Snow was piling up on the shoulder of a state highway somewhere outside an East Coast city when the princess in the hundred-thousand-dollar car realized she was stranded on Christmas Eve, in the United States of America, thirty minutes late for a blind date she already dreaded.

Her dashboard lights flickered like a dying Christmas tree. The engine coughed, shuddered, and then went dark with a sound that reminded her of a blender choking on cutlery. Headlights behind her swept past on the slick road, the glow of fast-food signs and gas stations reflecting off the snow. Somewhere out there, in the kind of cozy little café you see in feel-good holiday movies on American cable TV, a stranger was checking his phone and wondering if she was the kind of woman who stood people up.

If only that were her biggest problem.

Hours earlier, high above that same city, Sophia Lauron had stood barefoot in front of floor-to-ceiling glass, her penthouse windows turning the entire skyline into a glittering, indifferent audience.

From the twentieth floor, downtown looked like a glossy postcard: strings of holiday lights wrapped around lampposts, LEDs spelling Merry Christmas over a busy Main Street, car headlights crawling along the interstate that cut through the city like a silver river. Somewhere past the cluster of high-rises, she could even see a United States flag flapping from a government building, red and white stripes still visible against the deepening blue.

It should have felt magical.

Instead, all she could think about was bankruptcy.

Her phone buzzed again on the marble counter behind her, a tiny, insistent vibration that set her teeth on edge. She didn’t have to look to know it would be another email from the investors, another “gentle reminder” about the expansion decision, another spreadsheet, another subject line that made her stomach knot.

She wrapped her arms around herself over the thin silk of her dress and stared at the city like it was a problem she could still solve if she just thought hard enough.

Three months.

That was all she had left to save the company with her name on the door. Three months before the people who wore her clothes and tagged her on Instagram stories started following other labels. Three months before the American investors in their West Coast offices shook their heads and wrote off “the Lauron experiment” as a loss.

Her phone buzzed again.

Sophia exhaled sharply and turned away from the glass. The penthouse was all sharp lines and soft light, every piece of furniture curated, every object exactly where her assistant thought it should be. Tonight, it felt like a showroom for a life that belonged to someone else.

Someone who wasn’t seriously considering faking food poisoning to escape a first date.

The dress she’d forced herself into—a midnight-blue designer piece that cost more than most people’s rent in this very city—hugged her curves perfectly. Her hair was smooth, glossy, and pinned the way her stylist insisted made her look “effortlessly powerful.” Her makeup was red-carpet ready.

Inside, she felt like a kid who’d lost control of a skateboard and was now tumbling down a hill, unable to stop.

The front door flew open without so much as a knock.

Only one person in the world did that.

“Don’t you dare,” Mia announced.

Sophia turned. Her best friend strode into the apartment with the energy of a Broadway chorus line, cheeks pink from the cold, curls shoved under a beanie with a New York Yankees logo on it, snow still clinging to the wool. She stopped, took one look at Sophia’s face, and groaned like a disappointed sitcom mom.

“Oh no,” Mia said, pointing. “I know that look. That is an ‘I’m going to text him a last-minute excuse and pretend my phone died’ face.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sophia lied, attempting a careless shrug. “I’m totally going.”

Her phone buzzed again, proving her a liar.

Mia crossed her arms. “You’ve been married to that company for two years. And not in a ‘cute courthouse wedding’ way. In a ‘cult leader devotion’ way. You need this, Soph. You need to remember what it feels like to be a human being in America instead of a robot CEO trying to keep Wall Street happy.”

Sophia sank onto one of the bar stools, the dress tightening around her ribs.

“My company is dying, Mia.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But the words slipped out and just hung there between them, heavy and too real.

Mia’s expression softened. “It is not dying.”

Sophia laughed without humor. “The investors want an answer by January fifteenth. We need a flagship expansion site locked in, or they pull every penny. Two hundred employees, Mia. Two hundred people whose lives are tied to me not screwing this up. Pattern makers in Queens, seamstresses in New Jersey, the social media team in that tiny co-working space near Union Square. I mess this up, I don’t just disappoint rich men in California. I put them out of work.”

Mia stepped closer and grabbed both of Sophia’s shoulders, grounding her.

“Which is exactly why you need one single night,” she said firmly. “One. Where you are not thinking about quarterly reports or market projections or which street in this city has the best foot traffic for American shoppers. One date. If he’s awful, you never see him again. If he’s great…” Mia’s eyes softened. “Maybe you get something good in your life for once.”

Sophia stared at her.

She wanted to say she didn’t have time. That she couldn’t afford distractions. That romance was a luxury for women whose lives weren’t currently held together by sheer will and overpriced coffee.

Instead, she reached for her phone and flipped it over.

The screen lit up with a preview: Marcus – FINAL DECISION ON MARKET STREET NEEDED.

