CHAPTER ONE
EMILY
I had a speech impediment when I was a kid, and my foster parents thought it was so dang cute they let it slide.
Mistletoe was Missy Toe.
Christmas was Kissmas.
And for some reason, that’s the thought running through my head when I lift onto my toes and kiss Miles Murphy on the cheek under the mistletoe outside of the Christmas party at Little Apple Books. I caught him just outside the side door.
“There’s mistletoe,” I explain as I pull away.
Thank God I mentally correct myself before I can look like a total fool for calling it Missy Toe.
One corner of his full lips lifts, forming a crooked grin. “So I guess you missed.”
His voice is low and dry, like wind crackling leaves, and I know I ought to pull away.
But I don’t.
I stare up into his mis-matched green-and-blue eyes and the pink, puckered scar scissoring his eyebrow as he cups my cheek and lowers his mouth to mine.
His lips are surprisingly warm, and they meld to mine, opening them urgently, as if kissing me is the only thing that’s going to keep him alive.
I try to pour energy from my cup into his so that his is no longer so empty.
I don’t know this man.
I’ve never even been introduced to him.
I’ve only been in Apple Ridge two months.
But I do know this: Miles is the only passenger who survived a car wreck that killed two other young people.
One of them was the granddaughter of my new boss here at Little Apple Books.
Mr. Campbell’s a crotchety old man, but he has the heart of a real sweetheart hidden inside of his ribcage. Even so, I saw what he did to Miles just now, when Miles came in to bring him a cinnamon broom, made special by his grandmother, and a sealed card.
Mr. Campbell tore the card in half and let it fall to the ground. He refused to take the broom, which is still clutched in Miles’s other hand—and he did both in front of a busy party full of townsfolk and visitors drinking mulled wine and cider and eating cookies.
And that’s when Mr. Campbell said the words that seared my soul.
“You should have been the one who died.”
Miles looked him in the eye, brave as can be, and said, “Yes, sir, I know that.”
No one in that whole room, not a single person, said anything in Miles’s defense.
I would have, but I just started this job and can’t afford to lose it, so instead I followed him out the side door into the freezing cold of the night.
Because I had to say something. I couldn’t let him leave like that, with those words the last he’d heard from these people he’d known his whole life. And on Christmas Eve, no less.
Because even though I don’t know Miles, I know about the Murphys. They run the Evergreens & Apples farm. Selling apples and Christmas trees sounds like something out of a fairytale to me, but maybe that’s because I grew up around the panhandle of Florida.
We had plenty of oranges and Florida-man jokes, but no seasonal magic. No Christmas trees dusted with snow, no apples, crisp and sweet on their branches as the canopy of leaves grows orange and red with fall.
So I ran out after Miles and kissed his cheek while I was panting from the sudden exertion.
Miles grins down at me. “Thanks for that, Emily.”
I’m surprised he knows my name, even though I’ve come to realize the people around here know almost everything about each other. Or at least they believe they do. I guess what surprises me is that he bothered to know it.
“Mr. Campbell was wrong to say that to you,” I say fiercely, with all the conviction I possess in my soul.
“Nah, I don’t think he was. But thank you for saying so.” He runs his finger over my lips, sending a tickle of sensation through me. “And thank you for the kiss. I’m leaving tomorrow, and you gave me one good memory to carry away.”
“You’re leaving?” I ask, feeling crestfallen over it. He’s letting them drive him away. They might as well have chased him out with pitchforks and torches like in Beauty and the Beast. “You shouldn’t let them make you go. This is your home too.”
He shakes his head. “I want to leave, Emily. I love my family, but I’ll go crazy if I stay.”
He starts to turn away, but I reach out and grab his wrist, my hand encircling it.
He darts a surprised look at me, and again I find myself staring into those mesmerizing eyes. “Wait here. Please. There’s something you need to have.”
He lifts his eyebrows, probably wondering what in the hell I could know about that, given we haven’t exchanged a single word before this night, but he shoves his hands into his pockets and leans against the wall next to the door. “Take your time. I probably won’t freeze to death.”
I hurry back into the spice-smelling warmth of the shop. My heart is a jack rabbit’s, my fingers are buzzing as I hurry through the shelves, walking around clumps of people whispering to each other and sipping their drinks and feeling smug in their moral superiority.
Well, not all of them do.
Quite a few of the folks here probably didn’t even notice what just happened, the way most people don’t notice the tragedies unfolding right before their eyes, but plenty did, and I’m not feeling forgiving just yet.
Finally, I find the book he needs.
I feel the force of it through my fingertips. The rightness.
This is the book that will help heal Miles Murphy’s heart.
I pull it off of the shelf, feeling a kind of ecstasy only readers know, and hurry to the side door with it, making a promise to myself that I’ll put the folded bills from my wallet in the cash register before the end of the night.
I’d like to wrap it for him.
I have a feeling he won’t be getting many presents this year, but if I take too long, I’m worried he’ll get frustrated and leave.
Five minutes is about as much as you can expect from a man who doesn’t know you and has no reason to humor you.
My heart pounds a little faster as I step outside into the cold, but he’s there waiting. He looks a little unsure of himself, now, and more handsome because of it.
Fiery conviction spreads through my chest.
He needs this book.
I practically shove it at him, and he takes it from me with cold, tentative fingers.
“The Phoenix’s Feather,” he reads out loud, telling the title back to me.
“You need it.”
He gives me another crooked grin. “Are you trying to recruit me to a cult, Emily? Because I have it on good authority that my soul is already damned.”
“You weren’t driving the car.”
He’s silent for several seconds, watching me, before he says, “That doesn’t mean it’s not my fault.”
I don’t know what he means by that, and he doesn’t volunteer an explanation, so I nod at the book. “It’s not about saving your soul. It’s about surviving.”
He nods a couple of times, his mouth pressed in a firm line that makes me think of how his lips felt against mine, so pliant and soft. It’s amazing one man can be both things.
“Thank you,” he says simply.
I expect him to leave then. To leave and not look back, but he gives me a self-conscious smile before holding out the cinnamon broom.
“I’d like to give you something, but this is all I have.”
I halfway think I should tell him no. It seems like a bad idea to walk back into the store with the broom Mr. Campbell just rejected. I don’t know my new boss well enough to give him that kind of sass. That sort of thing requires finesse.
But I can’t deny Miles, and I don’t want to. I wrap my hand around the top of the broom, accepting it.
His fingers caress mine as he releases it, and he smiles at the sight of me with that broom in my hand, my red hair waving wildly in the winter breeze.
“You look like a witch.”
“You’re the one who forced the broom on me,” I say, but I’m not displeased. Anyone with sense knows witches are simply women who were powerful enough to piss people off. I don’t mind being among their ranks.
“You’re still standing under the mistletoe, Winter Witch,” he says softly, and I take a step toward him as if he was the one who cast a spell on me.
He kisses me more softly this time, his lips cold but soft, and I feel a surprising pricking of tears in my eyes.
“Take care of yourself,” I say. “Read the book.”
And he gives me a soft, sweet smile. “Merry Christmas, Emily. I think I’d like to remember you like this.”
And I’ll be damned.
He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo of me.
I don’t object.
I don’t tell him my own heart’s wish—that I had a photo of him with the book in his hand.
But I don’t have a smart phone, nor can I afford one.
“Merry Christmas, Miles,” I parrot back.
And he disappears into the night.