Christmas Ever After

by Karen Schaler

  When she looked over to Mike for his support, she found him talking to a cute production assistant who seemed charmed by him.

  Clearly, she was one-hundred-percent on her own here.

  As she sat up straighter and ran her hand over her hair, trying to tame the stubborn flyaways, she gave herself a little pep talk.

  The interview was only a few minutes. The time would go fast. Her goal was to focus on promoting her first Christmas novel, and getting her fans excited to follow along online and send in their suggestions and ideas. She already had the perfect line rehearsed for when she was asked what her Christmas story would be about. She was going to try to build suspense by telling everyone it was going to be like nothing she had ever written before but she couldn’t give anything away yet, and then she would encourage people to follow along on social media for the very latest.

  When the producer started the countdown to air, giving them the ten-second warning, she took a deep breath. She could do this.

  Easy peasy.

  When they were live, she relaxed a little as she listened to Joe introduce her as a beloved best-selling author who wrote the kind of love stories every woman wanted to be in.

  When Joe seamlessly moved on to announcing that she’d be doing a Christmas novel for the first time and getting inspiration for that book from a special Christmas Camp she was hosting this year, Riley was relieved everything was going as planned.

  As he continued to talk about when and where she’d be hosting the Christmas Camp, they rolled video to show the Christmas Lake Lodge in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, and Riley was impressed by what she saw on the monitor.

  Mike had shown her some quick pictures of the lodge, but they hadn’t done it justice. From what she could glimpse now from the video, the place looked enchanting, like something out of a storybook. It was outlined with hundreds of white Christmas lights and overlooked a beautiful lake.

  She was still taking it all in when Joe turned his attention to her.

  “Riley, thank you for joining us this morning,” Joe said with a perfect TV smile.

  She smiled back at him. “I’m happy to be here, Joe. Thanks for having me.”

  Joe glanced down at his notes and back up to her. “Riley, you’ve had quite the career, working as a TV reporter, then as a travel writer, and now as a best-selling romance author. You’ve made a very successful living writing about love and relationships, about meeting ‘the one’ and happily-ever-afters.”

  Riley smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”

  When Joe continued, he looked her in the eye for the first time. “But isn’t it true that you, yourself, have never been married, and that before writing Heart of Summer, you ended your last relationship and now your book sales are down?” he asked pointedly. “How can you continue to write about happily-ever-afters when you’ve never had one of your own?”

  Chapter Three

  Blindsided and stunned, Riley felt the room start to spin as all the Christmas decorations blurred into one big holiday nightmare.

  When she looked over at Mike for support, her panic grew when she saw he looked just as alarmed as she felt. Heart racing, she fought to keep a smile on her face as a wave of embarrassment washed over her. Every second of silence was suffocating her, but she knew she needed to say something—and fast. She was on live television.

  She’d been right about Joe all along, and she wasn’t about to let a self-serving, wannabe TV host define who she was and wasn’t.

  She met his bold stare with one of her own. She didn’t blink.

  “That’s a great question, Joe,” she said with a sweet smile, the kind of smile that anyone who knew her would recognize as a warning. “I’ve actually been very blessed because I have known great love in my life, what it is to feel love and to be loved. But you know not everyone’s happily-ever-after looks the same. You don’t have to be married to know what love is. I write about love because I think it’s the most powerful human emotion we have that connects us all. Wouldn’t you agree, Joe?”

  When Riley locked eyes with Joe, she saw he wasn’t going to back down easily. So she did the only thing she could do. She prepared for a battle.

  “So let me get this straight,” Joe said. “You’re saying you have been in love? That you have found ‘the one’ like you write about in your novels?”

  Riley answered quickly, too quickly. “Yes.”

  “Yet, you’re not with that person now,” Joe said, continuing to prod her. “Have you ever wondered ‘what if’?”

  Riley laughed to mask her growing resentment at having someone pry into her personal life on live television. “Of course. Hasn’t everyone?” She smiled into the camera.

  “So then what happened?” Joe countered quickly. “Where is this love of your life?”

  Riley instantly realized her mistake. What she’d meant to say was that all the love stories in her novels were inspired by different loves of her life, not just one person. She was trying to figure out the best way to clear it all up when she saw the floor director give Joe a wrap signal.

  Perfectly on cue, Joe looked into the camera. “Everyone, we need to take a quick commercial break, but stay with us, because when we come back, we’ll have more with best-selling author Riley Reynolds and this mysterious love of her life who has inspired her romance novels right after this break.”

  As soon as they were off the air, Riley gave Joe an incredulous look. There was a rational voice inside her head telling her to stay calm and professional and that getting upset wasn’t going to help anything.

  But she didn’t listen to that voice.

  Instead, she listened to the voice that told her to get the heck out of there as fast as she could. She rapidly removed her mic and stood up.

  Joe looked surprised. “Where are you going? We’re not done yet.”

  Riley laughed as she stared down Joe. “Oh, we’re done. So done. I came here to talk about my new Christmas novel and Christmas Camp project, and you’re trying to turn this into some tabloid tell-all. That’s not what I signed up for.”

