It Takes a Christmas Village

Alexandra Foster is the Mayor of Hawkins Bay. In the lead up to Christmas, she knows she has a problem on her hands in the delays in the much needed work done on the bridge leading to downtown, the detour which bypasses downtown and thus is killing the businesses along Main Street during their proverbial bread and butter Christmas season, many of those businesses which may not survive into the new year because of it. She and her assistant Gina come up with the idea to hold a multi-day Christmas market for these merchants, the problem being that the only suitable place to hold the market is the long ago closed Hawkins Mill site, the Fosters and Hawkins families who have been feuding for thirty years when the then Mayor, Alex's father Art Foster, openly criticized the Hawkins family for closing the mill without notice. While most of the Hawkins have since moved away, rumor has it that the only remaining Hawkins in town at the old isolated Hawkins estate is the reclusive Darcy Hawkins, who spent most of his formative years away at boarding school or college. Alex knows she has to push the right buttons to convince Darcy, who she learns lives at the estate with his paternal grandmother, Mary Hawkins, who is more aware of the feud. Alex is eventually able to convince Darcy in finding that right button, which concerns redevelopment of the Hawkins Mill site. While Art and the planning commission of the time previously rejected that redevelopment permit solely in not trusting the Hawkins, Alex believes the redevelopment is exactly what Hawkins Bay needs. In spending time together both in preparation for the market and in issues around the rubber stamp process of the redevelopment, Alex and Darcy seem to start to fall for each other. The problem in a romance developing between Alex and Darcy is if there are others who have longer memories about the mistrust between the two families. —Huggo