If Kisses Were Snowflakes

by Serenity Woods

  If Kisses Were Snowflakes

  Christmas Wishes: Book 4

  by Serenity Woods

  Copyright 2017 Serenity Woods

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter One

  “Have you written your wish list to Santa yet?” Lesa asked.

  “Give me a sec, I’m paying for lunch.” Angel Matthews slotted in her credit card, punched in her pin number, then carried her tray of food to a table by the window. Once she’d placed her coat over the back of the chair and sat, she picked up her phone again and pulled a face as she spoke to her older sister. “The sausage on my plate looks as wrinkled as my face when I get up in the morning. What is it with food in service stations?”

  “They have no incentive to make it palatable. Customers don’t have an option unless they want to come off the motorway. It’s probably been in the cabinet for three weeks. So, come on, then, be honest. Have you sent your list to Santa? I know you do it every year.”

  “I do not.” She stuck a straw in the cup of soda and sipped it. It was semi-flat.

  “Yes, you do. You have a Santa fetish. You’d still sit on his knee in department stores if you thought you could get away with it.”

  “I do not have a Santa fetish!” Jeez, she’d spoken too loud. Several patrons had turned to look at her with raised eyebrows. After glancing over her shoulder as if someone behind her had said it, she dropped her gaze back to her unappetizing meal and sighed.

  “All right, maybe it’s not a fetish,” Lesa conceded. “But you do have a thing about him. I know you write to him in your diary. I get the feeling he’s a strange mixture of Santa, Dad, and... I don’t know... a religious deity, in your head.”

  Angel shoved a few peas around the plate with a fork. “It’s a fun way of keeping a journal, that’s all.”

  Lesa sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that...” Her voice softened. “I know I said I wouldn’t keep on about it, but I wish you hadn’t gone away. You said your therapist told you the worst thing you could do is to spend Christmas alone, and I’m worried.”

  A silence fell between them. Angel knew Lesa’s words were laced with guilt. Ten months ago, she hadn’t been there when Angel had been in trouble, and now she was worried she was going to let her down again.

  “It’s all right,” Angel murmured. “I’ll be fine. I just need some time on my own to think, that’s all.”

  “Please, make sure you call me if you need to talk. Don’t do anything... stupid.”

  Angel ate a chip, grimacing at its greasiness. She’d talked enough for a lifetime. Jackie, her therapist, had insisted it was the only way forward, and it had helped, for a while. But she was all talked out. She just wanted peace and quiet, and the chance to be able to hear her own thoughts.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, forcing a smile on her face. “This is a brilliant idea; the best one I’ve ever had. Well, we’ve ever had.” When Lesa had finally accepted that Angel wanted to be away for Christmas, she’d suggested a holiday cottage on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne that belonged to the father of a friend. She’d never stayed there herself, but Angel knew the area very well, having studied it in depth for her university course. “I’m going to be on an island in the middle of nowhere. The Vikings landed there in AD793, think of that!”

  Lesa obviously picked up that she didn’t want to talk and teased, “If you bump into Ragnar Lothbrok, let me know, won’t you?”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind posing for Snapchat.” Angel reached for a packet of ketchup, hoping to make the meal more palatable. Tearing off the top, she squeezed it over the sausages. Unfortunately, a stray squirt landed right in the middle of her white sweatshirt. “For fuck’s sake.” She took a photo of it and sent it to Lesa. “See? This is why I need to be kept away from the general population.”

  Lesa laughed. “The general population will miss you, sweetie. We think you’re adorable.”

  Angel pushed her plate away and leaned back. “You make me sound like a kitten. I don’t want to be adorable.”

  “Aw. You can’t change the way you are. Look, I’m going to say it once more, and then I won’t say it again... Are you sure this is the right thing to do? I think you need people around you in case you need help.”

  Angel looked out of the window. “I don’t need help.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.”

  There was another awkward silence.

  “I know you’re worried,” Angel said eventually, inserting a note of cheer into her voice, “but I’ll be fine. I’m going to be the new St. Cuthbert.”

  “Who?”

  “The hermit who lived on a tiny island called Hobthrush just off Holy Island and refused to speak to anyone.”

  “You’re comparing yourself to a saint now?” Lesa’s voice was full of amusement.

  Angel ignored her. “Twice a day, when the tide comes in, I’ll be completely cut off from the mainland. I know it’s been hard, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I need to be alone. I’m going to write a plan for next year. I want to sort my life out. I’ve had enough of dreading going to work every day—I want to get a job I love.”

  “Some people would be thrilled just to have a job,” Lesa pointed out. “There’s nothing wrong with yours.”

  Angel bit her lip. “I handed in my resignation two weeks ago. Yesterday was my last day.”

  There was a stunned silence. Then Lesa said, “What? Are you mad?”

