by Lori Wilde
THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES
CARRIE
LORI WILDE
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Editor’s Note
Announcement Page
An Excerpt from THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES: RAYLENE
About the Author
Also by Lori Wilde
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
Carrie MacGregor hated Christmas.
She despised the endless smiles and constant cheeriness, the forced ho-ho-ho-ing. She loathed the cheesiness of tinsel and blinking multi-colored lights and plywood Santa Claus cutouts decorating every lawn in Twilight, Texas. She dreaded the commercialization of gift-giving, the continual overeating, the ubiquitous music, and the stressful push-pull of relatives’ unrealistic expectations.
Yes, okay, she too was a Christmas cliché—the obligatory Grinch. Every family had one. Bah-humbug.
Her only goal for the next six weeks was to get from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day as quietly as possible. No fuss. No tears. No drama. No memories. She refused to dwell on what the holidays represented to her—lost love, dashed hopes, a broken heart.
Breathe. Put one foot in front of the other. Take it day-by-day.
Funny, she sounded just like her dad, Floyd, an AA member who had been clean-and-sober for four years, with only one accidental fall off the wagon. That was something to be grateful for, at least.
Right now, it was Thursday. A week before Thanksgiving, and tonight was the last meeting of the year for the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club. The members of the club would be here soon. She had the refreshments laid out in the community room at the new Yarn Barn.
Her older sister, Flynn, had originally started the yarn shop, but Carrie had taken over the business after the first store on the town square had burned down three years ago. She’d reestablished it in the shopping center on the bluff overlooking Lake Twilight. She was damn proud of herself, only twenty-five years old and running her own successful business. Especially when, not so very long ago, she’d been engaging in self-destructive activities. Grief could make a girl do crazy things.
Carrie paused a moment from unpacking a box of yarn that had just arrived on the UPS truck, a skein of red and green alpaca yarn clutched in her hand. Through the big plate glass window, she gazed out at the lake. A sailboat swooped gracefully by, reminding her of the time Mark had taken her sailing.
For a split second, Mark’s handsome face popped into her mind, but she squelched the image of him as quickly as it materialized. No fuss. No tears. No drama. No memories. That was her holiday mantra.
A knock on the door announced the arrival of the first members of the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club. Ten minutes early, but Carrie didn’t mind. The lively group of knitters would keep her darker thoughts at bay. She abandoned the box of yarn and went to greet them.
She opened the door to four of the six knitting club members who stood there with containers clutched in their arms. “What’s all this?”
“Surprise!” they exclaimed in unison.
“We know how tough Christmas is for you.” Sixty-something Patsy Cross sailed over the threshold, a golden garland trailing from the cardboard box she carried. After more than forty years, she and her high school sweetheart, Sheriff Hondo Crouch, were finally getting married this Christmas Eve. Lately, the normally no-nonsense businesswoman had grown quite giddy.
“We’re going to decorate the Yarn Barn!” added plump Belinda Murphey, a relentless optimist who ran the local matchmaking service. She was in her forties, long married with five kids. She wore a blue-and-white Frosty the Snowman stockinet-stitched sweater.
Carrie forced herself not to roll her eyes. “Please, you don’t have to do that.”
“We want to do it,” cocoa-skinned Marva Bullock assured her. Marva was the principal of Twilight High, and in the course of her job had punished Carrie more times than she cared to remember. “You’ve worked so hard rebuilding the Yarn Barn and creating a cozy place for us to meet. You deserve this.”
“Besides.” Elderly Dotty Mae, who smelled of peppermint schnapps and mentholatum, patted her on the shoulder. “We promised your Mama we’d look after you. She knew that dying on Christmas would forever mar your holiday.”
Her mother’s death five years before from the lingering disease of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was only part of why Carrie hated Christmas. Mark Leland was the other half of the equation.
Forget about him. Ancient history. Old news.
Kind of hard to do, though, when she was in a room filled with women who had married—or in Patsy’s case was about to marry—their high school sweethearts.
You and Mark weren’t sweethearts, you were just hot and horny.
“We’re not going to knit?” Carrie asked, scrambling to think of a way to circumvent the decorating.
“Nope,” Belinda sang out, and then scratched at a crusty white patch on her sweater. “My kids had a food fight at the dinner table. Looks like I took mashed taters to the ta-tas. Oh well, we’ll pretend it’s just snow.” Belinda laughed. She had a thing for alliteration. All her children’s names started with K’s. “Like the Kardashians,” she was fond of saying. “Patsy, I just thought of something. Do you realize you’re going to be Patsy Calloway Cross Crouch?”
“Let’s not bring that up again.” Patsy started plucking the pieces of a nativity scene from the box she’d settled onto the refreshment table next to the crudités. Lamb, donkey, baby Jesus. She paused long enough to snag a purple radish from the platter, swish it in ranch dressing and pop it into her mouth.
“You really don’t have to do this,” Carrie said. “I can handle my own decorating.”
Marva wagged a chiding finger. “You’re not fooling us. We know you won’t do it if left to your own devices.”
