air. “What is wrong with you two? Before this—” She grabbed Ginger’s arm and held up the snowflake for Stella to see in the camera— “I had two levelheaded sisters.” She threw Ginger’s arm down. “Now Ginger’s baking cookies with random men who are not on Santa’s approved list, and you’re hacking into who knows what to determine if a guy has a decent investment portfolio and a retirement fund.” She stood up. “I want my real sisters back!”

  “Lux!” Stella exclaim
ed. “Sweetie, in my defense, I was doing this stuff long before Ginger was chosen to be Santa.”

  “That’s not helping.” Ginger warned Stella off before turning her attention back to her younger sister. “Lux, what’s really going on here?”

  A single tear fell to Lux’s cheek, and she swiped it away. “It didn’t spike.”

  “What?” Stella asked.

  Lux melted into the mattress. “When you met with the doctor—nothing happened. Well …” She wiped another tear. “That’s not true. The magic sputtered.”

  “That was then?” asked Stella. “We lost forty-five minutes of production.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t with the doc more than ten minutes.” Ginger held her hands up in defense.

  Lux gave her a watery smile. “And those were the most disastrous ten minutes in the history of measured Christmas Magic.”

  “Well, thanks for that.” Ginger folded her arms. “Now I feel like crying.”

  “In your defense,” Stella butted in, “Lux has only been measuring Christmas Magic for, like, five years.”

  “Seven,” Lux corrected. “But this was bad.”

  Ginger threw her arms in the air. “I didn’t screw it up on purpose. Maybe if I didn’t have the weight of every child’s Christmas dreams hanging on my shoulders—not to mention the hope of my family and hundreds of elves—I wouldn’t have been so nervous.”

  Lux rubbed Ginger’s arm. “I just don’t want you to write him off because you were embarrassed.”

  “What happened?” asked Stella.

  “Nothing!” Ginger glared at the screen.

  “Tell me later,” Stella said to Lux.

  Lux opened her mouth to reply, but one look at Ginger had her snapping her mouth shut.

  Ginger tried to give them all something hopeful to think about. “I have a date tonight. Scooter’s a nice guy. He’s kind of cute. And he asked me out. There’s no cosmic cupid who says I have to marry Patrick Greggory Scott.”

  Lux hit a key, and the good doctor’s handsome face shared a split screen with Stella. Stella scanned his stats. “He sounds perfect, Ginger. He’s educated, he’s smart, and according to this, he’s been on several mountain climbing expeditions, so he’d fit right in with the family.” She bit her lip.

  Ginger shook her head. “Stella, there was no zap.”

  “Oh man—ya gotta have zap.” Stella snapped her fingers.

  “Zap?” Lux’s eyebrows peaked up over her thick glasses.

  “Zap. Zing. Snap. Wow. Oh-yeah,” Stella filled in.

  Lux was a blank.

  Ginger gulped. The only zap she’d had on this trip was with Joseph. It happened once when she’d handed him the repaired gloves, and it happened again when he’d whispered in her ear to be safe. But she couldn’t have zap with Joseph. Joseph was a nonbeliever of the grumpy sort. The kind that slept until noon on Christmas, threw out Christmas cards, and didn’t have a wreath on his front door. Though, thanks to her and Layla, he now had the world’s biggest snowman in his yard.

  Stella leaned closer to the camera. “If he doesn’t make your heart flutter, then he’s not the one.”

  Ginger didn’t think it was possible, but Lux’s eyes grew even larger. “And what if he does?”

  “Then you’ve got zap.” Stella leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.

  Ginger hid her cringe. She’d have to nip this zap with Joseph in the zapper before it turned into something more.

  Lux looked to Ginger for confirmation. Ginger may not like it, but Stella was right. “Does Scooter have zap?” Lux asked.

  I certainly hope so. “Scooter has zap potential.”

  Lux gathered up her laptop. “Then I guess you’d better get going.”

  “Me too,” said Stella. “The new Santa is going to have a heavy sack this year.”

  Ginger leaned over Lux’s shoulder so Stella could see her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Over and out.” Stella clicked off, and her half of the screen went black.

  Lux touched the picture of the doc. “Are you sure he’s not … that you don’t …”

  “One hundred and thirty thousand percent,” replied Ginger. She may not know exactly what she felt for Joseph or why, but she was sure that the doctor was not her future husband.

  “I’ll let you finish getting ready.” Lux glided to the door.

  Ginger stared at her snowflake. “I wish you could just tell me which guy you wanted. You know, light up, throw a spotlight on him, or just surround him with snowflakes or something.” The silver twinkled in the bathroom light but was otherwise silent on the subject. “I thought so.”

