She stopped abruptly on the path. “Right,” she said, the truth of it hitting her like a bolt of lightning.
As he rambled on about not wanting to work five days a week and shopping allowances, Sammy’s brain turned the idea over.
There was nothing that said she had to go to Ohio State like her mother. Or that she had to use a veterinary career to build a legacy and a reputation. She could do it the way she wanted to. Heck, she didn’t even need to join her mother’s practice. She could practice veterinary medicine anywhere she wanted, and it wouldn’t be because her parents said so.
Maybe, just maybe, she could find a happy medium between rebelling and conforming.
“Oh. Hey. Look at that.”
Sammy followed the direction he pointed. Straight up.
“Mistletoe,” she said, her pulse fluttering. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. She forgot all about her potential future and focused on the present moment.
She’d caught the eye of the cute guy, saved a sheep, and potentially solved her own “rebel or conform” debate. And then accidentally wandered into Mistletoe Corner.
It was a secluded little section of the park where a tall spruce wore hundreds of colored Christmas lights. In front of the tree, the Decorating Committee always strung a canopy of lights interspersed with mistletoe plants.
Maybe the Solstice magic wasn’t over yet.
She wet her lips nervously, wondering if she should make the first move. Did she know what the first move was? Should she stand on tiptoe? Tilt her head?
Mid-worry about what to do with her hands, Ryan leaned down. That shock of blond hair tumbled across his forehead again. It was the last thing she saw before his lips touched hers.
Her first kiss was utter perfection. Under the mistletoe on a background of Christmas lights. She half-expected it to start snowing in further confirmation of a Solstice miracle.
But instead of fat, falling flakes, she got a shriek of dismay from a tall woman dressed in a puffy, lime green jacket and yellow ski hat.
“Ryan Shufflebottom! You get your fanny over here right now!” The woman stormed into the clearing like a principal about to start doling out detentions.
Sammy jumped back guiltily.
“Uh-oh,” Ryan said.
“Yeah, uh-oh,” the woman agreed. “You’re so grounded. We’re leaving. Now!”
Sammy wished the ground would swallow her up. Was he in trouble because he kissed her? Would he think it was worth the punishment? Or was he already regretting it?
“See you around, blue eyes. Maybe we’ll meet again,” her teenage Lothario said, giving her a little wink and one more hair toss.
She watched as Ryan Shufflebottom from Des Moines was dragged away by his mother, who was reciting the words “military school” like a mantra.
“What the hell just happened?” she wondered out loud.
2
Friday, December 20, present day
* * *
“What in the hell is happening?” Ryan growled as yet another VW Bus cheerily tooted its horn while the driver tossed him a jaunty peace sign. “Stop waving. I don’t know you.”
In his opinion, it was too frigid for friendliness. There was actual snow on the ground. Not the kind of flaky crap that fell from the sky in Christmas movies. But frozen crusts of it, just lying there glistening like icy death traps in the fading afternoon sunlight.
He didn’t bother wondering why he gave the driver a half-hearted wave—despite the fact that his life had imploded, he wasn’t a complete asshole—but he did give passing thought to why this hippie hellhole had so many Volkswagen vans.
It seemed unnatural, as did everything else regarding his current situation. Including the fact that his knees were embedded in his armpits because the last rental car on the lot had been designed as a child’s toy and not for a six-foot-two-inch-tall man.
“Turn right on Dharma Street,” the car’s snooty French GPS voice announced.
Ryan grudgingly took the turn. He was pissed off, unsettled, and several other adjectives along those same lines. The trip had been a whim. He didn’t have whims. He had plans. Goals. Lists. Whims led to situations like this.
After a long-ass cross-country flight, he was careening through upstate New York—which was significantly colder than downtown Seattle in December—in a tuna can of a car heading into the unknown.
Mistake.
He should have spent the day in his comfortable, organized office, meeting with clients, saving them money, building their empires. But as of last week, that was no longer an option. Instead, he was shoehorned into a ridiculous electric car, off to save his great-uncle from whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into—Ryan’s mother had been a little vague on that part.
Meanwhile, back in Seattle, his carefully planned and meticulously executed life was in shambles.
He felt like one of those razed casinos in Las Vegas. One push of a button, and years of hard work gone in an asbestos explosion.
So instead of having his usual dinner at his usual restaurant after his usual ten-hour Friday at work, he was cruising through Blue Fucking Moon’s downtown. Which clearly had its halls decked by elves on hallucinogens.
To his left was the requisite small-town park. Except the normal open space and meandering paths had been replaced with an army of festive inflatables, including but not limited to a red and green peace sign, a ten-foot-tall menorah, and what looked to be a Kwanzaa unity cup.
Signs stabbed into the frozen ground shouted messages like “Oy to the World!” “Have a Cool Yule!” and “Merry Christmas!”
He was scoping out the huge spruce tree draped from top to trunk in thousands of multicolored lights when his phone rang. It took him half a block and three tries before he managed to stab the Answer button on the car’s minuscule touchscreen.
“Yeah?” he snapped.
“Ryan! My favorite nephew,” his great-uncle Carson’s voice wheezed tinnily through the car’s speakers.
They came from a big family. Ryan doubted he was even in the top five of favorite nephews.
“Hey, Carson. I’m almost there,” he said, checking the GPS route. The too-friendly, too-festive town was thinning out and beginning to recede in his rearview mirror. He fervently vowed never to return.
“About that,” Carson said. “I won’t be there to greet you. You can let yourself in. Door’s unlocked.”
“I can wait outside for you,” Ryan insisted, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone. He wasn’t the kind of person who just barged into someone else’s house.
Carson’s cackle echoed inside the pumpkin orange Micro Machine. “You’ll be waiting a long time, boyo! My sister had an emergency. I’m on my way to help.”
Ryan’s frown deepened.
“Turn left immediately,” the French GPS robot announced briskly.
He slammed on the brakes and barely made the turn onto what was apparently some sort of unplowed, rutted path to nowhere.
“You don’t have a sister,” he reminded Carson. It was a big family, but the mandatory attendance of the Annual Shufflebottom Reunion ensured that all of the generations were reasonably familiar with each other.
Now he was going to have to report to his mother that her third favorite uncle was showing signs of mental decline. Fucking great.