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  Tim swings his legs over the edge of the bed. He starts the process of putting his pants on, followed by his shoes with the braces. I’ve seen enough movies about Christmas miracles to know that if this were a Hallmark Christmas movie, there would have been some incredible moment when Tim magically regained the ability to walk without braces and crutches. His cerebral palsy would have been magically cured. Doesn’t that always happen in sappy movies?

  Yes, I believe some sort of miracle happened last year right before Christmas that changed my life. But that was the only miracle. Tim still needs his braces and crutches to walk. He will always need them. That will never change. And if I told him otherwise, he would laugh in my face.

  And I’m glad. Because I wouldn’t change one thing about the guy I’ve been sharing my life with this year.

  Tim grabs his crutches and hauls himself to his feet. “Let’s go open presents,” he says.

  It goes without saying we have a Christmas tree this year. Not just a tree, but an embarrassingly large Christmas tree that takes up about a quarter of the living room. We picked it out together a few weeks ago. Honestly, at the time, it didn’t seem as gigantic as it did when we got it into the apartment. I was absolutely horrified when I realized that a large portion of our living room had been eaten up by this tree.

  But at the same time, I love it. I loved decorating it. I love the way it looks when we plug it in and all the lights go on. I love seeing the presents stacked up under it. I want to leave it in place till February.

  And there are a lot of presents under the tree. We’ve got presents from Roberta as well as Tim’s siblings. There’s a present from Polly, but I think she has something else for me waiting at her house (we’re heading out there later in the morning). And everyone from work chipped in to get me a present for the first time since I’ve worked at Janetta. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I don’t think anyone at work thinks I’m a bitch anymore. Everyone seems to really like me.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. Richard doesn’t like me, but he left the company soon after New Year’s. Given the sexual-harassment allegations that were piling up against him, resigning was his only option to save face. It spared him being fired.

  “Jesus.” Tim plops down onto the sofa next to the tree. “Look at all these presents. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  I scan the piles of boxes wrapped in festive wrapping paper. Even though I’m in my thirties, I get a thrill at the thought of unwrapping all these presents. There really is something about Christmas that makes me feel like a kid again. I wonder if Tim might be up for a snowball fight later.

  I notice one small rectangular box sitting on top, encased in solid red wrapping paper. It’s the exact shape of a bracelet box.

  It’s my bracelet! He got it for me!

  “That one.” I grin at Tim as I point to the rectangular box. “Is that one for me?”

  He gives me a funny look. “Yes. It is.”

  “From you?”

  He nods. I notice he’s squeezing his knees with his fists.

  Yes! I let out an excited squeal and lift the box off the pile. I plop down next to Tim on the sofa. “Do you mind if I open this one first?”

  He returns my smile, but it’s a little bit crooked. “Of course. It’s your present.”

  I rip off the red wrapping paper, imagining how the bracelet will look on my wrist. I don’t wear a ton of jewelry, but it really was a beautiful bracelet. Very simple and understated, but classy. And not too expensive. It will be perfect for work or a night out. I open the box, expecting to find my bracelet inside.

  But it’s not there. Tim didn’t get me a bracelet after all.

  It’s a diamond ring.

  Oh. My. God.

  I stare at the ring, my mouth hanging open. He put a ring in a bracelet box. If his goal was to surprise me, he has absolutely done it.

  I look up at his face. He’s blinking his blue eyes behind his glasses, and he’s still got that lopsided smile.

  “You don’t have to decide right now.” His words come out in a rush like they always do when he’s nervous. “I know it’s soon. I mean, it’s not too soon for me. We’ve been together a year, and I know that I… Well, you know.”

  I return his crooked smile. “What do I know?”

  “You know that I…” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “That I… you know… want to marry you. So…”

  I look down at the ring. It’s not what I expected to see in this box, but it’s something much, much better. I used to have my whole life planned out for me. And then in the last year, that plan has been totally turned upside down. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. “So… what?”

  He lets out a nervous laugh as he pushes his glasses up his nose. “So… will you?” He raises his eyebrows. “Marry me, that is?”

  If you don’t make your girlfriend cry when you’re asking her to marry you, you have not made an effective proposal.

  Tim has made a very effective proposal.

  Epilogue

  I don’t know who screams louder—Roberta or Polly. There’s something about engagement rings that makes people want to scream, apparently.

  So, yes. Tim and I get married. Me—the woman who always said I would wait till at least forty to settle down, and not until after my ovaries stopped spitting out eggs. But you can’t plan when you fall in love.

  At first, we were decided on a tiny City Hall ceremony with just the two of us. But in the end, we realize we want our family there. So we have a slightly larger ceremony in a church. Tim’s hands are shaking when he kisses me for the first time as man and wife. It’s the best day of my life until two years later, when our daughter is born.

