“Has Kyle talked to you?” her mother asked.
“He came by, yes,” Olivia replied.
“Then I wish I’d gone to him sooner.”
Olivia wasn’t sure she would’ve been ready before now. But there was no time to respond. Her father spoke up from where he sat on the couch, watching TV. “Well, are you going to let them in, Nancy? Or are you going to make them stand out in the cold all night?”
At that, her mother stepped out of the way, and Olivia hurried inside to put the hot casserole dish on the stove, where it couldn’t burn the countertop. She’d originally planned to have a talk with her family, to finally sit them down and hash out the past. After that, she’d imagined embracing Noelle and telling her she no longer held anything against her. But the coziness of her parents’ home, and the fact that Noelle, when she walked out from the bedroom area in back, acted pleasantly surprised but didn’t question their presence, made Olivia change her mind. Why go into all of that again? Why cause fresh tears by dredging up those negative emotions?
“How’re things at the shop?” her father asked Brandon.
“Sales are strong, considering that we haven’t had a lot of snow this year,” he replied, and sat down with Ham while Nancy drew her and Noelle into the kitchen.
“Come see the pies I made this morning,” she told them, as excited as though it was already Christmas morning.
If Noelle had already seen what her mother had baked, she didn’t say so. Like Olivia, she admired the pies, which were sitting off to one side so they wouldn’t be in the way of other preparations.
“They look and smell wonderful,” Olivia said.
“Maybe someday I’ll learn how to cook.” Noelle sounded somewhat wistful, which reminded Olivia of everything they’d been missing out on since they’d stopped having much to do with each other.
“We could set aside a few hours and have Mom teach us both,” she suggested.
Nancy’s smile couldn’t have stretched any wider. “There’s a real knack to it, but I could show you.”
“I don’t know when I’d be able to do that.” Noelle sounded genuinely disappointed. “I have to work so many shifts during the next two weeks.”
“You’ll have Christmas off, won’t you?” Olivia asked. The boutique would be closed—Olivia knew that much—but Sexy Sadie’s stayed open year-round.
“No, but people should be in a good mood that night.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get some decent tips.”
Olivia studied her.
“What?” Noelle sounded slightly defensive, as if she was expecting a comment—but Olivia smiled.
“I like the way you just turned that into a positive.”
Noelle pressed a hand to her chest. “You like something about me?”
Olivia remembered how cute Noelle had been as a young girl, how enthusiastic she’d been about every aspect of life. “I like a lot of things about you,” she said. And then, even though this hug wasn’t the one she’d planned in her mind, she pulled her sister close. When she let go, Noelle looked absolutely stunned. “What was that for?”
“We’re sisters,” Olivia said simply. “And it’s Christmas.”
Their mother blinked as if holding back tears, but then a buzzer went off and she rushed to the oven. While her attention was elsewhere, Noelle lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did what I did to...to you and Kyle. I don’t know why I do half the things I do.”
Olivia patted her arm. “It’s okay,” she said and, somehow, she meant it.
“This is going to be quite a Christmas,” her mother piped up, joining them again. “I don’t remember a time I’ve felt so optimistic.”
With a laugh, Olivia slipped an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Merry Christmas.”
* * * * *
Welcome to Icicle Falls
Dear Reader,
I’m so excited to be included in this collection of Christmas stories with these fine writers. I love Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday, and I really enjoy writing stories that take place at this time of year.
I like to make my stories about family and friends because they’re the most important people in our lives. In fact, I think friendship is one of the best gifts a girl can ever receive. When we’re going through hard times, it’s the people close to us who get us through. And when we have something to celebrate, who better to celebrate with than our BFFs? Still, sometimes we lose sight of how important our friends are, as Muriel Sterling can attest. It’s a good thing she’s on hand to tell the younger generation about the important lesson she learned when she was young. Pull up a chair and listen in. I hope you’ll enjoy her story as well as all the other stories in this collection. Merry Christmas!
I hope you’ll drop by my website at www.sheilasplace.com for a visit this Christmas—and any time of the year!
Sheila
Also available from Harlequin MIRA
The Life in Icicle Falls books by bestselling author Sheila Roberts
BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE
MERRY EX-MAS
WHAT SHE WANTS
THE COTTAGE ON JUNIPER RIDGE
THE TEA SHOP ON LAVENDER LANE
THE LODGE ON HOLLY ROAD
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
Prologue
Love and BFFs
WHO DIDN’T LIKE A COOKIE EXCHANGE? Well, other than a surly teenager.
Muriel Sterling-Wittman’s little house was filled with friends and the aroma of hot chocolate. And every inch of space on her dining room table was covered with plates of cookies—cookies smothered in frosting, cookies oozing chocolate, cookies with gumdrops peeking out like colored gems. Scented candles added to the good smells, and the room buzzed with conversation as three generations of Icicle Falls residents swapped recipes and gossip.
In one corner Olivia Wallace was making a face over some cheeky remark her friend Dot Morrison had just made. Muriel’s daughters were gathered around the punch bowl, which was full of eggnog punch, while Janice Lind, the grand old dame of Christmas baking, was holding court on Muriel’s sofa with Muriel, her friend Pat Wilder and Pat’s daughter Isabel keeping her company. Some of the younger girls were hovering over the table, sneaking cookies.
