SNEAK PEEK
Dear Santa, please leave a red-headed lumberjack under the tree. I’ve been a very good boy.
Tangled in Tinsel is a steamy, adorable Christmas romcom with a lumberjack cowboy who owns a tree farm.
Chapter One
Where does a store owner belong one week before Christmas? The answer must be doing fifty down a backcountry road, white-knuckling to both the phone and steering wheel.
“Hello?” Dean Hancock shouted, hunching deeper into his shoulders while casting furtive glances to the mountains surrounding him.
He hadn’t been in this much nature since his teenage camping days—not to be confused with his early twenties camp days.
Only one thing in the world would get him out of the city, a sighting of an actual Gustav Gilt piece.
At least, that was what his assistant claimed when she wasn’t cut off by the treacherous mountains that’d probably taken the lives of an entire von Trapp family.
“…sir? Sir?” Her garbled words returned from beyond the cellphone grave. Dean lowered the phone, trying to follow the GPS coordinates that were either leading him to a quaint Christmas town or Silent Hill.
“Tell me you have a better picture.”
He’d scrutinized the last one, attempting to zoom and enhance every pixel.
But a picture couldn’t get a feel for the wood, note the intricate details of the carvings, or check under the base for the illusive GG mark.
While it’d looked genuine in the photo, the most genuine he’d seen of a piece outside of a museum, it could be nothing more than a mass-market knock-off from China.
“I tried to get closer,” Anita said, her voice growing colder.
“But…?”
A low sigh carried over the line, and Dean pulled his phone down to check the connection. “You’ll have to see when you get here, Sir.”
On the fourth day before Christmas, my assistant gave to me an ominous message about an antique. He shook off the urge to sing his thought back at her. “Send me whatever you have and keep an eye on the piece. No matter what.”
“Can do.”
Anita was good, better than he deserved or honestly could afford.
Though, if this windfall came through, they could both have a very merry Christmas somewhere tropical where there wasn’t a threat of an avalanche taking out his car.
Dean risked a glance at the panoramic vistas.
Small white peaks ringed with clouds siphoned away the sun.
It was a wonder Santa and his eight tiny reindeer didn’t have a head-on collision up there.
A beep from his phone meant fresh pictures.
With one eye on the road, he swept through nearly the same images from before but with slightly varying angles.
The curves were a total Gilt. The man never met a line he didn’t carve into a swoop or gentle arc.
The world had been left with only a description of the bed frame Gilt made for a rich bridegroom before his wedding.
No doubt the couple enjoyed their new lives on the masterpiece sway-bottom bed that’d roll them together every night.
It’d certainly be cozy for the honeymoon period, then a source of unending bitterness after.
No wonder that beautiful piece with woodland animals carved into every leg and a whole forest for the headboard wound up as firewood for their first winter.
Dean scrolled to the end of Anita’s pics, then rounded back again, when he caught something. He was probably imagining it. These were grainy, shot in low light, and at a distance. But on the side of the leg, he’d swear he caught…
“Ah!”
An entire forest’s worth of trees came barreling from the side of the road.
Dean slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel.
His vision, then the whole of his windshield filled with a red wagon overloaded in pine trees.
Squealing and smoke twisted from his tires fighting the brakes, but he kept rolling closer to the log-filled cart.
The seatbelt cinched tight to his shoulder, momentum hurling Dean forward until he swore he heard a crack when the car finally stopped. Holding his breath, he looked up to find a single sprig of pine spread across his windshield. The entire front of his car had slipped under the back of the wagon.
Holy mother, that was close! His hand went numb as he slammed a thumb into the seatbelt release.
The dueling emotions of relief and anger overtook him and he slipped a foot off the brake—causing the car to jerk forward.
Damn it! Dean cursed more under his breath while making certain to fully park the rental.
With shaking legs, he stumbled out of the car onto the highway that’d gone deathly quiet. Up ahead, he could hear the idling engine of whatever was pulling the pile of logs, but no one came out. Probably some decrepit farmer who can’t see past his nose.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
The truck door opened wide, and a foot slid out.
Light strained through the passing winter clouds to illuminate the cowboy hat perched on the stranger’s head.
Striding with purpose, a man stopped at the side of the wagon.
A hint of red hair tufted from below the brim of the dark brown hat.
His sheepskin coat was open, revealing a plaid shirt that clung to a body better suited for selling jeans than moving trees.
If that was decrepit, Dean needed a shovel and map of the catacombs.
Focus. You’re not here to admire the wildlife. “I’m not sure. If my life flashed before my eyes, this is a boring detour.”
The stranger gave a low chuckle and Dean’s skin broke out in goosebumps.
That was the kind of voice someone paid a lot of money to have read their dirty texts aloud.
The man patted the side of his wagon that looked like it was used for hayrack rides, then checked the hitch. “Sorry about that. I didn’t see you.”
“Yeah.” Obviously. Dean shook his head, growing more agitated by the second, when the sun bounced off the truck to highlight the stranger’s carved face.
This was an Americana chiseling boasting broad strokes up the square jaw and a flat sweep across the wide cheekbones of a man who woke to rooster crows.
“When someone’s wood nearly impales my grill, I expect dinner first.”
Oh my god, why did you say that?
The man gave a slow, careful laugh, and Dean’s whole face turned bright red. Run. Flee. Get out of here before he calls his pitchfork posse.
“Are you—?”
“Listen, I’ve got to get to a very important appointment,” Dean said, already walking back to his car.
“Very, very, lots of people know I’m coming.
Not that I’m coming . I mean going. I’m going to…
so I’ll just leave.” Before his tongue could screw him over anymore, Dean dove back into the driver’s seat.
He put the car in reverse without checking in the rearview mirror.
A horn blared, and a truck shot past him.
Dean leapt in his seat, but he watched the tree man turn to give a jolly wave to whoever honked at them.
With one quick look behind and to the side, Dean pulled into traffic.
His dinky rental car could barely get up to speed, leaving him rolling past the stranger staring at the weird man’s escape.
“Thank you for nearly impaling me,” Dean shouted with a big wave.
“Uh…” was as far as the man got before Dean slammed on the accelerator.
Holy hell, what was that? He risked a quick glance in the mirror to watch the man. Yes, he’s hot, and rugged in that show up at your door on a white horse with fresh firewood under his arm way. And so not something for him to be focusing on.
Another beep sounded from his phone. Rather than look, Dean hurled it to the backseat. “That was all your fault,” he said and tried to focus on the road ahead. All the while, a voice like a shot of espresso, dark chocolate, and wine rolled about in the back of his mind.
He blew past the cute sign carved and painted by hand that announced he’d entered the village of Tinsel. Forget any gorgeous cowboys riding around on logs. He had to see a man about a creche.