Welcome to Christmas, Texas: A Christmas Network Novel Read online

  Christmas, Texas has as much magic as it has charm and only reveals itself to those who need it. The town was settled 1820 by the original Winter Texan, Santa Claus. He kissed the snowy North Pole goodbye and moved his whole operation to the sunny Texas Hill Country where there are never blizzard warnings and the only thing icy is his iced tea.

  When Lana Green crashes her car into the “Welcome to Christmas, Texas. You’re not lost, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be” sign, she doesn’t necessarily agree with the town motto. She was on her way to Fredericksburg for a business meeting when she got lost in a thunderstorm. Since she has no intention of sleeping in her car during a thunderstorm and she has zero cell reception, she pulls her suitcase out of the trunk and marches toward town. When it comes to hating Christmas, she could give Ebenezer Scrooge a run for his money so visiting Christmas, Texas the week before Christmas is bound to be a lesson in torture.

  Sheriff Nick Van De Berg is out on patrol when he runs across a Lexus wrapped around the welcome sign, but the car’s empty. Surely the driver didn’t walk to town through the thunderstorm. As the storm gathers in intensity, so does his fear that something bad has happened to the driver. After checking the fast-swelling river, lower water crossings, and every single road in town, he stops by the Christmas Tree Inn where he finds Lana Green, his college sweetheart and the one that got away, sipping a mug of hot chocolate.

  His Christmas wish every year since they broke up was a second chance with Lana.

  Now his wish has finally come true.

  Can he convince Lana to take a chance on him and on Christmas, Texas?

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  Other Books By Katie Graykowski

  Welcome to Christmas, Texas

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  Other Books By Katie Graykowski

  About the Author

  * * *

  Other Books By Katie Graykowski

  * * *

  ROMANCE

  THE LONE STARS

  Perfect Summer

  Saving Grace

  Changing Lanes

  The Debra Dilemma

  Charming Coco

  THE MARILYNS

  Place Your Betts

  Getting Lucky

  Sorry Charlie

  TEXAS ROSE RANCH

  Texas Rose Forever

  Texas Rose Always

  Texas Rose Evermore

  Texas Rose Forgiven- Out soon

  THE FORT WORTH WRANGERS

  Lyric and Lingerie

  Harmony and High Heels

  MYSTERY

  PTO MURDER CLUB

  Rest In Pieces

  Blown To Pieces

  Just One Piece

  URBAN FANTASY SCI-FI

  TIME, INC.

  The Navigator -Out Soon

  THE TOUGH LADIES

  Cold As January

  Sweet Susie Sweet

  Welcome to Christmas, Texas

  Katie Graykowski

  Copyright © 2018 by Katie Graykowski

  All Rights Reserved.

  Editing and Formatting by Anessa Books

  No part of this work may be reproduced in any fashion without the express, written consent of the copyright holder.

  Welcome to Christmas, Texas is a work of fiction. All characters portrayed herein are fictitious and are not based on any real persons living or dead.

  Dedication

  For my grandmothers, Mom, Nell, and Doris. Thanks for making wonderful Christmas memories with me. I cherish them as I cherish the time I was lucky enough to have with each of you.

  Chapter 1

  “I don’t want a fixer-upper, Mother, I want a move-in ready.” Lana Green glanced up at the small floodlit billboard that got closer and closer in her front windshield as the tires of her Lexus SUV ate up the two-lane road in front of her. The headlights did their best to light up the starless night, but the pelting rain swallowed a good portion of the light leaving only a tiny bit to illuminate the road ahead of her.

  “All men are fixer-uppers, they don’t come move-in ready.” Patricia Green’s cultured old-money voice blared from the car’s speakers. Her mother was the premier realtor in the Austin, Texas market. She spoke only in realtor terms, favored lots of sparkly diamonds, and thought that only married people were happy. “What was wrong with Justin? He’s a very successful mortgage broker.”

  In her mother’s book that made him good people.

  “He talked during the whole movie, and he ate popcorn one kernel at a time.” She was pretty sure that only serial killers ate movie theater popcorn one kernel at a time. He’d groaned loudly every time she’d gone in for a handful. She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s it? He’s a movie-talker and a single-kernel popcorn eater? I thought you were going to tell me that his house on Lake Travis is in the hundred-year floodplain or worse the fifty-year. I know for a fact that he overpaid for it by at least fifty-grand, but no one’s perfect.” Her mother seemed truly horrified by the possibility that her daughter might date a man whose house may or may not flood. Forget finding a loving partner just make sure his house is out of the floodplain. “You can fix the movie chatter and crazy popcorn eating. In a man and a prospective property, you need to look for potential. You have to see past the design flaws and picture what it could be. I chose your father for his potential, and after years he turned out fine.”

  Lana’s poor father had put up with years of what her mother called “grooming,” but the rest of the world called nagging before his heart gave out running a Christmas Eve marathon he’d trained for only because his wife brow-beat him into it. Lana had been sixteen when he died, and she tried really hard not to blame her mother.

  “I have to go. I’m almost to Fredericksburg.” The billboard’s message ahead appeared watery and slightly out of focus.

