By Sheila Roberts
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Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/099943988X
Starr Conner is longing to find the perfect man. She hasn’t found him in her beach town of Port Haven. She just knows he exists. Somewhere. Maybe this year Santa will come through for her.
John Smith is new to the area. Actually, John Smith is new to Earth. Making his visit in the special human form provided for him, he gets to experience a taste of life there. And he’s just in time for the festival called Christmas. Long before he meets Santa, he meets someone even better: Starr.
Starr is thinking her dream man might have finally arrived, but there’s just one problem. Earth’s atmosphere isn’t as welcoming as she is, and much as he wants to, John can’t stay permanently. Can an out of this world love conquer all?
Starry-Eyed for Christmas is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/099943988X .
Somewhere on the planet there had to be a man Starr Conner could fall in love with. Not just sort of, not just top lust and drool over, but someone who was her soulmate, someone who wanted to dream together, grow together, and build a life together. Where was he hiding? Certainly not in Port Haven, where men smelled like the fish they caught and never thought beyond beer on Friday night. Not that Starr had anything against beer. Or fish, especially not fish. Fish, along with crabs, oysters and clams, were what kept the Neptune Seafood Company humming. They sold both canned and fresh to chain supermarkets all around Washington State. And that kept the town humming as more than half its residents were employed there. The rest were either retired or managing to eke out a living catering to the tourists who managed to discover Port Haven during the summer. Most of them either went to Ocean Shores or Seabrook, two main attractions on the Washington coast, but a few managed to straggle in and buy fresh seafood, rent one of the two Air B&Bs in town and party on the beach.
No one stayed in the derelict old Starlite Motel (Or, according to its dying neon sign, the Star---te otel) which hunched in humiliation at the top of the bluff overlooking the beach. Nobody in town knew who owned it – some sort of shell company, it was assumed. The place had a crusty old custodian of sorts who beat back the blackberries and scared away teens hoping to find a room they could break into and hook up. Occasionally lights would flicker in a top corner room of the motel.
Which, of course, convinced some people that it was haunted.
No ghost hunters had come to town to prove it. But hardly anyone came to town at all so that wasn’t at all surprising.
Where were those romance heroes you saw stumbling into small towns all over the Hallmark channel? Not in Port Haven, that was for sure. Oh, the town had a few of the expected staple movie characters – the snobs, consisting of mean girls and the few remaining former high school football stars who dated and then married the mean girls, the requisite best friend. “Earth to Starr. Come back,” said Ellie Peterson from her desk across the small office of the Neptune Seafood Company where Starr (and half the town) worked.
Ellie was Starr’s requisite best friend. Although really, they were mostly besties because there wasn’t much of anyone else to bestie with. Starr loved to read and watch romance movies and series on BritBox. Pride and Prejudice, the BBC series … sigh.
Ellie was into graphic novels and shows where despicable people murdered each other. Love stories optional. But they’d known each other since kindergarten and Ellie did like to play Boggle. When her catch of the day, Gus, wasn’t claiming her evenings. She was expecting a ring for Christmas. And she had predicted Starr would be getting one, too, from Milton Curtis, the science teacher at Harbor High.
“What?” said Starr.
“You’re thinking about that movie again,” Ellie accused.
She was right. The latest movie Starr had watched had featured a mysterious stranger coming to a dying small town.
He turned out to be a business tycoon looking for a place to plant his new factory. Of course, he’d fallen for the heroine, Misty Moran (great name!) and when hiking in the woods she’d sprained her ankle. He’d carried her to a nearby, handily deserted mountain cabin. Later, after they’d conveniently found a bottle of wine and a frozen pizza, he’d kissed her in front of a roaring fire.
If she wanted, Starr could enjoy a roaring fire at her own house, where she still lived, even though neither her mother nor her father was around anymore. Dad had died in a boating accident and Mom had moved to an over fifty community further inland, hoping to find a Dad the Second. It was looking like she had. (That singles cruise had been a good investment.)
As for her brother, well, he’d left behind ordinary and moved to San Francisco where he was making big bucks as a tech genius and was working on becoming the next Elon Musk. No ordinary life for James.
“There are no lost billionaires wandering the Washington coast. If there were I’d have found one for you,” Ellie teased.
“So, you may as well grab Milton and come to Keep Clam with me and Gus tonight. Gotta get ready for the darts tourney tomorrow.”
“Darts.” At the pub. Again. And again. Starr was stuck in a remake of the movie Groundhog Day. She was tired of the same entertainment at the same place with the same people.
She was tired of her lukewarm life. Where was the zing? The zest?
“Why don’t they ever have a trivia night?” she complained.
“Because no one would come,” said Ellie. “Anyway, if they did, you and Milton would smoke us all. So, how about it? Darts?”
“I think I’m going to stay home. I want to work on that new bracelet.” Artistic fame and Etsy were calling.
“Ooh, the one with the sea glass?”
“Yep. The starfish charms finally came in and I’ve got enough sea glass now to make at least a dozen bracelets.”
“Save me one.” Yes, Ellie was a true bestie. She loved her short, half-shaved hair and she favored jeans and sweatshirts but, like Starr, she loved jewelry. And she especially loved Starr’s hand-crafted bling that featured beach glass and agates and shells.
Starr nodded and turned her attention to her computer screen.
“But we’ll see if you get anything done. Milton’s bound to turn up on your doorstep.”
“No, he’s got his podcast tonight.”
“Milton Mars,” sneered Ellie. “My gosh, that man has got to get over his fixation about past civilizations on Mars before he puts the whole town to sleep talking about it. Nobody cares.”
