The Santa Situation (Christmas at Mistletoe Bay #1)

Chapter 1

one

. . .

Charlie

The building that housed Mistletoe Bay’s administrative offices was relatively quiet, most of the town’s employees having left early for the start of the long weekend.

But not me. As Mayor, I was usually the first one to arrive in the morning and the last one to leave in the evening.

For ten years I’d been doing this job, and I planned to keep at it as long as the town would have me.

Nathan Hale, our Chief of Police and my friend since the sixth grade, sat across from me, his knee bouncing with agitation.

My daughters were curled up on the sofa in the far corner of the room, Maggie’s thumbs flying over her phone screen, while her sister, Lilah, was bent over a math worksheet, her brows knotted in concentration.

“Pulled Tessa Pope over again this morning,” Nathan said, his voice gruff. “Doing fifty in a twenty-five zone.”

“Give her the usual talk?” I asked, shifting a stack of folders threatening to topple off my desk any minute.

“In one ear and out the other,” he rasped. “I swear, she lives to torment me.”

Maggie glanced up from her phone. “Is she really in town to film a Christmas movie?”

Nathan grunted. “Documentary. Something about old-fashioned New England traditions and the people who keep them alive. Guess she missed the part where those fu … freaking Puritans banned Christmas.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Okay, old man. The Puritans were from like the sixteen hundreds. Lots of stuff happened since then, including Christmas becoming a pretty big deal.”

Nathan winked at his goddaughter. “Doesn’t make the thing about the Puritans not true.”

I logged out of my email and closed down my laptop. “I assume we’re all set for tomorrow?”

“Yup,” Nathan said. “We’ve cordoned off the route, and I’ve got cruisers at both the Dockside Cafe and the Harbor Walk to make sure no one parks there. You’d think folks would know the drill by now, but every year we have to tow some—.”

Before he could finish, a knock sounded at the door.

I looked up, setting aside my pen, as my assistant, Rory, stepped inside, shoulders tight and expression grim.

“I just got off the phone with Jack and Marjorie Dawson’s son, Gabe,” she said.

“They have food poisoning, and it’s bad.

He said there’s no way they’ll be better in time for tomorrow.

I hate to break it to you, Charlie, but we’ll need to find a new Santa and Mrs. Claus. ”

Nathan let out a low curse, while Maggie and Lilah’s heads shot up, matching looks of horror on their upturned faces.

Rory’s words were like a record scratch in my head. For one beat, I panicked, but then I immediately started rushing through everything happening tomorrow: their arrival by boat and then the walk to Market Square, the countdown to the tree being lit, and the photos afterward.

None of it worked without a goddamn Santa.

“Who’s our back-up?” I asked, trying to recall whether we’d ever actually needed one before now.

“Used to be Scott Drysdale, but he moved to Phoenix last winter because of his arthritis,” Rory explained, her fingers twisting a sheet of paper into a tight spiral.

“Shit.” I ran my hand through my hair and winced.

Maggie smirked. “Language.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure you hear worse at school.”

Lilah grinned. “You have no idea.”

“And I don’t want one,” I said, recalling some of the stuff my friends and I used to say. Teenage boys were the absolute worst.

Unfortunately, what nonsense my daughters heard from their peers or their old man was the least of my problems right now.

I needed to find a Santa and Mrs. Claus fast, or tomorrow’s celebration would need to be canceled. Rescheduled, at a minimum.

Nathan drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I can’t think of anyone who might have a Santa suit just lying around.”

“Wait,” Lilah said, sitting up, her face lit with excitement. “You have one in the attic, Dad!”

“What are you—”

I did have an old Santa costume sitting in a box up there somewhere. But …

“I haven’t worn that since you were like three years old. Pretty sure it wouldn’t fit anymore.”

Nathan snorted. “Says the forty-five-year-old who looks better now than he did at twenty-five.”

All right, I might look good for my age, but an almost six-pack wasn’t a guarantee that I’d make a good Santa. Was I really thinking about stepping in for Jack Dawson? On top of all my other duties tomorrow? The real question was, if I didn’t, who would?

