Books by Fern Michaels
Fancy Dancer
No Safe Secret
Wishes for Christmas
About Face
Perfect Match
A Family Affair
Forget Me Not
The Blossom Sisters
Balancing Act
Tuesday’s Child
Betrayal
Southern Comfort
To Taste the Wine
Sins of the Flesh
Sins of Omission
Return to Sender
Mr. and Miss Anonymous
Up Close and Personal
Fool Me Once
Picture Perfect
The Future Scrolls
Kentucky Sunrise
Kentucky Heat
Kentucky Rich
Plain Jane
Charming Lily
What You Wish For
The Guest List
Listen to Your Heart
Celebration
Yesterday
Finders Keepers
Annie’s Rainbow
Sara’s Song
Vegas Sunrise
Vegas Heat
Vegas Rich
Whitefire
Wish List
Dear Emily
Christmas at Timberwoods
The Sisterhood Novels:
Crash and Burn
Point Blank
In Plain Sight
Eyes Only
Kiss and Tell
Blindsided
Gotcha!
Home Free
Déjà Vu
Cross Roads
Game Over
Deadly Deals
Vanishing Act
Razor Sharp
Under the Radar
Final Justice
Collateral Damage
Fast Track
Hokus Pokus
Hide and Seek
Free Fall
Lethal Justice
Sweet Revenge
The Jury
Vendetta
Payback
Weekend Warriors
The Men of the Sisterhood
Novels:
High Stakes
Fast and Loose
Double Down
The Godmothers Series:
Getaway (E-Novella Exclusive)
Spirited Away (E-Novella Exclusive)
Hideaway (E-Novella Exclusive)
Classified
Breaking News
Deadline
Late Edition
Exclusive
The Scoop
E-Book Exclusives:
Desperate Measures
Seasons of Her Life
To Have and To Hold
Serendipity
Captive Innocence
Captive Embraces
Captive Passions
Captive Secrets
Captive Splendors
Cinders to Satin
For All Their Lives
Texas Heat
Texas Rich
Texas Fury
Texas Sunrise
Anthologies:
Winter Wishes
The Most Wonderful Time
When the Snow Falls
Secret Santa
A Winter Wonderland
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Making Spirits Bright
Holiday Magic
Snow Angels
Silver Bells
Comfort and Joy
Sugar and Spice
Let it Snow
A Gift of Joy
Five Golden Rings
Deck the Halls
Jingle All the Way
FERN MICHAELS
Holly and Ivy
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Books by Fern Michaels
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 by Fern Michaels.
Fern Michaels is a registered trademark of KAP 5, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944849
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0317-0
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: October 2017
eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0316-3
eISBN-10: 1-4967-0316-2
First Kensington Electronic Edition: October 2017
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.
The rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.
—“The Holly and the Ivy,” traditional carol
Prologue
Pine City, North Carolina
December 2008
“We’ll be just fine, Ivy. They were great on the flight to Charlotte, it’s a quick one. We’ll be home by the time you’re having your first cup of coffee,” John Fine explained to his wife of five years. “Of course this all depends if our flight arrives on time,” he added.
Ivy smiled. “Dad would spit nails if he heard you say that.” John had taken their twins, Elizabeth and James, for a three-day trip to Charlotte to visit his sister, who was home on a short leave from the military. Ivy’s sister-in-law had never met her niece and nephew, and they had both decided this was a great time, since Piper was spending the few days in Charlotte with her and John’s parents. They had flown courtesy of Macintosh Airlines, owned by Ivy’s family, and most recently touted as the fastest-growing airline in the country. She had had a mandatory meeting she couldn’t get out of, but felt sure John would do fine on his own. It was only for three days.
“Then make sure you don’t tell him I said that,” John teased.
“I won’t. Don’t forget to give Elizabeth Mr. Tibbles when you put her to bed tonight.”
John had called her their
first night away, explaining that Elizabeth refused to go to bed without Mr. Tibbles, a stuffed bear Elizabeth had become attached to when Ivy had moved her into her big-girl bedroom a month ago. Being a twin, her daughter was extremely attached to her older-by-three-minutes brother, James. It was at James’s insistence that Ivy had decided they were old enough for rooms of their own. Added to that was the fact that her son made it very clear that he did not like girly dolls in his room. After all, he was three years old.
