Merriment and Mayhem (Under the Mistletoe collection)

Chapter Two

9 11. Where is your emergency? ”

“ My neighbor needs help! She fell! ”

“ Can you tell me the address where she fell? ”

“ It’s 215 Juniper Lane. Please, please hurry! ”

“ I’m dispatching emergency services now, ma’am. What’s your name? ”

“ Gloria Martin. I live across the street at 220 Juniper Lane. Oh ... oh, God! ”

“ All right, Gloria. I need you to stay calm for me. Can you tell me the nature of your neighbor’s emergency? Where was she when she fell? ”

“ She was on the roof and ... and the ladder she was on broke. She slipped. My husband went to get our ladder, but it wasn’t tall enough. None of our ladders are tall enough! ”

“ All right, ma’am, I understand. Without moving her, can you tell me if your neighbor is injured? ”

“ Move her? I can’t reach her! Poor thing is holding on to the gutter for dear life! ”

“Don’t let go!”

She gritted her teeth and choked up on the drainpipe, muscles she didn’t even know she had starting to seize. “Didn’t intend to, Bob!”

As if this whole ordeal weren’t mortifying enough, the entire street, twenty-some-odd neighbors, had gathered around, watching while Everleigh clung to the side of her late grandmother’s house like a desperate baby koala.

Don’t stress! Hanging Christmas lights is a piece of cake! They, being the self-proclaimed experts on TikTok, had said. Don’t be intimidated and don’t waste your hard-earned money on one of those expensive, gimmicky lighting services. With these easy hacks, you’ll be the best-decorated house on the block.

With a canvas tote bag full of colorful LED lights and TuffClips tossed over one shoulder, Everleigh had scaled the ladder she’d found inside the shed with confidence. It had been covered in cobwebs, but aside from a few crusty old spiders that had fallen onto the frost-covered grass when she’d dragged it out—and sure, it was a little rickety and wobbly—it was, by all accounts, perfectly serviceable.

Or so she’d thought until the moment her foot went through the topmost rung, rot weakening the wood. She had clung to the gutter, watching over her shoulder as the ladder hit the ground and snapped clean in half, leaving her stranded thirty-some-odd feet in the air, with only the unforgiving concrete driveway and a few prickly holly bushes beneath her.

“You’ve got this, Everleigh!” sweet, sweet Frank, the kind, white-haired gentleman who lived across the street with his wife, shouted. He’d been her personal cheerleader throughout this entire shit show. “Gloria says help’s almost here!”

In the distance, sirens wailed, the most wonderful sound Everleigh had ever heard.

“They’re here!” Gloria yelled, and a door slammed, followed by another. “She’s over here! Hurry!”

“Miss Dangerfield.” She knew that voice. Captain Keegan. “How are you doing?”

Everleigh let out a half laugh, half sob. “Oh, you know. Hanging in there.”

“You’re doing great. Brantley’s on his way up to you now. We’ll have you down in a jiffy.”

Arms and legs hugging the drainpipe, Everleigh stole a careful peek over her shoulder.

From the basket attached to the tip of a cranelike ladder, Griffin Brantley grinned. “Long time, no see.”

Four days had passed since her last brush with disaster. Four. “Not long enough.”

Griffin clutched his chest and laughed. “Ouch.”

“I didn’t mean—” She huffed. “You know what I meant. This is mortifying.”

“Look on the bright side. At least this time you’re wearing pants.”

“Small favors,” Everleigh muttered under her breath.

Griffin held up a padded belt with a rope attached. “I’m gonna slip this harness around you, okay?”

She looked at the harness and gulped. “Isn’t that a little overkill? Can’t you just, I don’t know, grab me?” Preferably fast.

“It’s just a precaution,” he said. “Department protocol. I won’t let you fall.”

Everleigh exhaled shakily. “All right.”

Quickly and efficiently, he worked to secure the belt around her middle. “You know, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble just to see me again. You could’ve just called.”

“Aw, shucks,” she deadpanned, voice quivering only a little. “You found me out. This was nothing more than a desperate bid for your attention.”

“Called it.” His hands lingered on her waist. “You ready to let go?”

