Under the Mistletoe (Stardust Cove #0.5)

Artist and elementary school art teacher Maya Raynes moved to Stardust Cove for a new lease on life and love. While she got the first, the second goal remains tantalizingly out of reach… even as she's watched the Cove’s favorite firefighter go about his daily life for far too long now, too shy to make a move. 

Firefighter Dalton Halen of the infamous Halen brothers has settled down… mostly. He gets his adrenaline rushes saving locals from small mishaps and flirting with pretty tourists, although the only woman who's mattered lately doesn’t seem interested. But when a series of random events push them together, will it finally be the Christmas magic needed to give their love a chance?

a Stardust Cove novella

Maya Raynes eyed her latest batch of kindergarten students from where she was taking attendance at her desk, their restless bodies already squirming like wiggly worms. Art class happening right after recess often went about as could be expected. When she’d first started teaching here, she thought that meant they got their energy out. Phew, that turned out to be wrong, along with a million other assumptions she’d made about what it was like teaching. 

She was humbled. Fast. But she also fell in love with teaching… faster. 

Kids did not, in fact, burn off all their energy unless it was so boiling hot outside that all they could do afterwards is flop like limp noodles into their tiny little seats. Today, given it was December, the hottest part of the day was still just a hairsbreadth below freezing. She patted the classroom’s heater encouragingly. It let out a mournful clanking sound but churned out more hot air.  

Some kids were lobbying crumpled pieces of paper into the recycling bin with the precision of tiny major league baseball pitchers. Others were hunched over their art with postures bad enough to make a physical therapist weep in horror.

“Miss Maya!” Timmy shouted, waving a blue marker like a conductor’s baton. “Bobby’s eating my crayon!”

Bobby grinned, his teeth an alarming shade of forest green. “My mom says I need to eat more greens.”

“That’s certainly thinking outside the box, Bobby.” Good thing she only stocked her classroom with non-toxic art supplies. “But maybe stick to the actual vegetables next time?”

Bobby guiltily offered the massacred crayon back to his neighbor, who politely declined, having already made do with the blue replacement. 

Another fun Thursday afternoon with her little artists-in-training. Maya loved how they attacked creativity with such wild abandon—no overthinking, no self-doubt, just pure artistic chaos. 

Smiling, Maya wrote, “Today: Let’s Push the Limits of Imagination!” in bold letters on the chalkboard.

“Does that mean we can draw whatever we want?” Lily’s pigtails bobbed with excitement. 

She’d been the least impressed with the previous class’s assignment, which was to draw something fun they did over the weekend. A bit half-hearted, sure, but Maya had learned last year that as the holidays approached with the speed of a train, attendance was about to get rather spotty, and attention spans even more so.

“Absolutely.”

“Even dragons eating the principal?”

“Let’s keep Mr. Hall uneaten for a bit longer,” Maya suggested diplomatically.

Eager fingers rattled through boxes of colored markers and crayons, and she almost didn’t notice a tell-tale rumbling noise drawing closer. She paused, the attendance sheet still in hand. Her gaze shot to the window where a pickup truck pulled up to the hardware store across the street. The driver’s door swung open. She knew exactly who drove that battered black truck, but her heart still skipped a beat when a tall, broad figure climbed out. 

Dalton’s dark-blonde curls peeked out from under his woolen hat, and she felt her heart flutter as he absent-mindedly adjusted the firefighter pants he hadn’t bothered to change out of for the trip. He was small-town heartthrob personified, from his square jaw down to his well-worn boots, like he’d walked right out of one of those cozy holiday movies she loved so much.

It sure didn’t help that the street was blanketed in a fresh layer of soft white snow, with picture-perfect icicles hanging from the pretty rows of awnings all down the street. As he headed into the store, he absently reached up to brush his fingers against a string of colorful Christmas lights that dangled from the eaves. 

Perfect timing, as usual—right when she was trying to wrangle fifteen mini-Picassos. Although honestly, she wouldn’t mind if he showed up every day…

“Ooooh.” Sophie suddenly appeared at Maya’s elbow. That girl could find trouble from three million miles away. “Miss Maya’s looking at a booooyfriend.”

