Winter in Wonderland by Kari Trumbo

Author:Kari Trumbo [Trumbo, Kari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inked in Faith Publications
Published: 2019-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

His alarm hadn’t gone off. Sam dashed through his house, putting on his glasses instead of his usual contacts. No time to shave. But he was still pretty pleased about the previous day’s encounter. He’d shown Ashley he didn’t want anything to do with Chelsey. But Chelsey’s dad was on the town council, and she could be underhanded. Neither she nor Sam had extra money for fines this close to the end of their work on the reno house.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He whipped it out and fumbled it in his haste. “Sorry, Ash, I know I’m running late. I’ll be right there.”

“How sweet.” Chelsey purred. “But you won’t be able to go work on the house today. Practice starts at ten and we start our first round of caroling to each house tonight. At five, we’ll all go down to Molly’s for a burger. As you know, on kickoff night they light the Christmas lights on Main Street early for us so we can carol at each business. Then we walk to each of the Ladies. I don’t think we’ll be done until about eight or so, maybe nine if we’re luckily.”

The nerve of the woman … “I told you I’m not caroling this year.”

“ But you have to. All this week the schedule is the same every day. Christmas is one of our biggest times of the year. The rest of the Black Hills towns close or cut hours after Labor Day. And we are known for Christmas. Last year, so many people just didn’t practice, so we had to make sure this year everyone was committed. All day. All week. No excuses.”

“I repeat, I’m not doing it this year.”

“Are you sure you want to pull out now? You’d be impossible to replace. It would be a shame if someone pushed through this new city ordinance on Daddy’s desk making it impossible for anyone to start new bed & breakfast establishments. We want to protect our current businesses from upstarts coming in and offering substandard accommodations. Wouldn’t that be terrible, Sam? So can I count on you to be at practice?”

All the work they’d done would be for nothing. The house couldn’t sell as anything but a B&B after their renovations. But he wouldn’t negotiate with a crazy woman, not even a crazy woman he went to high school with. “No, you can’t.”

Now she took the condescending tone he was used to hearing from people who considered themselves above him. “I’ll see you at the community center in two hours. You’ll be there.” She hung up.

He stared at his phone for a minute. Hadn’t he told himself he needed to protect Ashley? Wasn’t that one of the few things he could offer her? He had to choose – one last week with Ashley to get her to stay and probably lose the ability to sell their house, or a week in torment with Chelsey, ensuring that Ashley would feel abandoned, but at least be able to get her money back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.