The First Love Cookie Club (2 page)

Travis looked perplexed. “Sarah?”

“Who is this?” Crystal asked.

Sarah ignored her and stared straight into Travis’s stormy gray eyes. “Don’t marry her. You can’t marry her.”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

The words spilled from her in a heated rush. “I’m your soul mate. Your one true love. You’re destined to marry
me.
If you marry her, it’s all over. None of us will ever find the happiness we deserve.”

A kind smile tipped the corners of his lips. “Sarah,” he said, and reached out to gently touch her arm.

His touch set her on fire. All the air left her body.

“You’re only fifteen,” he said. “You don’t know the first thing about true love.”

“But I do! I’ve been dreaming of you every Christmas Eve since I was eight years old. The kismet cookies are never wrong. You and I are meant to be together.”

“Good grief, are you for real?” Crystal Hunt snapped. “You’re a delusional little twit who’s read one too many romance novels. There’s no such thing as soul mates and one true love. Don’t kid yourself.”

The churchgoers dissolved into guffaws, and in that horrible split-second moment, Sarah stepped outside herself, and she could see the whole thing unfolding like some hideous nightmare.

There she was, a chubby teenager with braces on her teeth and reindeer antlers on her head and jingle bells on her sweater vest, standing between a bride and groom on their wedding day, professing her love to a grown man who clearly did not love her back, while nearly the whole damn town of Twilight looked on, amused by her abject humiliation.

A jagged stab of raw pain jabbed her heart.

“Sarah,” Travis murmured, “maybe you should go on home now.”

Fool! He doesn
‘
t want you. You
‘
re embarrassing him.

Her face burned. Her stomach roiled. Her chest hurt. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn’tsee. Blindly, she turned, stumbling for the door, yanking the antlers from her head, tearing the jingle bells from her sweater, ripping up all her hopes and dreams, and ran as far and fast as she could away from the raucous laughter echoing behind her.

And she vowed never, ever to put her heart on the line again.

“You’ve gotta see this, Sarah. It’ll jerk your heart right out of your chest.”

Ha! Too late. Her heart had been jerked out of her chest nine years ago when she was a naïve, foolish fifteen-year-old. Not that she thought about Travis Walker all that much. And if that embarrassment hadn’t been enough to make her a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, the accident she’d suffered in college had sealed the deal. Absentmindedly, Sarah’s hand went to her stomach, and she rubbed the scar that still ached from time to time.

She glared across the top of her computer monitor at her literary agent, Benny Gent. “I’m not doing another book tour at Christmas, Benny. Last year and the year before were—”

“Exhausting. I know. I was there.” He stood in the doorway of the dining room she’d converted into an office, one shoulder slouched against the door frame, cocking his oh-so-charming grin.

He’d dropped by after a power lunch at Movers and Shakers, a hip new uptown restaurant, withher publisher, Hal Howard. In his hand Benny held a piece of notebook paper. Sarah could smell his aftershave from here, expensive and exotic, star anise and cardamom. He wore a designer suit; crisp, cream-colored button-down shirt; and a paisley silk tie. His dusty blond hair was clipped in a short, young-executive-on-the-go style, and he was perpetually bronzed courtesy of the spray tan salon in his building. Benny had the energy of a nuclear power plant, and sometimes the guy simply wore her out. Even so, he was her closest friend and confidant.

Oh, who was she kidding? He was her only real friend. Sure, she had plenty of acquaintances, but he was the only one she considered a true friend. Getting emotionally intimate with people had always been tough for her, even more so after Gram had died.

Sadness shot through her as it always did when she thought of her Gram. She’d been gone eight years, and Sarah still missed her grandmother deeply.

“I was going to say a nightmare,” Sarah said. “I get all claustrophobic around strangers.”

“You live in New York City.”

“That’s different. People ignore you in Manhattan. I like being ignored.”

“Ah, so it’s the celebrity factor that bothers you, not crowds.”

“It’s the people factor that bothers me. The thing is, you thrive on glad-handing and parties and travel. Me, I’m just a curmudgeonly hermit with a bah-humbug attitude toward Christmas. Call me Scroogetta.”

“And yet you wrote a Christmas book. For children, no less. Imagine that.”

“Yeah, well, everyone has lapses in good judgment.”

“It made you rich.”

“You didn’t come out of the deal so badly yourself.”

“You’re in a peevish mood.”

“I told you I hate Christmas.”

Benny looked at her mildly. He knew her well enough not to overreact to her sweeping declarations. “You made a great decision when you wrote that book whether you know it or not. It’s evergreen, and even though you’ll be living off royalties into your dotage, your sales spike during the Christmas holidays. It’s the logical time to do a book tour.”

