It Started with Christmas: A heartwarming feel-good Christmas romance Read online

  It Started with Christmas

  A heartwarming feel-good Christmas romance

  Jenny Hale

  Also by Jenny Hale

  The Summer Hideaway

  The Summer House

  Summer at Oyster Bay

  Summer by the Sea

  A Barefoot Summer

  * * *

  We’ll Always Have Christmas

  All I Want for Christmas

  Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses

  A Christmas to Remember

  Coming Home for Christmas

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Coming Home for Christmas

  Jenny’s email sign up

  Also by Jenny Hale

  A Letter from Jenny

  A Christmas to Remember

  We’ll Always Have Christmas

  All I Want for Christmas

  Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses

  Acknowledgements

  One

  “I want to spend Christmas at the cabin.” Nana’s voice came from the dark stairway, startling Holly McAdams and making her jump as she walked in the front door, the warmth of the little house a stark contrast to the icy cold outside.

  “You want to what?” Holly asked gently, seeing Nana standing on the top step of the staircase, and understanding fully the weight of her grandmother’s statement.

  Holly dropped her heavy handbag with a thud against the wall, glad to have finished her last night of waitressing for the holiday. With the Christmas crowds, the restaurant where she worked had been slam-packed from opening to closing. One of their best employees, she had requested this holiday off to be with Nana and was thrilled when she actually got the okay from management. Her boss needed convincing, given the busy season, but knowing how hard she worked for him, even putting in late hours beyond her duties, he let her have the days. Her head pounded, her feet ached, and she wanted to climb into her warm bed, but Nana was finally opening up, and this was what Holly had been hoping for.

  “I’ve been thinking how things just aren’t the same,” Nana said, coming down the stairs and walking past Holly, the request she’d made hanging in the air between them.

  “That’s for sure…” Holly said. Her voice trailed off with her memories. Things hadn’t been the same since Holly’s grandfather died.

  Holly turned around to view her grandmother’s tiny living room, clicking on a lamp on the small table in the hallway as she trailed behind Nana, and then two more on either side of the sofa when Nana lowered herself down onto the center cushion and wrapped herself in the throw they had for chilly nights. The space was cloaked in a buttery glow. Holly pressed the button under the Christmas tree to turn it on and it sparkled in the corner, the white lights shimmering off the baubles they’d hung together during one of Nana’s rare moments of contentment. Bright red ribbons snaked through the mantle greenery, drawing attention to two stockings made of thickly knit material, each one embroidered with their initials in a snowy white.

  Holly stared at Nana, sensing how difficult this decision was.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Nana said.

  Holly faced her.

  “The idea kept going around in my head—restless, unable to be denied the way I usually can talk myself out of it. So I think I’m ready.”

  Holly leaned on the window ledge and took in a deep breath, the memory of Papa hitting hard tonight. The view of the Nashville skyline was full of high-rise buildings all outlined in lights for the holiday season.

  Arthur McAdams, or Papa as Holly called her grandfather, had been a musician, writing songs and singing in local bars. He’d never gotten The Big Deal, as he’d called it, but he’d actually played at the historic Tootsies once. He’d teased her that his life was complete because of that. But, really, his life had been complete because he’d been able to support his family by adapting parts of his songs as poems for greeting cards, selling others, and occasionally renting out his old family cabin in the Tennessee hills to tourists who wanted to be close enough to the gritty bars of Nashville’s Honky Tonk Row but be able to spend their evenings secluded.

  “I’ve never worked a day in my life,” he’d said with a grin once as he tapped a loose nail on the front porch floorboards of the cabin. Even everyday chores there seemed like a labor of love to him. Papa had managed what many people hadn’t: while his friends went off to their workday, he could make his money by doing what he loved.

  Holly had lived in Nana’s house in Music City for the last year. The neighborhood on the outskirts of Nashville had been quaint when her grandparents bought the bungalow back in the fifties. They’d lived in that little house downtown and paid it off over the years, and neither Papa nor Nana cared one bit about moving. But as the city had grown, and the homes had aged, that small area had gone into decline, and it wasn’t a great place for Nana to live all alone. Not to mention that when Papa had passed away, Nana had drifted into a distant, quiet state: she needed a companion. So Holly had moved in with her, canceling her enrollment in a local design class and taking a waitressing job at one of the upscale steakhouses in Nashville.

