Call Me Mrs Miracle. Debbie Macomber

slid her arms around him and simply laid her head against his chest. For a moment, Jake stood unmoving as she held him. Then he placed his own arms around her. It felt as though she was an anchor, securing him in an unsteady sea. He needed her. Wanted her. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he lifted her head and lowered his mouth to hers.

      The kiss was filled with urgency and need. She slipped her arms around his neck, and her touch had a powerful effect on him.

      He tangled his fingers in her dark shoulder-length hair and brought his mouth to hers a second time. Soon they were so involved in each other that it took him far longer than it should to hear the ringing of his phone.

      He broke away in order to answer; as he suspected, the car was downstairs, waiting. When he told Holly, she immediately put on her coat. Gabe continued to sleep as Jake scooped him up, holding the boy carefully in both arms.

      George opened the lobby door for them. Holly slid into the vehicle first, and then as Jake started to hand her the boy, he noticed a movement on the other side of the street.

      “Jake?” Holly called from the car. “Please, there’s no need for you to come. You’ve been so kind already.”

      “I want to see you safely home,” he said as he stared across the street. For just an instant—it must have been his imagination—he was sure he’d seen Emily Merkle, better known as Mrs. Miracle.

Six

      Forbidden fruit creates many jams.

      —Mrs. Miracle

      The phone rang just as Holly and Gabe walked into the apartment after church the next morning. For one wild second Holly thought it might be Jake.

      Or rather, hoped it was Jake.

      Although she’d been dead on her feet by the time they got to Brooklyn, she couldn’t sleep. She’d lain awake for hours, thinking about the kisses they’d shared, replaying every minute of their time together. All of this was so unexpected and yet so welcome. Jake was—

      “Hello,” she said, sounding breathless with anticipation.

      “What’s this I hear about you turning my son into a girl?”

      “Mickey!” Her brother’s voice was as clear as if he were in the next room. He tried to phone on a regular basis, but it wasn’t easy. The most reliable form of communication had proved to be email.

      “So you’re baking cookies with my son, are you?” he teased.

      “We had a blast.” Gabe was leaping up and down, eager to speak to his father. “Here, I’ll let Gabe tell you about it himself.” She passed the phone to her nephew, who immediately grabbed it.

      “Dad! Dad, guess what? I went to Aunt Holly’s office to help her decorate and then she took me to see the big tree at Rockefeller Center and we watched the skaters and had hot chocolate and then we walked to Central Park and had hot dogs for dinner, and, oh, we went to see Mrs. Miracle. I helped Aunt Holly roll out cookies and...” He paused for breath.

      Evidently Mickey took the opportunity to ask a few questions, because Gabe nodded a couple of times.

      “Mrs. Miracle is the lady in the toy department at Finley’s,” he said.

      He was silent for a few seconds.

      “She’s really nice,” Gabe continued. “She reminds me of Grandma Larson. I gave her a plate of cookies, and Aunt Holly gave cookies to Jake.” Silence again, followed by “He’s Aunt Holly’s new boyfriend and he’s really, really nice.”

      “Maybe I should talk to your father now,” Holly inserted, wishing Gabe hadn’t been so quick to mention Jake’s name.

      Gabe clutched the receiver in both hands and turned his back, unwilling to relinquish the phone.

      “Jake took us on a carriage ride in Central Park and then...” Gabe stopped talking for a few seconds. “I don’t know what happened after that ’cause I fell asleep.”

      Mickey was asking something else, and although Holly strained to hear what it was, she couldn’t.

      Whatever his question, Gabe responded by glancing at Holly, grinning widely and saying, “Oh, yeah.”

      “Are you two talking about me?” she demanded, half laughing and half annoyed.

      She was ignored. Apparently Gabe felt there was a lot to tell his father, because he cupped his hand around the mouthpiece and whispered loudly, “I think they kissed.”

      “Gabe!” she protested. If she wanted her brother to know this, she’d tell him herself.

      “Okay,” Gabe said, nodding. He held out the phone to her. “Dad wants to talk to you.”

      Holly took it from him and glared down at her nephew.

      “So I hear you’ve found a new love interest,” Mickey said in the same tone he’d used to tease her when they were teenagers.

      “Oh, stop. Jake and I hardly know each other.”

      “How’d you meet?”

      “At Starbucks. Mickey, please, it’s nothing. I only met him on Friday.” It felt longer than two days, but this was far too soon to even suggest they were in a relationship.

      “Gabe doesn’t seem to feel that’s a problem.”

      “Okay, so I took Jake a plate of cookies like Gabe said—it was just a thank-you for buying me a coffee—and...and we happened to run into him last evening in Central Park. It’s no big deal. He’s a nice person and, well...like I said, we’ve just met.”

      “But it looks promising,” her brother added.

      Holly hated to acknowledge how true that was. Joy and anticipation had surged through her from the moment she and Jake kissed. Still, she was afraid to admit this to her brother—and, for that matter, afraid to admit it to herself. “It’s too soon to say that yet.”

      “Ah, so you’re still hung up on Bill?”

      Was she? Holly didn’t think so. If Bill had ended the relationship by telling her the chemistry just wasn’t there, she could’ve accepted that. Instead, he’d left her with serious doubts regarding her parenting abilities.

      “Is that it?” Mickey pressed.

      “No,” she said. “Not at all. Bill and I weren’t really meant to be together. I think we both realized that early on, only neither of us was ready to be honest about it.”

      “Mmm.” Mickey made a sound of agreement. “Things are going better with Gabe, aren’t they?”

      “Much better.”

      “Good.”

      “He’s adjusting and so am I.” This past week seemed to have been a turning point. They were more at ease with each other. Gabe had made new friends and was getting used to life without his father—and with her. She knew she insisted on rules Mickey didn’t bother with—like making their beds every morning, drinking milk with breakfast and, of course, putting the toilet seat down. But Gabe hardly complained at all anymore.

      “What was it he told Santa he wanted for Christmas?” Mickey asked.

      “So he emailed you about the visit with Santa, did he?”

      “Yup, he sent the email right after he got home. He seemed quite excited.”

      “It’s Intellytron the SuperRobot.”

      At her reference to the toy, Gabe’s eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously.

      “We found them in Finley’s Department Store. Mrs. Miracle, the woman Gabe mentioned, works there...and Jake does, too.”

      “Didn’t