It Takes a Christmas Village

Alexandra Foster is the Mayor of Hawkins Bay. In the lead-up to Christmas, she knows she has a problem: in the delays in the much-needed work done on the bridge leading to downtown, the detour bypasses downtown so is killing the businesses along Main Street during their proverbial bread-and-butter Christmas season; because of it, many of those businesses might not survive into the new year. She and her assistant Gina decide to hold a multi-day Christmas market for these merchants, but the only suitable place to hold it is the long-ago-closed Hawkins Mill site, and the Foster and Hawkins families have been feuding for 30 years, ever since the then-Mayor, Alex's father Art Foster, openly criticized the Hawkins family for closing the mill without notice. While most of the Hawkinses have since moved away, rumor has it that the only remaining Hawkins in the old isolated Hawkins estate is reclusive Darcy Hawkins, who spent most of his formative years away at boarding school or college. Alex knows she must push the right buttons to convince Darcy, who she learns lives at the estate with his paternal grandmother Mar, who is more aware of the feud. Alex is eventually able to convince Darcy: the right button concerns redeveloping the Hawkins Mill site. While Art and the planning commission of the time previously rejected that redevelopment permit solely in not trusting the Hawkins, Alex believes the redevelopment is exactly what Hawkins Bay needs. In spending time together both in preparation for the market and in issues around the rubber-stamp process of the redevelopment, Alex and Darcy start to fall for each other. The problem in a romance developing between them is if there are others who have longer memories about the mistrust between the two families.—Huggo