Normally Pat’s fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Clara, would have been with them, but right now she sat in a chair with her back to the group, scowling like a miniature Scrooge in drag. This was a first. Pat had been bringing her granddaughter to Muriel’s cookie exchanges ever since she was five. And she’d always been excited to be there, happy to play with the other little girls whose mothers had deemed them worthy of the privilege of attending. Instead, here she sat, the expression on her face as dark as her hair.
“Why don’t you go hang out with the girls?” asked Pat.
“No, thanks.” Clara shot a dagger glare over to where the other girls were gathered in a giggling clump. All except for one, who was sneaking anxious looks in Clara’s direction.
Pat and Muriel exchanged glances.
“She and Aurora are having issues,” Isabel, her mother, explained.
Muriel’s daughters Cecily and Bailey had joined them now, leaving Samantha in charge of the punch bowl. Cecily helped Muriel’s oldest daughter, Samantha, run Sweet Dreams Chocolates, the family’s chocolate company, and Bailey owned a successful tea shop in town. All three of them were happily settled with the right man now and busy with work, and Cecily was expecting a baby in February. But they always gave the cookie exchange top priority.
“I need this recipe,” Bailey announced, holdi
ng up a chocolate cookie filled with candied cherries. She smiled at the scowling Clara and said, “You look like you need chocolate.”
Clara shrugged.
“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.
“Nothing,” Clara muttered.
Now one of the other girls had drifted over, a pretty girl with strawberry-blond hair and freckles, Clara’s best friend, Aurora.
Make that former best friend, judging by the way Clara turned her back. “Go away. I’m not talking to you.”
Tears sprang to Aurora’s eyes. “Please don’t be mad, Clara. It’s not my fault Garth likes me now.”
“Yes, it is. You stole him. He liked me first.”
“And so now you’re not speaking to her,” Bailey deduced.
“She stole him,” Clara hissed, in case they’d missed that piece of vital information the first time.
“We’ve been down that road,” Cecily said, and put an arm around her sister. “It was a dumb road. Especially considering how well things worked out.”
“What do you mean?” Aurora asked, settling onto the couch next to Muriel.
“I mean Bailey and I both wanted the same man. But in the end, we each got the person we were meant to be with.”
“Well, I was meant to be with Garth,” Clara said, her scowl deepening.”
Pat smiled. “Yes, I understand those feelings. You know, I thought I was meant to be with someone once and my best friend got him.”
“Who was that?” asked Clara, forgetting that she was supposed to be sulking.
Bailey and Cecily exchanged smiles. They’d heard the story back when they were fighting over a man. It looked as though it was time for a new generation to learn the importance of love and loyalty.
Muriel had both of the younger girls’ attention now. “What happened?” Aurora asked.
Dot and Olivia had drifted into the living room area now along with two other young girls. “Tell ’em,” Dot said. “I always like a good story at Christmas, especially when it has a happy ending.”
“All right,” Muriel said. “It happened a long time ago, but sometimes it seems like only yesterday.”
Chapter 1
Summer, 1969
“WE NEED MORE CUTE BOYS in this town,” Olivia Green complained as she and Muriel and Pat Pearson walked home from Icicle Falls High.
“We have more than we used to,” Muriel said.
By the late fifties, most of the cute boys and their families were all moving away. So were a lot of the girls, including her best friend, Doreen Smith. Muriel and Doreen wrote regularly for years, determined to stay best friends via the post office. But it wasn’t the same as having her in town.
The town hadn’t been much then. Icicle Falls had been dying for years, thanks to the railroad leaving and drying up the lumber business. After that there wasn’t much left—a ramshackle downtown with derelict buildings housing a general store, a bank and a post office. There was a run-down motel and a diner to cater to people going over the pass. Add to that a few houses, a church, a grade school and tiny high school, and that was about all there was.
When Muriel was eight, she’d eavesdropped on the conversation of various grown-ups gathered in her parents’ living room.
“We’ve got a mountain setting as nice as anything you’d find in the Alps,” her daddy had said. “We could turn this place into a Bavarian village, make it a real destination town. We’ve already got the mountains and the rivers to lure skiers and fishermen. Let’s give ’em a reason to stay and spend their money.”
“I don’t know, Joe. It’s a big gamble,” Mr. Johnson had said.
“If we don’t take this gamble it’s a sure thing Icicle Falls will be nothing but a ghost town in another ten years. We’ve got more people moving away all the time,” her daddy had pointed out.
Ghosts? Were there ghosts haunting the place?
She’d asked her mother about that later. Mother had kissed her and assured her there was no such thing as ghosts.
“What did Daddy mean, then?” she’d demanded.
“He meant that we need to find a way to make our town a place where people want to be.”
“I want to be here,” she’d said. She’d wanted her best friend there, too.
“So do I, darling,” her mother had said. “Don’t you worry. Your daddy’s going to fix everything.”
