Christmas By Lamplight

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Carrie Watson was in love with a voice.

Not in love, she corrected herself, steadying the stepladder against the memoir shelf. That would be pathetic. She was . . . objectively appreciative of rich vocal resonance, evocative delivery, and impeccable pacing.

The earbuds delivered another line of honey-dark baritone directly to her limbic system, and she forgot what she was supposed to be shelving.

Always chapter twenty-nine, when he confesses, “I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible,” and that velvet-dark voice made the word irresistible sound like a sin and a promise all at once.

“I loved her against reason,” the voice said, “against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

Carrie’s eyes fluttered shut, with one hand pressed against her sternum, where her heart was performing acrobatics that would raise a cardiologist’s eyebrows.

The bell over the door tried to ring, got stuck, then surrendered with a grunt.

“Oh, no. Let me guess. Chapter twenty-nine?” Shannon Wade walked in, wielding two coffee cups like weapons against the December cold. “It really should come with a black box warning: Do not operate heavy machinery or climb ladders with Tanner Blake narrating Great Expectations in your ears.”

Carrie yanked out an earbud so fast she nearly toppled off the ladder. “It’s inventory assessment.”

“Mm-hm.” Shannon set the coffees on the counter and assumed her classic position of elbows down, chin in hands, and maximum mischief in her eyes. “The part of the inventory where the hero says he loved her ‘with the love of a man’? Brr!” I don’t know about your assessment, but mine is—”

“Romantic!”

“Oh, yeah! And hazardous. That voice could read a grocery list and cause a soccer mom carpool collision.” Shannon slid a cup over. “Speaking of hazards, did you see the email from the landlord?”

Carrie’s stomach performed an unpleasant flip. “I saw it.”

“Lease renewal: five thousand by December 27, or . . .” Shannon winced.

“I know what ‘or’ means, Shannon.”

“Do you? Because I think ‘or’ means Ahab Coffee moves in and turns your charming, independent bookshop into franchise number thirteen twenty-seven. And that’s just on this block.”

Carrie climbed down from the ladder and wrapped her hands around the coffee cup.

The shop stretched around them—exposed brick she’d scrubbed herself, mismatched vintage fixtures she’d found at estate sales, and the beautiful old shelving that had come with the space when she’d bought it from the previous owner’s bankruptcy sale.

Everything had a history. She’d turned someone else’s failure into a warm and inviting space, proving she could see potential where others saw loss.

She just hadn’t proven she could make it profitable.

Shannon’s voice softened. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Carrie admitted. “I’ve got a shop full of inventory and no advertising budget. No one knows we exist.”

“Well, no, but you’ve been building your dream.”

“I’ve been proving a point.” The words came out sharper than intended. “And now Dennis gets to be right about his predictions.”

Shannon’s expression darkened at the mention of Carrie’s ex. “Dennis is an insufferable ass who told you you’d fail because he needed you to fail. Don’t give him that satisfaction.”

“Then I need a miracle by December 27.”

“We’ll make it work. We always do.”

They stood in silence, surveying the shop.

Carrie had poured everything into these walls—her savings, her pride, her desperate need to prove she was more than Dennis had told her she was for five soul-crushing years.

You’re not practical enough. Not business-minded. Too emotional for entrepreneurship.

She’d left him, found this space, and built something beautiful on her own. But three years in, she was struggling on Hollydale’s quiet Main Street.

She just needed people to find it.

The morning routine steadied her—flip the lamps on, start the cocoa station, and arrange the new releases to catch the light. Shannon put on the vintage Christmas playlist with Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mel Tormé.

Carrie had just climbed back on the ladder to fix the perpetually crooked “Local Authors” shelf when the ancient bookcase creaked and groaned like a cellar door in a haunted Victorian house.

The entire Austen section tilted forward in slow motion.

Carrie lunged for it, knowing she was too far away. She could already see the avalanche of books, broken spines, bent pages, and one more thing on a repair list she couldn’t afford to address.

A hand caught the shelf.

Not caught, commanded it to stop. One hand steady as stone, while the other pressed against the small of her back to keep her from pitching off the ladder.

“Careful,” a voice said.

Carrie’s entire body went still. That voice . . . No, it couldn’t be.

