Christmas Ever After Read online

  Dedication

  For all the great loves in my life,

  thank you for giving me the gift of true love.

  And to everyone still searching for their

  Christmas Ever After,

  keep your heart open and always believe...

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgments

  Christmas Ever After Recipes

  Christmas Lake Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls

  Christmas Lake Gingerbread XOXO Cookies

  Christmas Ever After Activities

  Christmas Lake Edible Birdseed Ornaments

  Christmas Lake Pine Cone Bird Ornaments

  Christmas Ever After Green-Friendly Christmas Tips

  Meet Karen Schaler

  Books by Karen Schaler

  Praise for Karen Schaler

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Riley Reynolds heard them moments before she saw them. People were singing Christmas songs, different Christmas songs, all at the same time, in exuberant, joyful voices. There was “Joy to the World,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

  “What in the world . . .” Riley said as she stepped out of the hotel elevator into the lavish lobby of the Royal Grand Central Park, one of New York City’s finest hotels, and found more than a hundred high-spirited Christmas carolers. They were all wearing elaborate, vintage Victorian costumes and passionately singing as if their entry onto Santa’s Nice List depended on it.

  Riley barely had time to take it all in before she was surround by one group of carolers singing “Joy to the World.”

  “Joy to the world, now we sing

  Let the angel voices ring . . .

  Joy to the world, now we sing

  Repeat the sounding joy . . .”

  Riley quickly moved to the right and the left trying to get by them. She had a car waiting for her out front to take her to a live TV interview on the top-rated Sunrise in the City national morning show to promote her next romance novel. She didn’t have time for these carolers to repeat anything.

  “Help!” she called out, joking, but instantly regretted her request when one of the handsome male carolers took her hand and spun her around for a dance as he kept singing.

  “Joy to the world, now we sing . . .”

  “No, no, no,” she said, laughing as she was twirled around. “I gotta go.”

  When she let go of her dashing dance partner’s hand, a new group of carolers singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” circled her. Every time they sang “We wish you,” they’d point at her on the word YOU.

  She felt like she was trapped inside the musical production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol . . . on steroids.

  Then the two caroling groups faced off and got louder.

  “We wish you a merry Christmas,” the first group sang.

  “Joy to the world,” the second group of carolers countered.

  “We wish you a merry Christmas,” the first group sang louder.

  “This is insane,” Riley said, still laughing. When she finally saw a small opening to get by the carolers, she made a run for it. She was almost to the hotel’s front door when a third group of merry carolers, singing “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” started coming toward her.

  She narrowly escaped them by dancing her way around them just as the doorman opened the door for her.

  “Thank you!” Riley said to the doorman, breathing a huge sigh of relief. She looked back at the carolers, shaking her head. “This is . . .”

  “Amazing!” the doorman said.

  Riley gave him a skeptical look. Amazing wasn’t the word she was about to use. She had been thinking more along the lines of insane, crazy, nuts, but not amazing.

  “What is all this?” she asked, not able to help herself.

  The doorman was now happily humming along with the carolers singing “Joy to the World.”

  “Dueling Christmas carolers,” he answered and then continued humming.

  Riley laughed loudly. “Wait. What?”

  “You know, like dueling pianos,” the doorman said. “But instead this is with Christmas carolers. There’s a big competition this weekend at one of the Broadway theatres.”

  Riley shook her head in amazement as she headed out the door. “That’s really a thing?” She looked at the carolers, then at the doorman again. “You’re not making this up?”

  “Oh, it’s as real as Santa’s reindeer,” the doorman answered with a grin.

  Riley’s steps faltered.

  “What?” she asked, even more confused. “So it’s not real?”

  But her question was forgotten when a gust of wind caught her black scarf and sent it sailing down the street.

  “Oh no!” she called out as she raced after it. She had just splurged and bought the scarf yesterday. It was from a top designer and pure cashmere. The scarf danced in the wind before falling to the curb right next to a black town car. It was the only car waiting.

  “My car,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief as she snatched up her scarf and quickly grabbed the back passenger’s-side door handle. But when she opened the door to hop in, she found three carolers, singing “White Christmas.”

  The car’s driver, an older woman, was singing right along with them.

  Startled, Riley jumped back. “I’m so sorry. I thought this was my car.”

  When the carolers just kept singing, Riley quickly shut the door. She’d had enough Christmas carolers for one day.

  When she stepped back on the sidewalk and looked around, she didn’t see another car waiting. “Where’s my car?” she said to herself, growing more confused by the moment.