“Well, yes, that’s sort of the point.”
Dotty Mae reached up to pinch her cheek. “You live in Twilight, dear. It’s your moral obligation to uphold Christmas tradition.”
“Is it too late to move?”
“Far too late.” Dotty Mae reached into her box and produced a twelve-inch-tall cardboard gingerbread man and woman. “You’re indigenous.”
All around Carrie, the ladies were stringing lights and positioning figurines and hanging stockings. Taking over her shop. Four surrogate mothers doing what mothers did—butting in.
“Doesn’t anyone want to knit? I got a fresh yarn shipment in today,” Carrie enticed, making Vanna White motions at her new display.
Before anyone could answer, the door opened and Raylene Pringle flounced in. Ever since her high school sweetheart and husband of thirty-five years had left her last Christmas, she’d been as down in the dumps about the holidays as Carrie. Everyone had been tiptoeing around Raylene since her split with Earl. No one knew how to take her anymore.
She’d stopped dying her hair, which was once Miss Clairol platinum blonde, but was now steel gray, and she’d quit wearing her famous short shirts. She had on baggy blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a faded black Rolling Stones T-shirt with a big red tongue sticking out at everyone.
Carrie breathed a sigh of relief. At last, an ally.
&n
bsp; “I’m here,” Raylene drawled. “What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Help us set up the Christmas tree,” Marva said brightly.
“Not a Christmas tree, too.” Carrie groaned.
“It’s not for you.” Patsy spread green felt on the floor in front of the window facing the parking lot. “It’s for your customers.”
“We need some music,” Belinda said, and the next thing Carrie knew, Dean Martin was singing over the store’s sound system about how cold it was outside. Hard to buy into when it was a balmy sixty-two degrees in North Central Texas.
“Got anything to drink?” Raylene asked.
“There’s coffee, fruit punch, and iced tea.” Carrie moved to the refreshment table.
“Let me rephrase. Have you got anything substantial to drink?”
“I think Jesse might have left a beer in the back of the fridge during the Halloween party,” Carrie said, referring to her brother-in-law who was also Patsy’s nephew. Halloween. Now that was a holiday. Costumes. Tricks and treats. Goblins. Ghouls. There was nothing sentimental about Halloween.
“Thank God for Jesse.” Raylene sauntered over to the dorm-sized refrigerator that Carrie stored behind the checkout counter. She fished around until she found the long neck bottle of Lone Star and twisted off the cap.
“Terri just pulled into the parking lot,” Patsy called out as she sorted green plastic tree limbs by size.
“What is she bringing?” Carrie muttered. “Santa himself?”
“Don’t be grouchy, Grinch.” Belinda smiled and ruffled Carrie’s hair as she passed Dotty Mae a handful of candy canes.
“I’m not fourteen,” Carrie protested. “And I’m not Flynn.”
“We know.” Marva opened a bag of potato chips. “You can knit.”
Even though Carrie’s older sister couldn’t knit, the group had made her an honorary lifetime member of the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club. Everyone in town loved Flynn. She was one of those magnanimous people, who always put others first, herself second. Carrie, on the other hand, was selfish and ornery and stubborn. The wild-child MacGregor. If she and her sister were ever cast in a remake of Gone With the Wind, Flynn would be Melanie and Carrie would have to play Scarlet. The sassy heroine everyone loved to hate.
“Don’t try so hard to be Scrooge,” Patsy said. “Jesse called and told me what you did for them.”
“Who me?” Carrie glanced away. “I didn’t do anything.”
“If not you, then what little fairy sneaked over to their house, cleaned up and left dinner in the refrigerator?” Patsy asked.
“Dunno, maybe Tinkerbelle?”
Okay, yes, she’d done it, but only because Flynn had sounded so exhausted when she’d talked to her last night. Flynn was in her last year of college, getting her teaching certificate in elementary education and eight months pregnant with her first baby. Jesse helped out as much as he could, but besides running his own motorcycle shop, he was working a second job at Home Depot to get health insurance, pay Flynn’s tuition and put away extra money for the baby.
The door burst open and dark-haired Terri Longoria—the final member of the Sweethearts’ Knitting Club—rushed inside, eyes sparkling. Terri ran Hot Legs Gym and looked the part. Toned. Firm. Athletic. She appeared half a decade younger than her forty years.
“Guess what!” Terri exclaimed.
“What?” obliged the other ladies.
“Remember when I was on Fear Nothing?”
Several years ago, Terri had appeared on a reality show where she was required to gulp down a bucket of earthworms. She’d fearlessly dived in, eaten the wriggly lunch in two minutes flat and won ten thousand dollars for her efforts. On the evening that the show aired, the entire town of Twilight had been glued to their television sets cheering on one of their own. Ever since then Terri had become something of a local celebrity.
“Please tell us you’re not going to eat earthworms again.” Belinda looked worried. “I about gagged watching you do that on TV.”
