An Unconventional Christmas

By Tara Fox Hall

When Endless Love CEO Viola Bohannon hires Cyprus Kennedy, a.k.a. Miss Romance, in early December to arrange a dozen “perfect” romantic moments leading up to a Christmas finale to save her failing marriage, she adds the next to impossible challenge: base the moments on the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Cyprus comes up with creative, unconventional romantic events in record time which seem to draw Viola and her husband, Kendrick, back together, even as Cyprus finds herself the focus of not one but two new beaus who couldn’t be more different men.

Each successive holiday event unfolds surprisingly well under Cyprus’s close supervision, yet also sparking reflection on her own estranged family, lack of close friends, and unthought-of dreams of the future.

Pressure mounts as the countdown to Christmas Eve nears, necessitating a choice between rural craftsman Tucker and police detective Mike, both of whom ask Cyprus for the date.

Can Cyprus fashion not only a perfect Christmas for the Bohannons, but also devise her own perfect Christmas romance, possibly her own happily ever after?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886530728

Book preview

Prologue

Viola Bohannon gave me a sweet smile, making me brace for the threat I knew was coming. Remember, if you fail me in this, Miss Romance, you’ll not only never work for Everlasting Love LLC again, but you’ll be also blacklisted from the entire city. In short, you’ll have to pack up your company and head down the road.

I gritted my teeth behind my smile. She said LLC just to intimidate me even more. Don’t show any fear, or the game is up. You made it very clear that not only was my future with your company at stake, but so was my reputation as Miss Romance, the woman who guarantees perfect romantic moments for couples on a budget. Now if you’re ready to begin, I need more information about what you expect.

Viola’s arrogant smile slipped a bit. For a split second her perfection cracked, the professional and beautiful blonde woman before me becoming much more like a typical client: unsure, awkward, and hopeful that I had the answer to her still unasked question. A miracle.

This I can work with. Could you expand on that?

I need you to make my husband fall back in love with me, she said, each word so grudging that I felt as if I’d pulled them out of her mouth one by one with a fishhook.

Um, this is not what I said I could do. At all. You asked me for a consultation, indicating you wanted to spice up your current relationship. There’s a big difference between spicing up a relationship and saving one.

You bill yourself as ‘Miss Romance, the lady who can create a beautiful fairytale romantic moment for any couple.’ Well, I want a happily ever after, and I want it by Christmas Eve.

That’s in three weeks, I stammered.

You say you need just a simple consultation to get information to create a perfect moment for any couple, Viola pressed. That’s what this is. I’ll give you any information you need, and I’ll pay you any fee. That’s right, I said any fee. I know you usually charge five hundred for your ‘moment’ plus any decorating, location, or prop fees. I’ll pay that as well. But I’m guessing you need more than just one moment to sway a man from filing for divorce.

Way, way over my head. And my pay grade. Excuse me, but if he’s filed for divorce, I’m not sure there’s much I can do.

Kendrick hasn’t yet, Viola said in resignation, sitting at her desk. She looked away. But he’s distant, and it’s not the good kind of distant, where he’s planning some special holiday surprise. We’ve had some fights in the last six months, and they’re only getting worse. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Again, I’m sorry, but I’m not sure that a romantic moment or twelve will be enough to make your husband reconsider.

There’s not another woman, if that’s what you’re implying, Viola said cuttingly. We’ve just grown apart. We both started out excited about our careers, but we were even more excited about each other. And now…we aren’t.

Before I start, I’ll need you to fill out this questionnaire, I said, sliding it over to her. Yes, I’m aware it’s twenty pages, and it asks for a lot of personal details. Miss Romance specializes in creating romantic moments for couples who are long-term that want to spice things up, as I already stated. To do that, I need information about the two people in the relationship, so I don’t send a pair of lovers on a skydiving expedition when one of them is afraid of heights. Anything you’re not sure of, write Don’t know in the space. Do not leave any questions blank, or I will think you missed them and have to ask you to fill them out and resubmit the form.

Viola scowled but accepted the paper. I can fill this out and have it back to you in a day. Kendrick sent me a text to say he was going to Chicago this weekend for a convention.

I’d ask what he does, but I want to get out of here, and she’ll give me that and more on the completed form. Great, I can get started as soon as you send it to me. I stood up.

Remember what I said, she restated, staring at me pointedly. Goodnight.

Later that night, I was just closing down my computer when an email from Viola popped through with an attachment. Ugh, she meant what she said. Damn it to hell. I opened the attachment and skimmed it to the end. Sure enough, all the questions were filled out. She’d written her answers out in messy longhand and scanned the papers in, but glancing through I was able to read most of what she’d written.

Then I saw the budget and was pleasantly surprised. As in wowed. Twelve thousand dollars for a budget!? With optional additional funds? She must be thinking a romantic travel holiday overseas.

Then came the kicker on the final page of the questionnaire, where my last question asked if the client had any ideas about their romantic moment. I’d seen anything from the ‘Don’t Know’ to ‘Roses and hearts all over’ to ‘Diamond ring in a box.’ But I’d never seen this, and the sight made me gasp aloud.

Viola had written You said that you weren’t sure if one romantic moment would do it, or even twelve. I’m a woman who believes in going all the way. I want twelve romantic moments, spaced out every two to three days over the next three weeks, cumulating with the last on Christmas Eve. And since it is Christmas, let’s be festive! Base the moments on the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I turned to my cat, Giselle. We’re doomed.

