Twice Upon a Christmas Read online

  Twice Upon a Christmas

  Shanna Swendson

  NLA Digital LLC

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  An Excerpt from Enchanted, Inc.

  About the Author

  Also by Shanna Swendson

  One

  I hit the office building exit at a run, momentum propelling me past the glass doors and into the rush hour crowds on the sidewalk. I was already running late, and every person I bumped into, every light I hit on “don’t walk” delayed me even more. Alicia was going to kill me.

  Finally, I reached my destination and rushed inside, where I was greeted by a woman dressed like a Victorian caroler. She should have been out of place in a New York City coffee shop, but she wore the hoopskirt and bonnet like it was her regular attire. As I entered, she raised an eyebrow and handed me a garment bag.

  Without breaking stride, I took it from her and headed to the bathroom at the rear of the shop. She followed me. “I’m sorry,” I said as we entered the bathroom. “They called a meeting at a quarter to five, and I couldn’t get away.”

  “Yeah, I figured it was something like that,” Alicia Wyatt said. She took my garment bag and pulled out my costume while I went into a stall to undress. A Victorian dress and undergarments appeared, draped over the stall partition. I peeled off my work clothes, throwing them over the partition for Alicia to catch. From outside the stall, she said, “You can’t keep this up forever, you know, Natalie. That job is gonna kill you someday.”

  I grabbed the hoopskirt, stepped into it, and tried to get it up around my waist in the narrow confines of the stall. “Maybe it’s this job that’ll kill me. At least the other one pays the bills.”

  “We’re not doing so bad. In fact, we’re full up this season, and we could have done more if someone didn’t have that pesky day job that limits our options. There’s been some grumbling in the ranks, let me warn you.”

  I got my dress over my head, arranged it over the hoopskirt, and pulled up the zipper that was an anachronism but that made my life so much easier. Fortunately, the dress was long enough that I didn’t have to change out of my comfortable work flats into Victorian high-button boots. Emerging from the stall, I said, “How many gigs could there possibly be during weekday business hours?”

  Alicia went to work pinning up my hair while I touched up my makeup. “You’d be surprised. Stores and restaurants want to hire us to serenade their customers. There are office parties. Office buildings want carolers in their lobbies. People want to have us deliver holiday greetings.”

  “Yeah, I can just see telling my parents that I’m quitting my job to be a singing telegram.” I pulled on my bonnet, gloves, and faux fur-trimmed capelet, and we left the bathroom to bustle through the coffee shop—taking great care not to knock over any drinks with our massive skirts—and out onto the sidewalk.

  Alicia didn’t miss a beat in the conversation. “It’s not just at Christmas. If you were freed up, then we could travel, go to music festivals, really make it as a legitimate group. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen when we’re doing this in our spare time—in your spare time.”

  I’d thought about it, and the thought always made me sick to my stomach with worry. “I guess I’m just not ready to make that leap yet. I have this strange addiction to eating and to sleeping indoors.”

  “Do you see me sleeping on the streets or starving? And how are things going for you at the day job? Flying up the corporate ladder?”

  “Not really,” I admitted reluctantly. As a matter of fact, I’d missed a couple of possible promotions. Although we weren’t quite so busy with the singing group the rest of the year, the bookings we did get and the rehearsal time we needed kept me from putting in the kind of hours it took to get ahead at work. Even if the extra time wasn’t actually needed for getting the job done, being seen at the office after hours was a way to demonstrate dedication and commitment. And then there was all the extracurricular “team building” and socializing.

  “You’re twenty-eight. At some point, you’re going to have to choose and commit, one way or another, or else you might never get anywhere.” She stopped abruptly, grabbing my arm to make me stop, too. Our skirts swayed around us from the change of momentum, like bells silently ringing. I heard sweet music over the din of city noise and noticed a street musician, dressed in Dickensian attire like ours, playing a violin nearby. Alicia nudged me to get my attention back. She took a coin from her purse and handed it to me. “Flip it. Heads, your day job as an up-and-coming PR executive. Tails, you focus on your music.”

  I tried to give the coin back to her. “I’m not basing my future on the flip of a coin.”

  “Do it,” she ordered.

  With a shrug, I tossed the coin in the air. It seemed to hang there for an unusually long time, suspended so that neither side was up. Finally, it came down, and I caught it, placing it on the back of my hand and covering it with my other hand so I couldn’t see the result.

  “Now, for the moment of truth,” Alicia said. “Do you want to accept the result, or do you want to go for best two out of three? That should tell you what you really want.”

  I cautiously moved my hand away to see what the outcome was, but it was hard to read because the coin was glowing. Or maybe I was willing myself not to see the result because I really didn’t know what I wanted the outcome to be. Violin music filled the air, so sweet that it made me want to cry. I don’t know how long I stood there, lost in a bubble of indecision. Finally, I shook myself out of the spell and said, “This is crazy,” as I walked over to the violinist and dropped the coin in his hat. He nodded an acknowledgment, but kept playing. The quarter tumbled end over end on its way down: heads, then tails, then heads. I turned away before I saw how it landed.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what you got?” Alicia asked, hurrying to catch up with me.

