The First Love Cookie Club Read Free

“maybe you should go on home now.”
    Fool! He doesn
‘
t want you. You
‘
re embarrassing him.
    Her face burned. Her stomach roiled. Her chest hurt. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She couldn’tsee. Blindly, she turned, stumbling for the door, yanking the antlers from her head, tearing the jingle bells from her sweater, ripping up all her hopes and dreams, and ran as far and fast as she could away from the raucous laughter echoing behind her.
    And she vowed never, ever to put her heart on the line again.

C HAPTER O NE
    “You’ve gotta see this, Sarah. It’ll jerk your heart right out of your chest.”
    Ha! Too late. Her heart had been jerked out of her chest nine years ago when she was a naïve, foolish fifteen-year-old. Not that she thought about Travis Walker all that much. And if that embarrassment hadn’t been enough to make her a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, the accident she’d suffered in college had sealed the deal. Absentmindedly, Sarah’s hand went to her stomach, and she rubbed the scar that still ached from time to time.
    She glared across the top of her computer monitor at her literary agent, Benny Gent. “I’m not doing another book tour at Christmas, Benny. Last year and the year before were—”
    “Exhausting. I know. I was there.” He stood in the doorway of the dining room she’d converted into an office, one shoulder slouched against the door frame, cocking his oh-so-charming grin.
    He’d dropped by after a power lunch at Movers and Shakers, a hip new uptown restaurant, withher publisher, Hal Howard. In his hand Benny held a piece of notebook paper. Sarah could smell his aftershave from here, expensive and exotic, star anise and cardamom. He wore a designer suit; crisp, cream-colored button-down shirt; and a paisley silk tie. His dusty blond hair was clipped in a short, young-executive-on-the-go style, and he was perpetually bronzed courtesy of the spray tan salon in his building. Benny had the energy of a nuclear power plant, and sometimes the guy simply wore her out. Even so, he was her closest friend and confidant.
    Oh, who was she kidding? He was her only real friend. Sure, she had plenty of acquaintances, but he was the only one she considered a true friend. Getting emotionally intimate with people had always been tough for her, even more so after Gram had died.
    Sadness shot through her as it always did when she thought of her Gram. She’d been gone eight years, and Sarah still missed her grandmother deeply.
    “I was going to say a nightmare,” Sarah said. “I get all claustrophobic around strangers.”
    “You live in New York City.”
    “That’s different. People ignore you in Manhattan. I like being ignored.”
    “Ah, so it’s the celebrity factor that bothers you, not crowds.”
    “It’s the people factor that bothers me. The thing is, you thrive on glad-handing and parties and travel. Me, I’m just a curmudgeonly hermit with a bah-humbug attitude toward Christmas. Call me Scroogetta.”
    “And yet you wrote a Christmas book. For children, no less. Imagine that.”
    “Yeah, well, everyone has lapses in good judgment.”
    “It made you rich.”
    “You didn’t come out of the deal so badly yourself.”
    “You’re in a peevish mood.”
    “I told you I hate Christmas.”
    Benny looked at her mildly. He knew her well enough not to overreact to her sweeping declarations. “You made a great decision when you wrote that book whether you know it or not. It’s evergreen, and even though you’ll be living off royalties into your dotage, your sales spike during the Christmas holidays. It’s the logical time to do a book tour.”
    He always sounded so sensible. Without even meaning to do so he made her feel neurotic.
    “I prefer Manhattan in December,” she said.
    It was October now and the leaves on the trees in Central Park that Sarah could see from the corner of her Upper West Side brownstone flared fiery autumn foliage.
    “You’re just being contrary,” Benny