“He could be right,” Starr said in her make-do boyfriend’s defense. “There could be life out there.”
“Right. And little green men really landed at Area 51.” Ellie studied her. “Why are you with him, anyway? I mean, he’s nice and all but he doesn’t exactly look Hallmark.”
Well, really, who did? “He’s sweet,” said Starr.
Sadly, being sweet wasn’t enough. Milton didn’t make her heart flutter when he kissed her. In fact, she tried to avoid kissing him as much as possible. For all his fascination with life on Mars, Milton just didn’t know how to make life on earth exciting. If that wasn’t a sign that they shouldn’t be together she didn’t know what was.
“Yeah, he is. But he’s a nerd. I just don’t see you with a nerd.”
“There isn’t much of anyone in this town to see me with,” Starr said.
“Gary,” Ellie began.
“Oh, yes, I want to get back together with the boyfriend who broke up with me right before prom.”
“Good point,” Ellie agreed. “But how about ...”
Starr cut her off. “Andy just found someone on Tinder.”
Ellie sighed. “Looks like you’re stuck with Milton.”
Poor Milton. Would he want someone who was with him because she was settling for second best? Not that there was a best in town to compare him to.”
Starr leaned on her desk and looked out the window past the reflection of a woman with long, red hair and hazel eyes who was teetering on the edge of thirty. An almost Hallmark worthy face. The sky above restless waters was slate gray.
There’d been talk of snow, but she doubted they’d get any.
Snow rarely visited the coast, even when it was December. A white Christmas would be nice, even if it was only a dusting.
White Christmases, perfect man – boy, was she a dreamer.
“If he’s not doing it for you, you really should set him free.
Give him a chance to find someone else. Otherwise, come New Year’s Eve, there he’ll be with a ring he’s sprung for and there you’ll be, throwing it in his face. Not literally,” Ellie clarified.
Starr exhaled deeply. She should set the man free to find someone else. There were other single women in town, and not quite enough men to go around. Milton was valuable property. She was just keeping him around as… a place holder.
She frowned at the thought. “I always thought I was a nice person,” she mused.
“You are,” Ellie assured her.
“Well, it’s not nice to keep Milton hanging on. You’re right.
He and I need to have a talk.”
But not that night. She already had plans for the evening, and dumping Milton wasn’t one of them. But they would have that talk. Soon. She owed it to him.
Okay, enough talk about their love lives – Ellie’s great, hers lukewarm. It was time to get back to work. Entering orders, typing reports, emailing copies of reports to Chad Everly, their boss. Chad, such a cool name. Too bad the man who owned it was a grumpy middle-aged misogynist.
The afternoon piddled away and finally it was quitting time.
Workers spilled from the factory, got into their trucks and SUV’s and headed home, many to their wives and their TV’s.
Some of them would be showering and getting ready to go to Keep Clam to play darts. They’d drink beer, eat burgers or clam chowder, listen to country music and laugh, talk about the Seattle Seahawks or tell their buddies about that ring they’d put money down on at the jewelry shop over in Aberdeen.
Some would have their girlfriends there, rooting them on as they aimed for the high points on the dartboard. In between turns they’d sit next to those girlfriends, with a hand on their knees.
Starr would love to feel a big hand on her knee. The last big hand had wound up with a wedding ring on it and the guy now had two kids. But he hadn’t been her soulmate either. Sigh.
Was it asking too much to want a man who would give her the shivers when he smiled at her? A man who was larger than life and really appreciate life, one who wasn’t just marking time catching fish and watching football? Was that too much to ask?
Really?
Her cell phone summoned her. Milton. Sweet, amiable Milton. In a romance novel he would be the hero’s buddy. Or the comic relief. No, not the comic relief. Milton was too serious
to be comic relief.
“I’m doing a special podcast tonight. Are you going to watch it?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. She could half-listen while working on her bracelets.
And that would be her exciting night, sitting home listening to Milton’s podcast. Drilling tiny holes in sea glass would be more interesting.
And so, later, after heating up a frozen mini-pizza and reading a chapter in her novel, she gathered her supplies and settled at her little dining table with her laptop open and tuned
to Milton’s YouTube channel.
He came on in all his Milton glory, wearing his favorite button-down shirt. No glasses. Milton may have been nerd, but he wasn’t a total cliché. He wore contacts. And he really wasn’t’ bad looking. He had nice eyes and lips. His face was a little long, but the eyes made up for it. Still, she didn’t look at Milton and think, Let’s take a blanket to the beach and pretend to star gaze.
Wrap those big arms around me. Martin wouldn’t want to expose his bare skin to sand fleas. And he didn’t have big arms.
She half listened as he showed pictures similar to the ones he’d showed on his last podcast.
“We really are being lied to,” Milton said. It was his favorite theme, and he loved returning to it often. “Look carefully at these pictures. If you do, you’ll see what I mean when I say that all the buttes on Mars are nothing more than destroyed vessels that have come down out of the sky. We can know this because of the debris, which is actually metal. See the rocks scattered at the base? The satellite pictures we have proven that these are not rocks.”
They looked like rocks to Starr.
“Nothing is ever as it seems when you are looking at Mars.”
Maybe. But everything was exactly as it seemed in Port Haven. Sigh.
– Excerpted from Starry-Eyed for Christmas by Sheila Roberts, Roberts Ink, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly best-selling author Sheila Roberts has written over sixty books under different names, ranging from devotional, self-improvement and memoir to fiction. Her novels have been turned into movies for the Lifetime, Hallmark and Great American Family channels. Her 2024 Christmas novel, The Merry Matchmaker, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Sheila is happily married and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Visit her website at www.sheilasplace.com.
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