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seated?” Marla asked Joss.
    “Right here. Over here. Where are you?”
    “Oh, they’ve set our group up there.”
    Joss followed Marla’s gesture toward a table fringed all the way
    around with an array of noisy children wearing combinations of colors that hurt the eyes. “It looks like you’ve been dropped into The Sound of Music ,” she said on a chuckle.
    “That’s my world,” Marla replied with a grin and a shrug. “Just
    call me Marla von Trapp.”
    “They’re . . . all . . . yours?”
    “Yep! All seven of them.”
    Joss’s eyes grew large and round as she surveyed the many mem-
    bers of the Jenkins family flanking the banquet table, each of them wearing sweaters bearing holly wreaths, Santas, and gingerbread
    men.
    “From six to sixteen,” Marla declared.
    “You’ve got a hockey team there,” Patrick teased Rodney.
    He nodded as he laughed. “This group makes hockey seem tame.”
    “I’m so happy you’re here,” Marla told Joss, and she poked
    Joss’s rib with her elbow. “I mean, what’s more fun than celebrating Christmas, huh?”
    Oh, I don’t know. Falling overboard?
    VICTOR FILLED JOSS’S COFFEE cup again while a server who
    didn’t look like she was more than seventeen slid giant slices of chocolate something in front of everyone at the table.
    “What is that?” Joss asked, leaning toward Patrick. When he
    didn’t answer instantaneously, she reached up and touched the girl’s sleeve. “Excuse me. What is this? I thought there was going to be cheesecake.”
    “It is chocolate cheesecake,” she replied with a thick unidentifiable accent.
    “Oh.” She tapped it with her fork and inspected it more closely.
    “Okay.”
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    Once Upon a Jingle Bell
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    “Cheesecake snob, are we?” Patrick asked, and she snickered
    without looking up at him.
    “I was expecting praline cheesecake, but this will have to do.”
    She poked the dessert with her fork and scooped up a large bite,
    which she set ceremoniously upon her tongue. When the slight hints of mocha and the velvety cream cheese settled in, Joss’s deep and long sigh turned a bit toward a groan in the end.
    “Well, that sold me,” he remarked, and he took a bite of the des-
    sert from his own plate.
    He nodded at Joss, shrugged, and then nodded again. “Yeah. I
    see it.”
    “No, no, my friend,” she corrected as she sliced off another chunk with her fork. “This is not something to be weighed and considered and then met with ambivalence. Cheesecake is very serious business.”
    “Is it now?”
    “It is.”
    An announcement through the sound system drew everyone’s
    attention to the front of the dining room. An odd little man stood center stage with a microphone in his hand and a set of antlers on his head.
    “It’s time,” he declared. “It’s what you’ve all been waiting for! It’s the Christmas sweater competition!”
    Thunderous applause rolled until Joss felt the reverberation
    against her ribs.
    “Our judges have walked the room several times over, and
    they’ve narrowed it down to six lucky finalists.”
    As the table numbers were called, Patrick leaned toward Joss
    and asked, “Are you a praying woman, Miss Snow?”
    “Now and then.”
    “Join me in prayer, won’t you?”
    He had a spicy scent about him, subtle and manly. Joss’s pulse
    raced as he pressed his shoulder against hers.
    “You have your heart set on winning?” she asked him.
    “No!” he objected with a raised hand, and he glared hard into her eyes. “It’s important to keep up here. We’re praying that I don’t win.”
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    38
    Merry
    Humbug Christmas
    When the rest of their table began to hoot and applaud, and Doug
    Denture rose to his feet and pointed his clapping hands at Patrick, a bit of the color drained from his handsome face.
    “No.” He swiveled and looked toward the emcee. “Is he codding me?”
    Joss could only guess what