Page 2 of Second Chance Christmas

She squinted into the fading darkness. Were those footprints? She pushed a little closer to the window.

“They are! Max, get ready.” Ivy looked over her shoulder to find the dog sound asleep. “Big help you are!” Wholly exasperated, she turned back to the window. From this angle, she spotted large boot prints that led from the side of the house and around in the direction of the back kitchen door. “Who would be out there at this time?”

Gran hadn’t mentioned anyone being at the inn already so it couldn’t be a guest. She leaned in. Close enough where she could outline the frosted fingers of winter along the edges of the glass and her nose pressed into the cold crystal. “Come on. Where did you go?”

Ivy shuffled her feet around the corner of the nightstand and craned her neck to the side for a better look. A thick thatch of brown hair poked out from the edge of the veranda right before a set of wide shoulders encased in red plaid and a muscular back came into view.

She pulled back and let the curtain fall into place when the stranger craned his neck around and looked in her direction.

“Crap!” After several seconds passed, she eased back to the window for another glance. “What kind of crazy man is out at this time of the morning?” He was gone. She didn’t know if that made her happy or more nervous.

With how her heart raced, the safer bet rested on the latter. Ivy fell to her hands and knees. Shuffling with a phone in one hand did not make for the stealth mode she aimed for. She scooted along the floor, nearly toppling over a ladder and stacked buckets of paints. Her gran’s crazy idea of waiting until almost a week before Christmas tospruce up the joint,as her gran put it, could be the death of her. The evidence of her claim stood outside right now, ax in hand.

Ivy stopped by her grandmother’s closed door. Not a sound and Max took her absence in bed as an invitation to spread out. Some guard dog.

Nothing kicked off the holiday season like a good jolt of horror and adrenaline. She should have snagged up her brother’s offer to get her a stun gun for her birthday. “Ivy, you’re a damn fool,” she reprimanded herself.

At the top of the stairs, she slowly shifted to her feet and made it down the hall to the kitchen without tripping over the wads of painter's plastic in ten steps when it normally took twenty. The distinct sound of wood splintering carried through the darkness above her head.

“What the hell? Chopping wood?” Who the heck went around chopping wood for people in the middle of the night? Maybe they needed the wood to burn the bodies. Hers and Gran’s. Poor Max.

She shook her head. The early hour coupled with her imagination fueled by too many hours watching cop shows played multiple murder scenarios over in her head. She didn’t want to be wrapped in painters’ plastic. That last few crime novels she’d read had scenes that came back to haunt her too.

Ivy popped her head up fast enough to grab the cordless phone off the kitchen counter. But nothing when she hit the power button. “Genius. No power means no phone.”

Knees pressed into her chest and her back against the glass window of the kitchen stove, she opted for her cell phone. If a wood-chopping loony was the way she had to go, someone needed to know what to look for in the mulch come springtime.

“Great.” The battery sign flashed on the screen. One bar left.

“Hello, Dixen Sheriff’s office.”

The female voice sounded way too chirpy for the crazy morning hour.

Holding her hand over the mouthpiece, Ivy whispered in a muffled voice, “Hello. I want to report a break-in.”

It grew quiet beyond the window. She rose to her knees and peeked over the kitchen sink for another look, but retreated to the safety of the shadows when a silhouette passed. Huddled by the front of the stove again, Ivy returned her attention to the phone. “I take that back. He’s not exactly inside. There’s a crazy man in red plaid cutting firewood outside my house. Who does that kind of thing?” She flared out the word crazy to make sure the lady on the other end understood the situation louder than she’d intended.

Half her attention on the window and the other on the phone call, Ivy cringed when the shadow paused by the window.

“Oh, shit.” She drew out in a shaky breath with her head in her hands.

“Ivy? Ivy Sunday Winters. Is that really you? I didn’t recognize the number on the ID. When did you get back into town? You were due two days ago. Thought maybe you weren’t coming, hon. Are you staying with your gran at the inn? Well, silly me. Of course you are.” The lady on the other end of the line answered herself before Ivy could. “She said to be on the lookout for you.”

“Mrs. December?”

“One and only. When did you get back into town, hon?”

“I..uh…last night,” she whispered, craning her neck for another look outside. Did she lock the back door last night after lugging her tired body in well after midnight?

“Oh, good. Listen when you come into town stop by and see Mr. December’s at the Slice of Heaven, eh? He’ll be thrilled to see you again. It’s been ages. Of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without him and Hardt at it again. This year they didn’t even wait untilafterThanksgiving to start up their antics.” Ivy felt the other lady settling in for a long talk. An audibletsksounded through the phone’s speaker and Ivy fought a scream of frustration as the other woman filled her in on the town’s gossip.

Dixen, Alaska was a quirky town tucked in the hollow between two snow-capped mountains an hour north of Anchorage, and her people were known to take three things very seriously: tradition, Christmas, and baking. Well, hockey too.

“It’s good to see some things never change. Who do you think will win the bake-off this year?” Ivy crept up to her knees. All seemed quiet now.

“Last year we came within a snowball’s throw to knocking the stockings off that Hardt. If you’d been here, you’d have loved how those blubbery cheeks of his huffed out in surprise when it came down to the final vote last Christmas. But those two have yet to break their tying streak. At this rate, those two will be feuding well into the grave. But we have plenty of time to talk about them and the annual town party. I’m so happy you’ll be here for the annual Dixcemberfest!” There was a bit of rueful chagrin, one Ivy knew all too well from her past Ivy school teacher’s tone and she cringed. The fact was, Ivy wouldn’t be here now if she’d had better luck and fairer siblings.

Longer story short, if her Facebook updates were anything to go by, her family stood firmly by the belief their grandmother no longer operated with a full set of cards. Without a clue as to what the other seven Winters siblings were up to, her name landed at the top of the list as the most eligible to spend her holidays shoveling snow and painting walls before the mass of guests descended on the seasonal bed and breakfast for Christmas. She’d accepted her fate on one condition—her name be moved to the bottom of the list for the next seven years.

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