Valerie Hansen - Cozy Christmas

Season Of Cheer

For the first time in years, Christmas brings hope to Bygones, Kansas. But for Josh Barton, Main Street’s coffee shop owner, it brings back sad memories he’d rather forget. He’s a new man, with a new life and faith now. Still, he hides a huge part of himself from his neighbors—and from one very inquisitive reporter. Whitney Leigh seems determined to uncover the mystery of the town’s recent windfall, and Josh could help her. But that would mean opening up his guarded heart. Can a man who thought family and Christmas were only for others find a forever home where he least expects?

The Heart of Main Street: They’re rebuilding the town one step—and heart—at a time.

“Do you have time to talk?” Whitney asked.

“I always have time for my favorite reporter,” Josh said.

Whitney felt a frisson of energy zing up her spine. Of all the new folks, this was the only person whose teasing set her on edge and sometimes made her tremble like dry autumn leaves in a gale.

“Mind if I ask you a question first?” Josh said amiably. “Sort of turnabout’s fair play?”

“I guess not. I have a whole list for you.”

He rested his elbows on the table, leaned forward and studied her for a moment. “Why do you wear those glasses instead of contacts?”

She noticed that he was no longer grinning like a Cheshire cat, so she made a face at him. “That’s a silly question. I need them to read.”

“To read? Or as a mask to hide behind?” he asked quietly.

The Heart of Main Street: They’re rebuilding

the town one step—and heart—at a time.

Cozy Christmas by Valerie Hansen

December 2013

VALERIE HANSEN

was thirty when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed, she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

Married to her high school sweetheart, she now lives in an old farmhouse she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for all the Love Inspired Books lines.

Life doesn’t get much better than that!

Cozy Christmas

Valerie Hansen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.

—Matthew 1:23

To my husband, Joe, and friend, Karen,

who faithfully read and proof for me.

Any remaining mistakes we plan to blame

on someone else. And many thanks to

Shelley Winchester of the Awesome Coffee Cafe in Salem, AR, for introducing me to the coffee business.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Whitney Leigh rolled her eyes. “Romance! It’s getting to be an epidemic.”

Because she was alone in the car she didn’t try to temper her frustration. Fortunately, the editor of the Bygones Gazette had instructed her to use a different approach this time. He wanted her to praise the progress of the stores involved in the Save Our Streets redevelopment project to commemorate their sixth-month anniversary. If he had asked her for one more fluff piece about all the engagements, and even a recent marriage, involving those new businesses, she would have screamed. Just thinking about it made her want to.

Parking in front of the Cozy Cup Café and pausing behind the wheel of her vintage, yellow Mustang convertible, she shivered. A warm, wool coat, scarf and gloves were not enough to make up for the lack of insulation provided by the cloth-topped car. Although it was dear to her heart, there was a lot to be said for a thick, solid roof during the winter, particularly in Kansas.

She pulled the ignition key, set the brake and slid out. Myriad Christmas lights twinkled around nearby shop windows and hung from the colorful awnings that fronted the block of renovated stores.

The Save Our Streets merchants’ decorating committee had wound garlands of holly, tinsel and shiny ornaments around the old-fashioned-looking light standards and topped them with banners heralding the holiday season. Coordinated wreaths decked every store entrance while bouquets of silk poinsettias had replaced real flowers around the bases of the evergreens in the quaint planters along the refurbished street. The whole effect was charming. Welcoming.

However, it was also freezing outside. Whitney leaned in to grab her tote bag, slammed the car door and picked her way cautiously through the dusting of fresh snow toward her current assignment.

As a lifelong citizen of Bygones she was supposed to have been perfect for the job of ferreting out the hidden facts concerning the town’s mysterious windfall. Too bad she had failed. Instead of an exposé, she’d ended up filling her column with news of people’s love lives, when what she needed were reasonable, definitive answers to her more serious queries. But she was not going to quit investigating. No, sir. Not until she’d uncovered the real facts. Especially the name of Bygones’s secret benefactor.

A few things were already known, not that that helped much. First, a mysterious philanthropist had bought a whole block of empty buildings on Main Street, then bankrolled a group of merchants from other places to open new businesses in every available location except the old movie house. Only outsiders could apply.

“What was that all about?” Whitney murmured to herself. Some former shopkeepers had fled when Bygones had started to die but that didn’t mean there were no other folks capable of stepping in. If some wealthy person had really wanted to help the town recover and survive after the disastrous downturn in the economy and the permanent closing of Randall Manufacturing, the least he—or she—could have done was relegate the grant money to locals.

The legal arrangement had included them as employees, yes, but never as bosses. That point, alone, was enough to convince her that the anonymous benefactor was not from a small town. He or she obviously had no earthly idea how the minds of country people worked—or how they looked after their own.

She slipped and slid the last yard to the Cozy Cup Café, used the door handle to regain her balance, stepped inside and wiped her boots on the mat, stomping off globs of wet snow as she admired the delicate wreath that hung just inside the glass door. It wasn’t the customary green and red colors. Instead, it had been fashioned of brass and gold ribbons and ornaments with snowy accents that perfectly picked up the mocha and cream motif of the shop.