“Okay. I can cover Santa.” I glanced up at Rory. “But we’ll need a Mrs. Claus, too.”

Rory shifted from one foot to the other. “Gabe said he can drop off his mom’s costume in the morning, but I really don’t think it’ll fit anyone.” She glanced down at her chest and back up, her eyes somewhat bugged out.

Immediately, I understood her point. Marjorie Dawson was a dead ringer for Dolly Parton, right down to the incredibly tiny waist and comically oversized boobs.

“Eli says his mom can do it,” Maggie called out, her fingers moving quickly over her phone screen as she exchanged messages with her best friend. “She has a costume she wears for the wreath-making workshop every year.”

Of course Jemma Price had a costume that would work! I honestly didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it first.

Still, I wasn’t about to let our kids rope her into standing out on a boat for an hour while we sailed into the harbor. As mayor, I was obligated to pull out all the stops to see this event through to the bitter end, but that didn’t mean I needed to rope my friend into the spectacle.

“Did Eli actually ask Jemma if she can do it, or are you two volunteering her?”

Maggie glanced up from her phone, eyes so like her mom’s meeting mine, right down to the guilt that shimmered in them. “I … uh … I think he asked her.”

I shot a look at Nathan, who had his eyebrows raised as if to say, “Well, this is an interesting development.”

It was interesting because Jemma Price wasn’t just my daughter’s best friend’s mom.

She was also my high school girlfriend. Back then, a lot of folks figured we’d get married someday.

When, instead, we broke up and headed off to separate colleges, those same people scratched their heads.

The fact that we then went on to marry other people was even more perplexing.

But the most confusing thing for them was how, despite being exes, Jemma and I were friends, too. Good friends, in fact.

It wasn’t confusing to me—Jemma Price was one of the best damn people I’d ever met, and every day she was in my life, I was a better person for it.

If I sometimes looked at her and thought what if?, no one but me needed to know that.

“All right,” I said, standing. “Let’s swing by and ask her. Rory, don’t mention this to anyone until we hear what Jemma has to say. Nathan, I’ll text you when we have everything covered.”

Nathan nodded and pushed to his feet. “Good luck,” he said, turning to head out of my office. Rory left when he did.

Slinging my laptop bag over my shoulder, my girls and I locked up the building and made our way out to the parking garage.

In the last couple of days, wreaths—courtesy of Flowers by Holly—had been affixed to the street light poles that lined Main Street.

Holly had also put together beautiful garlands and swags that now hung over almost every doorway of the commercial district.

Driving out of town past the lighthouse at Holly Point to where the last neighborhood gave way to farmland, my brain was already shifting from the logistics of saving tomorrow’s event to something else entirely. The truth was, I didn’t mind having an excuse to see Jemma. I never did.

As we approached Winterberry Farm, its sign swung a little in the wind while the house’s windows glowed with light from inside.

In the distance, hundreds of Christmas trees were lined up in neat, dark rows that crested a hill that would become a prime sledding spot with the first major snowfall of the season.

Once parked, we made our way up the brick path to the front porch. The light flicked on, and my heart did a stupid little thing it always did when I saw Jemma.

She opened the door wearing one of those soft hand-knitted sweaters she was so fond of. “Hey, guys. Come on in,” she said, moving aside to let us pass into the house.

Inside, I breathed in the scent of balsam and cocoa that always seemed to permeate the air here. “Hey Jem.”

I leaned in to kiss her cheek, and for half a second, the gesture transported me right back to when we were seventeen, and I was trying my damnedest to learn every inch of her. Unfortunately, these flashes kept happening with frequent regularity over the past year.

Her son, Eli, jogged in from the kitchen, grinning, and our three kids pounded up the stairs together.

Normally, a dad might balk at his daughters hanging out in a handsome teenage boy’s bedroom, but Maggie and Eli had been best friends since kindergarten, and I trusted them implicitly.

It also didn’t hurt that Eli had come out on his twelfth birthday.

“I heard about Jack and Marjorie,” Jemma said as we headed toward the living room where a fire blazed in the hearth. “And that you’re going to be Santa.” Her eyes twinkled with playful mischief. “Charlie Emerson, town hero.”

