His For Christmas. Michelle Douglas

with this man would be as solid as he was, a forever thing, or nothing at all.

      Don’t you dare think of him in terms of a relationship, the devoted-to-independence woman inside her cried. But it was too late. That particular horse was already out of the barn.

      “Where’s Ace?” she said, glancing behind him.

      “The Westons took her to the Santa Claus parade and then she’s sleeping over at their place. Ace is thrilled.”

      As she closed the door, she read a moment of unguarded doubt on his face. “You, not so much?”

      “I don’t know. I don’t quite get the purpose of it. I get going tobogganing, or to a movie. I don’t get sleeping at someone else’s house.”

      Don’t blush, she ordered herself. They were not talking about adult sleepovers.

      “Sleeping is not an activity,” he muttered.

      “Believe me, they won’t be doing much sleeping. Probably movies and popcorn. Maybe some makeup.”

      “Makeup?” He ran a hand through his hair and looked distressed. “I hoped I was years away from makeup. And don’t even mention the word bra to me.”

       Believe me, that was the last word I was going to mention to you.

      He could fluster her in a hair, damn him. She tried not to let it show. “Not serious makeup. Not yet. You know, dress-up stuff. Big hats, an old string of pearls, some high heels.”

      “Oh.”

      “Is there something deeper going on with you?” she asked. “Something that needs to be addressed?”

      Morgan saw she could fluster him in a hair, too.

      “Such as?” he asked defensively.

      “Any chance you don’t like losing control, Nate?”

      He scowled, and for a moment she thought she was going to get the lecture about knowing everything again. But then she realized he wasn’t scowling at her. After a long silence, he finally answered.

      “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he admitted reluctantly. “I felt like I wanted to call the Westons and conduct an interview.”

      Interrogation, she guessed wryly. “What kind of interview?”

      “You know.”

      She raised her eyebrows at him. He sighed. “Just casually ferret out information about their suitability to have Ace over. Don’t you think I should know if anyone in the house has a criminal record? Don’t you think I should know if they consume alcoholic beverages? And how many, how often? Don’t you think I should know if they have the Playboy channel? And if it’s blocked?”

      Morgan was trying not to laugh, but he didn’t notice.

      “Even if I got all the right answers,” he continued, “I still would want to invite myself over and just as casually check their house for hazards.”

      “Hazards? Like what?”

      “You know.”

      “I’m afraid I can’t even imagine what kind of hazards might exist at the Westons’ house.”

      His scowl deepened. “Like loaded weapons, dogs that bite, unplugged smoke detectors.”

      She was biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. She knew it would be the wrong time to laugh. “The Westons are very nice people,” she said reassuringly. “Ashley is active in the PTA.”

      He sighed. “Intellectually, I know that. That’s how I stopped myself from phoning or going in. I grew up with Ashley Weston. Moore, back then. She was a goody-goody. I guess if Ace has to sleep somewhere other than her own bed, I want it to be at a house where I know the mom is a goody-goody. Sheesh. The PTA. I should have guessed.”

      “Don’t knock it until you try it,” Morgan suggested drily.

      “I’m not trying it. Don’t even think about sending me a note.”

      There were quite a few single moms in the PTA, probably the same ones who swarmed him at the supermarket, so, no, she wouldn’t send him a note.

      “Still—” he moved on from the PTA issue as if it hardly merited discussion “—what about next time? What if Ace gets invited to someone’s house where I didn’t grow up with their parents? Or worse, what if I did, and I remember the mom was a wild thing who chugged hard lemonade and swam naked at the Old Sawmill Pond? Then what?”

      No wonder he had an aversion to doing his grocery shopping locally. That was way too much to know about people!

      “I’m not sure,” she admitted.

      “Oh, great. Thanks a lot, Miss McGuire! When I really want an answer, you don’t have one. What good is a know-it-all without an answer?”

      Morgan was amazingly unoffended. In fact, she felt she could see this man as clearly as she had ever seen him. She suddenly saw he was restless. And irritable. He had needed to do something tonight to offset this loss of control.

      “Is this the first night you’ve been apart since the accident that took her mom?” she asked softly.

      He stared at her. For a moment he looked as though he would turn and walk away rather than reveal something so achingly vulnerable about himself.

      But then instead of walking away, he nodded, once, curtly.

      And she stepped back over the fallen tree, motioning for him to follow her, inviting him in.

      Morgan knew it was crazy to be this foolishly happy that he had picked her to come to, crazier yet that she was unable to resist his need.

      But how could anyone, even someone totally emancipated, be hard-hearted enough to send a man back into the night who had come shouldering the weight of terrible burdens? Not that he necessarily knew how heavy his burdens were.

      He hesitated, like an animal who paused, sensing danger. And what would be more dangerous to him than someone seeing past that hard exterior to his heart?

      And then, like that same animal catching the scent of something irresistible, he moved slowly forward. He stepped over her tree, and she wondered if he knew how momentous his decision was.

      If he did, he was allowing himself to be distracted. He surveyed the strings of lights strewn around her living room floor, the boxes of baubles, the unhung socks. For a moment it looked as if he might run from the magnitude of what he had gotten himself into.

      But then he crouched and looked at the tree stand, a flying-saucer-type apparatus, that was still attached solidly to the trunk of the tree. It just hadn’t kept the tree solidly attached to the floor.

      “Is this what you expected to hold your tree?” he asked incredulously.

      It was the kind of question that didn’t really merit an answer. Though it had been the most expensive tree stand at Finnegan’s, a tree nearly crashing down on top of her was ample evidence that the design was somewhat flawed.

      “It’s worse than your hammer,” Nate decided, with a solemn shake of his head. Still, he looked pleased that he had found something in such dire need of his immediate attention.

      “I bought a new hammer,” she said.

      After his last visit, she had decided she wasn’t having her hammer choice keep her from the promised bliss of the single woman.

      Though somehow, in this moment, Morgan knew she had missed the point because she felt ridiculously eager to show it to him, secretly, weakly wanted his approval of her choice.

      “Really?” But he hardly seemed interested in her new acquisition of a hammer. He had already moved on to other things.

      With raw strength that made her shiver, he yanked