An Unplanned Christmas

by Lizzie Shane

  “To get a room. Unless we need to get home for Sofie. In which case, I hear there’s a bathroom near here...”

  Epilogue

  Five years later…

  Rachel held her breath as she closed the door to the nursery, sending up a silent plea to any deity who was listening for a full night’s sleep. The twins seemed to have developed a tag-team system and she was seriously considering begging her mother to come back as a night nanny just so she and Cam could get eight solid hours. Or even six. Hell, she’d settle for three.

  She padded silently toward the great room, the sound of muffled giggling alerting her there was something afoot even before she rounded the corner and saw them.

  Cam stood next to the tree, his hand incriminatingly close to the ornaments. “See the trick is to just move them a little,” he was intoning like a Harvard lecturer. “That way she isn’t a hundred percent certain they’re out of place and you can slowly move them around the tree.”

  Rachel paused at the edge of the room and smothered a grin, waiting until Cam had Milo’s silver baby’s first Christmas ornament firmly in his hand before she folded her arms across her chest and called out, “I knew it! Caught red-handed.”

  Cam whirled. “It’s the fuzz! Hide the evidence!”

  He shoved the ornament behind his back. Milo and Cassidy squealed, ducking behind their father’s legs while Sofie, with the lofty maturity of her six-and-a-half years, merely slapped a hand over her mouth to smother her giggles, her eyes glinting wickedly. Of all their kids, she was the most like her father—and the most likely to be lured into one of his schemes.

  Rachel approached, shaking her head direly, playing her part to the hilt. “Not only are you defiling my Christmas tree, you’re corrupting our sweet, innocent children.”

  The cherubs in question giggled helplessly as Cam held up the baby spoon. “I’ll have you know that Milo’s baby ornament fell and I was valiantly returning it to its place of honor.”

  “Mm-hm.” She held out her hand, palm up, and he sighed dramatically before slapping the silver spoon onto it. She turned to the tree, eyeing it to see how much damage he’d already done.

  It wasn’t the same tree she’d had when they met. They got fresh trees every year now—but she still spent the most time decorating. Getting it just right. Shifting things around until it was perfect.

  And every year Cam messed with her ornaments whenever she wasn’t looking. Though as far as she knew, this was the first time he’d turned the kids into his partners in crime.

  She’d worried, when he announced last year that he wanted to retire from baseball and be a stay-at-home dad, that he would be bored. She hadn’t counted on him turning their offspring into his willing accomplices—though Cassidy could always be relied upon to tattle to her. Cassidy loved rules. That one was definitely her baby.

  They were in Boulder full time now—which was a relief now that Sofie was in school. Winters in Boulder and baseball season in LA had been a challenge. Rachel had gone to part time at TD Events, with a few breaks for maternity leave, but now she was back to full time. Cam had started encouraging her to start her own company, but for now she was happy where she was. She’d talked to Trista about the toll the company had taken on her home life when she was building her business and Rachel had no interest in putting her kids through that. Maybe someday, but she wasn’t in a hurry. For once, she didn’t need a five year plan. The present was pretty damn perfect already.

  She hung the spoon back in its place and Cam sighed dramatically. “You’re a little bit of a tree dictator, you know that?”

  “I just like order and efficiency,” she said, the kids all grinning at the familiar refrain. “There’s a system.”

  “Uh-huh.” Cam reached out in slow motion, his eyes locked on hers the entire time, and grabbed the spoon, moving it to a branch two inches to the left. Much too close to the Jingle Bell Santa.

  Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Seriously?”

  “I just want to see how long you can go before you move it back.”

  She held his eyes, putting steel into her gaze, determined not to crack.

  She lasted five minutes.

  Her opportunity came when Cam shooed the kids down the hall for bedtime. “Get moving, team. Pajamas for everyone. Teeth to be brushed. Stories to be read.”

  As he herded the kids toward their bedrooms, Rachel took advantage of his distraction to quickly move the spoon back.

