Sam grins. “Wow, you’re really selling it hard to me now.”

  I laugh. “I know I sound completely crazy, but my dream felt so real…”

  I stare behind his shoulder, expecting a mermaid and still finding two leopards.

  Sam turns to look and then back at me. “You keep staring at the wall. Is something bothering you?”

  “No, yes, sorry, it’s just that in my dream this”—I gesture to the room—“was an ocean. The bamboo was a coral reef, the birds were fish and the leopards—”

  “—a mermaid,” we say in chorus.

  Sam stares at me for a long moment. “How do you know that? I’ve drawn an alternative design, but I never showed it to anyone.”

  “I saw it in my dream. You’d chosen the ocean theme because Jo’s favorite fairy tale is The Little Mermaid and she’d convinced you to go with water over jungle. We came here on New Year’s Eve, we left the kids with a babysitter and spent the night in the magnolia suite.”

  Sam’s eyebrows shoot high in his forehead. “That’s the room they’ve given me.” He looks astonished, like his head is spinning.

  Next to the leopards, an indoor waterfall spurts out of the wall and ends in an artificial stream that runs for the length of the spa reception area. Sam now sits on the small stone wall that marks the riverbed and stares at me. “What are you saying that you saw an alternative future?”

  I sit next to him. “I don’t know if I traveled to a parallel dimension, or had a medication-induced hallucination, or a dream. But I want to make what I saw my reality, Sam, letting you go has been the biggest mistake of my life. All these years I thought I was doing great on my own until I saw how happy we could be together. We were disgustingly happy, Sam, like a Hallmark movie level happy…”

  “That’s vile,” he says, mock disgusted. “Please don’t tell me we hashtag our Instagram pics #blessed or I’m bailing right now.”

  I can’t help but smile. “We don’t, but we could.”

  Sam is joking along, but he’s not saying much otherwise. I fidget with my dress and stare away. My gaze comes to rest on the rocks making up the riverbed where the fake waterfall lands. And a sudden inspiration hits me. I search the round, flat pebbles for a mostly dry one and grab a white one.

  I don’t have a pen, but I have lip gloss in my clutch. I use the pink brush to write yes on the stone.

  Sam watches me, amused. “I don’t think you’re supposed to paint on hotel’s properties.”

  I ignore the joke and look at him. “In my dream, you asked me if I wanted to try for another baby because you wanted another girl. And I said I wasn’t sure because, you know, another pregnancy, and we’d have to clear the attic to make room for the baby and start another college fund. So, I said that I’d think about it. And you got super excited, but I told you to cool down because it wasn’t a yes written in stone. But then my Christmas gift to you was a stone, engraved with a single word…”

  “Yes?” Sam asks.

  “Yes.” I give him the pebble. “What I’m trying to say is that I want a second chance, I want to marry you, and go live in the suburbs, and have three, four, ten kids, as many as you want. And if we can’t make them because you know we’re sort of coming late to the race with my biological ticking clock and everything we can adopt, or I can freeze my eggs…” I trail off, finally out of words.

  Sam is turning around the pebble in his hands.

  “This would be a good moment to say something,” I say. “I’m sort of dying over here.”

  Sam looks at me, deadly serious, every hint of a joke gone from his face. “When I broke up with you, I thought being a dad was the most important thing in my life. What I didn’t realize was that wanting kids was only half of the equation… I also had to find a woman I wanted to have kids with, and after you, that never happened.”

  I chuckle nervously. “When I woke up from the coma, I waited an entire day before I had the guts to look you up on Facebook. I was dreading finding out you’d married young and already produced a football team of offspring.”

  “No.” Sam’s gaze stays intense. “You’re the only woman I ever wanted to start a family with.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t you reach out? You knew where I was.”

  “At first, it took me a few years to come to that conclusion… I might appear all mature and composed now, but I was a mess for a while after the breakup, more so because it had been my decision…”

  “And later?”

  “Well, the realization that there were women I could be in a relationship with, love even, but that I didn’t want to marry or have kids with, convinced me I had been that kind of person for you… someone okay to date in college but not to start a family with…”

  “Oh, Sam, no… back then, I prioritized the wrong things… you were right. We should’ve been young parents and not let work or money come between us. And it only took a coma and an otherworldly experience for me to realize what I had left behind… and in my dream, I realized that in all these years, I never stopped loving you. And I know this is a lot to take in that I’m sounding delirious, but we’ve wasted so much time, Sam, and I don’t want to waste another minute. Not if I can help it.”

  “What are you proposing, Caroline? Marriage, a house in the suburbs, three to ten kids with relative college funds?” Sam stands up and offers me a hand. “Am I forgetting anything?”

