by Elle Rush
People came and went, but Ivy knew the second Hollis entered the store. Some of it was because he was a stranger, and this was a private party. But another part of her brain thought she, and everyone around him, might be responding to the kind, cheerful vibes he gave off.
She doubted he’d brought his reindeer-face tie with him on a business trip, which meant he’d taken the time to go shopping specifically for her party. And he’d stopped at his hotel for a fresh shave. The care he’d taken to look good at her party gave her a warm feeling that had nothing to do with the powerful rum ball she’d just popped into her mouth.
He’d evidently made a few friends; Marco Watson laughed when Hollis snagged a glass of eggnog with one hand and wrapped the other around Marco’s arm before a pair of tipsy guests knocked the coffee truck owner into the poinsettia display. Maggie made a special trip across the crowded floor to make sure Hollis got one of her coconut Christmas to thank him for all his earlier hard work. Ivy was pleased to see he recognized the gesture for what it was, because Maggie rationed those treats like they were gold.
It was a fair comparison.
She needed a big gulp of liquid courage before she made her way over to say hello. In the past few days, Hollis had become her own knight in shining armor. It was impossible to properly thank a person for that.
“The front of the store looks amazing. You snuck away before I could thank you. So, thank you.”
“It was nothing.”
She stared at him hard. “You were outside, in the cold, for over two hours, scouring brick with a wire brush. Now it looks like nothing ever happened. Believe me, it was something. Let me say thank you.” He had been so incredibly kind. She felt slightly guilty for not helping, but he’d told her to go inside and work. Who was she to argue with a knight?
“I was happy to help.”
“Did it cause any problems with your job? I know you’re supposed to be working with Love in Bloom.” He could come over anytime he wanted, as far as Ivy was concerned, but not if he got in trouble for it.
“Love in Bloom takes up a lot of my time, but as I said, my schedule is flexible. I can do what I want when I’m not working. Like—”
“Kisses!” Captain yelled.
They both turned to look at the bird. “Kisses!” it repeated.
Ivy burst into laughter. She knew what was up. Every year, they hung a sprig of mistletoe in the center of the store, right in front of Captain’s cage. Somehow, she and Hollis had been jostled into position. Captain was just doing her job.
“You have to,” Maggie insisted from the makeshift bar.
“If you don’t, it’s seven years of bad luck,” Joel added.
“Dude, that’s breaking a mirror.”
“Do you want to risk it? Don’t anger the big red man.”
She blushed at the thought of trying to explain why they’d been called out. Instead of trying to find the words, she pointed straight up.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to anger the big red man,” Hollis said.
Ivy braced. She hadn’t received a mistletoe kiss in years. Hollis cupped her chin carefully, tilted her face up to his, and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. She swore there were sparks.
Then she jumped out of his arms.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did I do something?”
“No, no, you were great.” Her luck was still holding. Her klutzy-action-hot-guy proximity reflex was working fine. “My phone is set to vibrate. It went off in my back pocket and scared me.”
“Saved by the cell.”
Ivy didn’t want to be saved. She pulled out her phone and saw a number that made her blink. “I’m sorry. I have to take this. It’s a supplier, and I have no idea why they’d be calling me at this hour on a Saturday night.” One thing was certain—it wouldn’t be good news.
She skirted the boxes in her tiny office and closed the door as best she could. “Hello? This is Ivy.”
“Hi, Ivy. It’s Brian Applebaum from Imprint Glassworks in Vancouver. Sorry to bother you on the weekend, but ’tis the season, you know.”
“Hi, Brian. How can I help you?”
“I’m calling to apologize. We’ve hired new Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable people, and the departmental changes are still shaking out. I’ve been reviewing the last two weeks’ paperwork and realized you were never sent confirmation regarding your cancellation of your holiday-themed order. Our Accounts Payable accidentally sent you an invoice, but I wanted to call to let you know to disregard it. We will be sending written confirmation next week.”
