Marrying Miss Kringle: Lux Read online

  Marrying Miss Kringle: Lux

  Lucy McConnell

  Copyright © 2017 by Lucy McConnell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Now Available

  Sneak Peek—Ginger

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Christmas Eve 2016

  365 days until Christmas Eve 2017

  Lux Kringle pushed the rectangular-shaped glasses to the top of her head. The glasses had a special blue coating to protect her eyes from screen strain. Frost, her baby sister, insisted they were better looking than the old glasses she’d worn since college. Granted, college was a decade ago, so ocular fashion could have changed. Lux wasn’t really one to keep up on that stuff. Frost, on the other hand, kept up on everything. That was her job and her nature. She couldn’t let a catalogue, fashion magazine, or letter to Santa cross her desk without devouring the contents.

  Frost could have her mail room job. Lux much preferred to spend time creating code and wiring the North Pole to keep it humming. She’d spent the last couple years studying Christmas Magic. Her dad called her a pioneer in the science—Christmas Magic was an energy source unparalleled in the known universe and basically unstudied. One of her great-great-great-grandfathers had written up a booklet, but it was sorely outdated. Christmas Magic was constantly changing. At least, it had changed in her lifetime. Which made studying the magic a necessary endeavor.

  Lux sat in her mother’s chair at the Goliath fireplace in the Kringle family room. On the opposite wall was a flat-screen television where she could watch Captain America hold a helicopter to the ground all day long if she wanted. Sometimes, she really wanted to. Behind her, the wall was lined with bookshelves containing the latest in popular fiction as well as her mother’s snow globe collection.

  Across from her sat the man with the big white beard. This was Dad’s first Christmas as a retired Santa and having him home was a bit strange. Ginger and her new husband, Joseph, had taken over deliveries. Right after their last drop-off, they were headed to an unknown location for a honeymoon.

  Lux considered her dad as she often considered things under a microscope, looking for changes she could record in a notebook. Dad didn’t look any older. There were no new laugh lines to crinkle around his eyes. His lips were still cherry red and plump. His belly rounded out of his shirt, belaying his penchant for all types of cookies and sweets. Instead of shoulders slumped as they normally were on a Christmas Eve, they were back, strong, and not speaking of exhaustion. He had one black boot resting on his other knee. Retirement seemed to agree with him. Popular Science lay open on his lap, and he licked his thumb before turning the page. Lux had given him a three-year subscription for Christmas last year. The gift was sort of selfish on her part as she read every issue, but she always waited for him to finish them before she took the magazine to her room.

  Blinking as her eyes adjusted to the firelight and lower level of lighting, she tucked red and unruly hair behind both her ears. “Dad?” she said quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  Lux waited, but he didn’t look up from the article. Her gaze lifted to the family portrait above the mantel, where she and her four sisters crowded around their parents who stared adoringly at one another. Lux wasn’t loud and flirty like Stella or commanding like Ginger, nor super cute like Frost with her original sense of style, nor charismatic like Robyn, who was always the perfect hostess. Sometimes Lux felt as invisible as a kilobyte in the midst of her siblings. And yet, she had something to say, something important.

  Earlier that evening, Lux had informed the family that, though Ginger’s marriage to Joseph had saved Christmas this year, their nuptials were a temporary fix. In order to secure Christmas for years to come, all five of Santa’s daughters had to get married. Not everyone was happy about the announcement. “Dad.” She tapped his knee.

  “Yes?” This time his twinkling blue eyes focused on her.

  Lux immediately dropped her gaze to the floor. Censoring herself, she lifted her chin. She’d been working on making eye contact. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Dad leaned heavily on the arm of the chair. “Honey, can you give us a couple weeks, maybe months, to get used to Ginger being married before I have to think about losing another daughter?”

  Lux twisted her lips as she tried to see all this from her dad’s point of view. “But Ginger and Joseph live here. You didn’t lose her.”

  Dad gave her one of his indulgent Santa smiles. “I’m not the number one man in her life anymore—that’s a hard loss for any father to take.”

  “Oh.” In her head, this was an addition problem—not a subtraction one. They had not only added Joseph Bear to the family, but also his bright niece, Layla. She’d gotten her first brother and her first niece all in one neat little package deal. She tugged at the ends of her hair. As per usual, she’d miscalculated when it came to social cues and family dynamics. She crossed her arms over her chest and hunched forward.

  “Honey, it’s not your fault. Goodness, you take on the world’s problems.” Dad patted her knee.