Ivy thought of her daughter’s cherubic little face and smiled at the memory of her waving good-bye as they had boarded the plane. Now she was glad she’d remembered to tuck Mr. Tibbles in the suitcase at the last minute.
“Trust me, after last night’s fiasco hunting for that bear, it’ll be a long time before I ever forget Mr. Tibbles.”
“I should have told you, I could’ve saved you a bedtime fit,” Ivy said, a smile spreading across her face. John hadn’t witnessed their bedtime ritual since they had put Elizabeth in a room of her own.
“We’ll both put her to bed tomorrow,” John added.
Ivy knew this was his way of telling her he was sorry he hadn’t been at home to put the kids to bed lately, but she understood. He was her father’s right-hand man at the airline and traveled frequently; though he tried to work his schedule around their family, it wasn’t always possible. She worked for her father’s airline as well, but since she’d had the kids, she had tried to keep her hours as close to nine to five as one could. Yesterday’s meeting, however, had been mandatory, so John took the kids on his own. He was a great father, and Ivy hadn’t given a second thought to his flying to Charlotte with the twins. His first time flying with the kids without her.
“I’ll hold you to that. Now, let me tell them good night. They’ve got an early morning ahead of them.”
She heard John call Elizabeth and James to the phone, their excited voices becoming louder as they neared the phone.
“Mommy, I want to kiss you,” Elizabeth said. “Make the noise like Daddy does, okay?”
Ivy smiled. On the nights John wasn’t home, whenever possible, he called them at bedtime, and he would make lip-puckering, sloppy-kiss noises over the phone. Both kids would giggle, asking him to repeat it over and over, and now, it seemed, it was her turn.
She did her best to replicate John’s kisses, but Elizabeth told her she wasn’t as noisy as Daddy, but it was okay. James, her little man, informed her he was too big for phone kisses, and said good night, he would see her tomorrow.
Ivy could hear John, Piper, and her in-laws laughing in the background. Poor James—at three, he was already an old soul.
“I’ll say good night, and we’ll see you in the morning,” John said before hanging up.
Content with the evening’s end, Ivy had decided earlier in the day to surprise John and the kids with a giant Christmas tree, which they could spend the day decorating. At lunchtime, she had gone to Baker’s Tree Farm, one of the oldest family-owned tree farms in Pine City, and picked out a twelve-foot Fraser fir, making arrangements for it to be delivered to the house this afternoon. It was only ten days until Christmas, and they had never waited this long to put up their tree. With her bout of bronchitis turning into pneumonia, then both kids coming down with the chicken pox, it simply had not been any kind of priority.
Better late than never, she thought as she made herself a cup of hot tea before heading into the living room, where she’d had the tree set up. The hundreds of tiny white lights Kyle Baker had added made her job so much easier. While she loved decorating the tree, in the past she had been tangled up in too many strings of Christmas lights to really enjoy it, so Baker’s effort had taken care of this for her.
She inhaled the fresh pine scent and sighed. This was her favorite time of year, and she never tired of dragging the dozens of boxes downstairs, one by one, removing the ornaments, each with its own special memory. She had placed the boxes next to the dark brown leather sofa. Placing her cup of tea on the coffee table, she carefully removed the tissue paper from the first ornament.
It was a small crystal angel etched in gold trim, which was now barely visible, its soft blue eyes had faded with time. It had a small chip on its left wing, and Ivy teared up every year when she removed this ornament from her special box. The angel was the last ornament given to her by her mother before she had died, when Ivy was just nine years old. She’d cherished it her entire life. There were only a few clear memories left of her mother, as the woman had been ill ever since Ivy was a baby, but she never failed to remember her mother’s excitement during the Christmas holiday. She seemed to come alive just for the month of December; then, when the cold, stark month of January rolled around, she would return to her room upstairs and spend her days and nights being cared for by Lila, her nurse and the mother of one of Ivy’s friends.