“Wait, what?” Ivy knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d ordered an assortment of vases, pots, and arrangement containers for upcoming holiday orders and had chosen each design with care. She preferred to get ones which could be reused or set out for another purpose in following years. They were great, unofficial advertising for Teague Flowers. People took them out each holiday season and remembered where they’d received it from. She rifled through her overflowing inbox tray looking for the order printout she’d made for her tax receipt file.
“I was sorry to see it,” Brian said. “We’ve enjoyed our business relationship with Teague Flowers over the years.”
“And I was hoping it would continue for many more,” Ivy agreed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We got a fax from you, cancelling the order. Fortunately, you have great taste. It wasn’t a problem to resell the stock.”
She landed hard in her desk chair, dropping more than sitting. “You sold my vases?” She needed those. She had orders starting on Monday, when the shipment had been due to be delivered.
“You cancelled the order.”
“By fax?” Who used faxes anymore? Ivy did everything online, like every other business in the twenty-first century.
She heard rustling at the other end of the line. “I was surprised, too. An actual paper fax. I didn’t know our printer was still set up to receive them. It says it was sent from the Whistler Business Center. It has Teague Flower letterhead.”
She couldn’t wrap her head around the facts. The fax. She’d never sent anything like that. She hadn’t been to the business center in months. But after ten years of using Imprint Glassworks without a problem, she believed Brian. “I don’t know what you got, but I never cancelled my order. Can you please send me a copy?” Ivy needed to see for herself. If there were tangible evidence someone had faked her letterhead, she would have to view her random bad luck of late in a new light.
“I’ll send it now. Are you saying it’s not from you?” Brian asked.
“Definitely not. I’ll happily figure out who did later. Right now, I’m more concerned about my order. Can you refill it and get it to me this week? I might have a few vases left over from last year, but I need that shipment.” She was going to have to brave the bowels of her storage unit to see what was left from the previous holiday season. She hadn’t been past the first couple rows of boxes since her mother died. Ivy would have to check the house, too, and hope something was stored in the garage rafters. It would be a dirty, potentially fruitless job she didn’t have time for.
“I’m sorry, Ivy. Like I said, you have good taste. The products you picked sold out fast. We have some left, but there aren’t a lot of options,” Brian apologized.
She could guess—generic vases with no character. If she was stuck with those, her clients would be less than impressed, which would affect future orders. Whoever had cancelled her order had manage to do double damage to her business.
“Can you send me links to what you do have?” Maybe she could work with them. Dress them up somehow. She had a hot glue gun and sparkles and knew how to use them.
“I’ll send you all available links in an email. Again, I’m sorry we didn’t catch this earlier. I would have called to verify the cancellation, and we could have cut this off at the pass.”
“Can you note in my file that I will never cancel except by email with a confirming phone cal
l to make sure this never happens again?” Her computer pinged, and she opened the email immediately. Two clicks later she was staring at an image of the fax and, as he’d said, it appeared to be on Teague Flowers stationary. It was a copy of a copy, but it looked legitimate. Ivy was stumped. She hadn’t known the business center had a fax machine. She’d never opened an account there.
“I’ll make that note now. Anyway, I’ll let you go. I’ll send you an updated list of links on Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.”
“You, too, Brian.”
She didn’t know how long she sat there staring at the paper she’d printed. Annie had managed to scoop her fall contract with the local bed-and-breakfast group, which had hurt, but her business plan took stuff like that into account. The Villa Montague order was never going to make her much money in the first year; she was using it to get a foot in the door, and it had ended up crushing her toes. Now her entire Christmas season was in jeopardy. And she had no idea how to fix any of it.
She heard a faint knock, and her door swung inward. Hollis stood there with two cups of cranberry red punch in his hands. “Are you coming back to the party?”
She had guests. She couldn’t hide. “Absolutely.”
He was beside her in an instant. “What’s that?”