  “I know.” Putting her glasses back on, she sat up straighter but kept her arms tucked close to her body. “Dad, I’ve examined the setup we have now. We’ve added new electronics and machinery—things that didn’t exist ten or twenty years ago. They’re all running on Christmas Power. We aren’t equipped to handle a full dose of Christmas Magic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If we all get married, we’ll blow this place up.”

  Dad’s white eyebrows inched up his forehead. He usually wore a red hat. Not always the traditional hat with the pom-pom at the end, but a baseball hat, a beanie, and—once upon a snowstorm—a cowboy hat. His tall forehead was shiny in the firelight. “Solution?” he asked.

  She shrugged, the answer obvious. “Install a substation.”

  “What a brilliant solution.”

  Lux dropped her gaze, blushing under his praise.

  “Will an electrical substation work? We can order parts through our energy company in the Ukraine.”

  Lux had already been online looking at parts. “Electricity travels at certain speeds through a substation—Christmas Magic matches that to go through our electronics and such—but there are other elements in the magic that make me think an electrical substation would need to be modified.”

  He leaned back, stroking his beard as he
thought over what she’d said. “Problems?”

  Lux swallowed. “I don’t have the knowledge or education to do this on my own.” She had degrees in computer engineering, programming, and physics, but electrical engineering was a specialty she hadn’t pursued.

  Dad smiled easily. “So get another degree.”

  While she appreciated his confidence in her, an electrical engineering degree would take two more years at the university. “I don’t have time. We’re barely hanging in there with Ginger and Joseph together. Installing and testing the circuit breakers alone takes two weeks.” Or so she’d read.

  Dad tapped his finger against his lips. “Is there someone we can consult with? Anyone who can teach you what you need to know?”

  Lux stuck her hands between her knees to keep from twisting her fingers together. She did that when she was nervous, and thoughts of Quik, the man she’d met in Clearview, Alaska, made her extremely nervous. The small amount of time they’d spent together rewiring the church for the Christmas Pageant told her he was the man she needed to make this substation happen. He’d been quiet but knowledgeable, and when she’d slipped in a couple questions about vacuum circuit breakers, he’d rattled off the answers as if they were common knowledge. They weren’t. “There is, but no one on earth has ever seen this stuff. He’d—” She cleared her throat. “He’d have to come here.”

  Dad blew out a heavy sigh. “Lux, there are limits.”

  She hung her head. Of all the people in the family, Dad would be the one to understand how important this was, yet he was bound by the magical limits as much as anyone. Santa’s Palace was invisible to the outside world. She could drop a person right on top of the North Pole and unless they were tied to the magic by blood or by marriage, they wouldn’t see a thing. She dropped her chin to her chest. “I know.”

  Ever the jolly one, Dad chuckled softly. “There are ways, Lux. Draw up plans and take them down there for him to review.” He waved his hand toward the south. “We’ll do what we can. Maybe we can video chat during construction.”

  Lux nodded. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her boyfriend cardigan as she got to her feet. Talking to Dad was the easy part of all this—after all, her dad was Santa. One of his job descriptions was giving the child on his lap his undivided attention. Lux was not a child. At twenty-eight years old, she was even beyond the young lady stage. “I’ll do what I can.”

  His gaze softened. “I enjoy our talks, Lux. You’re intelligent, you challenge me, and you constantly delight me with your ingenuity.”

  Lux leaned over and wrapped her arms around her dad’s neck. He was warm from the fire and smelled of peppermint. “Thanks, Dad.” He had a gift for making her feel special, because she was different from her sisters, not in spite of her differences. One day, after her sisters were all married and the palace and magic were safe, she’d think about finding a husband who thought as much of her as her father did.

  He patted her back and then she was off, ready to take on this next adventure. She was always happiest when she was mentally engaged, and nothing engaged Lux like exploring the unknown in science. Christmas Magic was the ultimate unknown, and she was the first Kringle to harness the power, sending it into everything from toy-making machines to the kitchen ovens.

  Lux made her way out of the family’s living quarters, down the Hall of Santas Past where portraits of her great-grandfathers lined the walls. The gilded frames brought out the gold threading on their Santa suits and, in some of them, the twinkle in their eyes. She’d studied them all many times before, looking for genetic links. Since she and her sisters were all so different in coloring, they each had to look in the past to find similarities. Lux had decided she was most like her great-great-grandfather Earl Kringle. He also had deep red hair, though his was much shorter and slicked into place with some kind of grease. At least, she thought there was grease involved, because his hair had more shine than the Santas who came before or after him. The portrait must have been done before he married, because most Santas didn’t go gray until after they said “I do.” His eyes were also green, though his were a light mint green and hers were darker, like moss.

