Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47241 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47241 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 189(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
As the snow begins to fall and the city streets sparkle with festive lights, Meri Winters feels anything but merry. Juggling a demanding job and a strained relationship with her best friend, she’s more focused on surviving the holiday season than enjoying it.
That is, until she meets Beau Starling, a ruggedly handsome hobo who’s been living in the alley behind her building. Despite his disheveled appearance, there’s something mysterious about him—an inexplicable pull she can’t ignore.
As Meri opens her heart to this unlikely stranger, she discovers that Beau isn’t just a wanderer passing through. He has secrets—ones that could change both their lives forever.
In a season known for miracles, Meri will have to decide whether to take a leap of faith and trust in the magic of the holidays, or risk losing the one gift she never expected.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
“I love early Christmas sales,” I said to my best friend, Kay, who was shopping with me after our Saturday spin class. “It’s like a buffet of orgasms without all the complications of sex.”
I grabbed five packages of lights and balanced them atop the giant plastic Santa, red cookie tins, and rolls of foiled wrapping paper in my shopping cart. Ten percent discount, baby! Woohoo!
“Oh. I think I just came again.” I wiggled my hips. “I just wish my wallet were into it. He’s such a frigid bitch.”
“Meri, girl,” Kay groaned, “you do this every year, and then you’re broke for the next twelve months.”
Ooh. Santa swizzle sticks! I grabbed three packs.
“Well, yeah,” I replied to Kay. “But at least I pay off my credit cards before the next Christmas. Right?” It was how my parents raised me. Always pay your debts, and when it comes to the holidays, give until your eyeballs bleed. And then give a little more.
Okay, okay. That last part wasn’t what they taught me, but they did love Christmas, and growing up, they did such a good job of making the holidays feel magical that I became obsessed. I literally started planning Christmas in January, the moment my dried-out tree went to the curb of my charming, 1920s apartment building with adorable arched windows and stained-glass sidelights. I then started packing up my decorations to go into storage because I wanted to take advantage of the post-holiday clearance sales for the following December.
Well, November, really. Any self-respecting Christmas enthusiast had their lights twinkling, their manger manged, and their fake tree (aka my holiday warmup tree before the live one moved in) re-flocked by mid-November.
Me? I started decorating in October, meaning right about now.
I just loved everything about the season, and it couldn’t come fast enough—the smell of fresh cookies and cinnamon candles, the cheery music, the parties and lights and sound of laughter and the miniature reindeer display on my coffee table and my snowflake-shaped dishes and…deep breath, everything!
But most of all, I looked forward to throwing my famous, annual Christmas party. I usually crammed fifty people inside my one-bedroom apartment, but everyone got to experience a magical Christmas and went home with a belly full of decadent treats.
I also gifted everyone in my social circle a tin of my signature sugar cookies. You know, the ones shaped like angels with those little edible pearls and a layer of powdered sugar in a lace pattern—a trick I’d perfected, using a special sifter I’d ordered from France. Set me back fifty dollars, but worth every penny.
“Meri,” Kay growled, her big green eyes narrowing on the pile of treasures in my red shopping cart. She only had a bag of apples in hers. Loser. “You promised you’d scale back this time so the two of us can take that cruise next summer.”
The weighty nuisance of guilt appeared inside my stomach, instantly smothering my pre-holiday shopping buzz. I had promised her, hadn’t I?
For the last three years, I’d sworn up and down that we’d go, but every time she went to book time off from work, I’d tell her I didn’t have the money.
She’d gotten so desperate last spring that she’d offered to pay my way—three thousand dollars for a two-week cruise in the Caribbean. First-class cabin with a balcony, endless views of turquoise water, and five-star dining. It was a high nail on her bucket list, right up there with marrying a man who loved to cook gourmet dinners and give three-hour-long foot rubs.
Of course, I’d turned down her generous offer to pay my way, feeling ashamed of myself for being so broke. Again.
But honestly? She worked just as hard as I did, and I wasn’t about to mooch. She was in real estate, and I was an insurance analyst who specialized in insuring big developers. Yes, I made decent money, but it somehow ended up under the tree each year.
Anyway, after I said no thank you in the nicest possible way, Kay cried and declared she’d go without me next summer. I felt like garbage and swore up and down I would not be broke next year. I would save, and we’d go together.
But, gah! I love Christmas. I eyed the stuff in my cart and then looked at Kay’s crinkled lips preparing to unleash some choice words. She fully expected me to break another promise, and she’d be right.
Could I really do this to her—choose an amazing Christmas over Kay? We’d been best friends since middle school, ever since Kevin Foster started making fun of my freckles and frizzy brown curls. Every day he’d come up with a new name for me—fuzz butt, pork rind, rat’s nest, and pube head. Then one day, he’d called me “slutty tumbleweed,” claiming I just rolled from guy to guy like a “wild bag of hoes.” He added that each freckle on my face was a devil’s kiss for all the boys I’d banged. “Marks of shame,” he’d called them. I guessed his parents were super religious or something, and he’d improvised on their teachings.