  As she started to walk away, Joe shouted after her. “If you walk out on this interview, you’ll never get booked on this show again,” he threatened.

  Riley laughed and kept walking. “That’s the best Christmas gift you could ever give me!” When she passed Mike, he was surrounded by two frantic producers and the handsome guy from the lobby who had saved her from falling. She didn’t even have a chance to wonder what the lobby guy was doing there because her power heels were hitting their stride and she wasn’t about to slow down for anyone.

  “Riley, wait!” Mike exclaimed as she headed for the door. “You can’t leave!”

  Riley picked up her pace. “Watch me!”

  When she got to the elevator, she impatiently pushed the button several times. “Come on. Come on. Let’s go. Get me out of here,” she said under her breath.

  But when the elevator door opened, she was swallowed up in a group of singing Christmas carolers coming out the elevator. They looked just like the carolers in her hotel lobby. They were happily singing “Deck the Halls.”

  “Deck the halls with boughs of holly . . .

  Fa la la la la, la la la la (fa la la la la, la la la la) . . .

  ’Tis the season to be jolly . . .

  Fa la la la la, la la la la (fa la la la la, la la la la) . . .”

  “Seriously?!” Riley exclaimed, feeling anything but jolly as she dodged one caroler after another to get inside the elevator and then pushed the “down” button as if her life and sanity depended on it.

  Chapter Four

  Luke stood next to Mike and watched Riley storm off the set. Cleary, Luke thought, she wasn’t having a good day. First, he’d barely saved her from falling when she was running into the building earlier, and now she was running out the studio. He shook his head in amazement.

/>   “I don’t think she’s coming back,” Luke said.

  “Riley!” Mike shouted again.

  But she was already gone.

  “She better come back,” a producer said, glaring at Luke. “We’re live in ninety seconds.”

  Luke looked at the livid producer and held up his hands in front him. “Hey, you’re talking to the wrong guy. I don’t have a horse in this race.”

  The producer whipped his attention over to Mike. “You get her back here or you’re going on. We still have three minutes to fill.”

  Mike, as cool as ever, smiled at the producer. “Not a problem. Luke can go on. He’s the resort manager where Riley’s hosting the Christmas Camp. He can tell you all about it.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped. “What?!”

  An audio tech was already trying to get Luke mic’d up.

  Luke took a step back. “Wait. Stop. No,” he told the tech. “I’m not going on.”

  Everyone looked at Mike.

  Mike locked eyes with Luke. “You have to. Riley’s gone.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” Luke said. “I saw her storm out of here. But I’m not doing any interview. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. I was only supposed to come to meet your author. An author you told me was this wonderful, charming, friendly woman who my guests would love.

  “We’re on in forty-five seconds,” the director shouted.

  Mike kept smiling his confident smile. “Look, Luke. I’m helping you out here, remember? I’m getting you publicity. That was our deal. So just go talk about your lodge, the Christmas Camp, what Riley’s going to do, whatever you want. It isn’t brain surgery. Just fill the time, get your free publicity, make everyone happy.”

  Luke looked at Mike as if he’d sprouted two heads. “You want me to go on national TV, in front of millions of people, and just . . . wing it?”

  Mike smiled and patted him on the back. “Exactly. No big deal.”

  Luke couldn’t believe this was happening. He hated doing interviews and public speaking, and besides, the only thing he knew about Riley was from the press packet Mike had sent him, and that only talked about her novels. He was starting to think this whole Christmas Camp idea was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Of course, it had all been Mike’s brainchild.

  Mike had been one of his college roommates. The two of them, along with their other roommate Jeff Jacoby, had done everything together. When they had graduated, they’d promised to always have one another’s backs, no matter what. While Mike had gone on to be a top publicist and Jeff had earned his own accolades as an architect, Luke had been interested in the field of hospitality and finding creative and cost-effective ways to help make hotels and resorts more sustainable and eco-friendly.

  Over the years, Mike had helped them both, usually offering unsolicited advice about how to get press for whatever projects they were working on. So when Jeff’s dad, Ben, who owned the charming Holly Peak Inn up in the mountains of western Massachusetts decided to franchise his annual Christmas Camp for grown-ups, a Christmas-themed week filled with holiday activities to help people “disconnect to reconnect with what truly matters most at Christmas,” Mike had stepped in to help with publicity.

  When Mike recently learned Luke’s mom, Margaret, was selling the family’s Christmas Lake Lodge so she could retire in Florida, he’d persuaded Luke to hold one of Jeff’s dad’s Christmas Camps at the lodge not only to help get publicity before the sale but to help Jeff’s dad with his franchise…and help Mike’s own client by having Riley host it.

  While Luke had been apprehensive about holding a Christmas Camp at the lodge, Mike had suggested that instead of a week-long event like the one’s Jeff’s dad did, they could just do a Christmas Camp weekend so it wouldn’t be as much work to put on, especially since it was so last minute. Even just a weekend would still generate some great publicity.