  Ginger finished her hair. Tonight was about Scooter. Ginger and Scooter. Scooter and Ginger. Not about Joseph and Ginger. Banishing thoughts of the bearded woodcarver, Ginger climbed on her snowmobile and headed into town.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Saturday, December third was a dark day. Of course, this time of year, the sunrise was around eleven and sunset happened between two and two-thirty in the afternoon, so most days were pretty dark. But today, heavy clouds hung over Clearview, threatening without releasing the moisture they held.

  Joseph muttered as he played with the radio dial. A fruitless and somewhat stupid thing to do, since the old radio had been tuned to the same station for years.

  Layla washed her breakfast bowl in the sink. Today, she had a purple bow in her hair. She hadn’t said much, and Joseph had been too caught up in his own thoughts to volunteer a subject for conversation that was suitable for her young ears.

  He smacked the top of the radio in frustration. He hadn’t been to town yesterday and wanted news of Ginger’s date with Scooter. If Hank didn’t cover the local gossip, surely someone would call in with the information he sought. Three chimes sounded, and he sagged onto a bar stool, running his hands through his hair over and over again.

  “Wanna borrow my brush?” Layla smiled.

  “No thanks.”

  “Can I brush your hair?”

  Joseph closed his eyes. Knowing Ginger had enjoyed a roast beef dinner with a decent guy—he had nothing against Scooter—had made the last two nights miserable. He’d sent Layla to bed early last night, telling her to read a book if she couldn’t fall asleep. She seemed to do a lot of reading. The four books she brought with her were tattered and smudged, yet she read them over and over. Feeling bad for being in a rotten mood, he nodded.

  Layla squealed and ran to the bathroom to retrieve her brush.

  “Just the brush—no clips or bows or anything.”

  “Awww.”

  “Yeah, awww.” A man had to draw the line somewhere.

  On the radio, Hank droned on and on about the approaching storm, reminding residents to put up storm guards on their windows, string lines to outbuildings—which Joseph had done the day Layla came to stay—and stay indoors. He hoped Ginger had enough sense to stay inside. She’d been fool enough to ride alone in the dark.

  Joseph had hauled in enough wood to last a week. They had a full pantry, though the cookie supply was severely lacking thanks to his nervous snacking. The fridge was also well-stocked, and he’d wrapped the water pipes with insulation. This was going to be a doozy.

  “Sit in this chair, please.” Layla pulled one of his handmade chairs out from the table. She set her very pink brush down along with a spray bottle, his shaving mirror, and a tube of hair gel.

  Joseph eyed the assemblage wearily. Oh well, it’s not like I’m going out in public anytime soon. Layla had to pull the kitchen step stool over so she could reach “all the parts of his head.”

  Allowing her free rein, he refocused on the weather report.

  “Pastor Willis is offering the church for shelter for anyone caught in town. He has a large pot of his Dutch oven chili to share, as well as a few cots.”

  Joseph nodded. The pastor was a good guy who gave a distinguished sermon. Joseph liked his preaching. Most of his lessons focused on the promise of eternal life and
hope in Christ. Despite his aversion to all things holiday, Joseph liked attending the Christmas Eve service and seeing the live Nativity put on by the few children in town. He may not spend every Sunday in church, but he’d found Jesus long ago.

  Layla yanked the brush through his hair, bringing him out of his religious remunerations.

  “Well, we’re almost out of time, folks,” teased Hank. Saturday mornings were set for the extended program. Hank recapped the news for the week and stayed in the studio for as long as it took to get through all the callers.

  Joseph clenched his stomach. He couldn’t take another day—or five, depending on the storm—without knowing if Ginger had fallen for Scooter. The very idea of her with another man twisted in his stomach like sour eggnog.

  “I’ll have to give you the abbreviated news on Scooter and Ginger.”

  Yuck—the names sounded awful together, like burnt caramel popcorn. Gripping the seat of the chair, Joseph only half noticed Layla putting gel on her palm.

  “Scooter said they had a fine time at the café. Judging by the number of people waiting for a table, most of you already knew that.”

  Joseph shook his head. He’d thought about taking Layla to Trudy’s for dinner, since they’d run out of Ginger’s soup and maybe to see for himself how things were going, but decided against it. Sounds like he’d missed a crowd.

  Layla bopped him on the head with the brush. “Hold still.”

  “Sorry.”

  “William was scheduled to take Ginger for a flight today, but his date has been postponed due to weather conditions. Steve Rob had a picnic on the ice scheduled for Sunday afternoon. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

  Joseph groaned.

  “There!” Layla pronounced his hair done and handed over his small shaving mirror.

  Joseph promised himself that no matter what she’d done to him, he’d be positive. Turning his head this way and that, he analyzed the slightly mussed do. “It’s not bad.”

  “You look like the guy on that wedding show.”

  “What wedding show?”