His For Christmas. Michelle Douglas

didn’t want her sympathy. He hated sympathy.

      It was something else he wanted from her. When he put his finger on it, it astonished him. To not be so alone with it anymore.

      To be able to tell someone that he had not been able to stop Cindy’s excruciating pain. That he had been relieved when she died because she didn’t have to be in pain anymore.

      That through all that pain, she had looked pleased somehow, going to be with the one she truly loved. And through all that pain, she had looked at him and said finally, seconds before she died, with absolute calm and absolute certainty, You’ve been my angel, Hath. Now I’ll be yours.

      And he hated that he wanted to tell Morgan McGuire that, as if it was any of her business. He hated that he wanted to tell her if Cindy was his angel, he’d seen no evidence of it, as if she, the know-it-all teacher, should be able to explain that to him. Wanting to tell her felt like a terrible weakness in a world built on pure strength.

      Morgan moved back over to him until she stood way too close, gazing up at him with solemn green eyes that looked as if she could explain the impossible to him.

      “I’m so sorry about your wife.”

      If she added a but as in but it’s time to get over it, or for Ace’s sake he would have the excuse he needed to really, really dislike her. He waited, aware he was hoping.

      She said nothing.

      Instead, without taking her eyes from him, she laid her hand on his wrist, something in that touch so tender it felt as if it would melt him, as surely as his firetempered steel.

      She seemed to realize she was touching him, and that it might not be appropriate at the same time he jerked his arm away from her.

      Brusquely, Nate said, “We won’t be here for Christmas. So there’s no sense Ace getting involved in the Christmas-production thing. I’m taking her to Disneyland.”

      He made it sound as if he had been planning it forever, not as if he had just pulled it from the air, right this very moment, a plot to thwart her.

      She didn’t seem fooled.

      “You know,” she said softly, after a time, “this town is really suffering as a result of the downturn in the economy. Last year’s concert, The Christmas Miracle, in Mountain Ridge, Vermont? The production alone pumped a lot of money into the town. But they couldn’t have bought that kind of publicity. The filming of some of the winter scenery around that gorgeous little town sent people there in droves at a time of year when they don’t usually get tourists.”

      “And that has what to do with me? And Ace?”

      “The same could happen for Canterbury.”

      “So what?” he asked.

      “It seems to me,” she said softly, and if she was intimidated by his show of ill temper, she was not backing away from it, “that people need something to hope for. At Christmas more than any other time. They need to believe everything is going to be all right.”

      “Do they now?” How could she be that earnest? How could she be so sure of what people needed? Why did he think, given a chance, she could show him what he needed, too?

      The fire was fine. He picked up the bellows anyway, focused on it, made the bellows huff and the fire roar, but not enough to shut out her voice.

      “Ace needs to believe,” Morgan continued softly. “She needs to believe that everything is going to be all right. And somehow I don’t think that belief will be nurtured by an escape to Disneyland, as pleasant a distraction as that may be.”

      He put down the bellows. This had gone far enough, really. He turned to her, head-on, folded his arms over his chest. “This is beginning to sound depressingly like one of your notes. How did you get to know what the whole world needs? How do you get to be so smart for someone so wet behind the ears, fresh out of college?”

      She blushed, but it was an angry blush.

      Finally, he’d accomplished what he wanted. He was pushing her away. Straight out the door. Never to return, with any luck. Nate was aware that accomplishing his goal didn’t feel nearly as satisfying as he thought it would.

      “Somehow,” she said, surprising him by matching his battle stance, folding her arms over her chest and facing him instead of backing away, “even though you have suffered tragedy, Nate, I would have never pegged you as the kind of man who would be indifferent to the woes of your neighbors. And their hopes.”

      His mouth opened.

      And then closed.

      How had a discussion about a damned permission slip turned into this? A soul search? A desire to be a better man.

      And not just for his daughter.

      Oh, no, it would be easy if it was just for his daughter. No, it was for her, too. Miss Snippy Know-It-All.

      “I’ll think about it,” he said.

      The famous line was always used, by everyone including him, as a convenient form of dismissal. What it really meant was No, and I don’t ever intend to think about this again.

      This time he knew he wasn’t going to be so lucky.

      “It means a lot to Ace to be in that production,” Morgan said. “I already told the kids in my class we were all doing it, or none of us were.”

      “Nothing like a little pressure,” he replied, turning away from her now, picking up his tongs, taking the red-hot rod of iron from the fire. “Are you telling me the Christmas joy of a dozen and a half six-year-olds relies on me?”

      He glanced at her, and she nodded solemnly, ignoring his deliberately skeptical tone.

      “That’s a scary thing,” he told her quietly, his voice deliberately loaded with cynicism. “Nearly as scary as the hope of the whole town resting on my shoulders.”

      She didn’t have the sense to flinch from his sarcasm. He was going to have to lay it out nice and plain for her. “I’m the wrong man to trust with such things, Miss McGuire.”

      She looked at him for a long time as he began to hammer out the rod, and then just as he glanced at her, eyebrows raised, looking askance as if Oh, are you still here? she nodded once, as if she knew something about him he did not know himself.

      “I don’t think you are the wrong man to trust,” she said softly. “I think you just wish you were.”

      And having looked right into his soul, Little Miss Snip removed the permission slip from her pink coat pocket, set it on his worktable, smoothed it carefully with her hand, and then turned on her heel and left him there to brood over his fire.

      A little while later, in the house, getting dinner ready—hot dogs and a salad—he said to Ace, in his I-just-had-this-great-idea voice, “Ace, what would you think of a trip to Disneyland over Christmas?”

      The truth was, he expected at least the exuberant dance that the shopping trip with Morgan McGuire had elicited. Instead there was silence.

      He turned from the pot on the stove after prodding a frozen hot dog with a fork, as if that would get it to cook quicker, and looked at his daughter.

      Ace was getting her hot-dog bun ready, lots of ketchup and relish, not dancing around at all. Today she was wearing her new skirt, the red one with the white pom-poms on the hem. She looked adorable. He hoped that didn’t mean boys would start coming by here. No, surely that worry was years away.

      “Disneyland?” he said, wondering if she was daydreaming and hadn’t heard him.

      “Oh, Daddy,” she said with a sigh of long suffering, in her you’re so silly voice. “We can’t go to Disneyland over Christmas. I have to be in The Christmas Angel. It’s on Christmas Eve. It’s on TV, live. I should phone Grandma and