  But for Luke, it had really been his mom’s enthusiasm that had been the deciding factor to hold the event. She loved the idea of a Christmas Camp. She adored all things Christmas and thought it was the perfect way to have one last memorable event at the lodge before they sold it. She’d said this way they could honor their family’s history of hosting other people’s families during the Christmas holiday for over the last century.

  From the moment Luke had said yes, it felt like things had been going sideways. His mom had broken her ankle when she was in Florida with her sister looking at new potential places to live for when after they’d sold the lodge. Her injury made it really hard to travel, and Luke hadn’t wanted her to risk it, or even to come back to Christmas Lake where there was so much snow on the ground. So while his mom was sitting by the pool in sunny Florida recovering, Luke had been left with having to figure out the Christmas Camp on his own.

  Right now, Mike’s favorite promise of a win-win was feeling more like a lose-lose to Luke as he faced doing a live TV interview he was completely unprepared for and talking about working with an author he didn’t know, who had just run out on her own interview.

  “So what’s it going to be?” the anxious producer asked Mike.

  Mike looked at Luke. “Well, buddy, it’s your call,” he said.

  Luke hated it when Mike made it sound like he had a choice when they both knew he didn’t. His family’s lodge was already part of this story. They’d just shown a video of it. He knew it would be a PR nightmare if someone didn’t finish the interview, and then this whole mess could end up hurting the lodge’s reputation.

  He knew he couldn’t just bail on this interview the way Riley had. He didn’t know what he was going to do about Christmas Camp, but he knew he needed time to figure out how to do damage control. So that meant he was going to have to go on live TV and wing it.

  The host, Joe looked annoyed as he stood up. “I need to know what’s going on here. Who am I talking to?”

  Luke clenched his jaw. “Me. You’re talking to me.”

  He didn’t miss Mike’s satisfied smile as they rushed to get him seated. Typical Mike, always getting people to do what he wanted one way or another. Luke knew Mike was only trying to help him and his mom get the best price for the lodge, but this little stunt today wasn’t cool. It wasn’t cool at all, and he really only blamed one person—best-selling author Riley Reynolds.

  This was her interview. She should be doing it.

  As the producer rushed to get Luke settled on the set, he hoped Mike knew what he was doing because his mom’s future depended on it.

  “Hi, I’m Luke Larchmont from the Christmas Lake Lodge.” Luke held out his hand to Joe, but the host was too busy riffling through his notes to pay attention.

  “Look,” Joe said without looking up. “We have three minutes to fill. I have no idea who you are so I’ll just ask you to tell us how you’re going to be working with Riley Reynolds, the romance novelist who will never be on this show again. Got it?”

  Luke forced a smile. “Got it,” he said, but inside he was thinking, What a jerk.

  When he looked over at Mike, who gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up, all Luke could do was shake his head and hope he didn’t make a complete fool of himself on national TV. He told himself he’d be fine as long as he was talking about the lodge.

  He’d grown up working at the lodge. He could remember his first job when he was eight, gathering kindling for the fireplaces in the guest rooms. Many of the guests returned year after year, making them feel more like family. Luke had always believed that the Christmas Lake Lodge was special because of all the people who stayed there.

  Raised in Colorado’s breathtaking Rocky Mountains, Luke always knew he wanted to find a job where he could combine his love of hotels and resorts with his passion for protecting the environment, and he’d done just that.

  After graduating from college in the top of his class, with a double major in hospitality and environmental design, he’d started working fo
r a world-class company in Germany that was a leader in helping to create sustainable businesses. Over the years, he’d continued to exceed expectations. He’d been about to be named vice president when a year ago, his mom called saying his dad was sick and he’d rushed right home.

  His dad had died shortly after, so Luke had stayed at the lodge to help his mom. He was an only child, and she needed him. That’s when he learned just how much the lodge was struggling financially. His parents hadn’t wanted to worry him, but after he saw the books, he was worried. Really worried.

  Before he’d gone off to college, they’d talked about if he might someday like to run the lodge and keep it in the family. It had been hard, but he had been honest with his parents, saying he didn’t want to stay in Colorado for the rest of his life. He wanted more. He wanted to travel and learn from people around the world who were spearheading Green initiatives for businesses of all kinds, including hotels and resorts.

  They had all agreed that when it was time for his parents to retire, they would sell the lodge. It would be the end of an era, but a positive change and a new start for all of them. This way they could hopefully give another family a chance to make their own history at the lodge.

  But when the city next to Christmas Lake, Forest Hills, had changed its rules it had allowed a huge hotel chain to build the Skyline Resort, a monster property with close to 1,500 rooms. The lodge, its thirty rooms, had quickly started losing customers. Before the Skyline Resort, no hotels or resorts over a hundred rooms had been allowed in an effort to protect the environment and maintain the charm and authenticity the area was beloved for. Now the Skyline Resort, with all the fancy amenities the area had never had before, including an award-winning spa, a giant gym with fitness classes, a year-round heated swimming pool, a 1,000-capacity theater, and a teen room with video games and all the latest technology, was getting all the publicity and bookings.