He always sounded so sensible. Without even meaning to do so he made her feel neurotic.

“I prefer Manhattan in December,” she said.

It was October now and the leaves on the trees in Central Park that Sarah could see from the corner of her Upper West Side brownstone flared fiery autumn foliage.

“You’re just being contrary,” Benny observed.

“Yes, yes, I am. Isn’t that my prerogative as a temperamental artist?”

“And it’s my job to talk you around to what’s best for the career of that temperamental artist.”

Sarah sighed, leaned back in her chair, and held out a hand. Reading the letter would have one advantage. It would take her mind off the fact that she was completely stuck on her manuscript in progress. If she even could call it a manuscript.

Over the course of the last six weeks she’d rewritten the opening scene, from scratch, eighty-seven times. Not that she was counting or anything. “Let me see it.”

Benny’s grin widened. Smart aleck. He knew he had her. He tracked across the hardwood floor, slipped the letter into her upturned palm, and then plucked a pristine hankie from the breast pocket of his suit. “Trust me. You’re going to need it.”

“You mistake me for a soft touch.”

Benny winked. “You don’t fool me, Sadie Cool. You’re a marshmallow at heart.”

Sadie Cool was her pen name. She’d adopted it on Benny’s suggestion after he had called her three years ago, told her she was a brilliant storyteller, and signed her on the spot. Much to her parents’ dismay, in college she’d majored in English, and for her senior class project she’d written
The Magic Christmas Cookie.
Unbeknownst to her, her creative writing professor at Southern Methodist University had been so bowled over, he’d forwarded the manuscript to Benny, and his exuberant call had come as a complete shock.

Sarah had never consciously set out to become a children’s author. Rather, after her abject humiliation that Christmas Day at the First Presbyterian Church of Twilight, Texas, she’d started writing as a way to deal with her disillusionment and make sense of her own shameful behavior. She’d been a young girl in love with a fairy tale and even though she’d learned the hard way that there were no such thing as fairy tales, she’d been loath to give up the dream. Even if things had not turned out happily-ever-after for her in real life, she could still make magic between the pages of her books.

Benny had sold the story for a modest advance to a big-name publisher who didn’t expect much from the little book and put no muscle behind it. At that point she was nothing more than a newbie author eagerly awaiting the publication of her first book. Then somehow Benny managed to get an advance reading copy into the hands of a Hollywood producer, and the next thing she knew, Benny had sold the movie rights. Bolstered by Hollywood buzz, the book came out to great fanfare. It was hailed by critics, won several awards, and quickly gained
Polar Express–like
cult status, with bookstores throwing
Magic Christmas Cookie
parties all around the country. At the tender age of twenty-two, Sadie Cool became an overnight sensation.

Now, one year and ten months after
The Magic Christmas Cookie’s
release, her publisher was clamoring for the second book and Sarah was deep in the throes of writer’s block. The pressure to top her own success was overwhelming, and to cap things off, her parents kept asking when she was going to write a
real
book. She had to hand it to Helen and Mitchell. No matter what she achieved, she was never good enough. Shaking her head at those thoughts, she read the letter written in royal blue crayon.

A tear trickled down Sarah’s face and she reached for Benny’s handkerchief.

“Told ya.”

“Shut up,” Sarah said. “I’m crying because I’m getting pressured by an eight-year-old kid to produce another book and I’m hamstrung with writer’s block.”

“Liar.”

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?

“Nope.”

“You do realize you’re the bane of my existence.” “And you love that about me. I’m your contact to the outside world, Scroogetta.”

“Don’t fool yourself.”

Benny grinned and picked up his briefcase from the floor, sat it on her desk, opened it up, and took out a manila envelope. “Jazzy’s letter arrived in this packet from the mayor of Jazzy’s hometown. He’s inviting you to visit, giving you the key to the city, and making you honorary mayor for a week. Apparently, the town holds some kind of Dickensian Christmas festival every year and you’re the guest of honor. Plus there’s a local Christmas cookie club in town, and the ladies of the club have invited you to their annual cookie swap. Also, the local bookstore wants to do a signing event, throw a pajama party for the kids, and have you read from
The Magic Christmas Cookie.
They’re offering to payyour way, put you up in the local B&B for nine days, and give you a four-figure honorarium. Not a bad deal. Plus getting out of this apartment might be just the thing you need to shake up your muse.”

An odd tingling sensation started in the pit of Sarah’s stomach and, like a brush fire, quickly spread along her nerve endings, shooting straight up into her brain. Twilight, the town where her grandmother had once lived, threw an annual Dickensian Christmas festival. They also had a Christmas cookie club, and there was a quaint little bookstore in town that loved staging children’s events.