  The chocolate campaign is a smash success, and ends up winning a ton of awards and selling a whole lot of chocolate. I make the cover of People magazine. They call me an advertising genius. Genius? Well, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But you can’t really argue with People magazine, can you?

  Roberta goes into business making cookies with Charles Danvier. When I say “making cookies,” I mean that both literally and figuratively. I never would’ve thought it, but the two of them really hit it off. They get married in a small private ceremony, and live happily ever after together. With lots of chocolate and cookies—the two best things in life. Well, aside from sex.

  Polly and I grow incredibly close, just like we were when we were kids. Tim jokes that we can’t cook dinner without asking the other one what they think of the recipe. Her kids never forget my name again. And I’m there every Christmas morning with a much better set of presents, none of which were originally designed for dogs.

  I remain CEO of Janetta advertising for many years, but eventually give it up to spend more time with my family. I have no regrets. Courtney ascends to take my job, and she is amazing. And then many years later, the two of us start our own advertising firm that is incredibly successful. Times magazine calls us the “dynamic duo.” Sounds like a couple of superheroes, doesn’t it?

  Our six cats all live lazy, happy lives, and they get fat like you wouldn’t believe. Alexander is with us the longest, and when his eyes shut for the last time, I can’t stop crying for days. I really loved that cat. So did Tim. And so did our children.

  Speaking of children, we have two of them. A boy and a girl. There are hard days and sleepless nights, but I could not have picked a better person to share them with. Tim never gets pneumonia, and we spend a long life together. No matter what, I take comfort in the fact that I will wake up next to this man every morning. And every Christmas morning, we gather around the giant tree he’d buy for our apartment (and later our house) to open presents and enjoy the day together with the people we love most in the world.

  And as our son would say, God bless us, everyone, and thanks for the presents, Mom and Dad!

  THE END

  Dear readers,

  Thank you so much for reading Ms. Scrooge! If you enjoyed the book and
the characters, it would help me tremendously to get a review on Amazon. If you are not an author, you may not realize it, but those things mean the world to me. Please.

  Just to make things easy, the site on Amazon is here:

  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZTZ9F7N/.

  And as always, I would love to hear from you at [email protected].

  Thank you once again to all my readers!

  Annabelle Costa

  P.S. Keep reading for a book excerpt after the acknowledgments!

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank my editor Danielle Stockton of Keen Eye Editing for your excellent advice. Thank you to Avery Kingston for being a great beta reader and also helping me to create an amazing cover. Thank you to J. Saman for helping me to create a less obnoxious heroine. Thank you to Molly Mirren, who is always a source of great feedback and good grammar and finding pesky typos. And thank you to Geralyn Corcillo for your infectious enthusiasm.

  Now turn the page for an excerpt from my other Christmas book, How the Grinch Stole My Heart…

  How the Grinch Stole My Heart

  Thump.

  I close my eyes, trying to shut out the sound of a ball hitting the wall just outside my apartment. It’s the second time in two days. The second goddamn time.

  Thump. Thump.

  I feel a seedling of a headache starting in my left temple. I open my eyes and stare at the computer screen in front of me, filled with code. If I get a migraine, there’s no way I’ll be able to get any work done. I’ll be lucky if I can get out of bed.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  I grit my teeth. I know it’s a lot to expect absolute silence at three o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, but there’s something about that sound that gets me. The fact that it’s not quite rhythmic. The way sometimes there’s a gap in the thumps and I think it’s finally stopped, but nope, there it is again.

  I know who’s doing it. It’s that kid. That goddamn kid. I don’t know his name, but his family moved here a couple of months ago, and ever since winter hit for real, he’s been playing out in the hall with his rubber ball. He throws it against the wall as hard as he can, then he catches it. You’d think he’d get bored of it eventually, but he never does. He never. Fucking. Does.

  Thump. Thump.

  I don’t want to be the asshole who yells at a little kid for tossing a ball around in the hallway. I don’t want to be that guy. Nobody likes that guy. Remember Dennis the Menace and his grouchy old neighbor, Mr. Wilson? Dennis the Menace was always messing up Mr. Wilson’s lawn or knocking down half his house or pulling down his pants to reveal polka dot boxers, but somehow Dennis was still the hero. Did anyone root for Mr. Wilson? No, nobody did.

  I don’t want to be Mr. Wilson. I don’t. I’m just really sick of the sound of that goddamn ball. I’m not going to be able to pay my rent if the kid keeps it up.

  Thump! Thump!

  To hell with it. I’m going to say something. Maybe the kid can go throw a ball on the floor above or below. Or anywhere else besides right outside my door.

  I take a breath, steeling myself for the effort it will take to stand up. I reach with my left hand for the forearm crutch I always keep leaning against my desk when I work. I lace my left arm through the metal loops, then slowly haul myself to my feet like I have hundreds of times before. I have a false start, where it seems like I’ll fall right back into my chair, but I don’t.