  “Okay, I love you. Talk to you soon.” Her mother hung up.

  Lana squinted trying to read the sign, “Welcome to Christmas, Texas. You’re not lost, you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”

  That was an interesting slogan. If they’d hired a marketing firm for that one, she hoped they didn’t pay much.

  Wait, hold on a minute.

  Christmas, Texas? She was supposed to be in Fredericksburg. She couldn’t be lost. She was never lost. She had a bullet-proof sense of direction which she hated to admit came from her mother.

  She pulled onto the grass shoulder, grabbed her smartphone out of the cupholder and pulled up Google Maps. According to this, she was in the middle of Fredericksburg, Texas. She looked around like she would be able to see anything in the storm, but all she saw were tiny rivers of rain running down her windshield. She couldn’t make out anything. Apparently, she was on the only one on the loneliest road in the Texas Hill Country.

  She studied her GPS. It still said that she was right in the middle of Fredericksburg. Using her index finger and thumb, she tried to zoom in, but it didn’t work. She looked around again in case she would be able to see something now. But nope, the storm raged on and the night was still starless.

  Maybe because of the storm whatever satellite that magically beamed dow
n GPS coordinates to her phone wasn’t working? She’d never had a problem before, but that’s what happened to her satellite TV when it was raining.

  She did a perfect three-point turnaround and headed away from Christmas, Texas. Fredericksburg had to be close. She drove for a good five minutes, but the Welcome to Christmas, Texas sign never seemed to get any closer.

  She eased off the gas and rubbed her eyes. She had to be seeing things.

  Her eyes flickered open just in time to see a shadow of something jump in front of her car. She slammed on the brakes and fished tailed. Her wheels locked and she skidded across the road and crashed head-on into the Welcome to Christmas, Texas sign.

  Her airbags deployed and knocked her back against the seat.

  It was strange, the sign had seemed farther away.

  She sat in her cocoon of airbags and took stock. Her neck ached from the jarring impact, and her left shoulder was raging-mad because her seatbelt had locked up, but otherwise, she felt fine. No headache and no broken bones.

  In the movies, after the airbags deploy, the heroine jauntily stabs them with a knife or shoots them so they deflate, but Lana was minus a knife and a gun. She’d never anticipated needing to bring a knife to a fight with her own car.

  Also, in the movies, this is where the handsome, muscular, unattached town sheriff just happened by and knocked on her window to make sure she was okay. She went perfectly still waiting, but no one knocked.

  She rolled her eyes. She watched too many romcom movies and read way too many romance novels. She was a resourceful marketing exec who owned her own firm. She didn’t need a handsome, musclebound hunky sheriff to save her. She was perfectly able to save herself.

  On the off chance, she gave it another minute.

  No one knocked on her window. She brought her phone close to her face and dialed 911. Nothing happened. She had no bars. How could she have no bars? She had just been on the phone with her mother. This was ridiculous. This wasn’t rural Guatemala, this was Texas. Cell phone coverage was right up there with Freedom of Speech in her personal Bill of Rights. In fact, what did Freedom of Speech matter if she couldn’t call anyone to talk to them. Weren’t cell phone companies always bragging about coast-to-coast coverage? It looked like they had fudged it.

  Well, she could understand. She might have rounded-up on a couple of products for her clients.

  She put her car in reverse, but her Lexus, Veronica, only spun her tires. She stomped on the gas, but all she got were spinning back tires.

  She fought the airbags to open her door and rolled out of the car. Gravel bit into the two square inches of exposed knee above her black Gucci Sylvie knee boots and her black Channel skirt as rain pelted her from all directions. She wiped her hair out of her face and stood. She held her cell phone up heavenward in case that gave her better reception, but it didn’t work.

  She turned on the flashlight feature and shined it on Veronica’s hood. Poor Veronica had taken some serious damage and was actually wrapped around the billboard.

  She was all alone on a desolate rural Texas road in a rainstorm—thunder crackled behind her… make that a thunderstorm with a phone that didn’t work and a car she was afraid would never work again. There was no way she was sleeping in her car—there wasn’t room for both her and the airbags.

  Lana leaned into her car, turned off the engine, wrestled her purse and sunglasses from the airbags and popped the trunk. She unzipped her overnight bag, slid her leather work tote into it, zipped up, and set the bag next to her on the road. She slipped her Channel sunglasses on top of her head like a headband to keep her hair out of her eyes and settled her Louis Vuitton purse high on her shoulder.

  With one hand, she held her phone’s flashlight out so she could see in front of her and grabbed her rolling suitcase with the other. The icepick heel of her boot got caught in a rut in the road and she stumbled, but thank goodness she didn’t fall. Her suitcase was hard to roll one-handed in the pouring rain so she stuffed her phone flashlight-side-out in the V of her cleavage so she could still use the light but would have both hands to roll the bag.

  Slowly, she made her way to the faint twinkling lights of what was supposed to be Christmas, Texas. She hoped Christmas was a real town and not one of those made up Texas tourist towns like Luckenbach that only had a tiny Post Office, an even tinier bar, a stage, and a kissing booth. The town lights were a good sign.

