Comfort And Joy. Fern Michaels

wrapping my customers’ Christmas gifts this year. That’s the main topic to be discussed at tonight’s meeting.”

      “We’ve had this same discussion every September for the past five years. You had the same discussion with my mother for the five years prior to my arrival, and the outcome has always been the same. This year is no different. Pay me to wrap your customers’gifts, and we’re in business. If you don’t pay me, I cannot help you. I’m in business to make money just the way you are. Try to wrap your feeble brain around that fact, then get back to me or have your lawyer call my lawyer. Good night, Mr. Eagle.”

      Outside in the cool evening air, Angie dusted her hands together. “I thought that went rather well.” She sniffed the air. “Someone’s burning leaves. Oh, I just love that smell.”

      Bess opened her car door. “I think you enjoy tormenting that man. I agree he’s sorely lacking in the charm department, but my mother always told me you can get more flies with honey than vinegar. The guy’s a hottie, that’s for sure.”

      “Ha! Eye candy. The man has no substance, he’s all veneer. On top of that, he’s greedy and obnoxious. With all that going against him, I wonder how he manages to charm that string of women he parades around all the time,” Angie sniffed.

      “His money charms them. Josh Eagle is considered a good catch. You know, Angie, you could throw your line in the pond. You reel him in, and all this,” Bess said, extending her arms to indicate the huge parking lot and the department store, “could be yours!”

      Angie started to laugh and couldn’t stop. “Not in this life time. See you tomorrow, Bess.”

      “Tell your mother I said hello.”

      “Will do,” Angie called over her shoulder.

      Angie sat in her car for ten minutes while she played the scene that had just transpired back in the store over and over in her mind. Would Josh Eagle drag her into court again? Probably. The man had a hate on for her that was so over-the-top she could no longer comprehend it. In the beginning she’d handled it the way she handled every challenge that came her way: fairly and honestly. She fought to win, and so far she’d won every round. Remembering the look on Josh Eagle’s face, she wondered if her luck was about to change.

      Well, she would think about it later. Right now she had to stop for pizza and go to the rehab center on New Durham Road, where her mother was waiting for her.

      Angie reached for her cell phone to call Tony’s Pizza on Oak Tree Road. She ordered three large pepperoni pies and was told they would be ready in ten minutes. That was good, the pies would still be hot when she delivered them to Eva and the other patients at the rehab center.

      On the ride to the pizza parlor Angie thought about her mother. A gutsy lady who had worked part time to help with the family bills. Back when she was young, with a family to help support, she’d worked three days a week for Angus Eagle, a man her own age whose wife deplored housework. Her mother had cooked and cleaned for Angus, and in doing so they had forged a friendship that eventually resulted, one Christmas morning, in his turning over the gift wrap department at his store to her with a lifetime lease.

      Her mother never tired of telling her the story of that particular Christmas that changed her life, even though Angie, who was fifteen at the time, remembered it very well. Angus’s wife hadn’t wanted to be bothered wrapping presents for Josh and her husband, so she’d turned the job over to Eva. Each time her mother told the story, she would laugh and laugh and say how impressed Angus had been at her flair for gift wrapping.

      It was always at times like this, when Angie grew melancholy, that she thought about her own life and why she was doing what she was doing with it. She’d gone to work on Wall Street as a financial planner, but five years of early mornings, late nights, and the long commute was all she could take. Then she taught school for a couple of years but couldn’t decide whether or not teaching was a career to which she wanted to commit herself. Five years ago, she’d happily given it up without a second thought when, after her aunt Peggy got into a serious automobile accident in Florida, her mother suggested that Angie take over the gift-wrapping business. Eva had rushed down to care for Peggy, knowing she was leaving her little business in good hands, and was gone four years.

      After her aunt’s passing, Eva had remained to take care of her sister’s estate, returning to New Jersey only a year ago.

      It was nice having her mother home again, in the big old house on Rose Street.

      Angie giggled when she thought about all the young guys, the sons of friends her mother had invited to dinner on Sunday in the hopes one of them would be suitable for Angie. So far, she’d made a lot of new male friends, but none of them was what she considered blow-my-socks-off material.

      As always, when she got to this point in her reverie, Angie’s thoughts turned to her beloved father and his passing. It had been so sudden, so shocking, so mind-bending, it had taken her years to come to terms with her loss. How she missed the big, jolly man who had carried her on his shoulders when she was little, the same man who taught her to ride her first bike, then to drive her clunker of a car. He’d hooted and hollered at her high school graduation, beamed with pride at her college graduation, and could hardly wait to show her the brand-new car he’d bought her. It was all wrapped up in a red satin ribbon. Oh, how she’d cried when she’d seen that little silver Volkswagen Jetta convertible. These days she drove a bright red Honda Civic, but the Jetta was still up on blocks in the garage on Rose Street. She planned to keep it forever and ever.

      Angie dabbed at her eyes. It was all so long ago.

      Twenty miles away, Eva Bradford sat in the sunroom of the Durham Rehab Center, waiting for her daughter. The television was on, but she wasn’t listening to the evening news. Nor was she paying attention to the other patients, who were talking in polite, low tones so others could hear the news. Her thoughts were somewhere else, and she wasn’t happy with where they were taking her.

      Eva looked up when the evening nurse approached her with a fresh bag of frozen peas to place on her knee. She was young like Angie with a ready smile. “You know the drill, Eva, thirty minutes on and thirty minutes off.” The nurse, whose name was Betsy, reached for the thawed-out bag of peas Eva handed her.

      Eva wondered if she’d ever dance again. Not that she danced a lot, but still, if the occasion warranted it, she wanted to be able to get up and trip the light fantastic. Knee replacements at her age were so common it was mind-boggling. She looked around the sunroom and counted nine patients with knee replacements, one a double knee, four hip jobs, and two back surgeries. Of all of them, she thought she was progressing the best. Another few days and she was certain she would be discharged with home health aides to help her out a few hours every day. She could hardly wait to return to the house on Rose Street in Metuchen.

      Eva turned away from the cluster of patients who looked to be in a heated discussion over something that was going on in the Middle East. She did her best to slide down into the chair she was sitting on so she wouldn’t have to look at Angus Eagle who, according to Betsy, had just been transferred from the hospital to receive therapy for a hip replacement he’d had a month ago. She knew the jig would be up when Angie arrived with their nightly pizza. At this moment she simply didn’t want to go down Memory Lane with Angus or be put in a position where she had to defend her daughter’s business dealings.

      She hadn’t seen Angus for a long time. At least five years—she really couldn’t remember. She tried to come up with the exact year. In the end she thought it was five years ago, the same year her older sister, Peggy, a childless widow, had been in that bad car accident. She’d gone to Florida and stayed on for four years because her sister’s health had deteriorated, and with no children to help out, it was up to her to see to her sister’s comfort. Then, she’d stayed to handle all the legal matters, sell the house, the furnishings, and the car. She’d been home for a year now. She swiped at the tears that threatened to overflow.

      Would Angie take care of her the way she’d taken care of Peggy? Of course she would. Angie had a heart of gold and loved her. She couldn’t