She turned the phone face-down again like it might poison her.

“I don’t even know this guy,” she said, more weakly now. “Blind dates are for people who have time to be disappointed.”

“He’s not random.” Mia’s smile tilted conspiratorially. “He’s Emma’s brother.”

“Emma,” Sophia repeated slowly. “Emma from the Thanksgiving charity gala, Emma?”

“The very one. Emma from Boston who somehow knows everyone. She swears he’s a good guy. Runs a small auto repair shop. Single dad.”

Sophia blinked. “You set me up with a mechanic.”

“Don’t say it like it’s a bad word.” Mia rolled her eyes. “Yes. A mechanic. In America. Where cars exist. And break down. And need fixing. And where women like you probably don’t even know how to check your own oil.”

“I do so know how to—okay, I don’t.” Sophia rubbed her forehead. “Mia. I own a fashion house. He’s…what, covered in motor oil?”

“And probably very good with his hands,” Mia said, waggling her eyebrows. “You like good hands. Don’t lie.”

Sophia burst out laughing despite herself, tension cracking like ice.

“There she is,” Mia said, satisfied. “Look, he’s not some hedge fund guy who’s going to talk about yields and tax shelters all night. He’s a real person. He loves his kid. He fixes people’s cars. He lives over his shop like this is a Hallmark movie but with better writing. Just go. Talk to him. Drink coffee that’s not from a boardroom. The café’s cute—Evergreen Café, down on Maple. You love that place.”

Sophia did love that place. The owner, Harper, put cinnamon in the hot chocolate and remembered everyone’s names, the way small-town American waitresses do in movies—even though this wasn’t a small town at all.

“Fine,” Sophia said at last. “I’ll go. One date.”

Mia grinned. “I already told Emma yes, so you didn’t really have a choice. He’s expecting you at seven.”

Sophia glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. If she left in ten minutes she’d be just on time. Assuming the whole country didn’t decide to fall apart around her first.

Down in a very different part of the city, above a brick building that backed onto an alley smelling like motor oil and pizza grease, another conversation was happening.

“Daddy, you promised.”

Lily planted herself in front of the apartment door, small sneakers squeaking against the linoleum, arms stretched wide like a human barricade. Her reindeer pajamas, bought at Target on a Black Friday sale, were a size too big and pooled around her ankles.

“Morrison men don’t break promises,” she announced seriously, mispronouncing “promises” just enough to be adorable.

On the cracked phone screen balanced on the kitchen counter, Emma snorted.

“She’s got you there,” Jake’s sister said from her place on the other side of the state line, probably sitting in her Boston kitchen with Patriots magnets on the fridge and snow piled up on the windowsill. “You told me you’d go, Jake.”

Jake tightened the knot on the only tie he owned. It had been collecting dust in the back of his closet since his wife’s funeral. It felt wrong around his throat now, like someone was trying to strangle him slowly.

“I know what I said,” he muttered. “But this really isn’t a good idea.”

Lily gasped as if personally betrayed. “You said Aunt Emma picked her and I helped. You can’t not go. That’s illegal.”

“That’s not illegal,” Jake said automatically.

Emma laughed. “It should be. Listen to your daughter. Jake, you haven’t been on a date in four years. Four. Years. That’s like…ancient history in American dating time. People have met, married, had two kids, and divorced in less than that.”

“Wow, that’s bleak.”

“Welcome to the U.S.,” Emma said dryly. “Point is, you’re stuck in that garage and that apartment, working all day, watching football with Lily at night, pretending you’re fine. You’re not fine. She wants you to be happy. I want you to be happy. You’re going.”

Lily bounced on her toes, dark hair flying. “And I helped pick her, Daddy. She’s really pretty. She likes fashion like me. She has sparkly dresses.”

Jake’s head snapped toward the phone. “You let a six-year-old help pick my date?”

Emma had the decency to look at least a little guilty.

“She saw the profile after I did and said you’d like her,” Emma said. “And frankly, Lily’s got better instincts than you. You’re the one who thought Denise from the parts store was flirting when she was just trying to hit her sales quota.”

Lily giggled, clueless but delighted.

Jake sighed. Arguing with those two was like arguing with a brick wall wrapped in glitter and Boston sarcasm. And he was so tired—of the garage, of the loneliness, of doing his best for his daughter and still feeling like he was screwing up.

He looked around the small apartment: the string of cheap Christmas lights drooping along the wall, the tiny artificial tree they’d decorated together with handmade paper ornaments, the couch that sagged in the middle from too many late-night movie marathons. Downstairs, his name—Morrison’s Garage—hung on a blue sign that had seen better days. This building, on Market Street, in a working-class corner of a proud American city, was all he had.

And all he was about to risk, if the rumors about developers were true.

“Fine,” he said at last, grabbing his jacket off the chair. “One date. But when this is a disaster, I’m blaming both of you.”