  Cam’s arms closed around her from behind before she could lower her hand. “Caught red-handed,” he murmured against her hair.

  She leaned back against him, folding her arms over his. She’d never believed in love at first sight—until she saw Cam. And Sofie. And Cassidy and Milo and the twins. She’d thought love made you stupid, that it made a person do things that made no earthly sense—until she’d figured out that love was what made everything make sense. It was the logic and the explanation. And five years into her happily ever after, she was starting to think love might just conquer all.

  The right kind of love. With the right kind of man. Like the one who had burst into her life and disrupted all her plans.

  “I love this tree,” she said, staring up at the branches from the circle of Cam’s arms. “I think the Battle of the Tree might be my favorite part of Christmas.”

  “You know what my favorite part of Christmas is?” he asked.

  She looked up at him over her shoulder. They knew each other so well now, after five years of ups and downs, arguing and making up. She trusted him completely, down to her soul, but he was still surprising her every day. “What?”

  “You. You’re the best Christmas gift I ever got.”

  “Aw.” She turned in his arms, grinning and tipping her face up for a kiss. “That was so sappy. I love it. When the kids are in bed, you wanna put on a cheesy Christmas movie and cuddle for five whole minutes before we both pass out from exhaustion?”

  Cam laughed, his arms squeezing her close. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Thank you for reading AN UNPLANNED CHRISTMAS. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review at your favorite bookseller or book club website.

  To meet Rachel's brother, read on for a sample of THE DECOY BRIDE from Lizzie Shane's Bouquet Catchers series.

  If you're looking for more holiday-themed novels, click here for information about the other books in the YOURS FOR CHRISTMAS series - a collection of stand-alone Christmas romances loosely linked to the Bouquet Catchers series.

  The Decoy Bride

  What’s the hottest movie star in the world to do when she wants privacy for her wedding day? Pay someone else to stage a fake wedding half a world away, of course.

  Struggling artist Bree has been the great Maggie Tate’s decoy for a while now, but when the movie star asks her to impersonate her for three weeks to distract the paparazzi from her real wedding she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. Especially when she realizes she’s going to be isolated in one of the world’s most romantic settings with the bodyguard she can’t stop drooling over.

  Retired football star Cross has always been driven to be the best at everything he does–whether that’s professional sports or personal protection. He doesn’t make mistakes. Ever. But when the sexy little decoy and her complete lack of impulse control start throwing him off his game, he’s about to discover that there are some things in life he can’t control. Like the irrepressible decoy…and his heart.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  “May I be honest with you?”

  Bree kept her face carefully blank as she swallowed down the dread roiling in her stomach. Somehow she didn’t think the owner of the premiere gallery in Santa Monica was going to follow up that question with I think you’re brilliant and would love nothing more than to launch you into the art world—but in her eleven years in LA, she’d never once puked on a gallery owner and she was not going to start with Olivia Hwang.

>   Bree folded her hands as if they were discussing any old piece of art and not the magnum opus she’d spent the last six months slaving over. “Please.”

  Olivia cocked her elegant head, studying the fifteen-foot collage that took up the entire showroom wall. “It’s beautiful,” she said, like someone else might say it’s blue, as if it was a fact, and not a particularly interesting one.

  Bree was tempted to leave it at that—just say thank you, gather up her things and go, holding onto the illusion of the compliment. Olivia Hwang had called her work beautiful. She could dine out on that for months.

  But she would know it was an illusion. And she’d never been good at leaving society’s pretty illusions intact. She’d always had to push, slave to a compulsion to find the truth beneath. “And?” she prompted.

  “And boring.”

  She couldn’t contain her flinch, though Olivia was too engaged in studying the collage to notice. Stupid compulsion. “Boring,” she echoed, voice empty, ears ringing.

  “It’s the sort of piece you would expect to see in an airport. Universal in a sort of bland, inoffensive way. Like something a computer could produce.”