Daddy made chocolate. She had no doubt he’d be able to fix this problem, too. The one all the grown-ups were so concerned about.
And he had. In the summer of 1962, while her friend Doreen was enjoying the Seattle World’s Fair, Muriel was helping with town cleanup, collecting old cans in a field with Pat Pearson and Olivia Green. That had been a bonding experience.
And while they bonded over bits of garbage, other townspeople bonded hauling away old tires and abandoned cars from empty lots. Architects and builders were put to work, and the ramshackle buildings began to get a face-lift, changing Center Street from a Wild West ghost town to a quaint Bavarian village.
Muriel’s correspondence with Doreen finally dried up, but life in Icicle Falls moved on. The following year new faces began to show up in town. They came in a slow trickle at first, like the drip from icicles on their roof when the snow began to melt. These visitors sometimes brought along cute boys. Some of them even returned to stay, opening up shops. Like Dale Holdsworth, who opened Kringle Mart and imported snow globes and handblown ornaments from Germany to sell to people who came to check out the newly minted tourist village. And Andy Marks, who started a small wood-carving shop, and Gerhardt Geissel, who built Gerhardt’s Gasthaus. The Mountain Inn got a face-lift and a new name—the Bavarian Inn.
By the time Muriel was in high school, the student body had nearly doubled in size. Now it was up to a whopping hundred and forty-eight students. Thirty-two of them, including Muriel and her friends, were seniors that year.
“We may have more boys than we used to,” Olivia said, “but most of them are underclassmen. Who’s there in our class to choose from?”
For Muriel? No one matched the man of her dreams, the man she hoped would someday come into her life. Waiting for a perfect man seemed silly to her friends, but she was a big believer in true love. And in dreams. Her grandmother had dreamed an entire company into being, so Muriel had no doubt she could find the man she’d envisioned—someone dashing and romantic, who would make her heart skip a beat.
“There’s Arnie Amundsen,” Muriel suggested. For Olivia, not her. Arnie was skinny and wore glasses but he was sweet. Olivia could do a lot worse.
“He’s got a crush on you,” Olivia said.
“Everybody’s got a crush on Muriel,” Pat added in mock disgust.
“That is a gross overstatement,” Muriel said.
Pat complained about being tall. She hated her auburn hair and lamented on a regular basis that she wasn’t blonde like Olivia or a brunette like Muriel. Still, she’d had her share of invitations to the senior prom, which had taken place the week before. Muriel had gone with Arnie. Just as friends, she’d reminded him.
She wished he’d asked Olivia. Olivia had ended up with Gerald Parker, who’d wanted her to go all the way. They’d come close but she’d chickened out at the last minute. Now she was regretting her decision because Gerald was ignoring her, making her last week of school miserable. He’d enlisted in the marines, though, and would soon be gone. Muriel was secretly relieved. Of course, she didn’t want anything bad to happen to Gerald, but it was best to remove temptation from Olivia.
“There’s Hank Carp,” said Pat.
Muriel frowned. “He’s a hood.”
“But he’s a cute hood,” Olivia said.
That was all Olivia needed, to get tangled up with Hank.
“I’d take him,” Olivia continued, “except he l
ikes Stephie.”
“She’s fast,” Muriel said.
“That’s probably why he likes her,” Olivia muttered.
“Anyway,” Pat went on, “that man is going nowhere. You can do better.”
“I don’t think so,” Olivia said. “Nobody wants a fat girl.”
“You’re not fat,” Muriel insisted. “You’re—”
“Curvy,” Pat supplied. “And boys like curves.”
“No,” Olivia corrected her. “Boys like Muriel. I bet you’ll be married by the time you’re twenty.”
Muriel shook her head. “Not if my father has anything to say about it.” She sighed. “He’s got my whole life planned.”
“Yeah, well, it’s tough having a family chocolate factory,” Pat said. “Poor girl. You’ll have to work there, get rich and eat all the chocolate you want.” She and Olivia giggled.
“I don’t mind working there, doing fun things like helping with recipes or answering phones. I just don’t want to run the place. I want to get married and have a family.”
“And be a famous writer,” Olivia reminded her. “Did you hear back from Seventeen yet?”
The rejection letter for her article, “How to Have Fun in a Small Town,” had arrived the day before. Muriel hadn’t even wanted to tell her best friends. It was so humiliating to be a failure. She bit her lip.
“Oh, no,” said Pat. “They didn’t like your article?”
Muriel shook her head again.
“Well, they’re stupid,” Olivia said.
“Don’t worry,” Pat told her. “You’ll sell something. Maybe you’ll even write a bestseller like Jacqueline Susann.”
Muriel wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t want to write that kind of thing.”
“I would,” Pat said. “If I wanted to write, that is. I’d rather read.”
“I’d rather make out,” Olivia said with a grin. “You know, it’s going to be really hard to find men to marry once we all graduate. It seems like half the boys are leaving for college.” Her expression grew sad. “I sure hope God brings some new ones to town.”
Together for Christmas: 5-B Poppy LaneWhen We TouchWelcome to Icicle FallsStarstruck Page 22
