K E Hubbard

The 24th K E Hubbard

Dumped days before Christmas, Jack and Ella commiserate about their individual break-ups while drinking away their sorrows at the local bar. As they swap stories, suspicion arises at the validity of the so-called whirlwind holiday romances of their exes. The pair decide to enact revenge and crash Ella's ex-boyfriend's wedding, despite the warnings from a chain-smoking Mrs. Claus perched in the back of the dingy dive. They travel together to the idyllic snowy town in the upstate and launch their disruptive shenanigans. The longer Jack and Ella stay, the more they start to feel out of place in the manufactured holiday cheer. The cocoa is a little too delectable, the people are a little too jolly, and everyone in town seems enamored by the wedding they're trying to ruin. Their plan is jeopardized at every turn, and no matter how hard they try to ruin the wedding of the century, they can't seem to stop what has been set into motion. Eventually, their interest in each other trumps all their planned mischief. As all the predictions Mrs. Claus warned them about come true, the pair dismisses each one as coincidence. Until Ella discovers something she wasn't meant to see hidden behind the ice skating rink that puts both her and Jack in peril. She keeps it a secret until the final moment when fate demands payment.