KENSINGTON BOOKS

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      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      A Wee Bit More on the Daft Days

      Chapter One

      Banners reading HAVE A JOYOUS YULETIDE, MERRY NOLLAIG BEAG, and HAPPY HOGMANAY decorated the interior of Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. A box of Yule candles sat next to Liss MacCrimmon’s day-by-day calendar on the sales counter. It was open to the current page—Tuesday, the ninth of December.

      As Liss wielded a feather duster and rearranged stock, a snippet of an old Christmas carol lodged in her mind and stuck there. Christmas was coming. The geese were getting fat. Or at least Liss supposed they were, not being acquainted with any personally. But with sales virtually nonexistent, she had a scant supply of pennies to put in the poor man’s hat.

      Or was it the old man’s hat?

      Liss never could remember the exact lyrics. She wasn’t much of a singer, either. Alone in the shop, she contented herself with humming the melody aloud. Even that small musical effort was off-key, but not far enough to silence her.

      A glance through the plate-glass display window at the front of the store revealed the same bare, unappealing landscape she’d seen every other time she’d looked. Skeletal branches reached up into an impossibly blue sky, starkly silhouetted against that cloudless backdrop. On the ground, patches of dead, yellow-brown grass alternated with piles of rotting leaves, pummeled by hard rains into shapeless, colorless lumps of vegetation. The vivid hues that had brought tourists flocking to Maine in the fall were only a distant memory.

      Bright morning sun made the scene even more depressing. Still no snow. How could it not snow in Maine in December?

      “Think snow,” Liss muttered to herself. “I ought to put that on a banner.”

      People had a right to see the white stuff on the ground by now. Skiers expected to be able to take their first outing of the season during Christmas vacation, if not before. Even more important, the residents of Carrabassett County needed tourists to show up and spend money on lift tickets, lodging, food, and gifts. Without that regular influx of business, everybody suffered, especially the tiny town of Moosetookalook.

      With a sigh, Liss turned away from the window. Wishing wouldn’t make it snow, not even if she had Aladdin’s lamp and a genie at her beck and call. What a pity that neither magic nor science could accurately predict the weather, let alone control it.

      After retying the bright red scarf holding her long, dark brown hair away from her face, Liss busied herself straightening the display next to a sign that read KILT-HOSE STUFFERS. To Liss’s mind kilt hose—or knee socks, as those not into Scottish-American heritage in a big way would call them—made ideal Christmas stockings. She’d gathered together an eclectic assortment of items that might be tucked into the toe or made to cascade enticingly over the top. There were pennywhistles and small figurines of pipers, refrigerator magnets, and campaign buttons bearing pseudo-Scottish sayings and puns, and the cutest little stuffed bears Liss had ever seen, all dressed up in kilts and plaids and wearing minuscule Balmoral caps. Liss had dubbed the four-inch high toys “Wee Scottish Bears” in the online catalogue she’d set up for the store.

      The display table in order, Liss turned next to the tall shelves that held a variety of Scottish imports, everything from tins of Black Bun, the traditional Twelfth Night cake made with fruit, almonds, spices, and whiskey—lots of whiskey—to canned haggis. She had no trouble dusting the upper reaches. She stood five-foot-nine in her stocking feet.

      Fourteen shopping days till Christmas, Liss thought as she worked. There was time yet to make a profit. If she started opening on Sundays, then it would be sixteen shopping days. She already planned to extend the shop’s hours by adding the two Mondays before Christmas. The rest of the year she took that day off to compensate for working Saturdays. Would it be worth the effort, and the expense, to staff the store seven days a week?

      The loss of her part-time sales clerk, Sherri Willett, had made scheduling more difficult. At the moment, Liss was not only half owner of the Emporium, but the store’s only employee. To leave the shop for any reason, she had to lock up and put the CLOSED sign in the window.

      Still, the extra hours might pay off. There was always the chance of a stray shopper wandering in. Liss sighed again. She should give it a shot. After all, she’d already calculated expenses down to the last decimal point. It wouldn’t cost all that much more to keep the heat at sixty-eight degrees for those extra days.

      The raucous jangle of the sleigh bells she’d attached to the door had Liss smiling in anticipation. A customer at last!

      Her spirits plummeted when she recognized Gavin Thorne. Like Liss, he owned a store that faced Moosetookalook’s town square. Several months earlier he’d bought the building that had once housed Alden’s Small Appliance Repair and opened The Toy Box.

      “Don’t you look the fine Scottish lassie!” Thorne had a big, booming voice and a smile that showed a great many large white teeth. Both were in marked contrast to a milquetoast appearance.

      Liss glanced down at the white peasant blouse and tartan miniskirt she’d selected from the store’s stock that morning and was suddenly glad she’d put on wooly dancer’s tights beneath the skirt. She did not