Chapter 1

Twelve Drummers Drumming

12-5 SATURDAY

Friday morning, I woke up, made myself some coffee, and got down to business. If Miss Romance was going to fail this time, I was going to fail spectacularly, having given this project my all. My first task was to look up the three weeks I had until Christmas, space them out for the twelve events, and then assign dates to them. Once I had done that, I looked up the poem about the twelve days of Christmas. Reading the lines, I felt worse about my prospects of pulling this off but shook it off. Okay, if she’s trying to be romantic, then she likely doesn’t want her guy Kendrick to know at the first event what the theme is, or he’ll know what to expect at the following events, which will take out some of the fun and excitement. I need to disguise the underlying theme. But a partridge and a pear tree anywhere in the first special moment will give the game away. Hmm.

I need to go in reverse! Seized with inspiration, I jotted down all the lines of the rhyme into their twelve respective slots. Okay Giselle, let’s have breakfast, then get back to brainstorming.

Heartened by real maple syrup and fluffy, happy pancakes, I picked my pen back up and stared at the list, then compared it to the calendar. Uh-oh, I’m going to have to work fast, tomorrow is the 5th. I need to do an event tomorrow of some kind, and Sunday, too…if I can get Viola to convince Kendrick not to leave town. No, better push the first moment to Sunday, he can likely come back early from that convention but not cancel his plans so close to leaving town, if he hasn’t already left, that is. Well, explain the time crunch to Viola, and ask her to confirm Saturday. I sent her an email to that effect, then went back to the calendar, picking dates, then shifting them until I had a workable tentative schedule.

So the first two moments will take place on the 5 th, and 6 th. Then another three this coming week on the 8 th, 10 th and 11 th, then another two for next weekend on the 12 th and 13th, another two next week on the 15 th and 17 th, two the following weekend on the 19 th and 20th, and then one the week of Christmas on the 23rd. I’ll also have to check and see what family parties they attend. Maybe I can do something both on the 23 rd and 24 th, so everything leads up to Christmas. It’s good to leave an extra day free in the plan too, in case there’s a storm that cancels either the event or makes travel too difficult. I looked again at the tentative schedule, knowing that each event was going to represent about an hour of my time to prepare it, if not more. This has got to be the tightest schedule I have ever worked on, ever.

I took a deep breath. You can do this. Now do it. I took another and looked at the line. Twelve drummer’s drumming. Not much romantic about that. But then there’s really no line in the poem that is romantic, except maybe the five gold rings. Even that’s pretty cut and dry. I’m going to need to go unconventional, bring some kind of new meaning to these lines based on what the couple enjoys.

I Googled the poem online, hoping for some inspiration. I got a lot of hits, but all were for webpages telling about the Christian symbolism in the poem, and what each line was supposed to really mean in relation to God. Not going to help. I briefly considered sending an email to Viola, telling her to pick a song that she liked that I could bring to life instead. But there was no reason to think that whatever she picked would be any easier than this. If it was just a couple of moments she wanted, I might be able to come up with something inspired. I forced my thoughts to calm down, trying to get them in order. Okay, the poem has numbers, so I have the number twelve to work with. I have drummers and drums. But neither Viola nor Kendrick are supposed to have any musical ability or any interest in music, either.

Stymied, I took two hours and read through Viola’s composite of their relationship. Much of what she’d written was a few words for an answer, with more than a little repetition. It’s almost as if she never got really close to him to find out the answers to what he really thinks is his goal in life, or what he loves best about his life. Or he told her, and she didn’t hear him.

The image of getting Viola on a set of drums and playing the beat of a love song outside Kendrick’s office filled my head, making me laugh. Stop it, that’s not going to help you. Think!

I read through the part about their relationship origin again, this time looking for what was implied but not stated. She says that he was really romantic when they were both in college, where they met. She was an art major, and he did sculpture. Both their parents disapproved of their dreams, and they rebelled together, working a summer at a winery, and then eloping one weekend that next fall. But Kendrick’s father had a heart attack and died that same night. Kendrick felt guilty about it, no way he wouldn’t have. "When they came back, he changed his major, going into business administration instead of his intended art education career. He worked part-time from then on during the days to help his family and went to school afternoons and at night." Another move that spoke of family devotion and responsibility but would have created distance between Viola and him as they wouldn’t have been on the same schedule. ‘Most weekends were spent working at his father’s funeral home’. They must have gone right from full blown romance to keeping house and barely seeing one another. It’s surprising they didn’t break up then, instead of going on to get married.

I read further. ‘Other couples might have broken up, but I loved him and knew if I wanted a life with him, I had to be what he needed.’ She also dumped her art classes and went into business administration. But instead of joining him and his mom in the funeral home business, she made her own business Everlasting Love that creates flower bouquets for weddings, as well as funeral arrangements for loved ones that pass on. So she found a way to be a part of his life, though she can’t stand death, and is likely afraid of it. The distance started when they eloped and it widened between them year by year, with him daily seeing grief and loss, and her daily celebrating the hope of new beginnings.

I rubbed my eyes. Okay, we need common interests in their off time if they spend their working days so differently. She likes movies or plays, going to dinner, spring and summer, bubble baths, flowers, and long walks in the fall. He likes, according to her, movies at home, takeout, winter, hot showers, and Saturdays doing nothing. Lord help me, how are these two people still married?

Giselle looked at me, yawned, then turned away and lay down, curling up to sleep with her orange fluffy tail over her eyes.

Thanks a lot. I debated for a moment watching a succession of romantic comedies, hoping for inspiration. But the odds that I was going to get some true unconventional ideas from a romcom was small. Finally, I took twelve pieces of printer paper, wrote the date and the line on the top of each, and then began jotting down ideas