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.
When she’d tried to get out of it by telling her agent, Margo, the Christmas novel lane was already overcrowded with best-selling authors, Margo had shot her down. Margo had insisted that Riley needed to do whatever the publisher wanted. Margo was confident Riley would have no trouble writing a holiday happily-ever-after.
But Riley wasn’t so sure. Still, realizing she didn’t have much choice, she was trying to give herself a holiday attitude adjustment and decided everything would be fine. She would just google Christmas and figure it out.
But first she needed to get through this live interview Mike had set up for her. And even though she had no clue what she was going to write about, Mike had pitched the story to Sunrise in the City, promising that they could have the exclusive on her big announcement, which included a unique twist.
Riley laughed a little just thinking about it.
Of course, Mike had been the one to also come up with this twist. He was from Los Angeles, and he was all about trading favors and leveraging contacts. Mike was only a few years older than she was, but he had this superior attitude that always made her feel like he was her boss, instead of the other way around. While she didn’t always appreciate his holier-than-thou attitude, the bottom line was Margo insisted she needed him, and Margo hadn’t steered her wrong yet.
Riley also knew they had to act fast to get the attention away from her last novel, Heart of Summer, which had been such a
