The First Love Cookie Club (7 page)

“I hate to kiss and run,” he said, glancing at his watch, “but I’ve got to go pick up Jazzy.”

Kiss and run.
For no discernible reason, Sarah shivered. “Where is she?”

“Story time at the library.”

“At eight o’clock at night?”

“You’ve forgotten the tradition?”

A memory floated back to her then. Something she hadn’t thought of in a very long time. She’d been nine or ten, a couple of years older than Jazzy was now, and Travis had volunteered to take the neighborhood kids to the story time that the library held after the Dickens on the Square parade. The librarian read
A Christmas Carol
and served refreshments. The children would circle around her in kid-sized chairs. She remembered Travis took her hand when they crossed the street and how it had made her feel so special. Later, she’d asked Gram why Travis had gone with the little kids to story time.

“His mother is very sick,” Gram had said. “He just needs to get out of the house once in a while, even if it’s just with little kids at story time.”

She recalled feeling sorry for him. His mother had died a year or two after that. He’d lost his mother at a young age and he had a daughter who had been ill for a long time. How hard that must be for him. But Jazzy had looked pretty good. Certainly well enough to participate in the parade and then go to story time at the library. That was good news.

“Not that I would know what Jazzy normally looks like,” Sarah told Travis. “But she seemed very well this evening.”

“She did.” The relief in his voice was palpable. “She’s on an experimental medication and it seems to be working.” He crossed his fingers, smiled a hopeful smile. Briefly, he told her about Jazzy’s condition and her current treatment, and what had started out as smoldering looks and a red-hot kiss,ended softly with sympathetic nods and understanding whispers.

“I better get a move on,” he said, tapping the face of his watch. “Have a nice night, Sarah.”

And then he was gone. Ambling out the door, leaving her staring in his wake, wondering what in the hell was going on between them.

The morning after he danced with Sarah at the Horny Toad and kissed her underneath the mistletoe, Travis woke up with her on his mind. He did not know why he’d kissed her. He certainly hadn’t planned it, but he’d been unable to think about anything except kissing those lush salmon-colored lips from the moment she’d stepped onto the float with him and Jazzy.

It bothered him, because for the last four years the only thing he’d thought about was his daughter. Now Sarah Collier, all sleek and cool, had swept into his life, leaving him feeling hot and bothered and worried.

No, he corrected. She hadn’t swept into his life. His aunt and her friends had dragged her into it. They didn’t fool him one bit. They might have initially brought her here for Jazzy, but now they were playing matchmaker, throwing him and Sarah into each other’s paths. Well, he wasn’t falling for it.

He stood in his kitchen making cinnamon toast for Jazzy and thought about how the soft brown sprinkles of spice were the exact same color as the faint dusting of freckles scattered across the bridge of Sarah’s nose. Those freckles. He smiled and slid the toast from the broiler. She might have buried the Sarah he once knew and replaced her with thepolished guise of Sadie Cool, but she couldn’t hide those freckles.

He put the toast on a plate, and then stirred a package of hot chocolate mix in Jazzy’s pink sparkle princess mug. He added a handful of miniature, multicolored marshmallows just the way she liked it. Jazzy looked good, even after the excitement and activity of the previous night.

Hope lifted his heart. Had they finally found the right drug? Could this be the solution they’d spent four years searching for?

Happily humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” Travis poured himself a cup of coffee and wandered outside in his bathrobe, pajama bottoms, and house slippers to retrieve the Saturday morning edition of the
Twilight Caller
from the front lawn. He bent down, scooped up the dew-covered newspaper wrapped in clear plastic, and raised his head.

That’s when he saw her.

There, at the edge of his property line, just across the one-lane road from Lake Twilight glimmering silver-blue in the spreading dawn, stood Sarah. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail braid and she wore black Lycra exercise pants and a plain white cotton T-shirt that stretched enticingly across her chest.

His gaze dipped downward as he took her in. It amused him to see she still wore the same black stiletto boots she’d worn the night before. When had she become such a girlie-girl? He remembered her as something of a tomboy.

That was a long time ago. She’d been a kid then. She was a woman now.

Travis eyed her curves. One hell of a woman, in fact.

He straightened, tucked the paper under his right arm, and took a sip of his coffee, trying to decide if she was really there or just a wishful apparition of his imagination. With his free hand, he cinched his bathrobe tighter, trying to cover up his bare chest as best he could, and raised his cup in greeting. “Morning.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to turn and run away, but she stood her ground. He walked toward her.

