Chapter 1
Merry
It cannot be November first.
Merry curled up on her U-shaped couch with a sherpa blanket covering her lower half, her fingers working the knitting needles in her hands absently as she stared out the window. Tiny flurries swirled through the air like glittering wisps on the wind, obscuring the trees beyond. After a string of lackluster relationships that had taken her from Washington to Colorado, she’d decided the outside world wasn’t quite as green as the rows of Douglas and Noble fir trees across her family’s Christmas tree farm and she’d come home a year ago. A year of swearing off men and enjoying the peace of being single—
Someone pounded on her front door and she jumped a foot in the air, her knitting needles clacking together.
“What the hell?” she hollered.
“It’s Nick. You decent?”
Merry set her knitting and blanket aside, climbing to her feet. “Yeah, come in.”
The door opened and her brother came through the door, his Navy beanie covered in dots of melting snow. “Don’t sound so cranky.” He held a tray of coffee cups in one hand and a white pastry bag in the other. “I come bearing goods.”
“Awesome, I’ll forgive you for practically breaking down my door. I haven’t mustered up the strength to make any coffee yet.” Merry took the bag from him and set it on her kitchen counter, peeking inside. “Chocolate chip scones. Yum.”
“Mom and Dad bought everyone breakfast since it’s all hands on decorating duty.”
Merry glanced out the window at the falling snow. “Really? In this?”
“Don’t be a wimp. It’s barely coming down.”
“But it’s cozy in here. I’ve got my blanket, my pellet stove, and now delicious hot coffee.” She reached for one of the cups but Nick held it away from her.
“Ah-ah! This is for working people only. You want to stay inside, you can make your own coffee.”
Merry gave him the stink eye. “Fine. I’ll get changed.”
“Hustle up! Everyone is waiting on us.”
Merry walked through the kitchen of her tiny house to the drawers in the wall under the loft where her bed was. Her family and friends had helped her build the four hundred square foot home on the back of her parents’ property in late spring, just across the gravel road from the foreman’s cottage. She pulled out a thermal shirt, jeans, and her wire-free bra and popped into her bathroom. Merry glanced at her small claw-foot bathtub longingly, but that would have to wait until tonight after decorating was done. Usually it was just the main house and yard, and then a string of lights around the flocking tent where people paid for their trees. But it was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Winters Christmas Tree Farm’s grand opening and her parents were determined to make it magical.
She finished changing and brushed her teeth, tossing her long blond hair up into a haphazard bun. Her brother was drinking his coffee and watching out the window when she came out of the bathroom.
“Is the snow getting worse?” she asked, grabbing her thick winter headband off of the jacket hook and sliding it into place.
“Nah, still the same, but we’re supposed to get a few inches. That’s why everyone wanted to get an early start.”
“Is Noel at work?”
“No, she’s up at the house. I told her she didn’t have to come out here on her day off but she insisted.”
“That’s because she’s family.” Merry shrugged into her jacket with a smirk. “The two of you just need to make it official.”
Nick leveled a hard stare at her. “Don’t say anything like that around her. We haven’t even been together a year and I don’t want her feeling pressured.”
“Relax, I’m not going to. I know her almost as well as you do.” That wasn’t exactly true. Nick and Noel had been inseparable since infancy and when Noel’s parents died, she’d moved in with the Winterses. Noel loved the rest of them, but no one had ever cracked through her barriers the way Nick could. Merry always expected them to date and when they’d crossed the line to more than friends last Christmas, she couldn’t have been more thrilled.
Just because Merry didn’t talk about the two of them getting married didn’t mean Merry wasn’t hoping for it.
Nick held out the second coffee to her and once she’d shrugged into her black down jacket, she took it. “I know, I just can’t help reminding everyone. Don’t want anyone scaring off my hippogriff.”
Merry quirked her right eyebrow, setting her coffee cup on the counter. “You compare the love of your life to a large mythical creature that is both scary and freaky-looking?”
“Hippogriffs are beautiful, majestic animals.”
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