She looked down into eyes the color of strong coffee, and under a beanie was a face that belonged on the cover of Woodworking Quarterly if there were such a thing.

The man holding her shelf—and technically her—wore flannel draped over a thermal shirt, muscular shoulders, well-worn jeans that rode low on hips that were .

. . not the point right now. The point was the shelf.

And not falling. Also breathing, which she needed to do.

His expression of mild concern suggested that rescuing women from literary avalanches was just another Tuesday.

“I’ll brace this,” he said, shifting his weight to pin the shelf with his shoulder while steadying her. “Unless this is some sort of performance art piece. Falling action? I don’t judge.”

That was the voice. Low. Controlled. The kind of voice that probably never had to repeat itself. The voice that had carried her through inventory at 2 a.m., through the night she’d finally left Dennis, through every moment when the world felt too big and she felt too small.

“I—no. Thank you. I just—” She gestured with the staple gun she’d been using to fix the bookshelf and accidentally fired it, pinning his sleeve to the shelf.

Shannon made a sound like a stepped-on cat toy.

The man looked at his sleeve, then at her, and the corner of his mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile but made her stomach leap to her throat. “I usually let a woman buy me dinner before we do hardware.”

“Oh my gosh. I’m so—let me—” She turned to find Shannon, arm outstretched with a staple remover at the ready, which Carrie took and leaned closer than was professionally appropriate.

The faint scent of cedar, sawdust, and fresh snow went to her head, and she thought she might faint.

Her fingers fumbled with the staple, but she finally freed him.

“Tanner Blake?” The words came out in a breathless fangirl sigh, exactly what she’d promised herself she would never do.

His expression shifted, not quite to panic, but close. His jaw tightened. For a long moment, he just studied her, and she saw exhaustion, the bone-deep weariness of someone who’d been pushed to his limit.

“While I’m here,” he said quietly, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d call me Tom.”

The vulnerability in those words hit her square in the chest. This wasn’t a celebrity asking for privacy—this was someone asking for refuge. His hand was still pressed against her back, steadying her, but his eyes were asking for something else entirely.

Carrie knew that look. Please. Just let me be invisible. She’d worn it herself six months ago, walking away from Dennis with nothing but a suitcase, a backpack, and the keys to a failing bookshop. It was the look of someone who’d been broken and just needed somewhere to heal.

She stepped down from the ladder, and he released her, stepping back like he expected her to demand an explanation—or worse—a selfie.

Instead, she stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Tom. I’m Carrie Watson. I run this place.”

He stared at her hand for a beat, then took it. His grip was warm, calloused, careful. The relief in his voice was almost painful. “I just moved in upstairs yesterday.”

Their hands lingered a second too long. His thumb brushed against her palm, and the touch sent heat straight up her arm.

Shannon made a strangled sound from behind the counter.

Carrie pulled her hand back and cleared her throat. “Thank you. For the shelf. For not letting me fall.”

“Anytime.” He crouched to examine the baseboards, his shoulders relaxing incrementally, as though he were only now realizing he was safe.

He ran his hand along the wood and then eyed her staple gun fix with a skeptical look. “This needs to be properly repaired. Soon. You saw what just happened. That shelf’s one bump away from coming down on a customer. You don’t want a lawsuit on your hands.”

Heat crept up her neck. “Yeah, I know. It’s on the list. It’ll have to wait until I can afford to get a carpenter in here.”

“I can fix it.” He said it simply, like it wasn’t a big deal.

“I can’t let you do that. You’re—” She stopped herself before she could say famous or a celebrity or anything else in her mind that would make this more awkward. “I can’t just have you fix things for free.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s—it’s too much to ask.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered—because I can, and you need it fixed.

” He looked at her with those expressive eyes, and there was gratitude in his expression, maybe, for not making this harder than it had to be.

Or maybe he just needed a normal task to do, useful work that had nothing to do with the world’s expectations.

Carrie wanted to argue, if not out of pride, then to maintain some shred of professional distance. But the way he was looking at her, like this mattered to him somehow, made her pride and professionalism dissolve.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Tom. Thank you.”

His shoulders dropped another fraction. “I’ll grab my tools.”

“You have tools?” The question came out before she could stop it.