She raised her chin. “I took your advice about exercising and went for a power walk.”

“In those boots? You don’t have any sneakers?”

“I didn’t think I’d need sneakers and I don’t like to check my bags at the airport, so I try to pack light. Besides, these boots are comfortable.”

“For a power walk?”

“I am working on a blister,” she admitted.

“C’mon in.” He inclined his head toward the door. “I’ll get you a Band-Aid.”

“That’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m good.”

He watched her pull in, raise her defenses. “So, other than the blister, how did the walk make you feel?”

“Good … great … amazing actually.” She sounded surprised.

“Fresh air clear your head?”

“Yes.”

“Get your blood pumping?”

“Uh-huh.”

He grinned. “Told you.”

She flicked her gaze behind him and he turned to see what she was looking at. All he saw was the Queen Anne-style cottage built in the 1920s, complete with gingerbread trim, a wraparound porch, and window boxes.

“You’re living in my grandmother’s house,” she said softly.

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“Crystal and I bought it from your parents after your grandmother died. Then I paid it off with the insurance money from when my father passed away and I sold his house. I own it free and clear.”

“Oh.” She stayed expressionless, staring at the house.

Travis loved this house, but Crystal had hated it. “Too small,” she said, “too cutesy.” Crystal had dreams of living in expansive splendor far beyond the reach of Travis’s pocketbook. He had to admit the place was a bit cutesy. It reminded him of one of those cozy cottages in Jazzy’s Beatrix Potter books. It seemed almost magical somehow, especially when the mist rolled in off the lake.

He noticed Sarah had fisted her hands at her side and her lower lip tightened. Was she hurt by the discovery? “Your folks didn’t want to keep the house for you? I know how close you were to your grandmother.”

Sarah’s eyes darkened. “I wasn’t given the option. I was sixteen and away at boarding school when Gram had her first stroke and my parents moved her to a nursing home in Houston. I guess they didn’t think it was important to let me know who bought it and I suppose I never thought toask. My parents …” She shook her head and the long braid swished against her back. “We’re not close. I’m a huge disappointment to them. In fact, I haven’t seen them in over a year. We were supposed to get together for the holidays, but as it always does with them, something came up.”

“Disappointment?” He couldn’t imagine ever being disappointed in Jazzy. “You’ve written a book that has touched thousands of lives, my daughter’s being one of them. How could they
not
be proud of you?”

Sarah shrugged. “They wanted me to follow in their footsteps. Become a surgeon. I simply didn’t have the aptitude. Or the desire.”

“That’s because your talent lies with words.”

“That’s kind of you to say.” She spoke in a distant tone, the way people spoke to strangers. But he wasn’t a stranger and it bothered him that she was putting up a wall, pushing him away when he wanted to know everything about her.

Why? What was this strange pull of attraction? She was attractive, yes, but so were a lot of women and none of them had ever made him feel … What did he feel? Mesmerized? Captivated? Neither word was quite right. Spellbound?

Maybe it was the history between them. His interrupted wedding. Her heartfelt vow. She’d been completely infatuated with him at the time and he’d been pretty clueless about it. Now he was the one smitten and she seemed disinterested. Was that why he was interested? Precisely because she wasn’t? How twisted was that?

Last night something inside him had come undone. Pent-up sexual desire gnawed at his insides.

Kissing her had felt so damn good, he’d wanted more. Wanted more right now, standing here on his front lawn looking into her faraway blue eyes. He ached to haul her into his bed, strip off their clothes, and thrust into her. He hungered to feel her legs wrapped around his hips, longed to feel her body quiver beneath his. He yearned to smash through the walls she’d erected around herself, shatter her resistance, and claim her as his woman.

The intensity of his desire scared the shit out of him. He’d never experienced anything like this primal pull, and it made him want to turn tail and run for his life. But Travis stood his ground, held her gaze.

A car rumbled down the lane in front of the house, a neighbor behind the wheel. He tooted his horn at them, raised a hand in greeting. Travis smiled, waved back.

“Anyway,” he said, “I just wanted to thank you again for coming back home to make Jazzy’s Christmas wish come true. You’ll never know how much this means to her.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “Well, I better head back.”

He could feel her shoring up her emotions, building her walls higher, shuttering the curtains, locking him out. “Have a good day,” he said.

