Risking It All for Love (A Christmas in Snow Valley Romance) by Kimberley Montpetit Read Free Book Online Page B

got home you’ve spent most of your free time at the cemetery. It
hurts that you seem to resent us. Most of all, it hurts me to see how
much you’re hurting.”
    I chewed on my lips, tears threatening to spill, arms crossed over
my chest to hold myself together.
    “It’s been three years, honey. You need to forgive yourself.”
    “That’s impossible,” I shuddered.
    “I promise you’ll feel better if you throw yourself into the
Christmas festivities or a service project like the bake sale fundraiser
tomorrow. Your old friend, Paisley, has done a remarkable job organizing. She
has real talent.”
    “Good for her. But she never had the guts to leave this town.”
    “That was cold, Jessica. Very unchristian.”
    I shrugged.
    “Perhaps you and Paisley could get reacquainted and work together?
I’ll just make a phone call. Getting involved in something will help you quit
moping around the house. Or telephone Kazlyn, your old classmate from ballet
school, and go out on the town.”
    “Don’t!” I turned around, wiping a stiff hand across my face.
“Just don’t . A bake sale will not fix this. Or a “night on the town. In
Snow Valley—are you kidding me?” I stormed out of the kitchen. “Hey Sam,
want to get out of the house for a couple hours? See if Big C’s has milkshakes
on sale?”
    “Not on the Sabbath, you two,” Mom said behind us in her strict voice.
    “Mother,” I said evenly. “Sometimes you have to let your children
make their own decisions and let them make their own mistakes. Going out for a
little while isn’t going to send me to hell.”
    I could see pain behind my mother’s eyes. It didn’t make me feel
any better to defy her, but I had to get out of the house for awhile.
    “I won’t go to hell, either!” Sam cried, a little too joyfully,
as he pulled on his jacket and stuffed one of mom’s hand knit caps on his head.
I pounded upstairs to grab my stuff so I could catch up to him.
     

Chapter Eight
    When I
slid into the car—inordinately grateful that I’d driven my own car from
New Orleans because I didn’t have to beg for keys every time I wanted to go
somewhere—Sam gave me a sheepish look.
    He held up a plate of cookies tied with red Christmas ribbon and
taped in the center with a cheap green Walgreen’s bow. “Sorry. Mom stuck it in
my hands. Said we have to deliver it to Pastor John’s house.”
    I gave him a sideways grin, trying to shake off the argument in
the kitchen. “Mom is a piece of work, you know?”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “So tell me Mom’s trick. How’d she get cookies mixed up, baked,
and on a plate so fast?”
    “There are two dozen plates just like this in the deep freeze in
the garage.”
    “Mom must be a Boy Scout. Always Prepared.”
    “Prepared is her middle name.”
    “Or cookies. She thinks the world can be made better with the
band-aid of chocolate chip cookies.”
    “Well, she does have a point,” Sam said, sneaking one of the
cookies out from under the plastic wrap.
    I give him a look. “Everybody in this town is too damn
cheerful—even you!”
    “Sorry, sis.”
    We got to Big C’s a few minutes later. The roads had been cleared
and salted so it was an easy drive.
    The squat gray brick building was clustered with tables and
chairs, now iced over with a thick layer of snow from the previous night’s
storm.
    “They really should bring these in for the winter,” I said as we
skirted around them and shoved the glass door open. Warmth bathed my cold face
from the grill and ovens. The smell of fresh baked hamburger buns and onion
rings made me realize that I was starving.
    “I think I could use some lunch,” Sam hinted.
    I grinned. “Order anything you want. My treat.”
    “I always knew I loved you best.”
    “The feeling is mutual.”
    After getting big sloppy burgers, a basket of hot deep-fried onion
rings and Cokes, we made our way to a table in the corner near the plastic
Christmas tree strung with droopy tinsel.
    We ate in