Merry with a Tycoon

Her landlord is playing Santa. In March, he closes her doors.

Four weeks before Christmas, my Santa turns up drunk, and the only man in Love Beach tall enough to fill the suit is the one who owns my building.

Preston Hollister is my landlord, the Hollister my best friend has never forgiven, and the last man I should want anywhere near me in a fake beard.

He's also unfairly good at playing Santa. And he's started looking at me like I'm something other than a line on a lease.

Then I find out what he's been hiding about Seaside Square. The renewals nobody got. The shutdown in March. My shop, and every shop on the row, and the whole stubborn, crooked little community I've spent years building, sitting in a folder on his desk since summer.

Now my neighbors think I picked him over them. Half of them have stopped speaking to me. The other half are waiting to see what I do.

I have until Christmas to decide whether the man in the Santa suit is worth what it will cost me to trust him.

In March, the doors close either way.