Holly Jacobs - A Valley Ridge Christmas

“I should...” he started, trying to prioritize what needed to be done.

“You should go to sleep.”

He nodded, knowing she’d worry if he didn’t go to bed with her. “After I turn on the propane so we have heat.” He pulled on his parka and opened the driver’s side door. The snow was almost up to his knees and blowing so hard that he couldn’t see the library or any other houses. He shut the door and felt small and alone, standing in the midst of the snowstorm. Then he looked back through the window and saw Josie kneeling by Carl. He took a deep breath. Josie didn’t deserve the situation they were in. And somehow he’d find a way out of it.

For a moment, the wind stopped howling and rather than being pelted by flakes, the snow fell gently around him. He glanced up and caught the merest hint of light in the sky. A star. One small beacon in the sky, shining like a promise of better things.

He heard the thought and laughed at himself. Josie the eternal optimist, forever talking about signs, had turned his brain to mush. He was thankful he was alone and hadn’t said the words out loud.

As if on cue, the wind picked up again and the small star disappeared behind the whirling snow.

Boyd turned on the propane and went back into the aging RV.

Josie had Carl unbuckled, and as Boyd picked him up, his son stayed asleep. “I’m sorry,” he said softly as they walked toward the bed in the back of the RV.

“Boyd Myers, you’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

He gave voice to his thoughts this time. “If I hadn’t lost my job, then we wouldn’t have lost the house, and we wouldn’t be out here in the middle of...”

“Snowmageddon,” she supplied with a grin. “We could play ‘what-if’ all night, but that’s not going to get us anywhere.”

“We’re going to spend the holidays in a RV. We’re driving away from everything we know. We’re driving across country, not knowing if there will really be a job waiting for me.”

“We’re going to spend the holidays with each other. With Carl. With the new baby.” She patted her stomach. “We have a roof over our head, and we have each other. For Thanksgiving next week, I have a whole list of things I’m thankful for. You’re at the top of it. You’ll find a job,” she finished with utter conviction and certainty. “Everything happens for a reason. Plattsburgh wasn’t our real home. We’re on our way to finding the town we belong to, but no matter what, we’re already home as long as we have each other.”

“My little optimist,” he said as he shucked his jeans and sweatshirt and crawled under the covers.

Josie tucked the sleeping, pajama-clad Carl into the middle, then climbed into the bed on her own side.

“We’re lucky, Boyd. We might not have much money...”

He snorted at the understatement.

Josie continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “And you could make a long list of what we once had and were forced to sell, but we’ve got the RV. We’ve got Carl and soon we’ll have this new baby. We have each other. Everything else will work out.”

“You really believe that?” He reached over and stroked her fine, soft hair that lay spread on the pillow next to his.

“I really believe that. Life is funny. One moment, you think you’ve lost everything, the next you discover that you’ve found something even better.”

The image of that lone star shining in the midst of the blizzard flitted through his head. He leaned across their sleeping son and kissed Josie’s forehead.

She was right. He’d lost his job, but so had many other people in recent years.

He’d also lost the house because he couldn’t afford the payments, but again, so had many others.

Even though he was in the same boat as all those other folks, he had one advantage. He had Josie. He’d loved her ever since meeting her on their first day of kindergarten.

She always denied that and insisted he’d never even noticed her until high school, but she was wrong. He’d noticed her all right. It had taken him the nine years between kindergarten and high school to work up the courage to approach her as anything more than a friend. But he’d known as a five-year-old that Josie Bentley was someone rare and special, just as he’d known she deserved someone so much better than him. But to his utter amazement, she loved him. She’d picked him.

They may have lost everything, but somehow, he’d find a way to get it all back—if for no other reason than because Josie believed in him. And that thought, like one lone star in the midst of a blizzard, burned bright as he closed his eyes. Somehow, he’d get it all back for Josie.

No matter what it took.

CHAPTER ONE

MAEVE BUCHANAN WOKE up at precisely 5:00 a.m. She didn’t need to look at a clock to know it was five. Maeve had an internal alarm that went off on its own every morning. Some people might find that annoying, but she liked mornings, so she didn’t mind. She enjoyed being able to catch a breath before jumping into her day—her normally very busy day.

As she snuggled under the covers she realized how cold her exposed face was. It was colder than a typical November morning in Valley Ridge, New York. She glanced out the window and rather than being greeted by the big oak tree, all she saw was snow. The blizzard that the weatherman forecasted had obviously arrived.

She eased down the cover and realized that it wasn’t simply cold...it was freezing.

She glanced at the alarm clock she never set, but no bright numbers lit up the room.

Darn. That meant the power was out. And no power meant the furnace wasn’t working, so she not only had no light, she had no heat.

Like ripping off a bandage, some things were easier if you did them fast, so Maeve pushed back the covers and yipped as the frigid air assaulted her. She quickly put on her robe and slippers and when that didn’t seem like enough, she pulled the throw from the bottom of the bed over her shoulders. She hurried down the narrow, steep steps into the kitchen and checked the window. Her view was reduced to almost nothing.

She kicked off her slippers and put on her UGGs, her barn coat and a hat. She looked down and couldn’t help but smile. Her red-and-black checkered pajama pants looked absurd sandwiched between her burgundy barn coat, the edge of her robe and her tan boots, but there was no one around to notice as she nipped out the side door and marched along the house to the small shed at the end of the driveway where she stored her wood.

She piled as many logs as she could manage into her arms and hurried back inside. God bless Mrs. Anderson’s sense of thriftiness and nostalgia. The former town librarian had done so much for her, and taught her a lot, as well. The woodstove still sat in the corner of the kitchen. Maeve dumped her load of wood in the wood box and opened the stove’s door. She didn’t use it often, but given the fact that she lost power at least once a winter, she’d had enough practice to make short work of starting a small fire inside it. She left a few of the logs for backup and took the rest to the basement where another wood burning stove was hooked up to the house’s heating system. Her house was small enough that between the two stoves she’d stay warm.

It took two tries to get the basement stove’s fire going, but she finally managed it. She went back upstairs and put the old percolator on the top of the stove in the kitchen, then went back outside to bring in more wood.

She’d made two more trips when the wind died down enough to allow her a bit of a view. Normally she looked out at some old oak trees that marked the edge of her property and, beyond them, a small stone wall, then the library parking lot and the library itself. Today, a ratty-looking RV blocked her view of the library.