Terri waved a hand. “Although there was some talk about me returning for an All-Stars show, Fear Nothing got cancelled last season.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Dotty Mae said. “I know you enjoyed it, but that show was uncivilized.”
“So what’s the big news?” Marva asked, handing Patsy the Christmas tree stand.
“I’m on Burt Mernit’s mailing list,” Terri bragged.
“Who’s Burt Mernit?” Raylene took a pull off her beer.
“He created Fear Nothing and a bunch of other reality shows,” Terri explained. “He’s got a new show that debuts in January, but they’ve already been filming episodes for the last several weeks. It’s sort of like MythBusters but with the focus on fables, legend and folklore.”
“And you’re going to be on that show?” Patsy guessed.
Carrie retreated to the corner. She contemplated slipping out the back door and abandoning the knitters to their busybody decorating but dismissed that thought. She had to be here to make sure they didn’t go nuts with the Christmas cheer. She glanced around the room. Far too late for that. Sighing, she poured herself a cup of fruit punch.
“Nope. Not me.” Terri grinned and danced around the room in time to “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“I’ll bite,” Marva said. “Who is going to be on the show?”
“All of us.” Terri clapped her hands. “The entire town of Twilight.”
“What do you mean?” Patsy straightened, narrowed her eyes. “All of us?”
Twilight lived and died by its legends. The town that claimed a resident population of six thousand had been founded on the Brazos River in 1875. To keep a steady influx of cash pouring into the community, a cottage industry had sprung up around the prevailing town legend. According to lore, two teenage sweethearts were separated during the Civil War. Jon Grant had been a soldier for the North; Rebekka Nash, a sweet Southern belle. Circumstances tore them asunder, but they never stopped loving each other. Fifteen years later, they met again at twilight on the banks of the Brazos in the exact same spot where the town now stood.
In the early 1900’s a statue in the lovers’ honor had been erected in the park near the town square. Rumor had it that if you threw a penny into the fountain at Sweetheart Park, you would be forever reunited with your high school sweetheart and live happily-ever-after. Whether it was true or not, the legend did indeed bring in the tourists. In 1910, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram nicknamed Twilight “Sweetheart Town,” and there’d been a steady influx of romance-related tourism ever since.
Carrie had grown up with the fairy tale, but she didn’t believe in it. For one thing, she was a cynic. For another, she’d thrown countless pennies into that damned fountain and Mark Leland had never returned. Never wrote. Never called. Never even accepted her friend request on Facebook.
“Fact or Fantasy is coming to Twilight,” Terri went on.
“To bust the myth of our town legends?” Marva looked alarmed.
“That’s just it,” Terri exclaimed, clearly not realizing the implications. If Twilight’s myths were busted; bye-bye tourism dollars. “They won’t bust us. We know the story of Jon and Rebekka is true.”
“We do?” Dotty Mae blinked.
Oh crap. Carrie kneaded her forehead. The town was in deep trouble.
“That’s not the best part,” Terri said.
“If this is your idea of exciting news, I’m scared to ask what the best part is.” Even perky Belinda shifted nervously.
“The host of the show is none other than a former Twilight denizen.” Terri’s smile went smug, and her eyes met Carrie’s.
For no reason at all, goose bumps blanketed Carrie’s arm, and her skin suddenly felt too tight. Her mouth went bone dry. She took a big swallow of punch and almost choked on it.
Belinda reached over and patted her on the
back. “You okay, sweetie?”
Carrie nodded, set down the punch.
“Come on you guys, guess.” Terri held her arms out in a ta-da gesture and rolled her eyes heavenward. “The host is a very handsome young man.”
“Who used to live in Twilight?” Patsy’s forehead wrinkled in a quizzical frown.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Could you give us hint?” Belinda asked.
“He was once very special to someone in this room.”
Raylene snorted. “Stop playing coy, Terri, who the hell is it?”
Terri made a drumroll noise with her tongue. “The new host of Fact or Fiction is none other than our very own Mark Leland.”
Mark Leland?
Carrie stopped breathing. Six pairs of inquisitive eyes immediately shifted to stare at her. She felt at once dizzy and sick to her stomach.
Her Mark Leland? Coming back to Twilight? Not only coming back, but returning with a camera crew to bust the romantic myth that the town’s economy thrived on.
The myth that said if you threw a penny into the fountain in Sweetheart Park that you would be married to your first love forever. The very same myth that she and Mark had already busted eight years ago when they’d had their impulsive Vegas wedding annulled.
CHAPTER TWO
Twilight hadn’t changed one bit in eight years.
That was a surprising sucker punch, even though Mark should have expected it, because he had changed. He’d changed a whole lot from the provincial farm kid who once sped his pickup truck around these quaint, meandering streets.
In his Brioni suit and A. Testoni shoes, his two-hundred-dollar haircut unruffled by the November breeze blowing across Lake Twilight, Mark stood on the front lawn of a Bed and Breakfast called The Merry Cherub. Back when Mark had lived in Twilight, the three-story Victorian had been a private residence. So okay, one thing had changed.
