My Most Hallmark-Worthy Christmas Romance

Maggie Shayne
17 hours ago
9 min read

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Holly Loves Christmas

When she was a kid, Holly's family died at Christmastime and she went to live with her aunt. Her mom had been the most Christmassy Christmasser ever, always going over the top, alwys making the holidays magical and special. Holly keeps Christmas the same way, to honor her mom's memory. She's loves Christmas like her mother before her, and she makes the most of it every year.

Matthew Hates Christmas

When he was a kid, Matthew's dad died at Christmastime, and his mom sold all his belongings to try to pay for gifts nobody even wanted that year. She even got rid of hisdad's beaten up old Fedora hat, the only thing Matt had hoped to keep. He hates Christmas, and makes sure he's always out of town at holiday time so his mom and sister can't rope him into stupid, pointless, painful gatherings.

The House that Christmas Forgot

This year, the house where Holly grew up is finally about to be sold. It's been empty for years, ever since her family left, but now the time has come to let it go. Holly leaves her aunt and drives north to Oswego County in New York's snow-belt to spend one last Christmas alone at her family home. The realtor is a friend and she's had the power and heat turned on for her. The buyer is coming right after the holiday so she'll have only one night.

The old plastic reindeer and sleigh and some of the other decoratoins are still in the garage, and Holly decides to put them up.

The Buyer Shows up Early

And then so does a blizzard!

Cranky humbug Matthew has used his house flipping penchant as an excuse to get out of the holidays with his family again this year, and has driven to the middle of nowhere to close the deal.

The last thing he expects to find when he gets there is a young woman precariously balanced on the roof of his house trying to put up reindeer!

The second to the last thing he expects is the snowstorm that's about to pummel this place, stranding these two together for the holiday. In Oswego, snow is often measured in feet, not inches.

But it's never deep enough to bury the magic of Christmas!

Here is one of my favorite scenes, and since it's not the opening scene, I'll set it up. Holly and Matthew have sort of met twice at this point. Once when he passed her on the road, and once when he stopped to ask about the nearest motel. Only after that did he realize that the house he'd come to look and buy, at was the house where he'd asked the pretty, irritating hippy for directions.

Here's the scene where he returns to the house.

HOLLY AND THE HUMBUG

An Excerpt

Holly stood all the way at the end of the driveway, staring back at the decrepit house that was currently lit up like a Christmas tree and smiling from ear to ear. It was dark outside, so the lights glowed even more brilliantly. It had taken her three solid hours. It hadn’t been difficult at all, because her mom had everything down to a science where decorating was concerned, and Holly remembered everything about her mom. There were still little hooks all the way around the eaves of the house for hanging the lights. There were more around each window. Aunt Sheila must have asked Maureen, their realtor, ahead of time to leave a ladder in the storage shed, and she’d been delighted to see that she'd left a few more things as well, including a bag full of extension cords, a hammer, and a box of nails.

Holly went back into the shed to return the hammer and nails to their spots, so Maureen would find them right where she’d left them. She flipped on the lights this time. She hadn’t had to before—it had still been light outside.

The back corners of the shed were illuminated, and she spotted what she hadn’t seen before: a giant box, taped shut. Her mother’s handwriting was on the side of it. She’d written one word with a Sharpie marker. “Santa.”

“It can’t be,” Holly whispered. Then she ran forward, falling onto her knees and tearing at the packing tape like a child tearing at her first present on Christmas morning. She got it loose, and pulled the box open, then pawed her way past the bubble wrap and newspapers that lined the thing.

And then she sat back on her heels, smiling through her tears. Santa smiled up at her from his 6-foot-long sleigh. She looked around and found the other huge box, the one that contained the reindeer, and tore that open as well. Everything was in pristine condition. After all, they’d used the set only that one year. The year before Holly’s family had died.

“Aw, Mom. If I’d known this was still here...” She brushed her tears away. “No regrets, right? Okay. I’m putting him up on the roof, where he belongs!”

And with that, she carefully took Santa and his sleigh out of the box, carried them outside and laid them on the ground beside the ladder. Then she did the same with the reindeer. Finally, she searched the shed until she found a sack full of twine, and she strung it all together until she had a nice lengthy piece. She tied one end to Santa, climbed the ladder, and hauled him up.

Because of the darkness, she had to crawl around, feeling for the brackets that had held Santa and his crew in place. But they were still there, right along the peak. She managed to get the sleigh into place. She was still anchoring it to the roof, when the snow began falling, sticking to her hair, her shoulders, her eyelashes.

"Magic," she whispered. And she closed her eyes, and tipped her face up to let the snowflakes deliver Christmassy kisses from her family.

Headlights from the driveway drew her gaze downward, and she saw the pretentious car and thought, him again?

“OH. MY. GOD.”

Matthew could not believe that in a few short hours, the tumbledown farmhouse had turned into the tackiest holiday display he’d ever seen. Lights lined the roof, up into the peak and down and along the edges. They lined every window, painting their borders in color. They outlined the door, twisted candy-cane-like over the railings that flanked the front steps, and marched all the way around the porch. It looked like something out of a children’s theme park.

He shut off the car, and opened the door to get out.

