Publication date: December 7th, 2021
Published by: Rosewind Books
Synopsis:
Screenplay by the writer of Rescuing Madison and A Lesson in Romance (Hallmark), and the forthcoming Aloha with Love.
Christmas isn't fashion editor Roxanne Hudson's style, but when she finds herself snowed in with a handsome stranger, she might just discover the magic of the season after all.
Roxanne Hudson does not like the holidays. They come with too many family obligations that take her away from work as a rising fashion editor in New York City. But this Christmas might be Grandma Myrtle's last, and Roxanne's parents want her to spend the holiday at the family cabin in the Green Mountains. With her boyfriend out of the country for a photo shoot, Roxanne decides to brave the long commute--and the wilderness--to spend Christmas in Vermont.
After an uncomfortable call from her boyfriend starts the trip off badly, Roxanne is blindsided by a blizzard on the snowy mountain road, where the last thing she hears before losing consciousness is sleigh bells. When she's rescued by Mark Foster, a handsome park ranger who's the exact opposite of everything she always thought she wanted, Roxanne seeks her grandmother's wisdom and discovers an uncanny connection that could be a sign of what her life is really meant to be.
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Excerpt
Myrtle laughed, took a long draw from her cocoa, and set the empty mug on her lap.
"Change is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always constant, and it doesn't worry itself with timelines." The old woman cast a long, thoughtful look out into the night. "If something doesn't feel right, it's usually not. You know, when I first met your grandfather, I could have sworn I heard bells, I was so smitten. No rhyme or reason for it, but one look at Jimmy was enough to change the rest of my life.
"Bells?" Roxanne echoed. She remembered the bells she'd been hearing for the past couple of days. They'd started right at the moment of her accident and ended the moment Mark had walked away. But a few days wasn't enough time to fall in love with someone, was it? The Roxanne of last week would have said no way, but today's Roxanne wasn't so sure. She recalled the way Mark's lips had felt against hers under the mistletoe in the snow and realized she would be happy if that was the last first kiss she ever had. Maybe there was something to all Mark's hokum about Christmas magic after all. It sure had made a believer out of her.
"Bells," Grandma Myrtle confirmed, her voice dropping to a whisper as she fingered her wedding band. "Used to hear them jingling every time he kissed me," she said with a sad smile. "Jimmy's been gone for over ten years, and sometimes, when I miss him the most, I think I can still hear them. Especially on nights like tonight."
"Why tonight?" Roxanne asked.
"Because it's Christmas." Myrtle laughed, as if it were obvious. "The season of love--love of the deepest kind." She motioned at the box in Roxanne's hand. "Not the kind that can be bought in a store, either. The kind what makes Christmas so magical is in here."
She placed her hand over Roxanne's heart.
"You're a smart lady, Grandma Myrtle," Roxanne said, reaching up to cover her grandmother's hand with hers.
Myrtle laughed. "Oh, honey, when you get to be my age you can't help but be smart. You've had a whole lot of life to put behind you and learned a lot of lessons along the way. Some are easy, some are hard, but either way, you're going to learn them, like it or not."
Lindy Miller is an entrepreneur, award-winning professor, and publishing professional. In 2011, Miller was part of the executive leadership team that founded Radiant Advisors, a data and business intelligence research and advisory firm, where Miller developed and launched the company's editorial and research divisions, and later its data visualization practice, for clients that included 21st Century Fox Films, Fox Networks, Warner Bros., and Disney. She is the author of numerous papers and two textbooks under the name of Lindy Ryan, The Visual Imperative: Creating a Culture of Visual Discovery (Elsevier) and Visual Data Storytelling with Tableau (Pearson) Miller holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Business Administration: Entrepreneurship and Strategy, and a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership and a Doctorate in Education, Organizational Leadership.