“He’s not my—” Maya whirled around to find fifteen kindergartners staring at her with knowing grins. “How are you all suddenly so quiet and attentive? Where was this energy last week?”

“Would you like him to kiss you?” Bobby asked, green teeth gleaming.

“No one is kissing anyone,” Maya declared, her cheeks burning.

“My mom says kisses give you cooties,” Timmy said.

“Your mom married your dad,” Sophie snapped. “So she must like cooties.”

Timmy looked horrified by this logical conclusion. 

“Do you like cooties, Miss Maya?” newcomer Pia piped up innocently. She’d moved to town with her mother a few months ago and was easily one of the best-behaved kids Maya had ever taught. Except for this one moment. 

“Ewwww!” the boys chorused.

Maya cleared her throat. “Let’s focus on art, shall we? Who wants to—”

“Miss Maya?” Bobby stretched the last letter of her name into a whiny symphony. “Can I use the hot glue gun?”

Last thing she needed was him gnawing on the glue sticks, which were very much not labeled as non-toxic. “No, Bobby. That’s for fourth and fifth grade only.” 

When she glanced back at the window, he’d long vanished into the store. Not that Dalton being visible from across the street would in any way impact her life. She’d take a classroom full of energetic five-year-olds over awkward small talk with Dalton any day. 

“I don’t want to use markers!”  Sophia declared. 

Maya bit back a chuckle at the pint-sized diva’s artistic grievances, grateful for the sudden shift in conversation topics. “Well, what do you want to use?”

The entire class joined the conversation. “Glitter!” 

“Paint!” 

“Googly eyes!”

“More stickers!”

“Hot glue gun?”

Ah yes, the daily negotiations with her tiny artists. They might be small, but they had opinions bigger than the town itself. Maya held up her hands in mock surrender. “How about we compromise with some colorful tissue paper? You can create your own unique masterpieces with a little texture and flair.” She had to leave on time today, so there was no way she was breaking out the glitter. 

Thankfully, her counteroffer was eagerly accepted, so Maya quickly distributed the packs of tissue paper and glue before they could change their minds. As the young artists dove back into their projects with renewed enthusiasm, Maya shook her head, amused.

High-pitched voices haggled swapping colors. Chairs screeched and wobbled, drowning out the soft music playing in the background. With a satisfied smile, Maya made the rounds to help here and there, trying to not overstep and become the de facto decision-maker. Colorful tissue paper, markers, and glue sticks flew between small hands. The cheerful classroom bubbled with the sound of children’s chatter.

At least it kept things interesting—and kept her mind off a certain firefighter who seemed to have a knack for showing up at just the right (or wrong) moment. She peeked back out the window after making sure that Sophie was well-occupied, but he’d already driven off. 

A pity the town’s most eligible bachelor didn’t regularly roam the elementary school hallways. Why would he, though? The only thing burning around here was her embarrassingly persistent crush. Although Mrs. Peterson was always looking for new volunteers to read to her second graders. 

The mental image of Stardust Cove’s finest firefighter sitting cross-legged on a rainbow carpet, surrounded by gap-toothed seven-year-olds, did dangerous things to her heart. Or perhaps this was simply what happened when one combined coffee for dinner, a past-midnight pottery session, and a love life as barren as her succulent collection was thriving.

Her succulents were doing fantastic. 

The past year in Stardust Cove had given Maya exactly what she’d wanted: proximity to the ocean, a quaint town center that belonged on a postcard, and a community where everyone knew everyone, and (for the most part) genuinely cared. Her dual career as art teacher by day, ceramic artist by night, filled her creative cup to overflowing. Her little rented cottage with the wonky porch step and studio space in the back was practically perfect.

So why, why, did her brain keep circling back to Dalton Halen like a moth with a death wish and exceptionally good taste in flames?

Just yesterday, she’d watched Dalton at Sweet Nothings Bakery, deploying that lethal smile on a cluster of tourists who melted faster than the icing on Isla’s famous cinnamon buns. The rational part of her brain—the part that remembered to pay bills and knew better than to date men with fan clubs—kept asking what she even saw in him beyond the obvious physical attributes that made him look like he’d walked straight out of a “Hunks of Fire” calendar.