Ivy flipped the paper facedown and placed it on her desk. “Work, and tonight is supposed to be about play. Is that for me?”
“Yes. I came in here for two reasons—three, actually.” He handed her one of the cups. “Here’s some punch. Maggie said you asked for a glass. Joel wanted me to warn you Marco is singing the alphabet song to Captain and keeps starting over at “S”. The bird looks like it’s getting annoyed.”
She laughed. “He does that every year. What is the third reason?”
Hollis adjusted his tie and straightened his shoulders. “Would you like to go out to dinner with me tomorrow night?”
Chapter Eight
Of course, she said yes. A handsome, kind, employed man had asked her on a date. She wasn’t an idiot. Even knowing Hollis wasn’t going to be in town long, she’d still agreed to go. If the past year had taught her anything, it was that life was short and she should grab the good times as they came along.
Between arriving home at three in the morning, her anticipation of her upcoming date, and the to-do list she had running through her mind for the next day, she hadn’t had the most restful night. Luckily, the Coffee Run was open every day. Marco, irritatingly looking like he’d had a full night’s sleep, set her up with her daily dose of caffeine.
She and Maggie had cleaned up after the party, leaving the store ready for its annual Christmas decoration tsunami. The Teague women had a motto: let no surface go unadorned. Ivy had purchased her own ornaments and holiday accoutrements over the past couple years. When added to her mother’s and grandmother’s collections, she had three times more stuff than space.
Her first stop was the shop’s storage room.
She needed to find the leftover vases and keepsake containers from the previous year. With any luck, her mom had squirreled some away, as well. However, luck was often disguised as hard work, and Ivy quickly realized she ‘d have to empty the entire unit to get to the good stuff.
She didn’t hesitate. She dragged every box and bag out of the storage room and heaped them under and around Captain’s cage. “Are you ready to get to organizing, me hearty?”
“Arr.”
Her hand hesitated above the first lid. “I wish Mom were here. This was her favorite time of year.” Despite what people told her, the holidays did not get easier as time passed.
“Kisses!”
Ivy managed a little chuckle. “Thanks, Captain.”
Her coffee had worn off by the time she finished separating the decorations from some half-full inventory boxes and her luck finally turned. With Elvis’s Christmas carols being piped through the store, Ivy got to work, setting up an assembly line. She grabbed a green, pinecone-shaped bowl which had been popular two years earlier, hacked a piece of florist foam into a cylinder to make it fit, and then reached into the piles of flowers in front of her.
She hated to acknowledge Annie must be doing something right, but the other florist had been scooping up her customers at an ever-increasing rate. Ivy had swung by Love in Bloom on her way in and studied the holiday arrangements Annie had in her store window. Ivy wouldn’t copy them, but she’d use them for inspiration without blinking.
She was so immersed in what she was doing, she jumped when she heard a rap on the front window. She looked up to see Hollis standing there. Brushing her hands on the apron she wore over her favorite, ratty, Canucks T-shirt, she bustled to the door. “Hollis? Is something wrong?”
“I was going to ask you that. Aren’t you supposed to be closed on Sundays? How long have you been here?” He looked a little worse for wear. His scruff was a definite sign he was not on the job. It added a couple years to his face, dispelling the illusion he was fresh out of college. She liked it.
“I got here a couple hours ago. What do you think?” she asked him, stepping aside to give him a clear view. Ivy gestured at a trio of arrangements.
She had created precise, perfectly balanced, red-and-white centerpieces, then framed them with strategically hung garland and tinsel. She’d reallocated the wire-framed reindeer wrapped in white Christmas lights, which had traditionally stood by the cash register, and placed it in the corner of the window. The display looked flawless. And cold. She hated it.
“They’re fine.”
“Fine? What’s wrong with them? The window looks like Love in Bloom’s display,” she said.
“That’s what I mean. I’ve seen Annie’s work. These are as conventional as hers. Don’t be Annie. Be you,” he said.
