Page 4 of The Christmas Arrangement
No, this is even worse. At least teenaged Dash was too stupid to know he was a punch line.
I blink at him. “That’s it? I’m screwed?”
“That’s it. Unless a miracle falls into our laps.”
Before I can tear him a new one thanks to the magic of cellular data, the call drops. I stare at the blank screen in disbelief.
Luna chuckles. “The coverage here sucks, but Brody’s timing, as always, is impeccable.”
I don’t laugh. “What am I gonna do?”
“Pray for a Christmas miracle.”
I spring from the chair and storm out of the room. I need some air.
Chapter 3
Winter Wonderland: Celebrity Edition
Ivy
Three hours earlier
* * *
I’m wrestling with a large white snowball hydrangea when a high-pitched shriek sounds directly behind me. I jump and nearly drop the heavy planter on my foot. I bobble it and, at the last second, ease it into the red wagon I borrowed from my dad along with his red pickup truck.
The wagon’s nearly full of blooms, but I’ve barely made a dent in the mountain of flowers still in the truck bed. I really should’ve wrangled someone into helping me with this delivery. Preferably someone muscular.
I brush the thought away. I am woman, hear me roar. Or grunt, at least. Thankfully, I don’t have to traverse the frozen, rocky ground all these flowers. As requested, the wide doors to the MacIntoshes’ heated barn were propped open for me so I could back the pickup into the space, protecting the flowers from the elements.
I push my bangs out of my eyes and tuck them back under the hood of my park as I turn in the direction of the nails-on-a-chalkboard noise. As suspected, it’s coming from Quinn MacIntosh. Her curly blonde hair bounces, probably from the decibel level.
Correction: the bouncing curls are courtesy of the way her entire body is jittering and twitching as she crosses the threshold from the blustery outdoors into the barn.
“Where have you been?” Against all odds, her voice climbs even higher up the vocal register.
I flash her a slight frown as I resume the task of hauling oversized flower arrangements out of the truck bed and nestling them in the wagon.
Quinn and my sisters and I have been friends since she and I were both in diapers. Holly, Merry, and I call her dads Uncle Chris and Uncle Pedro. She calls our father Papa Nick. It’s that kind of friendship. In all this time, I’ve never known her to be high strung.
“I’ve been at the shop putting together your order.” I speak in a soothing tone like she’s a rabid raccoon. “And, I’m early. Why are you tweaking? Did Merry stop by with a plate of her chocolate-espresso balls?”
I told my sister to cut back on the espresso powder in her eleventh-hour energy bites, but she insisted people need the boost to get through the jam-packed month of December festivities that Mistletoe Mountain is famous for. She has a point, but poor Quinn looks like she’s about to blast off.
“What? No.” Her eyes grow huge. “She’s not coming out here, is she? She can’t!”
She’s as edgy as a reindeer on an ice-slicked roof. I make the universal gesture for ‘calm down’ with my mittened hands. “She didn’t say anything about a surprise visit. It was just a guess based on how amped up you are. What’s going on with you?”
She heaves a long, loud sigh of relief and ignores the question. “Oh, good. I don’t need another lecture about the NDA.”
I pause with a brilliant red amaryllis in my arms and raise an eyebrow. “NDA? As in a nondisclosure agreement?”
She nods.
“What kind of photo shoot is this, anyway?”
“I told you—it’s a really big deal.”