Zak was God knew where with his beautiful and manipulative assistant. (I actually didn’t know if she was manipulative, but she looked like she would be.) The highly anticipated opening of Zoe’s Zoo would be delayed at least a month, maybe more. Maggie was gone from my life forever, even though a small part of me realized this was actually a good thing. And the snow that had seemed so beautiful just that morning had turned into a strategic nightmare as hundreds of tourists arrived for the weekend. “Don’t you love all this snow?” Ellie, who was seasonally dressed in a Santa hat and red sweater, asked as she joined me near the Santa house. I turned and growled. At least I felt like growling. The reality is, I most likely groaned. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Ellie teased. “I woke up on the right side. It’s everything that’s happened since that’s the problem.”
