White Magic Christmas

Chapter 3: November 30

Ivy had not anticipated the difficulty of reaching the tiny town of Slate Hollow. The flights had been no better or worse than to anywhere else in the world, but once she had landed, things had started getting hairy. In every other city she'd ever visited, the shuttle from her hotel would have been waiting with a couple burly dudes to help load up her bags and whisk her away directly to a nice, warm front desk where more paid staff would have magically made her bags simply appear in her room.

Here, Ivy had had to walk from the airport to a bus terminal, three full blocks away. She'd had to pay an actual bribe in order to get the luggage rack out of the airport.

"How else am I supposed to get my bags to the bus station?" she'd demanded. The pimply kid had just shrugged, taken her $20, and agreed to come get the rack an hour later. Lugging the rack down the sandy sidewalks had turned out to be nearly as impossible as just carrying all three suitcases. And why were the sidewalks sandy??

"You moving in?" the bus driver had asked her with perfect sincerity as he'd loaded the suitcases into the bus's cargo space. Ivy bit her cheek to stop a growl.

"Guess I am," she'd said. Could people living in these backward towns really fit everything they owned into three suitcases?

"No, I'll keep this one," Ivy had said when the driver had tried to take the box she was carrying. Inside, Jeffrey's teapot nestled in a cocoon of carefully arranged padding. She had wondered if it would be possible to take the teapot out once she was seated. It was terribly cold here, and even with the lining of her red coat and her warmest gray leggings made More fluffy, she felt the cold cutting straight through to her skin. Surely Jeffrey wouldn't mind a little cuddle. Perhaps she should have put her mother's ugly boots on after all.

No. Some sacrifices simply had to be made.

And now she was standing at an empty bus stop in the middle of nowhere, freezing to death and regretting the decision to have ever taken Gavin's seminar class. "This isn't a vacation," she said aloud. "In fact, I should be getting hazard pay." Jeffrey, however, was still packed tightly away and Ivy hadn't been quite mean enough to make him suffer the cold just so he could hear her grumble.

She picked up her phone again and tried to dial the inn, but the call wouldn't connect. How could she have known the buses only came once an hour? Was it her fault the drive had taken two hours instead of the projected ninety minutes? She was an hour late for the pickup time she'd arranged with Geri, the innkeeper, and now she had no way to call her.

A red truck appeared in the distance, heading her direction. As it began to slow, Ivy heaved a huge sigh of relief. Geri must have realized what had happened and come back for her. The truck settled into park and the window rolled down. A man with a deep five o'clock shadow leaned out. "You just get off the bus from the airport?" he asked. Ivy nodded as she started to collect her bags.

"Yes, yes. Thank you-"

"Anyone else get off the bus with you?" the man asked. Ivy froze, realizing he wasn't actually here for her. She tried to pretend she'd just been adjusting her bags.

"Nope. Just me." She patted the handle of her big suitcase awkwardly. Just a girl standing around, patting a suitcase.

The man glanced up and down the empty road. He quirked an eyebrow at her. "You need a ride into town?"

"No, I... uh..." Ivy, too, glanced up the road in the direction the man had come from. "Geri is supposed to be picking me up, but..."

"Geri?" the man asked.

"She runs the bed and breakfast in the middle of town?" Ivy said. Had she been foolish for thinking the town was small enough that everyone would know each other?