Then he’d sent that same smile towards her, and it hurt a lot more than it should have. She was nothing to him; just another woman to flirt with. If the rumors were true, Dalton had been a certified flirt for as long as he’d been alive. Their entire relationship consisted of running into each other about once a month, whereupon the following exchange would happen:

“Morning, Maya. Sure is beautiful out.” (Usually accompanied by The Smile.)

“Morning, Dalton.” (Usually accompanied by her trying not to trip over air molecules.)

And that one time at the Fourth of July picnic when he’d complimented her ceramic bowl in the charity auction, and she’d responded with something incredibly witty like, “Thanks, I made it with clay.” (Or so her friend Jasmine told the story, as she utterly blacked out for the entire ordeal.)

Shakespeare himself couldn’t have crafted a more captivating response.

It was ridiculous. She was thirty-two, not thirteen. She’d had relationships before—real ones with conversations that went beyond weather observations and awkward compliments about clay bowls. Yet somehow her chest performed a cheerleading gymnastics routine whenever he came into view.  Then that backstabbing organ would curl up in fetal position whenever he’d flirt with her in the exact same way he flirted with every other woman in the entire town.  (Except that every time she convinced herself to just enjoy the view, he had the audacity to do something ridiculously, unnecessarily kind. Like help sick neighbors with their shopping. Organize surprise parties to celebrate all sorts of random things. Swing by her pottery studio to comb over the place to make sure all the wiring was safe twice a year. Stuff like that. And then boom, her heart went right back to pitter-patter island.)

Maya sighed so dramatically that a stack of art papers fluttered. The sigh held way too many months of small-town loneliness. Of watching couples hold hands across restaurant tables while she ate solo with a book. Of fielding any special someone? questions at every holiday gathering. Oh boy, it was going to happen at Christmas this year, too. She was flying back to Texas for the annual family get-together, and as the years rolled by, and more and more diamond rings and babies made grand appearances, her tías got less and less subtle about how she should be next. 

“Maybe I need a pet,” she told the classroom at large.

“Get a hamster, Miss Raynes,” Charlie said, not looking up from the glue he was smearing all over his project. “I got one last year.”

“Hmmm,” she said, smiling. “Maybe I will.”

“But they like to run away,” Charlie continued, utterly unperturbed. “Fluffy escaped when we were trying to put a bowl of fresh water in his cage. He climbed up the ceiling fan while it was on and then flew out an open window. Woosh! We never saw Fluffy again.”

Maya stopped smiling really, really fast.

Pia let out a horrified gasp. Before she could formulate a response to that, the school bell rang. Saved by the bell, indeed. “That’s it for today. Please put your projects on the drying racks, put all glue and tissue paper inside your table bin, and we can pick up where you left off next week!” 

The children yelled goodbyes and scattered, five of them leaving their colorful creations everywhere but on the drying rack. And there went her last class of the day, although it was far from the end of her workday. 

Once she finished tidying the room, she headed out the door and paused to take a deep breath, relishing the taste of air so clean that it still. She usually biked, but it was so cold this morning that she decided to treat herself to a little heated commute. Maya slowly navigated her old blue hatchback through the quiet streets of Stardust Cove, taking the time to enjoy the front lawns dotted with all sorts of holiday decorations and windows were filled to the brim with paper snowflakes and tinsel. 

And she did not look for any familiar trucks on the way. 

After a devastating breakup, all Crew Halen wants is to hide from the world. But his brothers have other plans—getting him to come home to Stardust Cove to… fulfill a Christmas scavenger hunt? What he also doesn’t expect is to find that his next-door neighbor is Maggie Smith, his high school best friend who vanished without a word years ago.

Now a widow with a young daughter, Maggie has built a new life in Stardust Cove. But the sparks between her and Crew are impossible to ignore. With holiday magic in the air and a little help from her daughter, they find themselves drawn together once more.