  Another surge of nausea sloshed in her stomach, but Bree forced her voice to remain steady as she pointed out, “I did it all by hand.”

  Two thousand photos. Each painstakingly developed and carefully crafted into a larger piece until the pictures taken all over Los Angeles came together to form a giant wave crashing on the shore.

  “I can see that,” Olivia said, still speaking in that matter-of-fact, almost clinical way. She reached out as if she would touch the piece, but stopped short, her hand hovering in the air over the lines. “The technique is lovely. Composition, form—you have a good eye. It just lacks perspective. Soul. Obviously it’s beautiful, but what’s it saying?”

  “Does beauty have to say something?”

  “If it wants to be art it does.” Her tone was dry, this tall, thin woman in a skirt suit designed by a man who outfitted First Ladies. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t the first thing anyone noticed about her. Her composure, her exquisite poise, outshone everything else.

  Bree knew who she was, of course, but she’d still Googled Olivia Hwang as soon as Alan told her he’d managed to get her a meeting with the Hwang Gallery. The billionaire philanthropist’s wife had started the gallery over a decade ago and quickly become one of the most influential voices in the California art community, launching careers with a single sentence. She didn’t look like a woman on the far side of fifty—but even without the help of a skilled plastic surgeon, money could work miracles on the fountain-of-youth front. The lowlights in Olivia Hwang’s elegant updo probably cost more than a month’s rent for Bree’s apartment.

  “Art is only as meaningful as the emotion it inspires,” Olivia went on, taking a step back to take in the scope of the piece. “This? It’s pleasant. It doesn’t hit you in the gut. Do you want to be pleasant?”

  Well, I was raised in Minnesota. Bree bit her tongue on the urge to snark at the preeminent gallery owner in southern California. She smoothed sweaty hands down her Walmart skirt, and angled her body toward the photos resting at the foot of the adjacent wall. “What about the prints?”

  They weren’t on the same scale as the wave collage, but if Olivia Hwang saw something in them it would still change her life.

  “Pedestrian.”

  Bree flinched at the casual indictment.

  “Lovely,” Olivia qualified, “but generic. The sort of art you could buy at a farmer’s market.”

  I do sell them at farmer’s markets. Bree swallowed back another tide of nausea.

  “That isn’t really what we do at the Hwang Gallery.” The gallery’s owner waved a long-fingered hand at the prints lined up along the wall, somehow both praising them and dismissing them with the gesture. “You’re a talented photographer—obviously. I wouldn’t have agreed to look at your work if I hadn’t seen potential in the piece Alan showed me—but I don’t see you in any of this. Where’s your voice? Your point of view? What makes this a Bree Davies photograph?”

  Besides the fact that I took it? Bree stared at the print. She’d been proud of it twenty minutes ago. It had been one of her favorites when she was picking which pieces to load into the car to bring to the meeting with the great Olivia Hwang. Back when she’d been dreaming of words like big break and turning point. Now all she could see was Olivia’s words in neon letters across the vivid bridge scene.

  Pedestrian. Generic.

  At her continued silence, Olivia added, her voice gentle, “There are thousands of truly excellent photographers who don’t have anything to say. And the world needs them as well. There’s no shame in commercial photography. We can’t all be artists.”

  The words echoed against another voice from another time, that one harsh and deep. You can’t just decide to be an artist. That isn’t how it works, Bree.

  Her stomach gurgled and Bree pressed a hand to it, determined not to lose her breakfast burrito all over Olivia Hwang’s three thousand dollar shoes. “Thank you so much for your time,” she said hurriedly, hunched over like Quasimodo as she collected her prints, sliding them back into the plastic crate.

  Olivia stepped back, the corners of her mouth tugging down with sympathy. “I’d be happy to see your work again,” she offered. “If you find your voice.”

  Bree nodded her thanks, pressing her lips together to contain the emotion that was suddenly pushing against her from the inside out. She’d been so worried about throwing up on one of the most powerful gallery owners in southern California, she’d completely missed the very real threat that she might burst into tears in front of her.

