Page 1 of Mistletoe Sky
Chapter One
Willa
December 2025
The woman in the khaki trench coat took a sip from her mug, then tilted her head back to let her blond hair, like a golden waterfall, cascade down her back. Content, she flashed a perfect white smile and said her catchphrase (for the fifty-seventh time today), “In our family, we’d just give up without a Franken cup.”
Willa’s heart leaped into her chest. “Cut!” she cried, and the crystallized vision on the set before her exploded. Makeup artists rushed forward to fix the actress’s face, the kid actor in front of the bowl of cereal got up to jig in place, and Willa’s favorite camera operator, Steve, turned to give her a thumbs-up. They’d been filming all day. He was exhausted. They all were.
“I think we got it?” Willa muttered, mostly to herself. Her heart pumped. It was only her third commercial since her big promotion, and the stakes felt perpetually high.
All eyes were on her. And because she was a woman, almost everyone wanted her to fail and make way for younger men inthe business, eager to prove themselves better than any woman behind the camera. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Steve gave her an almost imperceptible nod, and she confirmed it was over. “That’s a wrap on Franken coffee, everyone! Thanks for the brilliant day.”
Since she’d become a director of commercials at her advertising firm, she’d started using the word “brilliant” about a thousand times a day. She didn’t know how to stop and wondered if she annoyed everyone else as much as she irritated herself.
Willa spent the next three hours in post-commercial meetings with her editor before heading to her dressing room to change into a chic black dress. She then went out into the night, fluffing her red hair as she went.
At seven thirty, Chicago was already pitch-dark, and since it was the beginning of December, that meant it was thirty-two degrees. A shiver ran down her spine as she grabbed a cab to take her closer to the lake. Gavin Marsh was waiting, and she knew he didn’t like to wait for long.
Once in the back seat, Willa allowed herself a full five minutes of looking out the window. The city was all dressed up for Christmas, as it always was, with glowing lights twisting around every telephone pole and every tree. A man in a Santa hat collected donations in front of the Walgreens on the corner, and a few little girls raced down the sidewalk, wearing elf hats and ballerina outfits under their unzipped coats. The girls giggled so loudly that the sounds filled the cab. It made Willa’s heart heavy.
Willa forced her eyes away and returned them to her phone, where she checked over her notes and found that, to her surprise, she still didn’t know which client Gavin was trying to connect her with. All week she’d ached to get out of meetingGavin, knowing she’d be exhausted after the coffee shoot and want a night to herself, all alone in the apartment she’d bought after the promotion had gone through. (The fact that they’d accepted her request for a mega-raise had astounded her and made her think,Finally, it all feels worth it.) But being so fresh in her position forced her to say yes to most things.
Gavin Marsh was a fifty-something agent who connected Willa and her company with brands willing to invest heavily in advertising campaigns. He’d connected them with some of the biggest names in the United States: coffee brands, fast food companies, and kitchen equipment. Last year, a significant commercial for a diaper company generated more revenue than they’d ever seen before. That had been before Willa’s promotion, but she’d watched it all from her lower-tier position, knowing that her company was on the up-and-up. She’d been proud to see her name on their list of assistant directors, proud to list her company as her boss of the last fifteen years. They were making waves.
Gavin stood when she entered. Always dressed to impress, yet with an air of a “young cool guy,” he wore an expensive suit jacket paired with jeans, and a linen shirt that he had unbuttoned to reveal the hollow in his neck. Sometimes Willa wondered if something was between them, something romantic, but she always shoved that thought to the side. Dating was nothing she had time for, nothing she’d allowed herself to thoroughly think about since she was twenty-nine or thirty.
She was thirty-seven and devoted to her work.
No, she was thirty-seven and devoted to herself. She didn’t want to give a scrap of her time or energy to someone who wouldn’t respect her as much as she deserved. The fact that work took up most of her time didn’t bother her. Or, fifteen years into her career, it didn’t bother her yet. Maybe it never would!
Gavin shook her hand. “You’re looking wonderful, Willa. Tell me, how did the shoot go?”
Willa sat and crossed her ankles, glancing at the cocktail menu, which didn’t have a single price on it. Typical of a swanky place that Gavin would pick.
“It was relatively fluid. We had a little bit of trouble with our child actor, but that happens. His shirt was itchy on him. I had a ton of empathy.”
Gavin laughed that pleasant laugh of his and told a story about another child actor on another shoot from last year or the one before it, who’d had a terrible head cold. “But his mother refused to let him go home because she was dead set on him becoming a child star. We had to reason with her for over an hour. The kid was green.”
Willa groaned. “I hate how parents push their kids into things.” Her gut trembled, remembering what her own family had wanted for her—and how far away she was from that.
“This business brings out the worst in people!” Gavin said. “Not us, though.” He winked.
The server came to take their cocktail orders. Willa opted for a summery tequila thing, while Gavin went for something warm and Christmassy.
“Don’t you know what time of year it is?” Gavin teased.
Willa swallowed the lump in her throat. “It’s hard to ignore, I guess.”
“The most magical time of the year,” Gavin said. Willa was pretty sure he was making fun of Christmas people, rather than announcing himself as one.
Willa wouldn’t call herself a Christmas cynic. Instead, she’d say,I don’t deal with that anymore. That being “celebrating Christmas.”For her, it brought more sorrow than anything.
But she wasn’t going to tell someone like Gavin about her sorrow.
“I guess you’re wondering why I brought you out tonight,” Gavin said.