Lily squealed and lunged at him, hugging his legs. “It won’t be a disaster. It’ll be a Christmas miracle. Like in the movie!”

“You’ve been letting her watch too much Hallmark,” Jake told Emma.

“It’s basic cable,” Emma said. “It’s a national treasure. Now go. Text me later. And Jake?”

He paused, hand on the doorknob.

“Try,” she said quietly. “Just…actually try.”

---

Twenty minutes later, Sophia’s car made a noise that cars in any civilized country—especially one obsessed with road trips and interstates—should never make.

One minute, she was cruising down a dark stretch of road, GPS politely informing her she’d arrive at Evergreen Café in nine minutes, traffic light, temperature dropping to twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. The next, every warning light on her dashboard lit up like Times Square. The engine coughed once, twice, and then emitted a grinding, protesting shriek, somewhere between a dying cat and a garbage disposal chewing metal.

“Don’t you dare,” she told the steering wheel.

The car shuddered, lurched, and died.

She coasted to the shoulder, hazard lights blinking faintly in the snow-filled darkness, and sat there for a moment in stunned silence.

Outside, the wind pushed snow across the asphalt in ghostly waves. Far in the distance, she could see the glow of a strip mall: a 24-hour diner with a neon sign, a pharmacy, a big box store she’d seen in a hundred American commercials. None of that could help her alternator.

Sophia dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel.

“Of course,” she muttered. “Of course this happens tonight.”

She pulled out her phone, ignoring the new email notification from Marcus, and opened her roadside assistance app. The estimated wait time popped up after a moment, cheerful and devastating.

Two hours.

“Great,” she said. “Perfect. I can just celebrate Christmas Eve on the side of a highway. Very festive. Very patriotic.”

She texted Mia.

SOPHIA: Car just died. Roadside says 2 hour wait. This is a sign from the universe. I’m going home.

The reply came so fast it was almost violent.

MIA: NO IT IS NOT. Call an Uber. I swear if you bail now I will storm your building and drag you out myself. You’re ten minutes away, Sophia. TEN.

Sophia stared at her phone, thumb hovering over the rideshare app.

Snowflakes hit the windshield in fat, lazy drops, slowly streaking across the glass. A car whooshed by in the right lane, sending up a spray of slush that shook her vehicle slightly. She was twenty stories above this kind of mess most days. It felt surreal to be down in it, stranded like any other American driver in an unreliable car.

Headlights appeared in her rearview mirror, growing larger.

Too large.

They were slowing down.

Her first thought slammed into her chest with enough force to make her reach for the door locks.

This is how horror movies start. Woman alone on a dark road. Christmas Eve special on the evening news.

The truck behind her—a pickup, of course it was a pickup—eased onto the shoulder and stopped a few yards back. The engine cut off. The driver’s side door opened.

A man climbed out, pulling his jacket tighter against the wind. He wasn’t wearing a mask, or carrying an axe, or stomping around in bloody boots the way her anxious brain briefly suggested. He looked…normal. Early to mid-thirties, maybe. Broad shoulders under a worn work coat, jeans, boots caked with old snow. His hair was a little too long, curling around his ears, and there was stubble on his jaw. A small flashlight dangled from his keychain, bouncing off his hip as he walked.

Most importantly, both his hands were visible, lifted slightly in front of him, palms open like he’d seen the same movies she had and wanted to make it clear he came in peace.

He stopped a respectful distance from her hood.

“Ma’am?” he called over the wind. His voice was rough in a way that suggested long days, hot coffee, and maybe a little country music on the radio. “You okay? Car trouble?”

Sophia cracked the window an inch, just enough for her voice to slip out, not enough to let in the cold.

“It just…” She gestured helplessly. “It died. Everything died. And roadside assistance says they’re slammed tonight.”

“Christmas Eve,” he said with a nod of understanding. “Everyone thinks their car can do one more trip to the mall.”

He stepped closer, eyes scanning the car without creeping her out by scanning her. Up close, she could see grease permanently embedded in the lines of his knuckles, the calluses on his fingers, and the faint crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

“I’m a mechanic,” he said, flicking the little flashlight on. “Name’s Jake. I’ve got my truck. If you’re okay with it, I can take a look. Might be something simple. Might not,” he added honestly. “But I can at least tell you which.”

Sophia blinked.

What were the odds that the universe would strand her on a U.S. highway and send a mechanic with a decent smile this way?

“You’re not…like…a serial killer, right?” she blurted, and then wanted to crawl under the seat.

Jake actually laughed, the sound warm and startled, puffing out in a cloud of white in the cold air.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Born and raised here. Pay my taxes, vote in the midterms, eat too many cheeseburgers, watch the game on Sundays. I fix cars and argue with my six-year-old about bedtime. That’s about as exciting as it gets