Holiday Hearts

Peyton Canaday, the accountant at her parents' Birch Creek business, the Canaday Inn, and physician Dr. Ben Tyler, having known each other since childhood, were once good friends, that is up until ten years ago when she professed her romantic feelings for him with he responding by leaving town the next day for good. Since Ben returned to Birch Creek a year ago to work at the Birch Creek Community Hospital under the Chief-of-Staff, his divorced father Dr. David Tyler, he and Peyton have conveniently avoided each other. But with one week to go before Christmas, they are forced back together when their mutual friend, widowed Ford Sherman, unexpectedly winds up in the hospital for a few days and needs someone to look after his adolescent daughter, Lily Sherman. With the care to Lily not only the necessities of life, which Ben could handle on his own, but also to maintain some stability in her life by embarking on what were Lily's mother's holiday traditions, Ben requests Peyton's help in he never having had any traditions associated with Christmas. This time with Lily throws a wrench into what both Peyton and Ben had planned in the lead up to Christmas. Wanting to move into event planning, Peyton convinced her parents to let her organize this year's twenty-fifth anniversary Canaday Inn Christmas Eve party, which for all those years has been Birch Creek's event of the Christmas season. Peyton wants to make her mark by making this the best party ever, especially as the Gazette newspaper is planning to feature it on the front page of its Christmas edition. While she has been able to cross all the t's and dot all the i's in being detailed oriented, the one thing Peyton has not been able to do with one week to go is the big picture item of coming up with the party theme, the secret which she's kept behind the locked doors of the inn's still empty ballroom. Ben, when hearing about Ford, was just about to catch a plane to spend Christmas in Honduras for a "vacation", with only his father knowing the real reason being in going for an interview for a three year contract to work at Doctor's Care International's field clinic there, they who need a doctor on the ground the beginning of the new year. In spending time together with Lily, Peyton and Ben become friends once again with the possibility of more, especially if Ben divulges the real reason he didn't say anything to her ten years ago. But they will still have to overcome their different life paths, Peyton in what she hopes will be her new event planning career, and Ben in his medical work in Honduras, much like the altruistic decisions both his parents have made in their lives. Written by Huggo