  When her phone rang, and she saw it was her new publicist, Mike Conneley, she took a deep breath. She knew without even answering that he probably already had his tinsel in a tangle.

  Before she even had a chance to say hello, Mike jumped right in.

  “Riley, where are you?” he demanded. “The car service just called and said they’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes, but you haven’t shown up.”

  “I’m right out front,” Riley answered as she paced back and forth in front of
the hotel. “There aren’t any cars here waiting for me. I mean, there was one, but it wasn’t mine.”

  It was starting to snow.

  Riley looked up at the sky in disbelief as chubby snowflakes started to fall.

  They were moving so slow you could catch them, but right now the only thing Riley was catching was grief from Mike.

  “You need to find your car now,” Mike barked. “Or get a cab, I don’t care. Just get here.”

  As Riley watched the snow start to fall faster, beginning to cover the sidewalk, she gave her stilettos a nervous look.

  “It’s snowing,” she said with disbelief. “It wasn’t supposed to snow today. It was supposed to be sunny and clear. I am not dressed to go wandering around trying to find a car that isn’t here.”

  “Then grab a cab. Just get here! You’re on live in forty-five minutes,” Mike shot back at her. “I called in a lot of favors to get you this interview.”

  “Then you should have made sure a car was here for me,” Riley grumbled under her breath.

  But Mike didn’t hear her. He’d already hung up.

  The snow and the wind were picking up fast. Riley quickly put up the hood of her black wool coat to try to salvage her TV-ready hair and makeup.

  “This is unbelievable,” she muttered to herself as she stepped out into the street, slipping and sliding in her stilettos as she tried to hail a cab.

  But all the cabs raced by her.

  She was about to give up and head back to the hotel when all of a sudden, she heard loud Christmas music. This time the Christmas music wasn’t carolers, but a car radio on the street blaring “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

  “Need a ride?”

  Riley whirled around to see a cab had pulled up.

  “Yes!” she said, relieved, but as she made a run for the cab she forgot about her high heels and practically fell onto the front of the car before jumping in the back seat.

  “Thank you so much!” she said, out of breath. “I need to go to twenty Franklin Street as fast as you can.”

  As the cab pulled back into heavy traffic, Riley texted Mike.

  I’m on my way!

  When they passed Rockefeller Center, Riley peered out the window at the spectacular Christmas tree, watching silvery snowflakes swirling in a winter dance, pirouetting perfectly before gently resting on the tree’s branches. The tree’s twinkling red Christmas lights magically illuminated the plaza, but right now, the only red lights Riley cared about were all the brake lights in front of them.

  Her cab was barely moving.

  She fidgeted in her seat. At this rate, she’d never make her interview. The snowflakes were getting bigger and falling faster.

  “This traffic is crazy,” Riley said, turning her attention to the taxi driver. “Is there any way out of this? Another way we could go that would be quicker? I’m really running late.”

  The driver was happily humming along to the Christmas classic playing on the radio, “Let it Snow!”

  The irony was not lost on Riley.

  When the grinning driver turned around and smiled at Riley, she did a double take.

  He had white hair, a white beard, and twinkling blue eyes, and looked suspiciously like . . . Santa Claus.

  She’d jumped into the cab so fast she hadn’t noticed what he looked like, but now she couldn’t miss how he was wearing a bright-red jacket with white fur trim.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” the Santa driver said with a big belly laugh. “You just need to believe I’ll get you to where you need to be on time.”

  But right now, all she could believe was that her Santa driver had spiked his hot cocoa this morning or was on a sugar high from eating too many Christmas cookies.

  She cringed as her phone dinged with another text from Mike. The text was in all caps. She hated when he did that.

  WHERE ARE YOU?!!!

  YOU’RE LIVE IN 20 MINUTES!!!

  If she missed this interview Mike would serve her up like a turkey at a Christmas dinner. Her publisher and agent were counting on her, and right now she couldn’t afford to do anything to upset them.

  As her cab crawled forward, she looked around and looked behind them.

  There was no escaping the glaring red brake lights.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. She was never late. She prided herself in always being organized and showing up early to everything, and she would have been early if the car Mike had set up for her had actually arrived.

  She knew she was lucky she’d been able to get a cab at all. When she’d lived in Manhattan, she’d always battled to get a ride whenever there was any kind of bad weather. All this gridlock was one thing she didn’t miss about living in the city.

