Merry Humbug Christmas (3 page)

“Oh, Joss, it was perfect. We went to dinner at McCormick’s,

and they led us through to one of those circular tables in the back, the ones with the soft leather booths. And there were red roses

everywhere, and about twenty white pillar candles.”

“What did you think when you walked in and saw it?” Joss curled

her legs under her and closed her eyes as she snuggled into Caleb’s thick fur.

“Well, of course, I started to cry like a big dope.”

“Of course.”

And then Joss started to cry too.

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On the second day of Christmas,

Murphy’s Law gave to me . . .

two hearty shoves

and a Partridge with the first name Keith.

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2

Joss paid the driver and dragged her large metallic pink suit-

case out after her, snapping the handle upward and lugging

the thing through the World Cruise Center crowd. She pulled her

ticket information out of her bag to confirm the berth location again before following the cattle drive toward the check-in booth.

It was half an hour or more before she finally reached the front

of the line and handed over her ticket. The attendant immediately scrunched up her pug nose and shook her head while making a click-ing sound with her tongue.

“Nah, honey, you need to go check in down at ninety-three.”

“No,” Joss corrected her, pointing out the berth information sta-

pled to the inside of the pamphlet. “It says here I’m supposed to go to berth ninety-one.”

“That was the original information, but this cruise,” she said, tapping the glossy fold-over envelope with pointy crimson fingernails,

“. . . this one was canceled.”

“What do you mean? It can’t be canceled. No one contacted me.”

17

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Merry

Humbug Christmas

“Don’t get your stockings in a twist, Red,” the woman seemed

to sing to her. “You’re still cruisin’. You’re just doing it on a much bigger ship.”

“Oh. Well. Where did you say I should go?”

“Check-in for berth ninety-three.”

“Okay. Well. Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas, honey. Next?”

Joss took the paperwork back and tucked it into her bag, pulling

her suitcase behind her in the direction pointed out by the bright red nail on the attendant’s bony index finger.

“Whuh-whoooa,” Joss stammered when she saw it.

She was right about a bigger ship. That’s the biggest ship I’ve ever seen.

Joss gazed upward, her jaw propped open at the sight of what

looked to be a small floating city.

Her train of thought careened off the tracks as an intense and

painful impact threw her shoulder out of the socket before it bounced right back again.

“Owwww!” she screamed, dropping her bags and grabbing her

shoulder on instinct.

“Ah, no, I’m sorry,” he said. Joss looked up into narrowed hazel

eyes. “I didn’t even see you there.” He picked up her suitcase by the pull handle and offered it to her.

“Th-thank you.”

Dirty blonde hair grazed the collar of an open denim shirt, under which he wore a navy henley tucked into the waistband of faded Levi jeans. His muscular arms pulled the cotton shirt taut over them, and thin blue suspenders with a crimson pinstripe stretched over broad shoulders.

“Your satchel,” he said, and she noticed a faint Irish brogue.

“Oh. Thanks.”

When he cracked the steel of his square jaw and smiled at her, she noticed a prominent dimple hiding at the center of his chin beneath the shadowy stubble of a day’s worth of beard. He braced her shoulder for a moment with a firm hand, and he cocked an eyebrow.

“You’re all right then?”

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Once Upon a Jingle Bell

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“Y-yes. Thank you.”

He gave her one pronounced nod, then tapped her shoulder and

moved away.

“Be careful now,” he called to her over his shoulder. “The docks

are crawling with clumsy bulls who will roll right over you.”

“Good to know,” she returned, and he glanced back just long

enough to grace her with a wide smile before disappearing into the crowd.

Following the throng of people heading toward ninety-three in

lines that were six-deep, Joss struggled not to bump anyone with her oversized suitcase.

“Hey, watch it.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

It took longer than expected, but she finally found the correct

check-in booth, reached the dock, and moved up the ramp along

with the pulsing wave of bodies.

“Please move into the first ballroom to check in,” someone

announced, but she couldn’t see who was speaking for all the people.

Feeling like a goldfish swirling with the current of a drain, Joss allowed herself to be swept along, funneled through a large open

doorway, and dumped out in a massive hall. Rectangular tables

framed the circumference of the room, manned by uniformed atten-

dants with laptops, each of them wearing Santa hats. Joss tugged her pink suitcase behind her and stepped into one of the rows.

The handsome Irish bull crossed Joss’s mind, and she scanned

the crowd for a glimpse of him. On tiptoes, she looked over a sea of short, silver heads in hopes of a quick glimpse of a six-foot . . .

Lumberjack? Sheep farmer? Gladiator?

Joss grinned at the Russell Crowe comparison. But wait. Crowe

wasn’t Irish.

Welsh? No. Australian.

“Are you lost?”

Joss did a double-take, face-to-face with a walking commercial

for Christmas at Dollywood.

“Pardon me?”

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Merry

Humbug Christmas

“You look lost, sweetie. This is your first cruise, iddin’ it?”