Could the invitation actually be from Twilight? What were the odds? She wrote under a pen name, for crying out loud. But it was easy enough to snoop around on Google and discover that Sadie Cool was really Sarah Collier, granddaughter of the late Mia Martin, a native of Twilight.

Sarah groaned and closed her eyes. “Please don’t tell me this place is Twilight, Texas.”

“Yes.” Benny sounded surprised. “How did you know?”

She opened her eyes, canted her head. She’d never told Benny about Twilight or the way she’d made a gigantic fool of herself there nine Christmases ago. She’d wanted to erase all that from her memory. She was no longer that kismet-cookie-believing, reindeer-antler-wearing, chubby, metal-mouthed fifteen-year-old, and she had no desire to go back. “My grandmother used to live there.”

“No kidding. Well, no wonder they’re rolling out the red carpet for you. Hometown girl makes good.”

“It was never my hometown.”

But you spent every summer and every Christmas holiday there from the time you were eight until you were fifteen.

“Hey, your heroine Isabella is from a town just like this one. In fact, is Twilight the inspiration for your story? We could milk that angle for even more publicity.”

“You do know you’re a publicity ho.”

“Why, thank you, Sarah.” Benny looked inordinately pleased.

“Stop.” Sarah held up a palm. “I’m not doing it. I have a book to write. A book, may I remind you, that my contract says I must have finished by January third. And that’s after they’ve already granted me two extensions. I’m skating on thin ice.”

“It’s the middle of October. The Christmas festival in Twilight isn’t until the first weekend in December. That gives you seven weeks to write twenty-five thousand words. Come on, you can do this.”

“You make is sound so easy. Just snap my fingers and the words will appear on the page like magic.”

“You’re making excuses,” Benny chided.

“I have serious writer’s block!”

“Stephen King says writer’s block is a myth. It’s just fear.”

“Yeah? Well, Stephen King can kiss it.”

“I really think you ought to do this, Sarah. It would be great PR. Hal thinks you should do it as well.”

Sarah groaned. “You told Hal?”

“He loved the sick-kid angle, and when he finds out Twilight is your hometown—“

“It’s not my hometown.”

“It would go a long way in smoothing things over if you have to ask for yet another extension.” He went on as if she hadn’t issued a protest. Agents.

Sarah pushed back from the desk, got up out of her chair. “You set me up, Benny.”

He blinked, tried to look innocent. “I didn’t.”

“You shouldn’t have talked to Hal without asking me first.”

“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s one town. One week. It’s not like you’re doing a four-month, fifteen-city tour or anything.”

She supposed from his point of view her refusal did seem irrational. She could lie and say she had family obligations. The majority of people did during the holiday season, but she wasn’t a liar, and Benny knew her relationship with her parents was strained at best, and in all the time he’d known her, she’d never spent her holidays with them. Why would she? During her childhood, they’d mostly spent
their
holidays with colleagues and/or sick people.

“Look, without getting into the details, I had an unpleasant experience in Twilight when I was fifteen and I have no real desire to return to the scene of the crime.”

“There was a crime?” Benny perked up. He knew a good story when he heard one. “What did you do? Shoplift lipstick from the Wal-Mart?”

She wished. “Figure of speech.”

“Think of poor little Jazzy.” He pulled a sad face. “All she wants in this world is to meet her favorite author before she dies.”

“Bastard.”

He chuckled. “Come on, Sarah, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You’re Sadie Cool. This is your chance to go back to Twilight with your head held high as local girl done good and show those townspeople what you’re really made of. I’ll bet you none of them remember whatever it is that’s haunting you.”

“Oh, believe me, it’s not something a small town like that is likely to forget.” Just thinking about it made her cringe.

“I’m totally intrigued. You’ve got to tell me what you did.”

“It was bad.”

“I have a hard time seeing you doing anything that terrible.”

She took in a ragged breath and as quickly as possible told him the sordid story.

“Wait, wait.” Benny waved a hand. “You were wearing reindeer antlers?”

She sighed. “Regrettably.”

“Ouch. That must have been really tough. So tell me, how did you manage to survive your first broken heart?”

“Believe it or not, in her own detached, clinical, misguided way, my mother actually helped me for once.” Sarah rubbed her chin, remembering how her mother was the first person she’d seen after she’d come running back to Gram’s house sobbing as if her life was over.

“How’s that?”

“The minute we got home to Houston, my mother hustled me over to the medical school lab and took out a cadaver and showed me a human heart.”