  I take his hand and let him pull me close. “An endless mess, and sleepless nights, and a few arguments along the way… and perhaps infrequent but very intense sex, and endless, disgusting happiness…”

  “Endless, disgusting happiness… Yes, Charlie Bear.” He flips the stone in the air once. “Yes. Written in stone.”

  With a cheeky smile, Sam throws the pebble back into the river and pulls me even closer, wrapping his arms around my lower back. His lips finally press onto mine just as the boom of fireworks explodes all over the city, signaling the beginning of a new year, of a new life…

  Note from the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed A Christmas Caroline. This is the second book in the Christmas Romantic Comedy series, but it doesn’t really matter if you started reading here or not, as all books in this series are complete standalones, totally unrelated to each other. Well, except that they share the same heartwarming, fuzzy holiday spirit. I hope you’ll want to give the other books in the series a try as well.

  The “next” book in the series will be Home for Christmas and it’ll feature two families stuck in the same mountain cabin after a double-booking mishap.

  Now, I have to ask you a favor. If you loved my story, please leave a review on Goodreads, your favorite retailer’s website, or wherever you like to post reviews (your blog, your Facebook wall, your bedroom wall, in a text to your best friend…). Reviews are the best gift you can give to an author, and word of mouth is the most powerful means of book discovery.

  Thank you for your constant support!

  Camilla, x

  PS. Did you notice my little Easter egg from A Sudden Crush? (Bucknam Publishing is the same publishing house that fired Joanna Price from that book.)

  Home for Christmas

  Down with a bad case of writer's block, Riven has escaped to a mountain cabin for a prolonged writing retreat. The last thing he needs this Christmas is for his family to invade his sanctuary away from LA. What he needs even less is for a family of strangers as large and boisterous as his own to also be stuck in the same house after a double-booking disaster.

  Especially when he ends up having to share a bunk bed with Wendy—a gorgeous, feisty New Yorker who quickly learns how to get under his skin.

  Sharing a room with her is sweet torture and Riven isn’t even sure what he dreads more: that every passing day brings them closer to saying goodbye or that they have yet another night to spend together...

  Get your copy at your favorite retailer!

  Also by Camilla Isley

  Romantic Comedies

  Stand Alones

  I Wish for You

  A Sudden Crush

  First Comes Love Series

  Love Connection

  Opposites Attract

  I Have Never

  A Christmas Date

  To the Stars and Back

  From Thailand with Love

  You May Kiss the Bridesmaid

  Sweet Love and Country Roads

  Christmas Romcom Series

  Fool Me Twice at Christmas

  A Christmas Caroline

  Home for Christmas

  First Comes Love Series Box Sets

  First Comes Love (Books 1-3)

  Then Comes Marriage (Books 4-6)

  Beach Reads Box Set (Books 1-6)

  New Adult College Romance

  Just Friends Series Box Sets

  Just Friends - The Complete Series

  Just Friends Series

  Let’s Be Just Friends

  Friend Zone

  My Best Friend’s Boyfriend

  I Don’t Want To Be Friends

  About the Author

  Camilla is an engineer turned writer after she quit her job to follow her husband on an adventure abroad.

  She’s a cat lover, coffee addict, and shoe hoarder. Besides writing, she loves reading—duh!—cooking, watching bad TV, and going to the movies—popcorn, please! She’s a bit of a foodie, nothing too serious. A keen traveler, Camilla knows mosquitoes play a role in the ecosystem, and she doesn’t want to starve all those frog princes out there, but she could really live without them.

  Connect with me:

  My Website: www.camillaisley.com/

  Newsletter Sign Up: Join Here

  Twitter: @camillaisley

  Facebook

  Goodreads

  Bookbub

  Instagram

  Pinterest

  Or just drop me an email: camilla.isley@gmail.com

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my son, Will and Bram characters are loosely based on him.

  Many thanks to Silvia Meyer, a member of my Readers’ Group, who suggested Sam’s job. The idea of him being a mosaic designer tied in so beautifully with the story I’m still in awe.

  Thank you to Rachel Gilbey for organizing the blog tour for this book and to all the book bloggers who participated. I love being part of your community.

  Thank you to my street team, and to all of you who leave book reviews. They’re so appreciated.

  Thank you to all my readers. Without your constant support, I wouldn’t keep pushing through the blank pages.

  Thank you to my editors and proofreaders, Molly Hill at Both Barrels Author Services, Helen Baggott, and BBB Publishings for making my writing the best it could be.

  And lastly, thank you to my family and friends for your constant encouragement.

  Cover Image Credit: Created by Freepik

 

 

  Camilla Isley, A Christmas Caroline

 

 

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