  Nana hadn’t been to Papa’s cabin since before he’d passed away two years ago. She’d refused to set foot in it without him. In fact, the only time Holly had been there in recent years was when she had renovated the place. They hadn’t known until his death, but he’d written songs and sold them in Nashville under a pen name. When he passed, he left them quite an inheritance. As part of the money Papa left her, she received directions from him to remodel the old cabin so they could rent it out full-time. Papa thought, with Holly’s decorating help, that the cabin could pull in a sizeable income in vacation rentals to supplement Nana’s retirement and give her a nice nest egg to see her through the rest of her life. He told them so in a letter accompanying his will.

  Holly had always had an eye for design. She often thought that was how Papa’s artistic gene had manifested itself in her. Planning things, organizing, and decorating came naturally to her. Her friends all asked her to go shopping with them when they’d move into their apartments and she couldn’t remember how many of her friends’ weddings she’d lent a helping hand to. She’d planned to do something with her talent, but life seemed to have other plans.

  Realizing she was lost in thought, Holly turned back to Nana. “Isn’t the cabin rented for the holiday?” she asked. After she’d redone the interior, and put the new photos online, they could barely keep up with the number of rental requests.

  Nana shook her head. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I cleared the schedule starting this week, just in case I had the courage to go.”

  “But the
snow…”

  This December had been a record-breaking month, with icy temperatures plummeting, sending more snow than this area had seen in decades. There were road closures everywhere, and Holly knew that driving in the hills would be a nightmare. But even though Nana and Papa had lived here in the city, their hearts had always been at the cabin. Nana married Papa there and she spent her honeymoon there. And they always had big family Christmases there.

  Should they go? The time at the cabin might do Nana some good, and it would also give Holly a chance to go through the old barn that was piled with the original furniture and things from the house that she still had to tag and either sell or give to charity.

  The alternative was to sit in this house for the next week, Nana spending another holiday, thinking about how they weren’t at the cabin like they’d always been, and about how Papa wasn’t there with her.

  Nope. Holly wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “You know what?” she said before Nana had answered her. “If you want to go, then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll pack up all the gifts, take down the tree, tie it to the top of my car, and put it up at the cabin. We’ll make hot chocolate, and climb under blankets, and binge-watch movies until we fall asleep. We’ll read all the books we’ve been wanting to finish, make oven pizzas, and never put anything on our feet but fuzzy socks.”

  She grabbed Nana’s hands, pulling her off the sofa gently, the blanket falling to a lump on the floor. “We’ll dance to Christmas carols and when we get tired of that we’ll visit Otis and Buddy! We can take them cookies like we used to do.”

  She twirled Nana around, and that little scowl she’d gotten so good at faltered just slightly.

  “Even with the snow, we can drive there in less than an hour. Let’s pack!”

  “Right now?” Nana pressed her lips together to suppress her smile.

  “Why not?” She pushed through her exhaustion for Nana’s sake. “It’s late, yes, but I can have that tree down and be ready to leave in a couple of hours. If we stay up till midnight, we can sleep in the next morning! I put extra thick, feather duvets on the beds, with one thousand thread-count sheets.”

  Nana’s eyes grew round.

  “Remember, Papa said, and I quote, to ‘do it up right’ and if I didn’t, I’d have to answer to him when we saw each other next.”

  That made her smile.

  “Let’s do it,” Holly said. She put her arms around Nana and squeezed her excitedly, making Nana laugh—the best sound in the world. Things were going to be great again—she could feel it—and Holly knew it would all start with Christmas.

  Two

  It took a few hours to pack up the ornaments and the lights, pull down the stockings, drag the small tree and mantle greenery outside, get it all secured in and on the car, pack their gifts and bags, and make the drive. The cabin was just up a winding road from a small hillside town called Leiper’s Fork, known for its southern, boot-wearing hospitality, warm buttermilk biscuits, occasional famous musician sightings, and local art galleries.

  On their way there the roads were treacherous. The weather forecast announcement on the radio said things were going to get worse before they got better and to be prepared to spend Christmas at home, warning that many of the roads wouldn’t be passable. Holly certainly believed it. She was jittery from maneuvering the car as it slid all over the place. She prayed silently that nothing would happen to them at such a late hour on the dark and snowy route to the cabin.

  It was after midnight when they pulled into the ice-covered drive. When she finally came to a stop and cut off the engine, the keys to the cabin now in her hand, she exhaled, unsure how long she’d been holding her breath. Her shoulders were tense from the events of the night, and she couldn’t wait to get into the cozy warmth that awaited them.

  “Stay here,” she said, opening her door. “I’ll come get you.”