  I hooked my arm through hers and grinned. “Nope.”

  This gig was singing for a Christmas tree-lighting festival at a park. I’m a member of an eight-member a capella ensemble. We specialize in jazz, but during the holiday season we get most of our bookings as Victorian carolers right out of A Christmas Carol. That means I spend a lot of time in a hoopskirt and bonnet. It’s actually a lot of fun, and I enjoy singing. No, I love singing, and I’m pretty good at it. My degree’s in music, and I met the other members of our group in music school. The only problem is that I can’t quite make a living at it. We’re busy during the holidays, but the rest of the year it can get pretty lean. That’s why I have a day job, and working for a public relations agency beats waiting tables or making coffee. It’s a regular salary with benefits, which is more than most of the others in the group get.

  It’s easy to feel festive when you’re singing carols, see the look on a child’s face when the tree lights up, and you smell hot cider and roasted chestnuts. One nice thing about what I do is that I get to go all-in for the holiday season and experience so many of those magical moments. The bad side of it is that I’m tired for about six weeks out of the year, dragging in late at night, collapsing, then having to get up for a full day at the office. I spend a lot of time running from the office to gigs and changing clothes in bathrooms and closets. Forget about having a social life with anyone other than the people in the group.

  Fortunately, this one wasn’t such a late night, since it was mostly for the kids. I had time to get home, hang up my costume, grab a bowl of cereal, and get to bed in time to get a decent night’s sleep—possibly the only time in the holida
y season. Alicia was right; it would be easier if I didn’t have the day job, but would I be able to afford to live that way?

  The next morning, I woke with the odd sense that I’d forgotten something. I groped for my phone on the nightstand, peered at it with bleary eyes, then blinked and took another look. It was 8:15 on a Tuesday, which meant I was running late. I jumped out of bed, nearly falling when my legs tangled in the sheets, and hurried to throw on clothes. I rushed out the door with my coat still unbuttoned.

  Because there are some things it’s dangerous to skip, no matter how late you’re running, I stopped at a coffee cart to buy a cup. I’d barely taken three sips before someone bumped into me, splashing the coffee from my cup all over my blouse. Great. Now I was not only running late, but I had a big stain on my blouse, and I didn’t get a whole cup of coffee. This was obviously going to be one of those days.

  I entered the lobby of the office building, and as I passed the receptionist’s Mission Control desk, she winced and said, “What happened to you, hon?”

  I was a little taken aback by her speaking to me. She’d always struck me as an icy blonde who’d consider me beneath her notice. I opened my mouth to reply, but she raised a hand in a “just a moment” gesture, which somewhat reinforced my earlier impression of her.

  “Parker Publicity International. How may I direct your call? Please hold while I transfer you,” she said into her headset, then she gestured for me to speak.

  “I guess I have a drinking problem,” I said with a wince. “Or a drinking and walking problem. Do you think anyone would notice if I kept my coat buttoned up all day?”

  She opened a desk drawer and took out a foil packet, which she handed to me. “Stain wipe. I can’t live without them. I’ve got a four-year-old and a public-facing job.”

  I tore open the packet and dabbed at the stain with the wipe that was inside. Much to my relief, the stain began to fade. “You’re a lifesaver. Thank you so much. By the way, I’m Natalie. I know I see you every day, but we never talk.”

  “Nice to meet you, Natalie. I’m Janet. Stop and say hi more often. Now, wash that blouse in cold water and it should be good as new.”

  “I’ll have to do that. Thanks again.”

  She fluttered her fingers at me in a wave as she took another call, and I headed to the elevators. I emerged on my floor and made my way through the maze of the cube farm toward my desk. As I walked, I continued dabbing at my blouse. The stain was mostly gone, but the area where it had been was slightly damp. I couldn’t tell if it would show or for how long.

  I was so intent on the stain that I nearly ran into Hadley Blake. Hadley had probably never had a stain in her life. She was the poster child for the polished PR pro, and next to her I always felt like a gawky child. “Oh, there you are. I was starting to think you weren’t coming in today,” she said.

  “Was someone looking for me?”

  To make things even more perfect, that was when my boss showed up. Reg Stewart was intimidating in a different way from Hadley, like a gruff old newspaper editor right out of Central Casting. I always felt like he should be demanding that Peter Parker get him some good photos of Spider-Man. “Oh, good, there you are,” he said, the words coming out as a growl.

  “Me?” Hadley asked, giving him a megawatt smile.

  “Both of you, actually. I need someone to join Jason on an account team for Carlton’s Department Store. They just dumped their agency since their holiday promotions bombed, and we’ve got the chance to see if we can salvage things.”

  “Three weeks before Christmas?” Hadley asked, raising the question I, too, had. Holiday promotions were usually planned during the summer. It was too late to get anything started with the holiday season already in full swing.

  “It’ll be a challenge, and a lot of work, but if we pull it off, we get the account year-round. Any ideas of what you’d do, either of you?”