I plopped down onto a sectional that took up most of the room, letting out an oof as the overstuffed cushions enveloped me. This thing wasn’t called a cloud sofa for nothing.

I sank back, heat licking at my shins, and tried not to stare at Jemma and think how pretty she looked in the firelight.

“That’s me,” I agreed with a slight chuckle, lacing my fingers together over my stomach. “But you’re no better. Eli said you volunteered to be Mrs. Claus.”

Jemma settled at the far end of the couch, her legs tucked up under her. Too far away and somehow too close at the same time.

“More like volun-told.”

“Please don’t feel obligated. I know how busy things are here, especially now that the holidays are in full swing.”

She waved away my concern. “Honestly? I don’t actually do much on the weekends. Baling trees and schlepping through the mud is more my brother’s territory. Gives him an opportunity to look all strong and manly in front of our neighbor.”

From upstairs, the sound of our kids’ laughter drifted down, mixing with the crackle of the fire.

“Those two still at it?” I asked with an amused quirk of my lips.

“It’s ridiculous.” She grabbed a throw pillow embroidered with a poinsettia and set it in her lap, playing with the fringe.

“Jeremy spent ten minutes this morning complaining that Harrison’s favorite goat got loose again and ate all the extra tree cuttings he was planning on turning into garland.

Then he spent twenty minutes describing exactly how Harrison looked wrangling the damn thing back on his side of the fence, right down to exactly what he was wearing and the way his hair flopped into his eyes.

” She shook her head. “They should just kiss and get it over with already.”

When Harrison Prescott had moved back to town six months ago, the hot gossip that week was his and Jeremy’s bitter feud. Jemma had filled me in on the high-level details—or what she knew of them—but I hadn’t realized the tension was still running that hot between them.

Not wanting to make any assumptions, I asked, “Do you know for sure that Harrison is into men?”

She nodded. “Last week he told me if given the chance, he’d climb Pedro Pascal like a tree.”

I snickered. “I’d climb Pedro Pascal like a tree, and I’m as straight as they come.”

She threw her head back and cackled. “Okay, fair. But he also said that my brother is—and I quote—‘so fucking hot,’ so it’s safe to assume he’d climb Jeremy like a tree, too, if given the chance.”

I huffed out a laugh. “Who needs soap operas when this sort of drama is playing out right in front of us?”

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so frustrating.

” The humor faded from her voice, replaced by something softer.

More worried sounding. “Last night, Jeremy went on a date with that new kindergarten teacher. When he got home, he said there was zero chemistry between them. Two minutes later, he was pacing the kitchen, laying out all the ways Harrison drives him crazy—which, in turn, drove us crazy. Eli straight up told him to do us all a favor and ask Harrison out already.” She plucked at a loose bead on the pillow.

“Jeremy’s face turned beet red, and he stormed upstairs.

This morning, he pretended like the conversation never even happened. ”

The way she said it—quiet, almost sad—made me feel bad for laughing about the situation. Jeremy hadn’t wanted to come back to Mistletoe Bay after their dad had died, but here he was anyway, stuck and stubborn and clearly miserable.

Jemma sighed, settling her head back against the cushions. For a brief moment, her expression turned distant, like she was seeing something beyond the fire. “Anyway. Thank god I’m past all that nonsense.”

Past what? I wondered, my stomach tightening. “What do you mean?”

She lifted her head, dragging her gaze my way, her mouth turned down in a frown. “Dating. Longing. Love. The whole shebang. I’m too old to go through that song and dance again.”

The words landed in my gut like a stone. Part of me wanted to ask why, but I knew better than most what she’d gone through with her ex-husband, Todd. And that closed-off look on her face told me now wasn’t the time to bring it up.

Still, I couldn’t say nothing.

Even though my own track record wasn’t much better than Jemma’s, I firmly believed I’d find love again someday.

Sometimes, I even let myself wonder if I’d find it with her.

She might think some dances weren’t worth repeating, but they were.

Or they could be. Especially if you found the right partner.

“Well,” I said carefully. “I hope you’ll at least save me a dance at the New Year’s Eve gala.”