Hollis reached around her to pick up a huge tote filled with boxes of untouched Christmas ornaments. Ivy had popped the container’s lid, but she hadn’t bothered to dig any deeper after she realized it didn’t contain any vases. The smaller boxes inside weren’t a surprise; her grandmother had a special fondness for pre-loved, yard sale, Christmas ornaments. The ones on top of the box Hollis had grabbed were bright, mismatched, and every color and style under the sun. “Why didn’t you use any of these?” he asked. “They have more real Christmas spirit than anything in the window.”
“I didn’t even know I had them until today. My grandmother bought holiday stuff like a squirrel collects nuts. I found oodles in the storage unit.” Ivy would bet she had more tucked in the backs of closets and under the stairs at home. “It’s a shame. These are antiques now. But nobody wants old-fashioned things like this nowadays.”
She lifted a shoebox from the container and brushed off the dust. She removed the lid to reveal a stack of shapes cut from sheets of music with sparkles glued to the edges, and twig stars with their corners tied with silver thread. “It’s too bad. These would make some awesome arrangements.” They would be throwbacks to an earlier, less streamlined time, when homemade was valued more than trendiness.
Hollis reached for a small, flat box from the stack. “What’s in this one?”
“I have no idea. Open it for me?” Ivy requested, still petting the glittery, paper bells.
He gasped. She did the same. A dozen, blown-glass candy canes lay nestled in tissue paper. Hollis held one up to the sunlight. The folded red-and-white stripes looked like ribbon candy with an ethereal glow. “I’ve been staring at Annie’s decorations for two days. These are what ornaments are supposed to look like. Too bad you couldn’t use them. They’re exquisite.”
“Who said I can’t? They’d be perfect for a Christmas baby bouquet,” she argued, noticing they’d switched sides of their argument. Ivy didn’t have any emotional attachment to the decorations; she’d never seen them before. If she wasn’t going to use them, they ought to go to people who would appreciate them. Plus, they would make a wonderful “Baby’s first Christmas” keepsake. She was tempted to hold back one for herself, but business came first.
<
br /> Ivy replaced the lid and tucked the box into the crook of her arm. “What else does she have in there?”
Hollis cracked open another bin. “Four mercury glass pickle ornaments. Why would somebody make a pickle as a Christmas ornament? I think it’s a mistake. Should I toss them?”
“No! They’re a thing in the U.S.” Some family visiting from the United States would be delighted to receive a souvenir pickle in a centerpiece. The rest of the world may not know about the tradition, but they didn’t need to as long as the flowers sold.
The entire tote was filled with ornaments that ran from antique to plain, old kitschy. Ivy could easily design arrangements around all of them—if she had the containers to put them in.
Then she opened four massive bins which had been pushed to the back of the storage room and hit the motherlode.
“Thank you, Grandma, for saving my bacon.” Her eyes welled with tears that had nothing to do with the dust coating everything. One was crammed with candleholders, another with baskets. The third was a mix of candy and cookie jars, and the fourth contained ceramic holiday shapes like sleighs, snowflakes, and other wintery objects—dozens of them. She had more than enough to get her through the season.
The thickness of the dust indicated they must have been in the storage unit since her mother had moved Teague Flowers to Whistler decades before. Slowly accumulating junk must have pushed the tote boxes into the back corner, out of sight and out of mind. A few stretched back to the goofiness of the eighties, but Ivy remembered a lot of them from her childhood in the nineties, when the popular centerpieces were shorter and broader rather than the present day, tall-and-narrow style. They wouldn’t be what everybody else was selling, but current styles weren’t flying out of her store for her anyway.
No guts, no glory. If she was going to have to shutter her doors in the new year, she was going to go out on her own terms: fun, original, and overflowing with Christmas spirit.
“I don’t understand. Isn’t this stuff all too old to use?” Hollis asked. He held up a porcelain reindeer head, replete with antlers sticking out the sides like handles, and looked at her in confusion.