“Hello!” someone called from on high.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze, following the sound of that voice, gazing through the tumbling jumbo-sized snowflakes until he saw her. That crazy, gorgeous hippie was on the freaking roof. His stomach knotted up. “What the hell are you doing up there?"

“Decorating.” She shook her head. “As if that’s not obvious. Do me a favor and turn your headlights back on?”

“Huh?”

“Car. Headlights. On.” She thumped a fist on her chest. “Jane need light.”

He almost smiled. Almost. He stopped himself just barely in time. Instead he leaned back into the car and flipped on the headlights. They didn’t help much, he imagined, but maybe a little.

She bent then and tugged on something, and he saw reindeer flying. Well, not actually flying. They were sort of rising, as she pulled them up from the ground up by a length of scrawny rope.

And the snow, he thought, was coming down harder. “Look, it’s gonna get very slick up there very fast. You need to come down before you break your neck.”

“I promise I won’t break my neck.”

“You will if you fall.”

“Don't make me think about falling. I wasn’t even thinking about falling. Now you’ve gone and put falling into my head, which makes it possible.”

“Huh?”

“What, you don’t believe in quantum physics?” She turned, the rope slung over her shoulder now, and dragged the reindeer higher up onto the roof. Then she sat on the peak, one leg over each side, a position he thought was much more stable than her former one. So, he relaxed a little.

She stood the reindeer up, bending over their feet and fastening whatever device she’d rigged to hold them there. It worked great. She was more than a hippie, she was a female MacGyver, he thought. Then she made her way back to the edge and sat down beside the ladder, her big furry boots dangling over the side. She was holding a plug in one mittened hand.

“Would you do me a favor and toss me the business end of that extension cord?” She pointed as she said it, and he saw the heavy-duty cord twined at the bottom of the ladder, one end snaked toward the house, already plugged into a heavy-duty exterior outlet.

“I can’t believe I’m going to be a party to this," he said.

“Party to what?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. He went to the cord, unwound a length, and tossed the end up to her.

She caught it easily, a huge smile on her face. “Ready?” she asked.

“Not exactly.”

She plugged it in. Santa’s sleigh lit up like the runway lights at Detroit Metro. His reins glowed, his sleigh’s entire shape was lined in lights, and they twinkled from key points on his suit. Every reindeer’s harness shone, illuminating every face, snout and antler. All nine of them; the traditional eight, plus one riding point with a glowing red nose.

“Happy birthday, Jesus,” he muttered.

“How does it look?” she called.

She was standing right on the edge, turning her back to him to try to get a better look at the display. He lifted his hands in a “stop” kind of gesture, and grunted the opening syllable of a warning. But that was as far as he got before she fell.

He tried to catch her, but only managed to break her fall a bit with both arms, before she landed on her back at his feet.

Her eyes were closed. Not in an unconscious sort of a way, but in an “I’m scrunching up my entire face in agony” sort of a way.

“Ouch,” she said. And then her face unscrunched and her eyes popped open.“Isn’t this the place where you’re supposed to be dropping to your knees, lifting my broken body and asking in a desperate, emotion-choked voice if I’m okay?”

He shrugged and remained standing. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

He extended a hand. “Help you up?”

“My hero.” She clasped his hand with her mitten, and he braced while she pulled herself to her feet. “You’re a romantic devil, aren’t you?”

He chose to ignore that comment. “I told you you were going to fall,” he said instead.

“And that’s why I did. Thanks a lot.”

“You deserved it. This poor house would hide its face in humiliation if it could.”

“I beg your pardon! This house loves to dress up and show off. It hasn’t had the chance for a while. And I happen to think it looks great!” She stood staring at it, arms crossed over her chest, and then turned to look at him again. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“The place is for sale. I was thinking about buying it, and the Realtor refused to show it to me tonight. So I thought maybe you could give me the grand tour yourself.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “My ass hurts,” she said. “I really don’t feel like taking that giant ladder down and stashing it back in the shed.”

He lifted his brows. “Uh-huh. And if I were willing to do that for you?”

“Then I’d ask you to bring in some firewood. Enough to last overnight.”

"This is getting to be a pricey tour. And if I do both those things?”

“Then I’ll give you the grand tour, and tell you everything I know about this house. And I know most everything about it. I grew up here.”

He nodded. “Deal.”

“Cool. I’m Holly, by the way.”

“Of course you are.”

She frowned at him, and he quickly said, “Matthew.”

“Nice to meet you, Matthew.” She looked up at the sky. “Man, I hope this isn’t lake effect.”

He looked up, too. “I heard that term in town, but then someone said it was only going to be a few inches.”

“Phew. That’s a relief. Tell you what, I’ll put on some hot cocoa. You like hot cocoa?”

He didn’t. It was too damn festive and Christmassy. But he didn’t answer her, because his grumpy “no” might have made her change her happy little mind about letting him in at all.

There you go. You have the setup and the meet cute and the sparkly spirit. If you want to read the rest, you're in luck, because. Holly and the Humbug is available at all retailers.

This perfect Christmas romance is just $2.99 in eBook at Apple, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords, Thalia, Everand, and you can find all those links and maybe a few more here.

All retail links