  She glanced down at the road and tried to keep the rain out of her eyes. When she looked up, she was about a quarter of a mile from the Christmas General Store. It seemed like only a second ago she could barely see the town’s lights.

  She shook her head. She’d probably been walking longer than she’d thought. Had to be.

  Or maybe it was the storm?

  Her super cute boots were rubbing blisters on her baby toes so maybe she had been walking longer than she’d thought. These boots weren’t made for walking, but what else could she do. She shivered and pulled her soggy suit jacket tighter around her which did nothing to cut the chilly wind that only now seemed to have started blowing. It looked like the storm had heralded a cold front. The temperature seemed to have dropped from the sixties to the forties.

  Lana continued to shiver. Main street, or what she was sure would be the main street was lined with boxy wooden or red brick buildings connected by a wooden sidewalk that was popular in old western movies and small Texas towns. She noticed that it wasn’t street lights she’d seen from the highway, but Christmas lights. Every square inch of the town square was plastered in them. If everything was covered in a new blanket of snow, it would be the perfect Christmas card. Only, central Texas rarely got snow, and if they did, it wouldn’t be enough to blanket anything.

  “Well, hello there. You look like you could use some help.” A woman called from the front porch of the Christmas Tree Inn as she marched down the steps two at a time.

  Lana could barely make her out. She could tell she was female by the tone of her voice, but that was it. “I had a car accident right outside of town, and my cell phone doesn’t work. Do you have a phone I could use?”

  “Of course.” The woman was a blonde who wore a dark green Christmas Tree Inn sweatshirt. She had to be in her mid-thirties.

  “Is Fredericksburg nearby?” Not that Lana was planning on walking there, but if she stayed the night here, she could still make her morning meeting in Fredericksburg before she left for San Antonio.

  “It’s about thirty miles that way.” The woman pointed over her left shoulder and grabbed the handle of Lana’s suitcase. “I’m Janis. I run the Christmas Tree Inn. Let’s get you inside so you can warm up and dry out. I’ve got a pot of beef stew on the stove. I’ll get you a bowl so you can warm up from the inside out.”

  “That sounds fantastic. I’m Lana.” She smiled as she offered her hand out for the woman to shake. The kindness of strangers never ceased to amaze her.

  “Nice to meet you, Lana.” Her handshake was firm. “You’re hobbling. Did you hurt yourself in the accident? I’ll call Dr. Janssen.” She picked up the suitcase as if it weighed nothing and ushered Lana up the stairs and into the inn.

  “Oh no. I’ll be fine. My limping has more to do with my choice of boots than it does with my car accident.”

  “Those sure are some fancy boots.” Janis helped her up the steps.

  “Thanks. I loved them in the store, but on my feet, not so much. They are better to look at than to walk in.” Even if the boots weren’t ruined, she was never wearing them again.

  Janis held the front door open for Lana. “I’m going to put you in the Welcome Suite. There’s a big clawfoot in the bathroom, and we have an endless supply of hot water. You can take you a hot bath while I build you a fire in the fireplace and bring you up a hot bowl of stew.”

  “You are so very kind.” Lana point to the long high wooden bar that she supposed was the front desk. “Don’t you need for me to check in? I should pay for the room.”

  Janis waved it
off. “We’ll take care of that tomorrow. Right now, let’s get you settled.”

  “Oh, okay.” She’d never heard of a hotel that let its guest register the next day, but she was anxious to get into that hot bath. “Is there a phone I can use in the room?”

  “No. You can use the phone in my office.” Janis pointed to a door behind the front desk.

  Lana pulled out her cell phone and glanced down at the screen in case there as cell coverage. All she saw was a black screen. She pressed the button on the side to wake it up only it didn’t wake up. She shook it like she was waking a sleeping child, but still nothing happened. It was dead. It had to be the rain. The phone was supposed to be water resistant, but with the buckets of rain coming down, clearly its resistance had lost the fight. “Do you have any rice? My phone’s water-logged and I need the phone number out of it to call my assistant.”

  Jill would be worried when Lana didn’t show up to the Bed and Breakfast in Fredericksburg. She’d call Lana’s mother who would assume the worst and call in the Texas Rangers, the governor, and the Marines.

  “Yes.” Janis set the suitcase down and stepped behind the counter. She pulled out a gallon zip-top plastic bag full of rice. “I keep this around for emergencies.”

  Lana slipped her phone in the bag, zipped it closed and shoved it in her purse. “Thanks.”

  Hopefully, it wasn’t a total loss and she could pull some numbers off of it.

  “The elevator’s over here.” Janis nodded to the right.

  Lana followed Janis to an old freight elevator complete with the metal grate manual door. She leaned in closer to take in the tiny scroll work on the metal of the grate. “That’s beautiful. Is it original?”

  The woman folded back the door and waited for Lana to enter and then rolled the suitcase in and closed the door. “Yes, the hotel was built the same year as the town was incorporated in 1820.” She pointed to the carved scrollwork on the trim around the door. “Everything’s original.”