Candy Cane Lane: Powder Springs, #3

By Maggie Marr

Clarissa McGovern has everything a big-time Hollywood movie producer could want, and that includes some big-time awards! But all her success can't prepare her for Christmas on Candy Cane Lane in her hometown of Powder Springs. Clarissa's mother treats Christmas like a military campaign and this year is especially important because Clarissa's little sister is about to get engaged! This is the perfect McGovern Christmas until Clarissa discovers that her former boyfriend, who proposed to Clarissa one Christmas ago, is also staying at the McGovern house for Christmas. All Clarissa's feelings for Norris that she thought were gone have returned and just in time for a family-filled Christmas on Candy Cane Lane.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maggie Marr
• Release date: Nov 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386814030

Book preview

Candy Cane Lane

A Powder Springs Novella

Maggie Marr

About the Book

Clarissa McGovern has everything a big-time Hollywood movie producer could want and that includes some big-time awards! But all her success can't prepare her for Christmas on Candy Cane Lane in her home town of Powder Springs. Clarissa's mother treats Christmas like a military campaign, and this year is especially important because Clarissa's little sister is about to get engaged! This is the perfect McGovern Christmas until Clarissa discovers that her former boyfriend, who proposed to Clarissa one Christmas ago, is also staying at the McGovern house for Christmas. All Clarissa's feelings for Norris, that she thought were gone have returned and just in time for a family-filled Christmas on Candy Cane Lane.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to Meghan Farrell.

Thank you for your work, dedication, and friendship.

Chapter 1

Santa was high.

Higher than Clarissa could remember him ever being on any Christmas before this one. He leaned to one side as though about to fall from his sleigh. He was high, and he was lopsided. The entire angle was off.

Clarissa stopped in the center of the sidewalk. A path that looked like powder sugar sprinkled over brick led to the front wrap-around porch, and up, up, up, above the third floor turret, near the kitchen chimney, higher than he’d ever been in Christmases past, was Santa.

How in the hell did Daddy get that up there? What was Mother’s problem? Sending a nearly seventy-year-old man up a snowy, slanted rooftop to place a plastic Santa and reindeer? At an angle. Jeez, Mother was bonkers . . . or Daddy had excellent life insurance . . . or both.

Both.

It was no use instructing Mother on her insanity and complete disregard for Daddy’s life, because Mother would simply say, This is Candy Cane Lane, and we can’t disappoint our friends and neighbors.

Incurring neighborly disappointment was a rather large concern for Mother, perhaps in the top ten on Eliza McGovern’s List of Shameful Acts. At the very least, top twenty.

Clarissa glanced behind her. The sun still clung to the horizon, so there was too much light for the cars to begin their slow processional down the street. No, the slow parade of cars to see Christmas lights, decorations, and giant old Victorian homes looking like huge old ladies glittering in their holiday finery didn’t begin until the cover of night.

Kudos to Mother. Eliza McGovern competed as though Christmas decorating was an Olympic event and the McGovern Victorian would definitely win gold this year. Mom (with Dad’s obedient help) won year after year after year after year. The house couldn’t look more horribly perfect, in an old-fashioned-Christmas kind of way. White lights trimmed every edge of the house. The pine trees in the front yard were decorated with red and white lights so evenly spaced it looked as if a pack of elves had swarmed the trees and hand-placed each light.

While Santa was high and a bit katywampus, he smiled and waved from his sleigh pulled by eight reindeer (plus a special hand-made Rudolph—Mother was nothing if not a Christmas populist) strung between the back chimney and the roof. The angle gave the appearance that Santa, with his giant sack of presents, was landing in preparation of leaving the McGoverns an ungodly number of holiday gifts that Clarissa’s mother would’ve spent the last ten months (yes, Eliza McGovern did begin shopping for Christmas in March!) collecting and wrapping.

There could be no more Christmas-y house in all of Powder Springs, could there? Not even the Emersons, her parents’ neighbors since before Clarissa was born (and Mom’s biggest competitor where Christmas decorations were concerned), had more carefully curated decorations than Mother.

Clarissa shook her head and closed her eyes. Deep breath. No there could be no more Christmas-y house than the one that Clarissa stood in front of, steeling herself to enter, simply because of the fact that Eliza McGovern would never allow a more Christmas-y house to exist in all of Powder Springs.

Mother was all cheery smiles and friendly waves, but behind the pleasant facade lurked a scrapper looking for a knife fight. Clarissa pulled her rolling suitcase up the front walk. Snow fell softly around her, giving the already white lawn and snow-covered trees an ethereal glow. Maybe Eliza had planned the snow. If anyone could, it would be Mother.

She yanked her bag up the steps. The scent of cinnamon? Truly? Did Mother have it piped out of the house and onto the lawn? One final breath filled with quiet and solitude. Once Clarissa opened that door there would be hot chocolate, and Christmas songs, and stories, and foil wrapping paper, and bows, and conversations. Many many many conversations, most of them inquiring, in a not-so-subtle way, when Clarissa would get engaged like her perfect younger sister Julia. The sister who lived a mere two hours away in Denver and worked as a teacher at a private school. The sister who had gotten engaged . . . or was meant to . . . this Christmas Eve.

***

This family was nutter-butter, fruitcake, mad. Not a second of silence from sunup to sundown, and he had to survive another four solid hours until bed. Ye gads. What the hell would he do? Norris pulled his hand through his hair and tried to maintain the smile on his face while his jaw dropped open aghast at this family, this horribly crazy family, his best friend Kevin intended to marry into. The McGovern clan prepared to sing Holly Jolly Christmas yet again, and they still had three whole days until Christmas Eve.

My God. He was going to lose his ever-loving mind before he could get out of this wackadoo home. Why was he here? Moral support. Hmm . . . that’s right. Moral support for Kevin, who had committed, after years of dating, to finally proposing to Julia, this Christmas Eve. Too bad the poor guy looked like he was being hauled to the gallows instead of embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.

Norris, darling, don’t stand all the way over there, Mrs. McGovern called. Come and join us by the piano. We’ve loads more carols to sing, and I adore your tenor voice.

Norris tapped his throat. Sorry, I have to sit this one out, he whispered. Parched. And feeling a bit hoarse. But I’m sure there’ll be plenty more carols before Christmas.

You bet! Eliza sang out and winked. She turned back to the baby grand, where her husband, Julia’s dad, obediently started pounding the keys, because tickling the ivories was much too subtle a description for the McGovern repertoire. Kevin shot Norris a help me glance, but Norris simply rolled his eyes and turned away. Oh, no. No, no, no. Norris held little sympathy in his heart for Kevin. Kevin had strung poor Julia along for the past two years, ever since he’d taken the job as music teacher at the swanky private school in Denver where Julia taught English. Now, the piper had finished his tune and needed to be paid, in the form of an engagement ring to be proffered on Christmas Eve, or else.

Norris cleared his throat. The whole Christmas Eve marriage proposal hit a bit close to his heart. Perhaps if he’d waited until he’d been instructed that a proposal was expected, even required, Norris’s heart would still beat in an unshattered piece. Alas, the knowledge had come too late for him.

He snuck a quick look at his best friend standing beside his soon-to-be in-laws. Norris shuddered for the poor bastard. Kevin wore dead eyes and a plastered-on smile as he mouthed the words to Holly Jolly for the thousandth time in preparation for the annual Candy Cane Lane competitive caroling event. Perhaps his pal saw a glimpse of Christmas future, or even a lifetime