  Instead of studying the portraits on her walk, her eyes stayed on the jolly, green carpet with the holly design woven in gold and didn’t meet the eyes of her grandfather and great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather or their predecessors in their red, green, and white fur-lined coats.

  Her thoughts were geared toward the future. Up until Christmas Magic upset everything and branded Ginger with the snowflake tinsel tattoo instead of Robyn, they were all under the impression that the oldest had to be married first. Hence Robyn had gotten serious with Elmer in college. They’d recently broken up, which meant that any one of the sisters could be married next.

  Stella had been chomping at the bit to catch a cowboy ever since she was in college. She was a huge flirt and had several online boyfriends to pick from. She also loved to fly and wouldn’t mind commuting anywhere in the world for a date. That could make for a short engagement.

  The pressure to figure out this substation mounted. If Stella married before the station was up and working, they’d fry everything electrical with one big power surge.

  As if Lux needed more pressure. The science she could learn, the drafting programs she could figure out, and the heavy lifting? Well, that’s what they had tractors and reindeer for. No, none of this was too daunting…except working with Quik. He was smart, too smart. Keeping her lineage a secret would be difficult with a man who noticed the smallest details. She’d have to hide the fact that she maintained a steady temperature no matter what the ambient temperature was, and she wasn’t that good of an actress. No Kringle could tell a lie to save their life. Okay, maybe Stella could. Out of all of them, she was the closest to the Naughty List.

  The biggest problem with approaching Quik and asking for help was that when Quik was near, Lux felt that zap thing Ginger and Stella had talked about. The zap thing that made her insides float like baby reindeer and fly like Blitzen jacked up on sweet carrots. The zap thing that brought to mind things like mistletoe and had her humming “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” She couldn’t afford to do either of those things with Quik. No, she needed to keep the lid on her zapping and stay focused on the substation.

  If she wasn’t careful, she’d blow up the North Pole while trying to save it.

  Chapter Two

  357 days till Christmas Eve

  A New Year’s storm was not uncommon in Clearview, Alaska. Matthew Quik had seen his share of them in the last five years. This year’s storm was not the raging wind and stinging snowflakes he’d come to expect in the harsh life of a homesteader. The giant clumps of snow fell as if dusting a cake. He had an image of a pillow bursting open with feathers in the shape of snowflakes floating to the earth.

  He shook off the fanciful thinking. Better to remember that snow like this could bury a man in the space of an hour rather than stand in front of the Trading Post admiring its beauty. He pushed the door open, bringing an icy blast of air with him.

  Kazu didn’t look up from the crossword book open in front of him on the counter. His gray ponytail was held back with a string of leather, and his skin was lined like the grain in a hundred-year-old tree. “A five-letter word for an agent that makes things visible?” he said.

  “Light,” answered Quik before he had a chance to censor himself. He slammed his lips together. He wasn’t supposed to be smart, and he sure as heck wasn’t supposed to be friendly. He was supposed to be a quiet guy who called in about bears and wolves when they passed his outpost.

  “Howdy, Quik.” Kazu smiled as he wrote the answer in block letters. When he was done, he put his pen in the crease to save his place and closed the book, sliding it to the end of the counter.

  “Kazu.” Quik dipped his head and made long strides toward the canned goods in the back.

  “We’ve got a good selection of beans now. Not sure what we’ll have next month.”
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  “Yep.” Short answers stopped conversation. Quik packed several boxes of refried beans to the front counter. He added canned corn, soup, stew, tomatoes, potatoes, and sauerkraut—which he didn’t particularly enjoy but would eat just to have the variety of something he didn’t like on the table. Next, he went to the dried foods, selecting deer and beef jerky and noodles. There was a package of peppermints calling to him, so he threw that on his pile as well.

  “That everything?” asked Kazu. His hair may have been gray, but his eyebrows were still black.

  “Yep.”

  Kazu began ringing up the items on his ancient cash register. The avocado-green machine looked like it had come right out of the 1960s. Kazu could have rung him up while Quik was bringing things to the counter, but he’d gone back to his crossword. Quik didn’t watch him work—the prices would be higher than San Diego prices whether he was looking or not. Last year, the price of fuel had gone up enough to cause a stir. Quik was more careful than some. He had a greenhouse where he grew fresh veggies and a pressure cooker he used to can what he didn’t consume. Since it was just him, stocking food away for the winter kept him busy, but he didn’t feel the constant drive a man with a family or a wife would feel. Now there was a thought. A wife.