  She also couldn’t figure out where all this snow was coming from. She had checked her weather app right before leaving her hotel room. There had been no snow in the forecast. None. If there had been, she never would have worn the shoes she was wearing. Now her brand-new black suede stilettos, with their spiky sky-high heels, which had seemed like such a perfect choice, were mocking her.

  Wearing the right shoes always gave her a boost of confidence, and that was something she needed today. If she’d known it was going to snow, she would have worn power boots, not power heels. She frowned as she looked down at her soggy shoes and wiggled her cold, wet toes.

  She looked back at her taxi driver, who was now munching away on a candy cane. She needed this jolly good fellow to be the real deal for a second.

  “Santa?” she said, leaning in, realizing how ridiculous she sounded but willing to play along in this Christmas fantasy if it meant saving her interview.

  Stopped at a light, her Santa driver immediately turned around and smiled at her. “Yes,” he answered with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Does this ride come with a Christmas wish?” Riley asked. “Because my wish would be to get to the TV station in the next five minutes. If you can make that happen, I’ll double your tip.”

  Santa chuckled as the light turned green, and he did some serious maneuvering around traffic to get them onto another street. As they started moving faster than Santa’s sleigh, Riley held on tight and thought she might just get her Christmas wish after all.

  Not that Riley believed in things like Christmas wishes.

  She’d outgrown that whole idea a long time ago. When she was little, growing up as an only child in a small town outside of Seattle, every Christmas her dad used to read her a holiday story he’d made up himself, every night before she went to bed around the holidays. It was their special time together. Riley smiled wistfully, remembering how much she’d loved his stories when he’d add beloved elements from familiar fairy tales. Some of her favorites has been his ChristmasElla—about how Cinderella spent her Christmas—Snow White and the Seven Christmas Eves, and The Little Mermaid’s Christmas Wish, and the list went on.

  Riley believed her dad’s Christmas storytelling was one of the reasons she’d wanted to be an author. She loved how the stories always took her to another time and place, to magical worlds where Christmas wishes and dreams came true, and there was always a happily-ever-after.

  But when her father had gotten sick and passed away when she was just eight, the stories had stopped, and she had stopped believing in things like Santa Claus and Christmas wishes.

  Riley still remembered how heartbroken she and her mom had been that first Christmas after her dad had died. Nothing had been the same. Christmas wasn’t even Christmas anymore. So the next Christmas, her mom had taken her to Hawaii where, instead of celebrating the holiday, they’d had a wonderful beach vacation. This had started a new tradition, and every Christmas after that they always went to Hawaii and escape all the holiday hoopla.

  Basically, they just skipped Christmas and all the traditional Christmas activities like baking cookies and decorating a Christmas tree,
and spent their time going sailing, snorkeling trips, and taking surf lessons.

  Growing up, Riley had always looked forward to their annual Hawaii trips. When her friends had told her she was missing out, she had thought they were the ones who were missing something. She loved her time at the beach with her mom, and as she got older, she never missed celebrating the kind of traditional Christmas she could barely remember.

  When Riley was a freshman in college, her mom had remarried and continued their Hawaii tradition with her new husband, Terry. Riley was, of course, always invited, but she’d been too busy with school, taking extra classes over the Christmas break, to make it to Hawaii.

  She honestly hadn’t minded missing her annual Hawaii trips because she was so focused on graduating early so she could save money on tuition and rent. Going to school in Southern California was spendy, but she’d felt it was worth it to go to one of the best broadcast journalism schools in the country.

  After hearing stories from her high school English teacher about how hard it was to make a living writing books and movies, she’d decided it was safer to be a TV news reporter than an author. That way, she would still be telling stories, and hopefully they’d be stories that would make a difference and help change the world for the better. She’d always promised herself that someday she’d go back to trying to be an author, when she was more established and had some money in the bank so she wouldn’t have to worry about paying rent.

  It hadn’t at all worked out the way she’d planned. She’d actually written her first novel when she was flat broke, but one thing had stayed the same. She always worked Christmas, no matter what job she had. It was the perfect opportunity to get ahead at work while everyone else was taking time off.

  The irony was that after her last summer romance novel had the lowest sales numbers in her career, her publisher had decided writing her first Christmas novel was the best way to win back her readers. And the plan was for her to start promoting it now during the Christmas season to get a bunch of buzz going early, even though her book wouldn’t be coming out until next Christmas. So now she was going to have to write about—and promote—a holiday she had expertly avoided all these years.