A Town Called Christmas. Carrie Alexander

bumped into Merry. She was bent at the waist, canted sideways, peering in through the partly open door to the guest room.

      She jumped at his touch. “Oh! I’m sorry.” Color rose in her cheeks. “I wasn’t spying. That is, Mom sent me up to get you.” Her gaze dropped to his bare chest, then shot upward like an elevator, right up to the ceiling. “But take your time.” She turned away before he could respond, hastily removing herself from his half-naked presence, her boot heels clip-clopping on the wood steps. “We’re having hors d’oeuvres.”

      “I’ll be there in a minute.”

      He tossed the kit into his sea bag and pulled on a fresh shirt, smiling to himself as he tucked in the tails. He knew a little about Merry. She was older than Nicky by a year or two, and had been living in Chicago away from her family for years. An intelligent, successful woman, not lacking in experience. She wasn’t likely to be thrown by the sight of a man’s bare chest unless she had a particular interest in the man, and even then, he’d surprised her into the fumbling reaction.

      Mike ducked to gaze into the mirror over the bureau, donned in gay apparel and suddenly bubbling with good cheer and a rousing interest that went quite a bit beyond the gentlemanly anticipation he should be feeling.

      He touched his smooth jaw. Fa la la la la.

      CHAPTER THREE

      SHANNON PRESSED her shoulder into Merry’s. “What do you think of Mike?”

      “He seems like a nice man.”

      “That’s all?”

      Merry looked into her sister-in-law’s eyes. She’d known Shannon all of her life, but they’d become much closer since both had returned to Christmas, sans the men in their lives. “Don’t tell Mom?”

      Shannon shook her head.

      “He’s…” Resist as she might, Merry’s gaze was drawn across the table to Mike’s face. He was handsome in a classic way, like an actor starring as a clean-cut war hero in a black-and-white movie, but it was his air of confidence that she found especially appealing. She’d always liked self-assured men. Even a little brash, as long as they could back up the attitude and didn’t let it turn into arrogance.

      “He’s the entire package. Just about perfect.” She dropped her gaze to her plate and stabbed a forkful of mashed potatoes. “I’m not sure that I can trust a perfect man.”

      “Greg wasn’t perfect.”

      “This doesn’t have anything to do with Greg,” Merry insisted, but of course it did. Greg had seemed perfect to her for a very long time. She’d believed in him and their life together. Believed it much longer than she should have.

      Shannon inclined her head, keeping to a low tone so they wouldn’t be overheard. “They call Mike Captain America, you know. Cappy is his call sign.” Nicky’s was Boots, shortened from his original Father Christmas nickname.

      “That’s what I mean,” Merry said. “He’s too perfect. I am not.”

      “Yeah, but Mike went through his own breakup, remember? You’ve got that in common.”

      Shannon spoke as if that was a good thing to share, but how would she know? Nicky had been her high-school sweetheart. She’d never suffered a broken heart.

      Merry shrugged. “Rebounding balls bounce off each other,” she said thinly.

      Her father’s voice rang out from the head of the table, stalling the dinner chatter. “Merry, Shannon. Are you girls whispering about my Christmas present again?”

      Merry’s gaze snapped off Mike’s face. She hadn’t felt so awkward around her family since high school. No, even then she’d been relatively confident.

      She had to go all the way back to junior high. Her first serious crush on a kid named Jason, who’d been a head shorter than her. Nicky had teased her without mercy. The family’s enthusiasm had mortified her when Jason had arrived with his dad to escort her to an eighth-grade dance, with her mom snapping photos, her dad joking about first kisses and Nicky and Noelle making smooching noises behind Merry’s back.

      She smiled to herself. She hadn’t thought of those days in years. The move back home had brought up a lot of old memories.

      Shannon answered Charlie’s question. “We’re talking about sports.”

      “Sports?” Grace echoed with a genteel but dubious air.

      Shannon smiled blamelessly. “Basketball.”

      “Our Merry was the MVP of her high-school class,” Charlie said to Mike. “Basketball, volleyball and track. Her teams went to the regionals.”

      “Oh, Dad. That was ages ago. No one but you remembers.”

      Mike eyed Merry approvingly. “Do you still play?”

      “I run, some. I golf during the summer.”

      “You look athletic.”

      Was he kidding? Everyone had stopped eating. She couldn’t tell if there was an actual hush in the room, or if it was only her own ears that weren’t functioning. Her voice did sound far away when she answered. “Not so much, lately.”

      Mike nodded as if he’d noticed nothing out of the ordinary. “There’s really a lot of snow here. Do any of you ski?” Either he was oblivious, or extremely polite.

      Merry let the conversation slide by. Her mother’s face was pink. Shannon gave Merry a sympathetic squeeze before turning the other way to link hands with Nicky under the table. The men talked about the weight room they used aboard their aircraft carrier, while Charlie reminisced about learning Ping-Pong in ’Nam during his own tour of duty. Then he started in on his ski-jumping stories, which could end the dinner conversation if no one interrupted.

      Merry told herself to relax.

      “We built our own ski jump on Sawhorse Hill, a rickety contraption made of old barn boards and cedar poles. It leaned to the left. Climbing the ladder to the top was taking your life in your hands.” Charlie eyed the last piece of beef on his plate, then reached for the gravy boat. “I volunteered to make the first jump.”

      “More guts than brains,” Grace said fondly, as she always did at this point in the story.

      “A trait of the York males,” Shannon added, making Nicky give a raspy chuckle.

      Perhaps a trait of the females also. Merry frequently felt as if she was teetering on the brink of a scary adventure, with no one to catch her when she fell.

      She looked at Mike. He was watching her father, nodding along with the story. Skip and Georgie sat on either side of him, lured there by Mike’s intervention when the boys had started fighting over who got to sit next to their dad. He’d called them his dinner service copilots.

      Diplomatic, decent, dependable. Not to mention dishy. Merry felt slightly feverish whenever she thought about catching Mike shirtless, and since she thought of that every five minutes, well, no wonder she’d grown so warm.

      She tugged at her collar while her gaze rose inexorably from the surface of the table. Yes, he was still there. Captain America, a practically perfect man. Her unexpected gift for the holidays.

      Who’d arrived in her life at the worst possible time.

      “So there I was at the top of the makeshift ski jump, on a couple of badly warped skis,” Charlie continued. “The ramp was as bumpy as a backwoods road beneath the snow we’d packed onto it. Someone gave a push to get me started.”

      Charlie surveyed the table, in his element. The only thing he liked more than telling family stories to a new audience was gravy. His gaze fastened on Mike. “Do you know ski jumping?”

      “Sure. Like the Olympics?”

      “Well.” Charlie chuckled. “We young pups thought