Page 1 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

1

Oh, no.

Nope.

There was no way Louis Bellmore was her new neighbor.

Hannah was going to toss that thought straight from her mind and keep hanging her outdoor Christmas lights and ignore the tall figure in the yard behind her. She adored the month of December, and thinking about that man would ruin her mood with fabulous efficiency.

Think about Christmas. Think about the way the holidays bring people together, highlighting their innate kindness and generosity.

Unlike Louis, who had been horrible to her in high school. Always judging, always acting as though her plan to marry her high school sweetheart wasn’t enough.

Hannah yanked at her lights. They were too loose. How had Calvin always made them look so perfect?

As she struggled with the tangle of wires she caught a glimpse of her seven-year-old tearing by with his elbow out—a sure sign he was attempting another wrestling move on the inflatable snowman in the front yard.

“Thomas, cut it out! You’re going to wreck poor Frosty.”

“He had it coming! He’s a wily, frozen-headed monster!”’

Hannah readjusted the ladder, shifting it around the corner, then did a double-take as she peeked back at Thomas, who was now running in the opposite direction.

“Tom-Tom, you better not have done that!”

There was a telling silence and Hannah groaned. She was fairly certain he’d just stuck his tongue out at Mrs. Fisher, the Longhorn Diner’s waitress. She was a good woman, but very efficient in spreading gossip. The last thing Hannah needed was word getting out that, as a day care worker, she couldn’t keep her own kids under control.

“What have I said about being polite?” Hannah called into the yard.

“Okay. I will.”

“Apologize. Right now.”

“She didn’t see me.”

“Do it anyway.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Fisher!” he yelled.

Hannah waited to hear the woman reply, then climbed the ladder. Where had Thomas learned his wrestling moves? Surely not from his father, who was mild-mannered and on the same parenting page as she was. Other single moms might worry about the impact of their ex’s lax rules and schedules, but Thomas was given the same boundaries when he was at Calvin’s house, which meant no wrestling. No sticking out of tongues, either.

Maybe Thomas was picking up things from his older brother Wade? Ever since the separation a year and a half ago, and then the subsequent divorce, Wade had been more physical in expressing himself.

From the ladder, Hannah could see that Thomas had managed to wrangle the seven-foot-tall snowman into a headlock. Their golden retriever, a rescued dog that Thomas had renamed Obi-Wan Kenobi after theStar Warscharacter, was barking and dancing as though a stranger had entered the yard.

“What was I thinking, buying that snowman?” she muttered. Wade had been in love with the idea of snow, and he’d requested the yard decoration as well as mitts so he could pretend he lived in Alaska instead of sunny Texas. She’d quickly got on board, hoping to coax more smiles from her eldest. Instead he’d rejected it all once Thomas got excited about it.

“Obi, hush!” Hannah called. “And Thomas, cut it out. You’re getting the dog excited!”

Something caught her eye as the canine continued to bark. Therewasa stranger, although not in their yard. The new neighbor, who’d moved in a few weeks ago, was rolling some fancy grill, which had likely cost as much as all the furniture in her living room, from his truck. She watched him go behind the fence and hedge that separated the two yards, and around to the back of his house.

This man had the same lanky build and improbably wide shoulders, but it couldn’t be Louis. There was no way he’d move back home to Sweetheart Creek. Like she and Calvin, and so many of their classmates, he’d left town after high school. In fact, the last time she’d seen Louis he’d been across the street from the police station, smirking, as she’d shuffled out with her parents, shoulders hunched and completely mortified.

One day she might think the graduation prank had been funny. Her friends April and Jackie already did, but that was likely because they’d been the ones to dare her to join them and hadn’t been caught. Their horses had been faster, their riding skills impressive. In their identity-masking costumes they’d ridden through the school hallways, vanishing almost as fast as they’d appeared.

Hannah less so. Once inside, her horse had balked, and she’d been so afraid of hitting her head on a door jamb that she’d been busted almost immediately.

That would have been okay, but one of the teachers had spooked her horse, which promptly kicked in the football trophy case, then left behind a stinky, steaming pile.

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