He opened the jar and held it out to Ivy. “Here. Take one.”

The jar was full of cellophane-wrapped chocolate candies. Ivy took one and gave him a questioning look.

“These were Carlette’s favorites. I always keep them in the house. Don’t eat a lot of sweets myself, except for these.”

“I’m not really a sweets person either,” Ivy confessed.

“Try one of these,” Mr. Jones urged. “I buy ’em from a shop here in town. They’re different. Not too sweet. More minty.”

She obligingly peeled the wrapper away and tasted. He was right. The candy was dark chocolate, sweet with just a hint of pepper and a big dose of mint.

“Pretty good,” she admitted.

Lawrence Jones helped himself to a piece of candy. “I guess I just like the taste of peppermint. It reminds me of Christmas. And hope.”

Chapter 8

Ivy read and reread the email from her home-builder client. The words “severing our relationship” swam before her eyes. A nice way of saying she was fired.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it had. She’d never been fired before, never really failed at anything. Well, except at marriage. So now she was oh for two in just the past nine months.

She picked up a piece of the chocolate candy Lawrence Jones had pressed upon her, peeled off the cellophane, and sucked. The smell of peppermint and the slight peppery tang of the candy somehow eased the sting of rejection. She examined the printing on the wrapper and typed the company’s name into her computer’s search engine.

“Oh no,” she muttered, looking down at the company website. It looked like it had been designed by someone with less than a passing understanding of graphic design. Or public relations, or marketing.

It was clunky, even ugly. But she did manage to learn that Langley Sweets had been around for ninety years, was still owned by a member of the Langley family, Nancy Langley Bergstrom, and that their best-known product was the one she was holding in her hand—Dark Chocolate PepperyMint Patties.

“Not a bad name,” Ivy mused, but it, and the product itself, was the only thing to like about the public face of Langley Sweets. The website didn’t even have a link to buy the product, for heaven’s sake. The packaging, company logo, all of it, was completely mediocre and utterly charmless. There was a photo of the candy shop on the website, and she realized she’d passed the business several times on her trips downtown, without ever taking notice of it.

Ivy took another tentative taste of the PepperyMint. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Lawrence Jones was right. These candies were special. They conjured up hope, and holidays, and, well, even a little bit of magic.

She opened her laptop and began typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she conjured up a new advertising campaign for PepperyMint Patties.

“PepperyMint: So good they’ll take your breath away!”

But it wasn’t just words this brand needed; they needed new images too. Ivy’s mind turned to the old Christmas cards and Santa Claus photos and letters she’d discovered in the trunk currently residing in the otherwise-empty guest bedroom.