As old feelings resurface, so do the questions about why Maggie left and Crew’s recent heartbreak. Can the magic of Stardust Cove give them the second chance they need? Or will the past keep them from the love they’ve always wanted?

a Stardust Cove novel

  The local grocery store in Stardust Cove was pure festive chaos. The narrow aisles, usually just wide enough for two carts to pass, were made even tighter by towering displays of gingerbread house kits and tins of butter cookies. 

The air, thick with cinnamon-scented pinecones near the entrance, and the aroma of squash soup in the back, was filled with the cheerful din of neighbors catching up over produce.

For Maggie, it was just another Monday errand on a long to-do list while Pia was in school. It wasn’t usually this crowded, but she moved with an efficiency born of habit, the squeaky-wheeled cart a familiar companion. She paused in the baking aisle, her fingers absently tracing the curve of her wedding ring as she scanned the shelves for flour. It was a grounding gesture; one she relied on when the quiet moments felt a little too quiet. 

All around her, couples debated dinner plans and families navigated the aisles as a unit, gentle reminders of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. She pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the list in her hand. Flour, sugar, vanilla…

She was so focused on her task, on the quiet internal rhythm of her day, that she didn’t notice the man at the far end of the aisle. It was only when she pushed her cart forward with practiced ease that her world tilted on its axis.

Another shopper, moving with the distracted air of someone unfamiliar with the store’s layout, stepped back from the shelf and directly into her path. His cart collided with hers, making a metallic clang.

“Oh, sorry about that,” a deep voice said. “My fault, I was…”

The words died in his throat as he looked straight into her eyes.

Time seemed to warp, stretching and slowing. The cheerful noise of the store faded to a dull hum. The man was tall, his broad shoulders filling out a dark wool coat. His green eyes, startlingly familiar, were wide with disbelief.

Crew Halen.

He looked older, of course. The boyish softness of his face had given way to the firm lines of a man. A faint scar she didn’t recognize cut through his upper lip. But the essence of him—the thoughtful set of his mouth, the intensity in his gaze—was so unchanged it felt like a punch to the gut. The carefully constructed peace she’d cultivated over the past few months shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Maggie?” he breathed, his voice a low note of astonishment. “Maggie Rae?”

No one had called her that in fifteen years.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. She felt a flush of heat creep up her neck, a mortifying blush she was powerless to stop. She was no longer a nurse, a widow, or even a mother. In his gaze, she was sixteen again, all raw nerves and secrets, standing in the paralyzing silence after her first kiss.

“Crew,” she managed, her voice barely a whisper. “I… I didn’t know you were in town.”

“Just got in,” he said, his own composure seeming to hang by a thread. He took a half-step back, creating a sliver of distance, as if giving them both room to breathe. The air in the aisle felt thick, charged with unspoken questions. “I could say the same for you. I heard you were… well, I didn’t know where you were.”

“It’s a long story,” she said, the words feeling terribly inadequate. She tightened her grip on the cart handle, a solid anchor in a suddenly turbulent sea. “I moved back a few months ago.” She knew she needed to end this, to retreat before the fragile composure she’d fought so hard for crumbled completely. “I should probably finish my shopping. It was… good to see you.”

She began to push her cart past his, the small space forcing them into close proximity for a brief, charged moment. He smelled different, like wood smoke and pine. 

“Maggie, wait,” he said, his voice stopping her.

She paused but didn't turn fully around. "Yes?"

“I always wondered… what happened? Back then.” The question was quiet, tentative, but it landed with the force of a blow. It was the very question she had dreaded for fifteen years.

She took a slow breath, her back still mostly to him. “Like I said, Crew. It’s a long story.” She finally turned to face him, her expression carefully neutral. “And this probably isn’t the place for it.”

He looked around the grocery aisle, at the bickering kids and the carts passing around them with curious glances thrown their way. A look of understanding dawned on his face. “Right, of course. You’re right.” He nodded, accepting her retreat. “Well… I guess I’ll see you around, then.”

“See you around, Crew,” she lied. 

She didn’t wait for another word, pushing her cart determinedly toward the front of the store, her shopping list completely forgotten. Her heart was still pounding. She had come back to Stardust Cove for a fresh start, not to dig up the past. But as she fled the baking aisle, she had the unnerving feeling that the past had just found her.