A Star Sweetly Gleaming Read online

  A Star Sweetly Gleaming

  Christmas Sisters Series Book 2

  By Marie Higgins

  Copyright © 2019 by Marie Higgins

  Cover Art – Got You Covered

  Editors – Teresa Pearson, Amy Petrowich, & Veronica Mesia

  Edition License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Ivy Kidman’s dream is to assist the big movie producers, and when a billionaire hires her to make a commercial for his son’s island romantic resort, she can’t turn it down. After meeting the owner of Cupid Island, however, she’s definitely ready to turn around and go home. How dare he call her accident-prone when he is the one falling all over himself? As she works closely with the handsome man who makes her laugh, she slowly starts to change her mind.

  Steele Morgan is frustrated with his father for sending the determined woman to his island. His father insists that Steele needs to be in the commercial, but he’s not a photogenic man and he wants Ivy to leave and never come back. But when his competitiveness kicks in when she proves to be just like him, he wants to keep her around a little bit longer… just to see who wins. He feels himself losing quickly, especially when his heart becomes involved.

  Contents

  A Star Sweetly Gleaming

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  Author’s Bio

  ONE

  “Are you recording this?” Ivy asked her best friend.

  “Yes, now go.” Dawn nodded while holding Ivy’s cell phone toward her with the video record button on.

  Ivy straightened her shoulders and put on her serious expression, because the very thing she wanted the world to know about – or anyone who watched this video – was that she would not tolerate animal cruelty. The moment she saw what someone wanted to do to illegally catch some animals, had her head spinning in anger.

  “I’m Ivy Kidman,” she said into the video, “and I’m in the woods near West Yellowstone in Montana. My friends and I were hiking, and we nearly stepped in hidden snares. I wouldn’t have known about this if not for seeing this segment on a local news station a few months ago. However, seeing firsthand that poaching is a real issue, I’m going to try and put a stop to it the only way I know how. This might not work, but I’m willing to do anything to keep our wildlife out of the hands of poachers.”

  She motioned toward the ground and Dawn moved the phone closer to the object Ivy pointed out. “This is a snare. It is made of sharp wires that wrap together just perfectly so that when a large animal steps inside, the wires tighten around the animal’s leg and keeps the animals from getting loose.” Ivy motioned to Dawn to have her lift the video on her again. “What I plan to do is carefully move these snares and place them in the spot where we noticed tire tracks. If everything goes smoothly, I’ll be able to catch the poachers in their own trapping game.”

  Ivy had Dawn zero in the recording as Ivy placed a thick jacket over her arms and gently lifted the snare trap. She cautiously stepped toward the tire tracks and set it down. She did this with five other traps that were close by.

  Brushing the dead leaves and twigs off her sleeves, she faced the camera again. “Because we don’t know when the poachers will be here, my friend and I will climb a tree where we’ll stay the night, waiting for these poachers to come. My other two friends will wait near the Wildlife station several miles down the mountain for our notify them to bring someone up here to arrest these idiots.” She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Pray that this will work, and we can put away some of these poachers who are harming our animals just for sport.”

  Ivy signaled for Dawn to turn off the video.

  When the video resumed, Ivy and Dawn were in the tree. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least they were out of the poacher’s sight and away from stray animals.

  “As you can see,” she said quietly, “I’m now in the tree. Over there –” the video turned toward the tire tracks, “is where we’ll be watching. Keep us in your prayers. These people need to be stopped, even if I take each one by myself. I’ll do all I can to make things right.”

  The video turned off again, and when it came back on, it was daylight. Ivy and her friend were still in the tree. Ivy’s hair was messed, and her makeup was slightly smeared under her eyes, but she didn’t care. “I think the poachers are coming,” she said excitedly, but in a soft voice. “Let’s watch.”

  The camera was turned toward the jeep coming their way. On top of the vehicle was a large spotlight that was also used by poachers. The jeep stopped and four men jumped out one-by-one. The men ranged in age from about sixteen to forty years old. All of them were hefty, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to take on these men by herself without some kind of help.

  The poachers walked a few steps and stopped to listen. They scoped the area before continuing their walk. As they neared the snares, Ivy held her breath. But the men stopped again, looking around. She had always been impatient, and she wanted this finished now. This tree limb she sat perched upon was killing her bottom.

  She removed her sunglasses and tossed them in the bushes behind them. The poachers heard which made their steps faster.

  The man in front was the first to get his foot in the snare. He yelped and stumbled. As he reached down to grab the wire, it cut his fingers. He cussed and hopped around. Immediately, the second man moved to help, but he stepped in one. Then the third man, followed by the fourth. All of them were cussing up a storm and screaming like little girls as they tried to untangle the wires around their ankles.

  Ivy quickly took Dawn’s phone and sent a text to her friends waiting at the Wildlife station. Her friend sent a text back, letting Ivy know they were only two miles away from them.