“You too.”

He watched her walk away, her head high, her steps almost a purposeful march as if she were trying to convince herself of something. And he couldn’t help wondering, What would it take to break through that tough shell she’d erected and uncover the real Sarah Collier hidden away inside?

Raylene and Dotty Mae were waiting for Sarah in the lobby of the Merry Cherub. They stood on the guest side of the front desk while behind it, Jenny was bent at the waist, elbows on the counter, chin propped in her palms. All three were leafing through a catalogue filled with angel-related items that lay open on the counter in front of them.

“There you are,” Dotty Mae exclaimed when she spied Sarah. She eyed her workout clothes. “But you’re not ready to go.”

“Go where?” Sarah ran a hand through her bangs, taming them down from the wind off the lake. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Travis now owned her grandmother’s house and no one had told her.

“You’ve got a full day ahead of you,” Raylene said. “Didn’t you get your itinerary?”

Guiltily, Sarah thought of the stack of info Mayor Schebly had given her the previous day. She’d tossed it on the bedside table in her room and never looked at it again. “Um, I’m sorry, I didn’tread my itinerary … my agent usually handles the details of my appearances.” She realized that sounded like an excuse. She hated public appearances and if Benny didn’t push her, she’d never do them, but it was rude of her not to have looked at the itinerary. She’d kept them waiting. “I should have assumed responsibility for myself. I do apologize.”

“Boy, that agent,” Dotty Mae said, “he’s sure got you spoiled.”

“I suppose he does,” Sarah admitted.

“It’s okay, we haven’t been here long,” Raylene said.

“Could you ladies excuse me for just a little while longer? I need to shower and get changed.”

“You go right ahead.” Dotty Mae waved a hand. “I was just about to order this angel fondue set. There’s Bible verses printed on the bottom of the fondue bowls. When you get done eating, ta-da, you’ve uncovered the word of God.”

Raylene rolled her eyes. “What about your guests who don’t like to mix fondue and religion?”

“Then they don’t have to look at the bottom of the bowl, now do they? Sign me up for a set, Jenny.” As an aside to Sarah, Dotty Mae said, “Jenny sells angelware. It’s sort of like Tupperware, dontcha know, but cozier.”

“Better get a move on,” Raylene told Sarah. “Moe is presenting you the key to the city at nine and it’s eight-thirty now.”

“Yes, yes.” Sarah hurried up the stairs, fishing her room key from her pocket as she went.

As much as she would like to weasel out of this thing, that didn’t appear to be an option. Sighing, Sarah stripped off her clothes and got in the shower.

Fifteen minutes later, she was dressed in black slacks and a red knit sweater. She dabbed on a bit of makeup, and then wrenched her door open to find Dotty Mae and Raylene hovering in the hall-way.

They left the B&B, and Dotty Mae stopped beside a faded yellow VW Bug straight from the 1960s parked at the curb and unlocked the passenger side door.

Raylene stepped ahead of Sarah, pushed aside the front seat, and folded herself into the back. “Guests sit up front. I would have brought my Cadillac, but it’s in the shop and Dotty’s VW is better than Earl’s stinky ol’ farm truck.”

Sarah eased into the seat while Dotty Mae toddled around to the driver’s side. The woman was eighty if she was a day.

“Should she be driving?” Sarah whispered to Raylene.

“Don’t let her slowness fool you, Dotty Mae’s still on the ball. I’m sure your Gramma Mia would have been just as feisty if she’d have lived, God rest her soul,” Raylene said.

Dotty Mae climbed inside and started the engine. The Bug chugged to life. “So tell us, is Travis a good kisser? Last night he looked like he was a pretty good kisser.”

“What year model is this VW?” Sarah evaded. “1967.”

“Ah, the summer of love,” Raylene said. “I wish I could remember it better. I smoked too much damn pot that summer.”

“I’ve heard he was a good kisser,” Dotty Mae kept on. “You know he was quite the ladies’ man before he got married and became a daddy.”

Sarah let that slide by without commenting.

“But ever since he had that baby girl, he’s done a complete one-eighty,” Raylene said. “He’s changed so much. Travis used to be so fearless. I remember the time he did a triple gainer off the old Twilight Bridge, showing off for all the moony-eyed girls on shore for the Fourth of July.”

Sarah remembered that. She’d been one of those moony-eyed girls.

“And remember when he water-skied through the mesquite thicket at Cartwright Cove?” Dotty Mae said.

