Christmas Kisses Collection. Louise Allen

outside your grasp.”

      All these years she’d not wanted to be like her mother, but her mother had been happy, had been choosing to be single, but not out of fear of love. If her mother, who’d borne the brunt of so much hurt, could love, could trust, why couldn’t McKenzie?

      If her mother could put her heart out there, be in a committed relationship, find happiness, why couldn’t McKenzie?

      Maybe she wasn’t like her father. Maybe she wasn’t like her mother either.

      Maybe she was tiny pieces of both, could learn from their mistakes, learn from their successes and be a better person.

      Right now, she wasn’t a better person. Right now, she didn’t even feel like a whole person. She felt like only half a person, with the other half of her missing.

      Lance.

      “I want him back,” she admitted, causing Cecilia’s eyes to widen with satisfaction.

      “Good. Now, how are you going to make it happen?”

      “He didn’t want more than our two months, Cecilia. He was as insistent on our ending point as I was,” she mused. “I wasn’t the only one who let us end at two months. He didn’t fight to hang on to me.” He hadn’t. He’d walked away without a backward glance. “His heart belongs to another woman.”

      “Another woman who can’t have him,” Cecilia reminded her. “If you want Lance back, then you don’t worry about whether or not he’s fighting for you. You fight for him. You show him you want him in your life. Show him how much he means to you.”

      She did want Lance back and, Lord help her, she wanted to fight for him, to show him she missed him and wanted him in her life.

      “How am I supposed to do that?”

      Cecilia’s gaze shifted to the back of a flyer posted on the salon’s front door. A flyer someone from Celebration Graduation had dropped by a week or so ago, advertising a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Senior Citizen Center.

      “I have the perfect idea.”

      McKenzie could see her friend mentally rubbing her hands together in glee. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

      Lance shoved the giant four-leaf clover to the middle of the stage, trying to decide if the light was going to reflect off the glittery surface correctly or if he should reposition the stage prop.

      “That looks great there,” one of the other volunteers called out, answering his silent question.

      He finished arranging props on the stage, then went to the room they were using as a dressing room to get ready for the actual show. He was emceeing.

      The event hadn’t been a planned Celebration Graduation fund-raiser, but the Senior Citizen Center had approached him with the idea and the earnest desire to help with the project. How could he say no?

      Besides, he’d needed something to focus on besides the gaping hole in his chest.

      He should be used to having a gaping hole in his chest.

      Hadn’t he had one since he’d been a seventeen-year-old kid and the love of his life had been killed in a car accident?

      Only had Shelby really been the love of his life? Or had she just been his first love and their relationship had never been able to run its natural course to its inevitable conclusion?

      Which was his fault.

      He winced at his thoughts. Why was he allowing such negativity into his head?

      It had been his fault Shelby was no longer alive. He’d promised her that her death wouldn’t be in vain, that her life wouldn’t be forgotten. He’d vowed to keep her alive in his heart and mind. Wasn’t that why he did the volunteer work?

      Wasn’t that why he headed up Celebration Graduation?

      So that no other teen had to go through what he and Shelby had gone through?

      So that there were other options in teens’ lives besides making bad choices on graduation night?

      If only their school had offered a Celebration Graduation program. If only he and Shelby had gone to the event rather than the party they’d been at. If only he hadn’t given in to peer pressure and drunk. If only he’d not let her drink, not let her get into that car for him to drive them home that night.

      If only.

      If only.

      If only.

      Hadn’t he spent a lifetime playing out if-onlys in his head? What good had they ever done? He couldn’t go back to that night, couldn’t bring Shelby back. All he could do was carry on and make a difference in other teens’ lives.

      He did make a difference in other teens’ lives. Both at his job where he counseled and encouraged teens to make good decisions and with Celebration Graduation.

      Shelby would be proud of the man he’d become.

      At least, he thought she would.

      That’s what kept him going, knowing that he was living his life to make a difference for others.

      He couldn’t let anything, anyone get in the way of that.

      “There’s a full house out there already,” one of the other cast members told him, taking one last look in the mirror before moving to the doorway. “This was a great idea, Dr. Spencer.”

      “I can’t take the credit. The Senior Citizen Center approached me,” he admitted.

      “Well, I’d say they’ve sold out the show,” Lanette said, peeping through a curtain to look at the crowd. “There’s only a few seats left and it’s still a good fifteen minutes before showtime.”

      Lance had called the cast members from the Christmas show and gotten them on board to do a St. Patrick’s Day show. They’d kept it simple, doing numbers that they all already knew, but that would be fun for the audience. Lance had even convinced a magician to come in and do a few tricks between sets. If the guy worked out, Lance hoped to have him perform on graduation night at the kids’ lock-in to help pass their time in a fun way.

      Seven arrived and Lance went out onto their makeshift stage. He welcomed the crowd, apologized to the ones standing in the back of the room, but applauded them on participating in something that was for such a worthy cause.

      He moved to the side of the stage. Four of the female performers came out onstage, holding sparkly four-leaf clovers the size of dinner plates. The performers changed and a male singer crooned out a love ballad that had Lance’s throat clogging up a little.

      He didn’t want to think about Shelby. He didn’t want to think about McKenzie.

      He couldn’t stop thinking about either.

      The crowd cheered each performance.

      They finished the first half of the show, went to the back to grab a drink and change costumes while the magician did his show. Lance found himself laughing at some of the tricks and trying to figure out how a few others were done. The crowd loved the show. Soon the singers were back onstage and sang a few more songs. Lanette had the lead in the next number and took the stage with a bright smile.

      “Okay, folks, this is a little different from what’s on your program, but sometimes the best performances are the unexpected, impromptu ones,” Lanette began, causing Lance to frown.

      He was unaware of any changes to their schedule and certainly there weren’t any planned impromptu performances that he knew of.

      That’s when he saw her.

      McKenzie, wearing her sparkly green dress that she must have had hidden beneath a jacket for him to have not noticed her before because she glimmered