It took a second for her fingers to obey her brain. As soon as she relaxed her grip, the drainpipe shuddered, creaking ominously. A gasp flew from her mouth.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay, you’re okay.” He squeezed her waist. “I’ve got you.”

She shook her head and pinched her eyes shut, clinging to the gutter like a lifeline.

“Everleigh. Look at me.”

Maybe it was his tone, or maybe that he’d called her Everleigh, but without question, almost as if compelled by the sound of his voice, she complied.

Griffin stared steadily at her, blue eyes beseeching. “Trust me.”

With a short, sharp breath, Everleigh let go, trusting that he wasn’t going to drop her. Barely a split second of free fall later, she found herself cradled against his chest. Sooner than she’d have liked, she was back on her feet, stupidly mourning the loss of his arms around her.

Hands still fisted in his shirt, Everleigh tipped her head back and looked up at him. Big mistake. Huge. If she had thought he was beautiful standing in her grandmother’s kitchen, he was breathtaking now, bathed in shades of gold and pink, the setting sun hovering right at the horizon glinting off his skin, giving him an almost ethereal glow.

His smile was soft and slanted, and Everleigh’s heart, already racing, beat even faster, a painful tattoo against her ribs. “I told you I wouldn’t let you fall.”

“I guess you did,” her voice came out breathy, barely above a whisper.

His big hands rested on her hips, calloused thumbs sweeping an arc against the strip of bare skin between her jeans and sweater, the latter of which had ridden up during the rescue. Goose bumps erupted across Everleigh’s skin, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining the way Griffin’s eyes darkened, his breath shuddering from between his lips.

“How we doing up there, Brantley?”

Everleigh jerked back, Captain Keegan’s voice a cold-shower shock, snapping her back to reality. For a moment, she had forgotten where she was, that she was standing on the platform of a ladder suspended thirty feet in the air, neighbors gathered in the yard below, watching this entire disaster unfold.

Griffin scrubbed a hand over his face, chuckles petering off into a sigh. “On our way down, Cap!” He pressed a button on the control panel, and as the basket began to lower, Frank let out a cheer that incited a round of applause from the neighbors down below.

Everleigh groaned. “You must think I’m a total disaster.” She certainly felt like one.

“Eh, I was thinking more along the lines of a hot mess.” He grinned wolfishly, eyes dragging down her body. “Emphasis on hot .”

Despite it being only a few degrees shy of freezing out, Everleigh went warm all over. “Well, I’m not. A mess, I mean. Not usually. Unfortunately, you’ve just been witness to my extraordinarily awful spate of bad luck.”

An extraordinarily awful spate of bad luck that she could only pray would soon pass.

Griffin hummed. “See, what you call bad luck, I’m more inclined to call fate.”

“ Fate? ” She laughed. “You think it’s fate that my grandmother’s neighbors had to call 911 for me twice in one week?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Feels a little like the universe wanted us to cross paths, is what I’m saying.”

“Wow,” she breathed. This guy. He just didn’t quit, did he? “I bet that line works on all the girls.”

“A few guys, too.” His lips twitched. “But it’s not a line. I’m serious. You’re telling me it doesn’t feel a little serendipitous, us meeting like this?”

“Like I said. An awful spate of bad luck.”

His tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, and he squinted, blue eyes twinkling in the late-afternoon sun. “Mark my words, Trouble, I’m gonna win you over yet. You’ll see.”

She had to briefly pinch her lips together to keep her smile in check. “Knock yourself out.”

As soon as they were back on solid ground, Chen was there, opening the basket. “You mind if Miller and I check you out real quick? It won’t take a second.”

“That’s really not necessary,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Everyone was staring, neighbors all still gathered around, whispering, and Everleigh wanted nothing more than to escape back into the house with what remained of her dignity.

“You should take a look at her left hand. She’s favoring the right.”

Everleigh whipped her head around, staring at Griffin in disbelief. “Because I’m right-handed,” she argued. “Of course I’m favoring it.”

Maybe it was a little tender, and maybe she’d heard a teeny, tiny little pop, followed by a sharp pain near her palm when she’d first slipped and grabbed at the gutter, but she’d swallow a couple of ibuprofen and be fine in an hour or two.