  It was pitch black. Holly turned on the little light on her phone so she could see where she was walking, her boots sinking into the fluffy snow. What started out as ice billowed down after making, she noticed, the whole place look like a winter wonderland, once her eyes adjusted to the darkness. But with no porch light on it was still difficult to see, so she shined her phone toward Nana’s car door and pulled the handle.

  “Let’s get inside and then we can think about what we want to do with the tree. I should probably get it in as soon as we can since the snow is still falling.”

  Nana nodded, taking her hand and carefully exiting the car. They walked together to the porch, every step labored and careful. The last thing Nana needed was to fall way out there, in a snowstorm.

  By the time they got to the distinctive red front door that always made Holly feel like Christmas, Holly was shivering so much that she could hardly slide the key into the lock, but she got it in and, with a click, she turned the knob and hit the lights.

  “I’ll get our bags,” she said as Nana looked around at the new interior.

  That sadness that had been in Nana’s eyes when they pulled up remained; she didn’t seem at all impressed with the updates. It was easy to see that she missed the old, familiar surroundings. Her gaze settled on a glass guitar sculpture Holly had bought from a local art dealer, thrilled that she’d been able to afford it.

  Growing up, the old cabin always had a special place in Holly’s heart. It was a place to lay her head after long days outside hiking, fishing, or sitting around the bonfire with friends. And in the winters, they played board games, strung popcorn garlands on the Christmas tree, and Papa hid presents all over the cabin for everyone to find.

  It was simply decorated with very basic furniture—no frills. But Holly had changed that. She’d painted the interior, updated the lighting, added stainless steel appliances with a double oven feature and new cabinetry, hardwood floors and crown molding. Then she’d completely refreshed the space with creamy furniture, soft lighting, and lots of references to Nashville and its surrounding areas. She’d covered the blank walls with local artwork, and the whole place had a very southern feel to it when she’d finished—the perfect retreat to bring in the tourists.

  Holly understood Nana’s feelings, though. It was the same way she’d felt the day she’d first come in to make the changes. It was the place where Papa’s memory was the strongest. She remembered how he sat her on his lap whenever he retired in one of the old rocking chairs on the front porch at sunset. She’d lean back against him as he rocked to the sound of the crickets when they started their song in the woods each evening. She’d felt completely safe, like nothing bad could ever happen to her when she was sitting with him.

  “Why don’t you relax on the sofa?” Holly suggested.

  Nana tore her eyes from the sculpture to acknowledge her granddaughter, but when she made eye contact, there was uncertainty in her face. She turned around and toddled over to the cream leather sofa, her legs stiff from the journey, and ran her weathered hand along its surface before she took a seat on the edge of it.

  Pulling her coat up around her chin to keep the icy cold from assaulting her, Holly went outside again and tugged their suitcases from the backseat, shutting the car door with her foot. She brought them up the porch stairs, the weight of them making her winded, and carried them down the hallway to the bedroom. She noticed that Nana was still on the edge of the sofa, her hands on her knees, that scowl clear as day. Perhaps she was just tired. Holly would get her things into the bedroom as quickly as possible so she could have some rest. It had been a big night. Dropping the luggage at her feet, unable to drag them a step further, she opened the bedroom door and turned on the light.

  To Holly’s complete surprise her eyes flew to the center of the room where a man sat straight up in bed like a bolt of lightning, before jumping to his feet, shocked out of sleep, causing her to shriek in panic. He froze, clearly taking stock of her, his gaze bouncing from her face to her bags. When it was clear to both of them that the other meant no harm, the man ran his hands through hi
s hair in sleep-deprived confusion.

  Only then did she take in the square of his jaw, the shadow of stubble, the darkness of his eyes, and his thick, jet-black, perfectly cut hair. He looked like a magazine model. Apart from the fact that he was wearing ridiculous silver striped pajamas. But even those he could manage quite well.

  “I’m sorry… Are you renting here this week?” he asked.

  Holly shook her head, having difficulty finding the words while those eyes bore into her. They seemed restless and curious. She cleared her throat and tried to focus on something else so she could get a coherent thought, but all she could see was the print of his body on the sheets, making it harder to concentrate. She’d stepped into this man’s personal space, awakened him from sleep, and her cheeks were burning in embarrassment. “My grandmother said no one was renting this week,” she managed. “We own the cabin.”

  He blinked excessively, and she wasn’t sure if he was processing something or still trying to wake up. Then, finally, he said, “So… Are you cleaning between guests or something? At one in the morning? In a snowstorm?”

  “What’s going on here?” Nana said from behind Holly, taking her by surprise. “I heard a scream.”

  “Joseph Barnes,” he said, introducing himself to Nana.