“Either time he coulda broken his fool neck.” Raylene clicked her tongue. “But now he understands what it means to be a parent. You can’t do the kind of stupid things you used to do when someone is depending on you.”

“In a way,” Dotty Mae mused, “I guess you could say that little Jazzy saved his life. Especially after what happened with Travis’s father.”

Sarah wanted to ask what happened to his father, but she didn’t. What did she care? It was none of her concern and she didn’t want to stir gossip.

“Such a shame you weren’t old enough for Travis back then and he’d already gotten Crystal in trouble,” Dotty Mae went on. “People don’t seem to fall in love these days, the way you fell for Travis. That took some courage, interrupting his wedding like you did. I wish I’d been there to see it.”

“I was there,” Raylene said. “It
was
something.”

Apparently so, since they were still talkingabout it nine years later.
Let it go, people, move on.
Sarah suppressed a sigh.

“I’ve never seen any declaration of love so heartfelt,” Raylene continued. “Even I got misty-eyed, and everyone knows I don’t tear up easy. You were just so vulnerable, Sarah, in those reindeer antlers and that jingle bell sweater.”

Please God just kill me now.

“Mmm, isn’t that a stop sign?” Sarah pointed out the stop sign as they zoomed past without stopping.

“City council is planning on taking it down.” Dotty Mae waved a hand.

Sarah let out a pent-up breath. “But until they do, shouldn’t you still obey the stop sign just in case other drivers are expecting you to?”

“Never thought of it that way,” Dotty Mae mused, turning the corner into a parking lot where an attendant was directing traffic.

They arrived at the town square just in the nick of time as Mayor Moe, a.k.a. Charles Dickens, was kicking off the day’s scheduled festivities. Everywhere she looked, she saw holiday decorations. Miles of red ribbons and bows festooned the booths. Metallic garlands every color under the sun outlined the windows of the storefronts. Vast strands of twinkling lights covered every tree in sight—oaks, pecans, elms, cedars—none was spared the ebullient holiday spirit. The relentless cheeriness exhausted her, and she was surprised to see so many people standing on the courthouse lawn. Were they all waiting for her? Talk about pressure.

Moe spied Sarah and waved her up. With muchfanfare from the high school marching band playing “Deck the Halls,” Sarah scaled the steps leading to the makeshift stage and joined the mayor at the microphone.

The mayor made a speech about the universal appeal of wish fulfillment in
The Magic Christmas Cookie
and how proud the town was of Sarah’s accomplishments. The crowd cheered. Then the mayor presented her with the key to the city.

The townsfolk did their best to make her feel not only welcome, but special. Anyone else probably would have felt honored and flattered, but Sarah felt … well, that was the curious thing. She didn’t feel much at all. This was happening to Sadie Cool, not her.

Her alter ego stepped forward, accepted the key with a smile, and even made a short, impromptu acceptance speech. She wished Benny was here. He would understand the ambivalence leaking through her. Why couldn’t she accept the appreciation, the compliments?

But she already knew the answer. It was because she’d fallen into her career completely by accident. She’d simply been lucky, but that was the way publishing worked. It was a bit like the lottery. Write a book, make it the best you can, send it out there, cross your fingers, and wish on a falling star. Most of the time you ended up holding a useless lottery ticket, but she’d hit the jackpot on her very first try. That didn’t mean she didn’t have talent or didn’t deserve the attention. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. It meant she was lucky. The luck was what made her feel like a fraud. Anyone could buy a lottery ticket, spin a roulette wheel, roll the dice. Andher vicious case of writer’s block seemed to back all that up. What if she really was a one-hit wonder?

The large symbolic gold-plated key rested cool in her hands.

“You do deserve this,” a voice said, and for a minute she thought it was coming from inside her head. Except it was a masculine voice, accompanied by the tang of spicy cologne.

Sarah jerked her head around and met Santa’s gray, comforting eyes. At some point in the presentation, Travis had come up on the stage behind her and she’d never even seen him.

How had he known about the doubts hammering around in her head? It was like he had super powers and could see straight into her brain. Dammit, how could any man look so sexy in a Santa suit? The band was playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and Mayor Moe was extending his arms to help her down off the stage. It was Father Christmas’s turn in the spotlight.