The platinum blonde’s candy cane earrings dangled all the way

to her shoulders, blinking with tiny red-and-white lights. Her dark green eye shadow was exactly the same shade as her sweater—a tight Angora number with Rudolph’s three-dimensional head plunked

right in the middle of her ample chest—and her wrist appeared

heavy under the weight of a large chain-linked bracelet clasped with a bundle of small, silver jingle bells and a red velvet bow.

Joss squinted into the woman’s blinking earlobes and shook her

head. “Uh, yes. It’s my first cruise. It’s that obvious?”

“Well, you found your way to check-in, at least. You’re just a

couple of steps away from starting the 12 Days of Christmas Fun

Cruise.”

“Oh, no. I was sent over here because my original cruise was

canceled, and they rebooked me on this ship.”

“Oh, goodie,” she squealed, and Joss couldn’t help but grimace.

“This is my third year on the Fun Cruise.”

“No. I’m not on the Christmas—”

“You’ll have the time of your life, sweetie. I’m Connie Rudolph,”

she added, taking Joss’s free hand and shaking it vigorously. “Like the reindeer?”

“I’m sorry. Like the—”

“The reindeer, sweetie. You know, with the red nose.”

“Oh. Right.” Joss nodded slowly, hoping to shake her brain back

into place. “Rudolph.”

“And you?”

“Me?”

“Your name, sweetie. I’m Connie and you are . . . ?”

“Jocelyn. Joss. Joss Snow.”

“Snow!” she cried, shaking her head until one of the candy canes

became tangled in her big hair. “Well, that’s just adorable, sweetie.”

“Checking in?”

Joss twirled around to find herself next in line. She fumbled with her bag and suitcase, producing her paperwork as she thumped into the edge of the table and handed the attendant her ticket.

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Once Upon a Jingle Bell

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“Jocelyn Snow. You’re one of our rebooks,” he observed, just

about the time Joss noticed the fifty-foot decorated Christmas tree through the glass window behind him.

“Yes. But I think there’s some kind of mistake,” she said. “I

was booked on the Bah Humbug Cruise. You know, their slogan is

No-Christmas-None-of-the-Time?”

“Right. That was canceled.”

“Yes, so I understand. But why would they rebook me from . . .”

—moving both hands to the left
—“. . . a Christmas-free cruise to a . . .”
—

and then to the right—“. . . 12 Days of Christmas Fun Cruise?”

“Oh, it’s not twelve days,” Connie interrupted, propping her chin on Joss’s shoulder, the bracelet jingling as she patted her arm. “It’s the 12 Days of Christmas. You know, like the song? Packing twelve days of fun into a seven-day cruise!”

The last part of it sounded as if she read from a brochure. The

attendant pointed his finger at Connie. “You’ve been with us before.”

“Three years now,” she acknowledged, her chin digging into

Joss’s shoulder as she peered around at her.

Joss took a deep breath and held it for a moment before squirm-

ing out from underneath Connie Rudolph’s grinning face, a grin

bearing teeth at least four shades whiter than they should have been.

The woman’s candy cane earring got caught in Joss’s hair as she

pulled away from her.

“But it’s still a Christmas cruise,” Joss told the attendant.

She could have kissed the woman at the front of the next line

when she motioned to Connie. “Next! Step over here, please.”

“You got something against Christmas?” the young man asked Joss

as she watched Connie go. “Oh! Are you Jewish? It’s okay because

we’ve got some great Hanukkah activities planned and—”

“No!” she exclaimed. “I am not Jewish. I just signed up for—”

“We gotta wait here all day?” a man bellowed from the line

behind her. “Can we move this along?”

“Here you go,” the attendant said as he placed a red vinyl enve-

lope of paperwork into her hands. “Here’s your sea pass and your

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Merry

Humbug Christmas

ship information, your meal schedule, and a map to your cabin.

You’ve been upgraded to a deluxe suite up on Frosty.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Frosty the Snowman: that’s level eight. They’ve placed you in a

deluxe suite because of the schedule change. You’ll go through those doors, across the deck, around the Christmas tree, and to the elevators on the left. Just tell them you’re on Frosty, and one of the elves will help you from there.”

“Come on, sweetie,” Connie cried excitedly, locking her arm

through Joss’s. “We’re both on the Frosty level.” Then the woman

gasped and pinched Joss’s elbow. “Hey! Maybe we can share an elf.”

JOSS TALLIED SEVEN ELVES, sixteen wreaths, and countless candy

canes between the elevator and her cabin. Well, countless plus two, once she added in Connie Rudolph’s blinking earrings. Every cabin door they passed had a striped stocking hanging from it, some of

them green stripes and others red, all of them with two white fur pom-poms dangling.

When she finally shook Connie loose around the corner from

the elevator, the elf known as Hadji the room steward herded the

rest of the group down the long garland-draped corridor. As mem-

bers of the moving flock reached their individual locations, they scattered like little holiday insects, and Joss was nearly the last to reach her cabin. Hadji continued to natter on for a minute or two with

his spiel about daily activities such as a contest aimed at pinpointing the ugliest holiday sweater onboard—for which Joss felt certain Connie should take the prize—and a big-screen, twenty-four-hour