  Angel had been prepared for this. She’d known Lesa wouldn’t approve. Normally, that would have been enough to make her back down and admit she was wrong, but this time she wasn’t going to do that.

  She wasn’t a child anymore. She’d spent a lifetime being told what to do and when to do it, and she was done. Lesa thought that because Angel had struggled in the past, she needed more help, but she didn’t. It was time she took off the training wheels. She shouldn’t be thirty-four and still riding with stabilizers.

  “I have enough savings to pay the rent for six months. I’m taking the leap, Lees. I need to do something different, and start coping on my own. I’ve relied on other people for far too long. I’m tired of having to be saved. I don’t want to be a damsel in distress anymore.” She kept her voice firm.

  “If this is about Eoin,” Lesa began.

  “It’s not,” Angel said.

  “But I know you miss him, and—”

  “I don’t want to talk abo
ut Eoin.”

  There was another long silence.

  Then, obviously deciding it was pointless to continue to argue with her, Lesa said, “So you’re, like, Joan of Arc or something?”

  “She was burned at the stake,” Angel pointed out. “And she was French.”

  “Boudicca, then?” Lesa suggested.

  “Yeah, I could be Boudicca. Or Lagertha. I’m going to be a shield maiden.” Angel looked down at the ketchup on her top and leaned back in her seat with a sigh. “I’ll start tomorrow.”

  “Will you send me a text when you get there? Let me know you’ve arrived safely?”

  “Sure,” Angel said, because she couldn’t be bothered to argue that she’d been driving for ten years and she was perfectly capable of getting from A to B without having a major disaster. This was exactly what she’d meant. It was true that in the past she’d struggled to cope emotionally, but now her friends and family thought she couldn’t even lace her shoes on her own. She wanted to prove to everyone around her, and to herself, that she wasn’t afraid to be alone.

  “Take care of yourself,” Lesa said. “I mean it. I miss you.”

  “Miss you too. Speak to you later.” Angel hung up before Lesa could try again to convince her not to go.

  For a long while, she just sat there, looking around at the bland service station. Its Christmas decorations were already limp and sagging, and only half the colored lights twinkled on the plastic tree in the middle. Bing Crosby’s White Christmas was playing in the background, the tinny sound system doing little justice to his beautiful voice.

  Usually, talking to Lesa comforted her, but today she felt flat after their conversation. It wasn’t Lesa’s fault, though. The old black dog of depression was still around, prowling, despite the pills and all the therapy. Occasionally, she hoped it had vanished, but it was always in the shadows. Sometimes, she thought it would never go—she just had to find a way to coexist with it, so that it didn’t continue to take over her life.

  The festive period had always been the time she struggled most. She looked out of the window, not seeing the busy car park, the gray English sky, or the people hurrying through the cold rain. Instead, she thought of that fateful Christmas when she was eight and Lesa was ten. She’d written to Santa and asked for a doll’s house. Her father had addressed the envelope to the North Pole, and they’d posted it together. She’d been so excited leading up to the big day. And then, on Christmas Eve, while she and Lesa were making mince pies with her mother, they’d received a phone call. Her dad had suffered a heart attack at work, and had been rushed to the hospital.

  Her mother had left her and Lesa with their aunt while she went to visit him. Auntie Barbara had been kind, and had let them stay up late and eat chocolate ice cream while they watched a movie. But that year, Santa had forgotten to deliver their presents to the bottom of their beds. And their father had never come home again.

  She’d finally received the doll’s house when her mother had returned from the hospital. It had displayed a tag written by her father, Hope it’s what you wanted, our little Angel! Love Mum & Dad x. She’d played with it once, and it had made her so sad that she’d never played with it again. Her mother had eventually given it to the local charity shop.

  The following year, the presents had miraculously appeared again at the bottom of the bed, but by then the magic had gone. Angel had heard the muffled weeping after her mother left the room, and she’d known it had been her father who’d delivered the presents in the past.

  Lesa had cried, mourned, and then continued with her life. Angel had taken it much harder. She’d started writing to Santa in her diary, telling him she missed him, and she’d been writing to him ever since.

  She looked back at her dinner, poked the wrinkled sausage, and sighed. She’d cook herself something when she arrived at the cottage.

  This was no way to start her Christmas holiday. Determined to haul her spirits up by their bootstraps, she studied the tray before her. The checkout girl had given her a Christmas gift pack, which appeared to be as exciting as the food. It consisted of a plastic bag containing vouchers for the shops in the service station, several flyers, a pen topped with a tiny plastic Rudolph whose nose lit up when you pressed a button, a mini chocolate bar, and a free sample of engine oil. What genius put these things together? Tearing open the chocolate bar and sucking it, she turned one of the flyers over to the blank white side and switched on the pen.