Dotty Mae and Raylene ushered Sarah off to her responsibilities as honorary mayor. At nine-thirty she dug a shovelful of dirt for the groundbreaking of the library expansion that would house the new children’s wing. When the head librarian told her that the town council had voted to name it the Sadie Cool Wing, Sarah had been completely bowled over. She had not expected this. It touched her and freaked her out, all at the same time. Clearly these people thought she was a much bigger deal than she really was. They had expectations, and she wasn’t sure she could, or if she even wanted to, measure up.

At ten, she judged a costume contest, and ateleven, she sat on a mattress, carried along by hunky firemen in the Victorian Bed Races. And at noon, she joined the local ladies who lunch at the Velvet and Lace Tea Room on Orchid Street two blocks south of the square. As a dyed-in-the-wool introvert there was only so much human contact she could take in one day. Being with people drained her energy. In order to charge back up, she needed her alone time. But she wasn’t going to get it. Not today.

At one-thirty, Raylene and Dotty Mae took her to Sweetheart Park for the decorating of the Sweetheart Tree, turning it into the Cherub Tree for the holiday season. As the honorary mayor, Sarah was slated to put the first cherub on the tree.

They explained to her that the Cherub Tree project benefited underprivileged, disadvantaged, or seriously ill children from Hood County. The tree was decorated with cherubic ornaments containing the names and wish lists of local children. Between now and Christmas, generous donors would pluck cherubs from the tree and anonymously make a child’s Christmas wish come true.

Sweetheart Park hadn’t changed a bit in the nine years since she’d been away. In December, it was decorated in full splendor, filled with all manner of Christmas displays from Santa and his reindeer, to Frosty the Snowman, to an elaborate nativity scene.

A cobblestone walkway ran through the park, leading to several long wooden footbridges spanning a small tributary of the Brazos River that filtered into Lake Twilight. At the very center of the park lay the fountain featuring a cement statue oftwo lovers in Old Western attire, embracing in a heartfelt kiss. Rumor had it that if you threw pennies into the fountain, you would be reunited with your high school sweetheart. Sarah had to wonder what happened to those wallflowers like her who’d never had a high school sweetheart.

What about an unrequited first love? Did that count?

She was pretty certain that did not count. Either way, she wasn’t wasting any pennies on a silly myth.

The Sweetheart Tree itself was a two-hundred-year-old pecan thick with sheltering branches. In the past century, hundreds of names had been carved into the trunk. The oldest name was that of the original sweethearts.
Jon loves Rebekka
had been engraved in the center of the tree in 1874, faded and weathered now, the etched lines barely visible. Many lovers had followed suit, carving their names into history. But sometime in the 1960s a botanist had warned that if the name carving continued, it would kill the pecan, so a white picket fence had been constructed around the tree, along with a sign sternly admonishing: “Do Not Deface the Sweetheart Tree.”

In an uncharacteristic act of rebellion, Sarah had ignored that warning and she had indeed defaced the Sweetheart Tree. Seeing the tree again brought back the memory of her seditious graffiti. On the New Year’s Eve when she was fourteen, she’d slipped from Gram’s house in the middle of the night, with a penlight, a pocketknife, and a collapsible ladder. She had no excuse for her behavior other than she was caught up in the kismet cookie spell.

Briefly closing her eyes, she remembered propping the ladder beside the tree, climbing up, and finding an empty spot. Then painstakingly she’d carved:
Sarah Loves Travis 4 Ever.
Honestly, she’d forgotten all about it until this very moment. She couldn’t help wondering if Travis had ever seen it. She wished she could go back in time and kick her own lovesick teenage ass and yell,
Snap out of it.

A group of ladies and gentlemen in Victorian outfits waited for her at the old pecan. Two ladders were already set up beneath the bare branches, and a large cardboard box, overflowing with all-weather angel ornaments, sat between the ladders. The group greeted her in Dickensian speak.

If she hadn’t been so worried about someone seeing the
Sarah Loves Travis
thing, she might have been swept away by the fantasy and matched the rhythm of their courtly language. Instead, she simply smiled and tried not to say too much, wanting to get this over with and get out of the vicinity as quickly as possible.

“Might I escort you to the Sweetheart Tree, Miss Collier?” asked a smooth-voiced man.

Sarah didn’t have to turn around to know who was standing behind her. It was just her luck that the Cherub Tree decorating event included Father Christmas. She turned to look, purposefully keeping her face impassive. Which was hard to do since all she could think about was the kiss he’d given her under the mistletoe.