“Humor me,” he said, and with a defeated sigh, Everleigh let herself be led over to the back of the engine, where she sat on the tailboard, trying not to squirm under Griffin’s watchful gaze as Miller wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her biceps, checking her vitals.

A hiss of pain slipped through her teeth when Chen palpated a particularly tender spot at the base of her index finger. Damn, that hurt.

“Sorry,” Chen said. “Can you form a fist for me?” Everleigh could. “Okay. Now, here, squeeze my hand.” Chen frowned thoughtfully. “Hmm. Grip strength’s diminished.”

“A2 pulley strain?” Miller asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Everleigh looked between them. “Is that bad?”

“Well.” Miller blew out a breath as he unwrapped the cuff from her arm. “It’s not good.”

“Great,” she muttered. “Just great.”

Exactly what she needed. An A2 ... whatever strain potentially putting her hand out of commission for God only knew how long. The hits just kept coming, first with the oven and now this. She had the entire upstairs left to pack and half a house strung with lights she’d need to figure out how to take down without a ladder and, now, with only one hand.

Chen patted Everleigh on the knee and rose from where she’d been crouched in front of her. “It’s a common injury seen among rock climbers. Tendon pulleys act as connective tissue to keep the tendon close to the bone.”

“You ever been fishing?” Miller asked, a non sequitur if Everleigh had ever heard one.

“Not in years, but I used to go with my grandfather all the time. Why?”

“Tendon pulleys are like the eyelets of a fishing rod. You know how they keep the fishing line attached to the rod? You put too much force on ’em, and that sudden stress can cause tearing, which’ll cause the tendon to pull away from the bone, a little like a bowstring.” He held up his index finger, illustrating in a way that made her stomach churn. She preferred not to think about the parts of her body hidden beneath her skin, and she definitely didn’t like to think about them tearing. “You lose grip strength, can’t bend your finger—”

“I can bend them, though.” She winced. “It just hurts like a bitch when I do.”

Griffin reached for her hand and cradled it between both of his. “Could just be a strain.”

Everleigh studied the long, scarred fingers wrapped around hers with a frown. Letting Griffin hold her hand felt a little too close to encouraging him in his quest to ... At this point, she honestly didn’t know his endgame. Win her over, whatever that meant. He could talk about serendipity until he turned blue in the face, could claim his lines weren’t lines at all, but Everleigh was pretty sure the guy was a consummate flirt who, in all likelihood, chatted up everyone on calls from damsels in distress to little blue-haired old ladies.

Just this once, Everleigh would allow him this small liberty, but only because it was hard to deny that his hand felt nice wrapped around hers. That she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had just ... held her hand. Which was probably tragic, but nothing new there.

Captain Keegan wandered over from where she’d been chatting with Frank and his wife, Gloria. “How are we doing over here?”

“Treat and street, Cap,” Chen said. “You’ll need to see a doctor. X-rays don’t show tendons, but sometimes fractures can happen concurrent with soft-tissue injuries. They’ll want to rule that out, and they might do an MRI to confirm whether there’s a tear. But since it’s not a life-threatening injury, you don’t need to go to the emergency room. Unless you’d like for us to transport you—”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll just drive myself to urgent care.”

Gloria stalked across the yard, her husband right behind her. “My ears must be failing me because I know I didn’t just hear you say you’re going to drive yourself to the doctor, did I, Everleigh?”

Her cheeks burned. “It’s fine. Really, I can—”

“Nonsense.” Gloria set her hands on her hips. “Frank and I will drive you. Won’t we, Frank?”

He held up his keys. “Of course we will.”

With no small amount of reluctance, Everleigh tugged her hand free and stood. “Thanks for, you know, rescuing me. Again. ”

Griffin flashed his dimples, and she could swear her knees wobbled. “Anytime.”

She quickly thanked Chen and Miller and followed Frank and Gloria across the street to the Buick Lucerne parked in their drive.

“Shame about that ladder, Everleigh,” Frank said, unlocking the doors. “It’s going to be strange not to see the place lit up this year.”

