Page 124 of Mistletoe All the Way

“Tell us about all the special things you’ve planned,” Rowan says to her.

“First of all, I heard a delicious rumor that you’ll be coaching the contestants as they cut down the blue spruces,” Coretta says, clearly having fun with the fact that she’s lined up a hockey player as a guest star. “Is that true?”

“Can confirm. Since, no surprise, I’m excellent at cutting Christmas trees down,” Rowan adds.

“And at humility,” a deep, gravelly voice calls from the crowd. Probably one of his hockey player teammates. “Don’t forget how good you are at that.”

“As if I could forget, Tyler.” Rowan pauses, then says, “But the best part is that Coretta’s farm will donate those twenty-five trees to the library, the fire station, the hospital, and so on.”

“Credit given where credit’s due—the suggestion came from Eloise Langston, my new social media maven,” Coretta says, singling me out and… I beam.

Maven. I’m a fucking maven.

“And it’s a lovely gesture for the whole town,” the mayor says, then taps her chin as if she’s just thought of this. “And perhaps Mr. Holiday can deliver them?”

The crowd erupts in cheers, and I clap the loudest since I love that visual to pieces.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that the mayor likes another one of my ideas. Take that, Mom and Dad.

Rowan nods toward the five contestants near the gazebo. “Be ready, gentlemen. Be ready.”

“The contest will start in two hours. Lucy is picking up extra saws as we speak. She loves saws,” the mayor says with fond affection for her niece, completely missing the irony of Macabre Lucy’s love of saws.

“So warm up now, check your saws when Lucy arrives with them, and get your butts ready,” Rowan says. “I want these to be the best darn Christmas trees I’ve ever seen.”

With a furrow in his brow, Noah gives a crisp nod, like he’s making a plan, and I watch him, taking in the cut of his jaw, the thickness of his beard, the focus in his mind.

I’m enjoying the view of the cowboy Santa so much I almost don’t notice the two eerily familiar faces at the edge of the crowd. Wait. Make that three.

First, the guys in suits I spotted that night at Stephen’s bar are here. This time they’re dressed casually, wearing woolen sweaters and peacoats. But I’d recognize them anywhere. One has slick blond hair and a straight nose. The other, gelled black hair and the blackest eyes. And something tells me they’re not just here for fun. They’re here to cheer on the guy they’re betting on. Second, Stephen’s college buddy is here. Chad Tanner with his mustache and ball cap I want to rip off.

I know who he is. I’ve looked him up already. I don’t know the other guys. I just have a hunch.

So I do the thing I’ve been doing all along. I lift my phone and snap their photo.

We rush over to my truck, ready to take Big Red to the tree farm at the edge of town, but my attention isn’t on the red beauty and its bevy of bumper stickers.

It’s on Google.

I’ve finally zoomed in close enough on the guys’ faces to do a reverse image search, and the results pop up on my phone as we reach the driver’s-side door.

I squint at the results, clicking through them as Noah opens the door. “What did you find out?”

Nothing meaningful yet. Just names. “Cameron Flanagan is the blond. And Bryce Murray is the other guy,” I say, reading them back.

“Sound like douches,” he says, for no reason other than that they do. Then he nods toward the passenger side. “I’ll drive. You spy.”

That sounds like us, so I race around and dig deeper into the results as he starts the truck.

When—

My stomach falls.

Holy smokes. I can barely catch my breath. Unease slides over me like a heavy blanket, chased by foreboding.

“What is it?” He sounds deathly concerned.

They’re not lawyers. I was wrong, and it’s so much worse than I thought. I swallow, look up, and say heavily, “They’re hotel and restaurant investors. Their company is Flanagan Murray Hotel Group. It’s a division of a large hotel chain, and they establish boutique hotels in trendy small towns.”