  Dawn chuckled in the background as the video stayed on the men and their struggle. Ivy shimmied down the tree and marched toward them. The four men stilled as their eyes widened.

  Angrily, Ivy marched toward them until she was only a few feet away. She rested her hands akimbo on her hips and glared. “Now you jerks know what the animals feel like, don’t you?” She shook her head. “Except the animals don’t have hands to untwine the wires like you do.”

  The one in the lead cussed again and shook his fist at her. “I won’t stand for this, and if I were you, little missy, I’d be getting away from here quickly, because as soon as these snares come off—”

  “And if I were you,” she interrupted, raising her voice, “I’d be high-tailing it out of here because the sheriff is currently on his way to arrest your sorry butts and take you all to jail.”

  The men lost more color in their already pale faces and tried to run back to their jeep. Unfortunately, the snares kept them from getting too far. By the time they made it to their vehicle, the sheriff and two other cars pulled up with lights flashing.

  The video zoomed in toward the men as they were all handcuffed and dragged to the squad cars… while still wearing their snares as ankle bracelets.

  The video turned back to Ivy who smiled in victory. “This concludes
the segment on how breaking the law can eventually turn out to be… very painful in the end.”

  Grinning, Ivy clicked off the video that had been posted on social media less than one month ago. After Dawn had recorded this, Ivy took it and edited out the swear words and the dead space in between the action scenes. It had only taken three days for the video to go viral and only one week later for Ivy and her friends to be given a citizen’s award from Wildlife and Game for helping to protect the animals.

  Two weeks after that had happened, she’d gotten a call from the billionaire, Trent Morgan, who owned a few island resorts. These honeymoon spots were in the Prince William Sound area off the Gulf of Alaska. Mr. Morgan offered her an once-in-a-lifetime job. He wanted Ivy to shoot a commercial for the Cupid Island Resort to help boost exposure, which of course, would equal into boosting sales.

  Ivy sighed as excitement bounced inside her, still feeling the elation as what she’d felt that first day of Mr. Morgan’s call.

  It’s a chance of a lifetime, her family had told her. Reach for your dream, her sister Holly had said. Out of all of her sisters, Holly knew Ivy’s dream – to work for a big movie production company as their film editor. Currently, she worked at a small-time television news station in Montana.

  Ivy stood from the bench at the airport and stretched out her stiff limbs. Grabbing her carry-on bag, she swung the strap over her shoulder. She glanced at the time on her phone. There was still a good hour before her scheduled flight to Alaska.

  The wait would kill her since patience was not one of her virtues.

  She passed the coffee shop and stepped inside. It didn’t take long before she had purchased a cup of hot chocolate – since she never drank coffee – and sat at one of the empty tables. She pulled out her cell phone, looking again at all of the likes her video was getting. What pleased her even more was that the poachers were guys the sheriff had been trying to find for two years. She was happy to know they wouldn’t see the outside of a jail cell for a while.

  Sighing, she relaxed in her chair. Carefully, she sipped her hot chocolate, grateful that it didn’t burn her tongue. As she waited for time to pass, her hopes for the future brightened considerably. She wanted to believe that shooting this commercial for Cupid Island would eventually get her connected with bigger people in the movie business. Holly had assured Ivy that it would, since something similar had happened to Holly that made her dreams come true.

  Ivy searched the internet on her iphone, looking for the Morgan Islands Resort. Several links popped up. The first thing she noticed was that a few of them were named after Santa’s reindeers and other Christmas words. She chuckled. Trent Morgan must be as eccentric as Ivy’s mother who named her three daughters Christmas names – Noelle, Holly, and Ivy. As a young girl in school, Ivy was teased constantly, but as an adult, people didn’t seem to mind that she and her sisters were named after Christmas.

  She found the link she needed and scrolled through the pictures. The resort was none other than a paradise, but apparently, the manager didn’t like his photo taken. In the pictures on the internet his head was turned, or he held something in front of his face. For being a billionaire’s son, she’d think he would be used to getting his picture taken.

  From the corner of her eye, a man walking past the coffee shop window captured her attention. Tall, dark, and scrumptious, paced in front of the shop holding his phone to his ear. A scowl creased his dark eyebrows and created lines around his mouth. Whatever the man was talking about definitely had him irate. She understood him perfectly since that’s how she felt when she’d first learned that her flight had been cancelled.

  The man stopped and clicked his phone before sliding it inside his jeans’ front pocket. He leaned his shoulder against the outer wall and rubbed his forehead. Within seconds, another person joined him. The beautiful blonde whose large chest labeled her a fashion model for bras, touched the man’s arm as she batted her fake eyelashes and pouted.

  Ivy couldn’t hear what the two on the other side of the wall were saying, but it looked as if the blonde, and especially her deep cleavage blouse, wasn’t cheering up the man. Already Ivy liked the guy since he wasn’t falling for a woman who was fond of showing what her push-up bra was made for.

