Christmas at the Candied Apple Café
There’s nothing so magical as Christmas in New York…Santa is coming to New York!Snow is falling, excitement is high and the delicious scent of chocolate drifts along Fifth Avenue – the Candied Apple Café is ready for Christmas! And no one is busier than publicist Iona Summerlin. With so much to do, she doesn’t have time to think about men, dating, or the fact her last boyfriend ditched her for her brother… Relationships are off the menu!Hotel boss Mads Eriksson is not looking forward to the first Christmas since losing his wife. His six-year-old daughter Sofia has lost her belief in Christmas magic along with her mother, and he has no idea what to do. But an unusually festive business meeting at the Candied Apple – and meeting the beautiful Iona – starts to defrost Mads’ frozen heart, and suddenly life seems full of light and sparkle again.If only they dare to believe, maybe all their Christmas dreams will come true!
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017
Copyright © Katherine Garbera 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Katherine Garbera asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008277857
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008142537
Version: 2017-11-14
Table of Contents
Christmas is such a special time of the year for my family. My parents were married on Christmas Eve and this year will celebrate their 50th anniversary. This book is dedicated to Charlotte and David Smith for showing me that the best things in life always start with love, laughter and family.
I’d also like to dedicate this book to my family and it’s a large one, so please indulge me this list of those who I keep in my heart. Rob, Courtney, Lucas, Bobby, Josh, Tabby, Donna, Scott, Emily, Linda, James, Ryan, and Katie.
Christmas was the most special time of the year. This year, Iona Summerlin had poured all of her energy into making the Candied Apple Café a Christmas wonderland. She’d started from the storefront windows all the way through the shop. Her theme had been the “magic of Christmas”. Standing underneath the iron-worked apple that hung in front of the shop and watching as one of the crew on the lighting team she’d hired placed a large Santa hat on the apple, she couldn’t help but smile.
The windows had been inspired by Frosty the Snowman and how the magician’s hat had the power to bring him to life. Iona and her design team had come up with a group of kids in one window and a group of adults in the window on the other side of the door that were both looking at a very plain shopfront. Every thirty seconds a wind blew through the scene and stockinged caps, berets, and top hats settled onto the heads of the different characters while the backdrop changed to a magical wonderland of the Candied Apple Café with different chocolates and other offerings, including their famous Minty Cocoa.
Snow fell lightly on the sidewalk outside of the Candied Apple. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” could be heard from the shop each time the door opened and Iona stood next to her very best friends in the world. They were being photographed for an article about the hottest holiday places in Manhattan. And Iona knew she should be satisfied, but she was already thinking about next Christmas, and the things she wanted to implement for next year.
This holiday season they were competing with the big guys on Fifth Avenue with their window scenes, so she’d pulled out all the stops to make sure their customers got the maximum holiday experience.
And it felt like her work was paying off. Two different companies had contacted her about partnering with them for the New Year. One was a luxury resort chain, which even Iona admitted was a long shot. The chain had only twenty resorts worldwide and in each resort they offered their guests a one-of-a-kind experience and retail options that weren’t available everywhere. So, signing with them would give the Candied Apple an opening into the luxury clientele market that Iona thought would be wonderful. She had a few concerns, though, given that Hayley Dunham, their head chef, was particular about who she allowed to make chocolates for their shop. So far, the chocolatiers she’d used were just herself and one apprentice.
The other option was a developer who was interested in helping them open a second location in Manhattan down in the old meat packing district, which had become a trendy food mecca.
“This is so perfect, Iona. I love the ‘magic of Christmas’ and I think you have really captured it,” Cici Johnson said, coming up to her and looping her arm through Iona’s. Cici was a few inches shorter than her. Her friend and business partner had an easy smile that matched her curly brown hair. She usually wore horn-rimmed glasses but had contacts in today as they were doing a photo shoot for
