Less Than White Christmas: A Short and Sweet Holiday Romance (Imperfect Holidays Book 4) by Noelle Heart

Author:Noelle Heart [Heart, Noelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-07-21T23:00:00+00:00

Julie

I don’t know why I tried so hard. I mean, was there even any point to it? Why had I volunteered in the first place? Why hadn’t I just left enough alone?

Poor Marc. He’d looked as defeated as me when he’d told me about the forecast. Had it been remotely not seven in the morning, I’d have chugged an entire bottle of wine in bed.

But no. I couldn’t do that. I needed to finish the decorations, which were really, painfully, winter themed. Some of them wouldn’t work at all without the snow, which was fine. I just needed to…I don’t know. I don’t know what I needed to do.

And, I decided, I was allowed not to know. I took a warm shower and felt sorry for myself and then perked back up. First, I’d go see downtown, and maybe find inspiration.

For the third time.

“Want me to come with?” Marc asked after cleaning the girls up and getting them ready for daycare.

“You don’t need to,” I said, kissing him. The girls giggled. “I’ll try to figure something out while you bring the bugs to daycare.”

I left, unable to shake the feeling of defeat, knowing that I’d done a poor job of hiding it from Marc.

By the time I reached downtown, only a few minutes later, I stopped dead in my tracks. The beautiful tall tree was being hoisted back up, and it looked like it had picked a fight with a building. And lost.

“What happened?” I asked George, the city foreman, who oversaw the operation.

“The base wasn’t well set,” he said apologetically, removing his hat. “The whole thing tumbled down right into that store,” he pointed to a storefront that looked like it had seen better days, two of its windows currently being replaced. “We tried to set it back up, Mrs., but ’fraid it won’t look pretty. Too broke, now.”

The tree looked sad, half of its branches on this side bent or missing. Pine needles carpeted the street. There was no way we’d get another tree in time, and it was a shame to waste this one. It had been grown specifically for the countdown, and deserved its time to shine.

It was imperfect, like me. Like this entire holiday season. Like the countdown was going to be.

“Can you get it to stay in its base this time?” I asked gently.

“Of course. But do you still want it?”

“I do,” I nodded, certain at least of that. “I’ll have stuff for your crew this afternoon to decorate with. It’ll take longer, so I might need to keep your men longer…”

“That’s no problem, Mrs. May,” he said, nodding. “We love the countdown, too, so we’ll work hard to make it work.”

He headed off, slipping his hat back on his head.

“That’s…different,” Marc said, stepping beside me.

“You came,” I said, so glad to see him as I hugged him.

“Of course,” he said, “if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

Having him by my side made me feel better, at least marginally. When I looked around, I felt less good.

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