  He said something to the blonde and she huffed, folding her arms. The man rolled his eyes and glanced up at the sign on the coffee shop. He mumbled something to the woman before leaving her and moving inside the shop. As he walked to the counter to give his order, Ivy couldn’t help but admire his athletic body. This man definitely wouldn’t be accused of being a couch potato. The long sleeves on his cotton light-weight sweater had been pushed up his forearms, giving her a glance at how very muscular he was.

  Ivy shook her head and glanced down at her drink. Although it gave her something to do during her wait, ogling men was probably not a good idea. It didn’t matter that she’d been dating the same guy for three months, they weren’t engaged, and they weren’t really exclusive. Their relationship was probably just one-sided since she was the only one who wasn’t dating other people. Perhaps why she didn’t feel guilty for checking out Mr. Hottie. It’s not like anything would happen between them, anyway.

  She glanced back out the window at blondie. The woman’s face tightened into a scowl as she angrily moved her thumbs across the keypad of her phone. Had Ivy just witnessed a break-up? And yet, why would people break up at an airport when they were most likely going to the same destination?

  Ivy finished drinking her hot chocolate, and glanced back at her phone, focusing on her assignment that Trent Morgan would be paying her very well to accomplish. If he hadn’t offered her three times more than she was making working at Montana’s small television news station, she wouldn’t be sitting here right now waiting for the next flight to Alaska.

  Since her talk with the billionaire, her mind had been spinning with ideas for his son’s island commercial, but so far nothing popped into her head that would be good enough. She prayed she hadn’t made the wrong decision taking on this task. Yet, how else would she be able to reach for her dreams if not taking a leap of faith?

  Ivy stood and slid her phone in her pants pocket. She gathered her carry-on bag, and quickly turned… slamming right into someone. The dark liquid from his coffee cup splashed onto her arm, but she jumped away before any more could touch her. Immediately, the man growled and placed the half-empty coffee cup with the missing lid on the table where she’d been sitting at. He shook the brown substance off his hand and forearm… a very familiar looking forearm.

  Gasping, she glanced up to the man’s face. Her breath caught in her throat as she peered into the blue – and very irritated – eyes of the man she’d been secretly ogling a few minutes ago.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Without another thought, she grabbed the napkins on the table and dabbed his wet hand and arm. “I didn’t even see you there. I’m so sorry.” She noticed some coffee had spilled on his dark blue sweater, so immediately she grabbed some clean napkins and pressed it against the soon-to-be stains. The more she tried to dry the spilled coffee, the more she could feel his strong chest underneath. Feeling his muscles was like a magnet for her fingers, and she couldn’t pull away even if he was on fire. It was difficult not to sigh aloud, too.

  “Uh, thanks, but…” He removed her hand and the continuous dabbing away from his chest. “I got this.” He took backward steps and used his own napkins to wipe his sweater.

  Inwardly, she groaned. I’m such an idiot! He probably thought she was one of those women who had never talked to a good-looking guy and didn’t know how to act. In fact, at this moment, she felt like one of those women. “Again, I’m sorry. Let me buy you another drink—”

  “It’s okay. Thanks, anyway.” He turned sharply to leave but smacked into the magazine rack that stood just inside the shop’s doors.

  Books, magazines, and newspapers flew through the air in all directions, hitting the floor and sliding. She groaned under her breath, knowin
g she was the cause for this ruckus. Again.

  She jumped into action, knelt on the floor, and started scooping up magazines. Another person joined in the cleaning, wearing the red and black uniform jacket that the shop’s employees were wearing. Mr. Hottie’s red face looked angrier than it did embarrassed. Of course, she was sure her hot face was due to shame as the feeling washed over her.

  He adjusted the magazine rack. She handed him what she had gathered from off the floor. The glare of his eyes hinted at his impatience with her clumsiness. Although she wanted to apologize again, she didn’t dare this time. Hopefully, he could read it on her expression.

  “Honey? What’s going on?” Blondie’s high-pitched voice echoed in the airport’s terminal area.

  Ivy rolled her eyes. Sure, let’s make a bigger scene, why don’t we…

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” he snapped at the woman.

  Ivy kept her opinions to herself as she continued to hand books and magazines to him and the employee trying to refill the rack. Mr. Hottie blew out a frustrated breath as he stuffed the magazines into their separate slots.

  “Sorry about this,” he told the employee. “I’ll pay for any damages.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the employee who looked young enough to still be in high school told him. “I don’t see anything damaged.”

  Except for my pride. Ivy frowned. She had definitely not made a friend in that particular airplane passenger.

  Once the rack was filled again, the man hurried away from the coffee shop with the blonde woman tagging behind in her four-inch heels. A couple of times, the heels twisted slightly, and Ivy half-expected the woman to tumble to the ground, but that never happened.

  Ivy stood and dusted off her black pants. She gave an apologetic nod to the employee, grabbed her bag, and hurried out of the shop.

  As she headed toward the terminals, she was intercepted by a pretty brunette woman with a friendly smile.