Her mother had given her the angel on their last Christmas together. Ivy would never forget her words when she’d presented the small ornament to her.
“Every time you hang this on the Christmas tree, know I am with you.”
She hadn’t really understood the significance at the time, but as she got older, she knew exactly what her mother’s words meant. And each year, she would hang the ornament at the very top of the tree, knowing that her mother was looking down from heaven and was always with her. She carefully placed the angel aside, as this would be added to the tree later, when Elizabeth and James had their chance to decorate with their own three-year-old-appropriate ornaments. They were still little, and she didn’t want to risk her special ornaments getting broken. Ivy understood three-year-old hands weren’t as careful as her twenty-eight-year-old ones.
She spent the next two hours unpacking boxes of tiny sleighs, smiling snowmen, and dozens of bells in red and green. She left the colored balls in their boxes, but stacked them beside the tree, counting each box to make sure she had divided them evenly. Three boxes apiece should be enough. One for each year should just about cover their limited attention spans.
Ivy planned to spend the next week frantically shopping for the kids; then she and John would remain at home until after the New Year. They had talked briefly about taking the kids on a skiing vacation, but neither had committed just yet. Making last-minute plans was one of the perks of having a father who owned an airline. They never had to wait for discounted tickets, blackout dates were unheard of, and the long lines through security were avoided, since she, John, and the kids had applied and received TSA security clearance as soon as the service was available to the public.
They tried to keep their home life as routine as possible, but there were times when both she and John were called away. Her mother’s former nurse, Lila, had a daughter, Rebecca, who was three years older than Ivy. They’d been friends since they were kids, and now Rebecca was as good as family. Elizabeth and James called her Aunt Becca, and Rebecca had saved Ivy on numerous occasions when she and John had to leave on urgent business trips. With luck, they could all stay home the next few weeks and simply enjoy being a family.
While Ivy missed her mother terribly, she had never felt as though she had missed things other girls her age had. Her father, an incredible man, had made it his life’s mission to see that her needs were met in the same way that girls her age who had mothers were. He had encouraged her friendship with Rebecca, and even though at the time of her mother’s death, the three-year age difference between them seemed enormous, they’d been as close as sisters and remained so. Her father took great pride in being a hands-on parent. Even though the airline often took him all over the world, she was never in any doubt that she was the most important person in his life. Ivy would accompany him sometimes, and these trips made her decide to follow in her father’s footsteps. She had attended Duke University, received her master’s degree in business, and to this day enjoyed every minute of the business her father had worked so hard to make a success. And it was a major success. Its main hub was in Charlotte, a short plane ride from Pine City, bu
t most of her business could be conducted in the Pine City branch office. Ivy did her best to be a loving wife and mother, put her family first, and if the light in John’s eyes and the joy she saw in her children’s faces were any indication of her success, she thought she was doing a pretty darn good job at this family thing. She smiled, as that was John’s favorite way of referring to her as a mother and himself as a father. Their family thing.
For the next hour, she added the ornaments that required a special connection to the strands of lights. When she finished, she viewed her handiwork. While she would never be the next Martha Stewart, so far the tree looked pretty festive and smelled divine. Once the kids added their decorations, it would be complete. She reached for her mug of tea, took a sip of its now-cold contents, made a face, and headed to the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea, hoping its calming effects would relax her enough so she could rest. She planned to get up before the kids arrived to make their favorite breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. She filled her cup with water and heated it in the microwave. Normally, she would use her teakettle to heat the water, but she just wanted to take her cup upstairs and unwind with a hot bath.
Ten minutes later, she was soaking in a steaming tub of hot water, the master bathroom filled with the luscious-smelling gardenia-scented bath bombs she’d purchased at a local shop in Pine City, which had just opened last month. Ivy frequented as many local businesses as possible. Shopping in malls and chain stores was fine for the most part, but she had always preferred to shop locally. It was more personal, plus she had made a few good friends by doing so throughout the years. There was a new children’s shop that had opened in the summer, and she hadn’t had a chance to check it out. Rebecca told her it specialized in unique toys and handmade clothes. This might be the perfect place for her to get a jump start on her late holiday shopping.