  I’ve gotten good at this over the last several years. I barely remember a time when standing up from a chair didn’t involve any effort at all. It feels like that was a whole other life.

  I guess it sort of was.

  I limp in the direction of the door. I keep the path from my desk to the door cleared of dirty clothes, rugs, or other paraphernalia that can and will trip me up. It’s about twenty feet from the desk to the door, but it takes me a good minute to traverse. My left leg does fine, but my right drags along behind me like dead weight, even with the plastic brace I’ve got supporting my ankle. It goes without saying I don’t go on any long hikes these days.

  I get the door open just as the kid is hurling his rubber ball at the wall with an impressive overhand for a kid his size. I don’t know how old he is, because I don’t have much familiarity with children. He’s somewhere between kindergarten and adulthood. Seven? Eight? Something like that. My clues are he’s two heads shorter than me and has no visible facial hair.

  He catches the ball, cupping it between his hands. A jab of jealousy hits me right in my rib cage. I can’t do that anymore. Throwing. Catching. I throw worse than a little girl with my left, and my right… well, it’s obvious I’m not throwing with that one anymore. I’m not doing anything with that one these days. Not that I was any Babe Ruth before, but I could toss a ball around without humiliating myself. I used to sometimes pitch on my company’s softball team and could always be counted on to strike a few guys out.

  Before.

  “Hey!” I say.

  The kid turns and looks at me, startled. He’s a cute kid—big brown eyes, messy brown hair, and a runny nose. I wonder if I’d stayed with Taylor, if we’d have a kid of our own by now. Probably we would. Taylor wanted three and I wanted two. We used to argue about it.

  I clear my throat, not wanting to come off as too harsh. I don’t want to be Mr. Wilson. “Hey,” I start again. “Listen, when you throw the ball against the wall, it’s too loud…”

  The kid is staring at me. Actually, he’s staring at my right arm. It’s not a big shock, since everyone stares at my right arm. Even adults stare, but at least they look away when they notice me noticing. But this kid couldn’t care less that I’ve caught him staring at me.

  And this is why I get my groceries delivered. This is why I work from home. This is why my skin is embarrassingly pale because I only venture out of my apartment once a week, at most.

  I never wanted to become one of those loser computer geeks who’s holed up in an apartment and loses all contact with the outside world. But to be fair, nobody wants that. It just… happens.

  “My mom said I could,” the kid finally says.

  “Right,” I say, “but you’re throwing it outside my door, and it’s making it really hard for me to concentrate on my work.”

  The kid’s jaw juts out. “My mom said I could.”

  “Listen.” I hear any trace of niceness disappear from my voice. My resolution not to be an asshole is dissolving. “You can’t throw the ball here. Go to another floor or something.”

  “My mom says I can’t leave the floor.”

  My temple throbs. If that ball didn’t give me a migraine, this conversation will do it. “So go to the other end of the hallway. Around the corner.”

  He shakes his head. “More room here.”

  A muscle twitches in my right leg, and I tighten my grip on my forearm crutch. Even standing in one place is a lot of effort for me. “Look,” I say, “you can’t throw your ball here. You’re not allowed.”

  “My mom says I can,” he insists again.

  “Your mom is wrong.” I try to look him in the eyes, but his are focused like a laser beam on my right arm. I want to adjust my arm so it doesn’t look quite so bad, but I don’t dare release my crutch. “You can’t play with your ball in the hallway. Got it?”

  “But—”

  “And if I hear you doing it again,” I say, “I’m calling the building management. Cappish?”

  The kid blinks at me. “Ca-what?”

  To hell with it. Everyone already thinks I’m a grumpy asshole. May as well own it. “Look,” I say, “throw the ball again and I’m taking it.”

  His eyes widen. “You can’t do that!”

  “I sure can,” I say. “Anything that lands right outside my apartment is my property. And that includes your ball.”

  The kid clutches the ball to his chest. His lower lip trembles. Shit. I didn’t make him cry, did I?

  Christ, I didn’t want to make him cry. Maybe I’m a grumpy asshole, bu
t I’m not a monster.

  Not yet, anyway. Give me a few years of living here all alone, with no human contact. That’s the direction I’m headed.

  But thankfully, he doesn’t cry. Instead, he sticks out his right hand, and shoots his middle finger up in the air.

  Holy shit, that little kid just flipped me off!

  I don’t even have a chance to react before he races away. That’s probably a good thing, since I’m not sure what I would have done. I definitely couldn’t reciprocate. You can’t give a grade schooler the finger. I’m sure if I had, some neighbor would have opened their door at that exact second. And then I’d be…

  Well, I’m not sure what the punishment is for flipping off a child. But it wouldn’t be great. It’s not like I’ve got any friends in the building who would stick up for me. Aside from Fanny, but she’d be horrified too.

  I have a bad feeling this isn’t over.

  Buy How the Grinch Stole My Heart on Amazon today!