  I had ideas and opened my mouth to share them, but hesitated. This assignment would put me ahead in this job, maybe even get me a promotion. But this was the worst possible time of year to take on extra work. My evenings and weekends were already booked, and I needed to escape at five every day to make it to all my gigs. Then again, if I could get a promotion and make more money, I might be able to save enough to quit later and really make a go at the music business.

  But before I could say anything, Hadley said, “Obviously, they need press coverage, and the easy way to get that at this time of year is some kind of charity promotion. Maybe a toy or coat drive? That would get people to the store and provide a camera-ready event.”

  Reg smiled. “Sounds like an idea. Want to join the team?”

  “I’d love to.”

  At that moment, Jason Baker rounded the corner with a coffee mug in his hand. I self-consciously pulled my coat over my stained blouse and remembered that I hadn’t put on makeup that morning. Not that this made any difference in how much he noticed me. I always became acutely aware of my flaws around him because he seemed so utterly flawless. He was good-looking, great at his job, and generally rather nice to work with. Unfortunately, I’d never managed to say more than three words to him that weren’t directly work-related. I always seemed to lose the power of speech in his presence.

  Hadley had no such issues. She gave him a huge smile and stopped just short of batting her eyelashes at him while still managing to imply that she was doing so.

  Reg turned to him. “Jason, Hadley’ll be working with you on the Carlton account.”

  Jason gave her a smile worthy of a teeth-whitening ad and said, “Glad to have you on board. We’ll head over to the store to meet with their executives this morning, but I’ll give you a quick briefing now.” The two of them walked away, looking awfully cozy already.

  I would have felt utterly invisible, but Reg said, “Natalie, what’s your client load like?”

  I blinked, a little surprised at being addressed. I’d felt like he’d forgotten I was there. “Okay. Most of my accounts are pretty slow this time of year.” For which I was grateful, but that wasn’t the sort of thing I dared tell my boss.

  “Good. I’ve got a pro bono project for you. Tilly Ferris sent it our way, and we want to keep her husband happy. I’ll e-mail you the details. There’s a meeting this afternoon.”

  When I emerged from the subway station later that day, I double-checked the address. This didn’t look like the sort of neighborhood where Tilly Ferris, a leading player in social and philanthropic circles, would have a meeting. The row houses had all seen better days and had been carved into apartments. The Christmas decorations on the lampposts looked like they dated from maybe 1975, and the plastic tinsel had become threadbare over the years.

  But the address was correct, and I saw that one of the houses had “The Ferris Center” stenciled on its front door. I had to step around a group of young men sitting on the stoop to reach the front door and ring the bell.

  Tilly herself opened the door, looking very out of place in those surroundings in what I was pretty sure was a Chanel suit. “Ah, you must be our PR girl. Come in, come in,” she said. I refrained from mentioning that she’d met me before at a meeting. I didn’t think I wanted to draw attention to the fact that I’d apparently been rather unmemorable.

  As she ushered me toward an office in what probably would have been a parlor in the days when this was a single-family home, she chattered nonstop. “I’m so excited about this project, and when I told my husband, he said his company’s PR firm could probably help. I know we don’t have a lot of time, but anything we can do will surely make a difference.”

  The office we entered was sparsely furnished, and yet it still seemed to barely have enough room to turn around in. The man who sat behind the cluttered desk was probably in his mid-thirties. His dark hair was badly in need of a haircut, and I doubted that his last cut had been at a designer salon. He’d either owned his clothes a very long time or had bought them from the sale rack at a thrift store. They were of good qual
ity, but probably around a decade out of date. When he looked up to acknowledge our entrance, I got the impression from his glower that he wasn’t happy to see either of us.

  If she noticed the chilly reception, Tilly didn’t let on. “Dan, honey,” she said, “here’s our PR girl. I told you they’d put someone on this. Dan Carroll heads up the center. He does such a great job, but it wouldn’t hurt to get more attention.”

  When I could get a word in edgewise, I held out my hand to Dan. “Hi, I’m Natalie Miller with Parker Publicity.”

  He hesitated for so long, staring at my hand, that I wondered if I had maybe got something on it. When he finally shook it, he grimaced like it was the last thing he wanted to do. “You didn’t have to come here,” he said.

  Tilly ignored his gloomy mood. “Nonsense!” she said. “How are we to strategize without meeting? And talking over the phone is so impersonal. Please, have a seat, Natalie.”

  I had to move a stack of files to take a seat, and Tilly didn’t wait until I was settled before she continued. “You of course know what the center does, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid all I got was the time and place for the meeting,” I said.

  Dan started to speak, but Tilly blew right past him. “They do the most wonderful work. Do you know what happens to foster children when they age out of the system?”

  Dan took advantage of her pause for my answer to chime in. “When they turn eighteen, they’re out, even if they’re still in school. Some foster parents may keep them on even after they’re not being paid, but most kids are on their own. Were you ready to be totally on your own, self-supporting, living in your own home, the day you turned eighteen?”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready now,” I admitted with a wry smile.