Shielding her eyes from the setting sun, Everleigh turned and stared forlornly up at the house half-decked with lights.

“Yeah,” she murmured.

It really would.

“I’ll be fine,” Everleigh said for what felt like the umpteenth time since leaving urgent care. “You don’t need to come and cook for me, Gloria, I promise.”

A mild strain was all it was, the nurse practitioner had said. With rest and ice, Everleigh would be good as new in a week, two weeks tops, as long as she kept it splinted and avoided putting any additional stress on it.

“We’re just worried about you,” Frank said, making a left onto Juniper Lane. “All alone in that house, especially this time of year.”

“You know,” she teased, “it’s not really any different from being alone in my apartment this time of year, right?”

“No, because that’s even worse,” he grumbled. “Don’t you get lonely?”

Everleigh scoffed out a disbelieving laugh. These two were worse than Grandma Dangerfield with their mother-henning. The concern was sweet but unnecessary. “I do have friends, Frank.”

“But are they good friends?” he prodded. “Friends you see more than once a month for coffee?”

She must’ve waited a beat too long to answer because Gloria tutted loudly.

“Everleigh—”

“They’re ... we’re busy,” Everleigh stressed. “We’re all busy.”

Her friends were all either married or in serious relationships; a few even had kids. Get-togethers were no longer spur-of-the-moment the way they once were, but rather planned meticulously weeks, if not months, in advance. But Everleigh understood. Life happened. And her life? Her life was good, leaving little room for her to complain. She had a roof over her head and a job she liked and ... she was content. Just occasionally, when she was in a funk, the kind of melancholy mood that had an awful tendency to creep up on her around holidays and birthdays and special occasions, Everleigh would wish for more . As the pages on the calendar seemed to pass by quicker every year, Everleigh’s yearning for that undefined thing grew.

If there was a solution, she knew it was down to her taking charge and doing something to change her life. But most days, she really was content. And content was easy. Content was safe. Change, on the other hand ...

“You work from home; you could die in your apartment, and who would even know?”

“Gloria!” Frank threw his wife a horrified look from the driver’s seat. Everleigh was sure her face looked similar.

“Morbid as the thought may be, it’s true.” Gloria crossed her arms. “Everleigh could be rotting in her apartment for God knows how long before anyone would think to look for her.”

“Someone would check on me.” She was sure of it. It might take a few days, but someone would look eventually. She frowned. Ninety percent sure of it.

Gloria huffed. “If you’re sick, who even brings you soup?”

Soup? Everleigh shrugged. “I’d probably just DoorDash it, to be honest.”

At that, Frank scoffed. “The same way you’d probably order a Lyft if you needed someone to take you to urgent care, I bet.”

Everleigh kept her mouth shut and Frank groaned. “I was kidding, Everleigh! A Lyft? Really?”

“I swear,” she stressed. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of—”

Gloria gasped, and it was a good thing Everleigh was wearing her seat belt because Frank slammed on the brakes.

“Jesus, woman!” He panted, knuckles white around the steering wheel. “You can’t just— Oh. Oh, my.”

Everleigh’s breath caught in her throat.

At the end of the cul-de-sac, Grandma Dangerfield’s house was lit up with enough Christmas lights to rival an airstrip. Someone had picked up where Everleigh had left off. The big, colorful bulbs Everleigh had found in the attic had been strung all around the steeply pitched gable roof, and icicle lights she didn’t recognize hung from the gingerbread trim over the porch.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Gloria murmured, and Everleigh had to laugh, because it was either that or cry. And, well, she might do that, too.

This was no Christmas miracle. Everleigh didn’t believe in those any more than she believed in fate or serendipity or whatever the hell Griffin Brantley wanted to call it. But she did believe people could be good and kind, and that? That was better than any miracle in her book.

“Thank you so much for driving me.” She threw open the door and hopped out before Frank had even put the car in park. “You two have a good night!”

Everleigh sprinted up the front walk and took the porch steps two at a time, heart racing by the time she made it to the front door. The front door that had a note taped to it, right above the knob, unmissable.

Everleigh—

It read in a slanted script.

Stay out of trouble

xx.