Christmas at Fireside Cabins - Jenny Hale Page 0,7
on becoming the next country music superstar.
She and Razz had taken all the savings they had, which was about nine hundred bucks in total, and headed to Music City to follow his dreams. What she hadn’t anticipated was that the strain of living in his van during all the gigs he played, trying to make enough money for them to live on and surviving on pennies, would begin to tear them apart when she’d thought it would make them stronger. And then he’d hurt her in the worst way, leaving her for someone he barely knew.
As she matured, she realized that they’d become two totally different people. While she used to love his playful nature, she began to resent it when she was pulling double shifts and he wouldn’t help her pay the bills, taking the money he’d earned from gigs and staying out with his new friends in the bars downtown, forgetting all about her. He didn’t help her establish friendships as a couple, or work with her to find them a modest place to live where she could relax after a long day’s work. And after a while, she started to wonder if he had ever really been in love with her at all. He never asked how her day was or what she’d been doing, and as he spent long nights out with his friends, it occurred to her that she was alone.
After only a few weeks together in Nashville, she’d found him in the van they shared cuddling up with the stylist he’d hired for his first video shoot, and it was then that he’d admitted he was moving on. In that instant, he’d broken her heart and cheapened all the years they’d been together, making Lila feel like she’d tagged along on the move to Nashville rather than making the journey by his side. Ever since, she kept waiting to hear his name on the radio, but to this day, she hadn’t. If she were a betting woman, she’d guess that if she looked hard enough for him, she’d find him in some old honky tonk, still playing every night and never once thinking about her.
In the aftermath of the breakup, she vowed to never put herself in that kind of position again, and instead she put all her energy into her friendships. This wonderful group of women was something she didn’t know how she’d live without. But she might have to learn how. Charlotte’s new job with the TV network was going to require a considerable amount of travel—so much that she’d already mentioned the possibility of moving to California, where the network was located. Piper would soon be too busy with work and house hunting in Colorado. She was considering going back to school there so she could take a few business classes, since her career was building so quickly, and expanding her soap company. And Edie had met someone special—a man named Jarod. That was why Lila wanted to make this year even more special and have one final Christmas blowout together with her best friends.
Her navigation announced they’d arrived, and Lila pulled her Volvo to a stop outside the main house, all of them taking a moment to take in what was in front of them.
“Did we make a wrong turn?” Charlotte asked, as they all stared at the eyesore of a cabin.
Lila cut the engine and they got out of the car, the four of them speechless for a second as they tried to make sense of the fact that the main cabin and the grounds surrounding it looked absolutely nothing like the online photos.
“Where are… the front steps?” Piper asked, pointing to two cinderblocks covered by weeds and stacked in front of a sloping front porch, the boards rotted in places and gone altogether in others. One of the windows next to the front door was cracked, duct tape covering it to keep the elements from seeping into the house. All the brown-painted trim was peeling and in need of a good sand and stain.
“The owner told me in an email that the website was a little dated, and she needed to get some new pictures taken but I had no idea that the photos misrepresented the property entirely… I’m so sorry,” Lila said, feeling terrible. It had been her who had found this place and booked it. They’d just had a bizarre experience at the coffee shop to say the least, the town was cute but definitely not