  At the top, she wrote, Dear Santa, here’s my wish list. She stopped and nibbled the top of the pen before continuing. She wrote one of these every year. They also served as a New Year’s Resolutions list. Whatever Santa didn’t bring her for Christmas, she’d attempt to put into practice in the New Year.

  But this year, she wanted it to be more than just a fantastical list of things she could never hope to achieve. One thing Jackie had taught her was that she needed to make practical goals that would give her a sense of achievement, and she was determined to put it into practice.

  Drawing in bubbles because her disorganized brain hated linear lists, she began to write.

  1. A REAL job. Doing something I love. Can you make me director of the British Museum?

  It was a semi-joke. She had a Masters in archaeology, but her last post had been PA to the CEO of a lubrication firm. It hadn’t even been fun lubrication—it had been grease for cars. Her ex-boss would have been super excited at the free engine oil. The new job didn’t have to be at the British Museum, but she wanted something more challenging and rewarding where she wasn’t always counting off the days to her next vacation.

  2. A wardrobe that fits the figure I have, not the figure I want to have.

  She was sick of dieting. Of trying to squeeze herself into clothes that were so tight they made her look like a sack tied in the middle. And of deriding herself for not losing weight. While she didn’t want to put on any more, and she didn’t want to live in tunics and elastic waists, she was going to try to buy herself some clothes that suited her body shape.

  She went on with the rest of her list. A treadmill, so she couldn’t use the weather as an excuse for not doing exercise. A subscription to her favorite history magazine, so she was always learning something new. The coloring books and pens she’d seen about the Tudors but hadn’t yet bought for herself. Not everything was life changing, but she tried to focus on feel-good things that weren’t going to cost the earth and that were within her reach.

  She was going to make this happen. She would work through her list and, by next Christmas, she would make every single item come to be.

  When she reached number ten, she stopped and thought for a moment. What else would she love to get that didn’t include calories? Lips curving, she wrote, Orgasms. Lots of. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the sort of thing Santa would be delivering to her stocking, but it was obtainable even without a partner. Perhaps a vibrator might help here, she added at the end, and then signed it, finishing with a smiley face.

  She sat back and studied it. Then she stuffed the wish list into the plastic gift bag, put the pen in her bag, stood and tugged on her coat, and went back to the car. Once inside, she put the gift bag into the glove compartment—you never knew when you might need a microscopic amount of engine oil—took off her coat and tossed it into the footwell, turned up the heater, and headed back onto the motorway.

  Chapter Two

  The blare of the Foo Fighters’ Everlong coming through Hal’s headphones was interrupted by a sharp ding, announcing the appearance of an email in his inbox.

  He minimized the AutoCAD program he’d been working on and pulled up the email. It was from Charles, his boss.

  Done yet? the email read.

  Hal lowered his headphones around his neck, leaned back, and stared out of the window at the dark sky.

  It was five thirty p.m. on Friday, December 22. It would take him ninety minutes to drive from Edinburgh to Holy Island, and the tide turned at around seven thirty. He absolutely had to leave by
six or he was going to be late, again.

  He pulled up AutoCAD and looked at the file he’d been working on for the castle in the nearby town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. He’d previously taken a site survey and hundreds of photographs, as well as researching the available historic plans, and he was now designing an online guidebook. It would take another week to complete it to his usual standards, but that was out of the question.

  Pushing away from his desk, he removed his headphones, got to his feet, then walked out of his office and along to Charles’s door, which was shut. He knocked and, without waiting, went in.

  Charles was on the phone, and he threw Hal a glare. Hal ignored it, leaned against the wall, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  The slim, fair-haired man had impressive, straight white teeth that must have cost a fortune at the orthodontist when he was a kid. Hal—whose father hadn’t been able to afford expensive dentistry and therefore had a gap in his front teeth—had fantasized on more than one occasion about punching Charles’s down his throat.

  Charles put his hand over the phone and said, “Do you mind?”

  “No,” Hal replied. He looked out of the window again at the rainy night.

  The weather would slow the traffic down, and it was a full moon too, which meant the tides would be higher than usual. A lifetime spent on the island and the knowledge that the sea captured at least one visitor on the causeway every month had given him a deep respect for the ocean. He wouldn’t be able to safely shave any minutes off the safe crossing time tonight.

  Obviously realizing he couldn’t glare Hal into leaving, Charles stretched out his legs and continued with his conversation, which appeared to be about the links golf course at Berwick. Knowing he was being made to wait, Hal gritted his teeth and tightened his hands into fists in his pockets.

  After five minutes, when Charles burst into laughter at something uttered by the person on the other end of the line, Hal pushed off the wall. “I’ll leave you to it,” he snapped, and turned to go.

  “Wait.” Charles gave a theatrical sigh and said, “I’ll call you back, Jake, I need to sort out a work problem.” He hung up and leaned back in his chair.