Page 26 of A Pen Pal for Christmas

Dear Pen Pal,

Are you a reporter? You’re relentless with the questions. Do you interrogate every stranger this thoroughly, or am I just lucky? At least you answered them all yourself before making me spill my guts, so there’s that.

Favorite Christmas Movie: Die Hard. Call me basic, but it’s the best. Don’t fight me on this. (And for the record, I can’t believe you picked Love, Actually. We can’t be friends.)

Eggnog: Hard no. How can you trust a drink that looks like it was left out on the counter too long?

Real or fake tree: Fake, obviously. I bet you think the smell, the mess, and the constant battle to keep it upright is all part of the fun, but not when you combine all of that with living somewhere that it’s hard to deal with.

Dream vacation: I get why you’d say tropical, but I’ve had plenty of that in the past. Now, I’ll take a snowy cabin in the woods with a fireplace and no cell service. (And maybe good company, if you’re willing?)

I nearly dropped the letter. There was still one more question I hadn’t gotten to yet, but I had to reread the vacation one a dozen times before I was sure I hadn’t hallucinated.

He was flirting with me, right? It was right there in black ink and a manly scrawl.

Flirting.

So far, our letters had been warm and friendly, but flirty? Nope. This was a first, and as I tried to see past the stars in my eyes, my mind cycled through ways I could discreetly find out if this was a handsome, eligible bachelor or an old married man just saying the things they tended to say. And I would know—bartender and all that.

I went back to the letter, eager for more, eyes peeled for clues.

Favorite thing about Christmas: Easy. The quiet moments. The ones you don’t really think about until later—sitting by the tree when it’s all lit up at night. Seeing someone light up like a tree when you give them a gift they weren’t expecting. Apparently, things that involve lights… and trees. Don’t judge.

Full transparency, I think most of your answers were objectively wrong on at least half of these. But, I’ll let it slide since you’ve clearly got good taste in other areas.

Talk soon,

Your Pen Pal

I smiled, folding the letter and slipping it back into the envelope. I set it on the nightstand beside my journal and the book I was halfway through, then promptly threw myself back on the bed.

Yep. I needed to figure out if it was safe to flirt back with this mystery man… or shut him down. Soon.

A knock at my door startled me from my thoughts, and I glanced at the clock—ten minutes before the scavenger hunt started. I sighed. Not only had I taken way longer than I’d thought pouring over my latest letter, but my date was late.

“Who is it?” I called, already halfway to the door.

“It’s Grace. Open up, slowpoke.”

I opened the door to find my sister-in-law bundled in a red knit scarf, holding a stainless steel mug in each hand. The scarf instantly made me laugh considering what I’d recently written to my pen pal, but I didn’t say a word.

Grace raised one of the cups with a grin. “Coffee. You’re welcome.”

“You’re late,” I teased, stepping back to grab my coat from the bed.

“I’m five minutes late, and I brought caffeine. That’s not late. That’s hero behavior.”

I rolled my eyes with a smile as I zipped my coat. “You ready to dominate this scavenger hunt?”

“Please,” Grace said, handing over my coffee. “We’ve got this in the bag. Plus, Tommy’s working crowd control. If we’re stuck on a clue, we can bug him for hints.”

“You’re shameless.”

“Accurate,” Grace preened, looping her arm through mine. “Now, let’s go prove we’re the queens of Snow Hill scavenging for the second year in a row.”

By the time we made it into the town square, it was packed. Groups of tourists and locals alike sipped hot cocoa and scanned their clue sheets, heads bent together as they strategized. I traced the strings of twinkling lights that crisscrossed the square with my eyes, grinning when I tripped over my feet and almost plowed into Grace.

“I’m sorry,” I said through a laugh. “I can’t help it. Snow Hill’s Christmas charm is cranked up to eleven today. I hate how much I don’t hate it.”

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