  She blinked rapidly, trying to focus her suddenly blurry vision on the prints beneath her hands. Olivia must have sensed what an edge she was on, because she murmured, “Justin will help you if you require any assistance. Best of luck, Miss Davies,” and retreated with a soft click of expensive heels, leaving Bree alone with her disappointment.

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t had disappointments before. Rejections were easy to come by in this business and she’d learned early on that she would need a thick skin to survive. But this time had felt different. She’d let herself get her hopes up.

  Two weeks ago, her friend Alan had thrown the art equivalent of an open mic night in his tiny little gallery in Venice. It was a monthly ritual and one that Bree participated in more out of habit than any real sense that it might lead to her big break. But that night a miracle had occurred. Olivia Hwang herself had dropped by, perusing the art with pursed lips and the occasional encouraging twitch of an eyebrow. And she’d stopped in front of Bree’s piece—a double exposed photo that had given the eerie impression of a hidden self. She’d been experimenting—the effect more accident than art.

  We can’t all be artists.

  Bree sniffed hard and climbed the step stool to release the clips holding her magnum opus in place. The collage sagged, one end sinking toward the floor as the other stayed clipped up—would Olivia have been impressed by her vision if she’d seen it like this? The city of LA as a wave, half crumpled in on itself. Would she have been saying something then?

  The other side released, slithering to the floor, and Bree looked up to see Olivia’s assistant guiding it gently down. “It’s a beautiful piece,” he said—and she forced herself to smile even though the last thing she wanted was his pity.

  “Thank you.” She bent and began to briskly roll it—taking much less care than she had an hour ago in her studio when she’d oh-so-gently packed her pièce de resistance for transport to the illustrious Hwang Gallery. But the world had looked different then. Olivia Hwang had singled her out, asking to see more of her work. Everything was hope and technicolor fireworks in that moment.

  But now…back to beige.

  We can’t all be artists.

  Justin helped her carry the collage out to her car and brought out the crate of prints while she was maneuvering it into th
e hatchback. She’d bought the used Honda Fit off a surfer three years ago. He’d bragged that he could fit three surfboards into the tiny car and she’d discovered it fit easels and tripods just as well. Not to mention massive—bland—collages.

  Her phone buzzed as she was jockeying the rolled collage to make room for the crate. She balanced the crate on the edge of her bumper as she fished in her pocket for the phone, the face lit with a text alert.

  MT: I need you! 911!

  Bree snorted. Since nothing in Maggie Tate’s life was ever a 911 emergency—at least nothing that she would be texting Bree about—she pocketed her phone to finish shimmying the crate into place before acknowledging the text.

  But since she also needed the job with Maggie more than ever, she texted back On my way before slamming the hatch closed and climbing into the driver’s seat. Driving away from the Hwang Gallery and leaving all her stupid, overly optimistic hopes behind.

  Maggie’s Hidden Valley estate wasn’t far, by LA standards—the ten miles inland would probably only take a half hour if the traffic stayed bearable. Bree pointed her car toward the familiar destination and let instinct take over, not bothering with GPS.

  There was something oddly soothing about the stop-and-go Thursday morning traffic. It let her shut off her brain and try to forget the words that kept echoing inside her mind.

  Banal. Generic. Pedestrian.

  Her phone rang through the car’s Bluetooth and Bree reached to connect the call, grateful for the distraction. “Hello?”

  She’d expected Maggie—the star wasn’t known for her patience—but instead an all-too-familiar voice came through the speakers. “Bree?”

  She barely managed to keep her groan internal. “Hi, Mom.” Her mother was psychic. It was the only possible explanation for how she always knew exactly when to call when Bree’s doubts were loudest in her ears.

  “Are you all right? Your voice sounds strange.”

  “I’m driving,” she offered as an excuse, silently hoping her mother would take the hint and let her go lest she become another distracted driving statistic.