Page 43 of The Christmas Box

I nod. “Darlene McIntosh was famous for her cookies around town—she used to make dozens and dozens and give them to everyone she knew. But she’s in her seventies now and has a bad back, so…”

“So it sounds like you’re making cookies,” he says with a grin.

“You have to help me,” I demand. “With all of this.”

“I do?” He balks. “Because between Dad and renovating, I’m pretty busy. And you’ve already got me talking to Nick and carrying Judy up the stairs. Plus, I have a dog now.”

I actually can’t tell if he’s kidding or not, but I flash him a look of warning. “You made me open the box.”

Slowly, reluctantly, he concedes with, “All right, all right. Where do we start?” And that’s when I realize he was just keeping up his Scrooge routine. As if I haven’t already seen all the chinks in his armor.

I smile. “Tomorrow we can bake cookies and collect gifts for Mikayla’s kids.”

He looks doubtful, though. “Uh, don’t you have a shop to run here?”

“I’ll see if Dara can come in,” I tell him, then get back to planning. “After that, we can make some deliveries. And I’ll donate a tree and ornaments to take to Mikayla’s. Maybe we can drop them on her porch with gifts after dark—with a note from Santa—so she won’t know where they came from.”

He looks a little overwhelmed, dark eyes growing wide. “We’re doing this all in one day?”

I just shrug. “Like you said, we both have a lot to do and Christmas is coming fast. So we should accomplish as much as we can as quickly as we can.”

“Guess that makes sense. But if I’m playing Santa all day tomorrow—” He pauses, giving a playful shiver of horror at his own words. “—then I’d better head home.”

“And I’ll get busy making lists for everything we need to do.”

After we say goodnight, I stand at the front door and watch him cross the slushy street in the dark. Despite myself, I’m excited. I thought the box was just a wishing box, but now it’s also becoming a wish-grantingbox, which goes way beyond my original vision for it, but in a wonderful way. And…well, if it means getting to spend more time with Travis, that makes it even better.

Flipping the lock behind him, I return to the bar and go through the rest of the wishes, finding the ones from Mikayla’s three kids, and also pulling out a few more I think we can accomplish. The rest I put back inside and say a prayer for as I carry the box back to its table.

That’s when it occurs to me that maybe I should put my own back in the box as well. Or…throw it away in case Travis suddenly decides to go through them again.

I reach in my pocket to retrieve it—only the pocket is empty. It’s gone. Whoa.

That can’t be, though, so I reach deeper, into the corners.

But no wish.

I keep looking, even turning my pocket inside out—but there’s still no slip of paper to be found.

Where could it be?

I carefully retrace my steps back to the bar, looking around table legs and the bottom of the counter. It couldn’t have gone far—yet I can’t find it anywhere.

Well, the important thing is that it didn’t end up in Travis’s hands.

And I have a lot of work to do on wishes Icanhave some control over, so I’d best shift my focus there. I already can’t wait for tomorrow.

December 15

Lexi

Travis and I worked side by side this morning in my kitchen, baking cookies. He’s not much of a baker, but I’m not much of a cookie decorator—as Dara so bluntly informed me—so it worked out.

My favorite moments: when he reached up to brush some flour from my cheek (thank God I’m messy in the kitchen) and when he kept nabbing pinches of cookie dough to eat and I finally had to grab onto his hand to stop him. Did I hold on too long? Did he notice? I’m not sure, but when he teased me, saying, “You know you want some,” then popped a bit into my mouth, too, his fingers brushing my lips…well, let’s just say it was delicious in more ways than one.

Now I’m packing them up, not only for Darlene McIntosh, but also for my grandma’s old friend Mrs. Brewster, a shut-in who wished for some visitors this holiday season, and the Parkers, an elderly couple who wished for “unexpected blessings this holiday season.” I’m hoping cookies and good tidings do the trick.

After we deliver them, Travis’s trusty, snow-worthy pickup will carry us over slick roads to the Holly Ridge Walmart, where we’ll pick up gifts I didn’t have at the shop. Since I’m donating a tree, lights, ornaments, a stuffed Rudolph for Mikayla’s youngest, and a winter hat with a ball on top to make sure Mikayla gets at least one gift herself, Travis offered to foot the bill for the rest. In fact, he tried to paymefor the donations, but I refused.

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