LITMIR.BIZ

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the friendly type and had a ton of them.

      The image of her dad’s jolly face brought an unexpected tightness to her throat.

      “It’s her!” came a high, excited shout.

      “Hey, Miss Neighbor!”

      The two childish voices let her know she’d stood reflecting too long. She turned, and the sight of the twins—Pam’s twins—coming toward her made her heart turn over. Clad in identical red snow jackets, black tights and furry boots, they could have been an advertisement for Christmas family joy.

      And she couldn’t make herself turn away from them, even though she should. She’d keep it brief. “Good morning, ladies,” she said, kneeling down to be at their level.

      They slipped and slid to her with the fearless footing of children accustomed to snow and ice. “Where are you going?” one of them asked.

      Lily studied her. “Are you Sunny?” She’d noticed that Carson had gestured toward the twin in the lead when naming them yesterday.

      “How did you know?” Sunny asked, eyebrows lifting high.

      “Nobody ever does, at first.” The other little girl studied her, head cocked to one side.

      “Just a guess,” she said, smiling at them. Man, were they cute.

      Man, did they look like Pam.

      “Where are you going?” The quieter girl, who must be Skye, asked.

      “Down to town,” Lily said.

      “Us, too!” Sunny sounded amazed. “Daddy sent us out to play so he could look over his sermon in peace, but as soon as he’s done that, we’re going down into town, too.”

      Oh, right. Pam’s husband was a preacher. According to Pam, it was a cover-up for his abusive ways.

      “Is your dad pretty strict?” she asked the twins. And then she wished she could take the words back. It wasn’t fair to ask the girls to tattle on their father. If she wanted to know something, she would discover it by observation, not by grilling these two innocents.

      “What’s strict?” Sunny asked.

      “She means, does Daddy make us behave.” Skye glanced back at the house. “He tries to be strict, but we don’t always do what he says.”

      Lily was dying to ask what kind of punishments he meted out, but she didn’t.

      Didn’t need to, as it turned out.

      “When we don’t do what he says,” Sunny said, “we get a time-out.”

      “Or an extra chore,” Skye added.

      “Yeah, we have lots of chores!” Sunny spread her arms wide and nodded vigorously, the picture of childhood overwork. “We have to make our beds every day.”

      “And put the silverware in the drawer.” Skye frowned. “Only, here at the cabin, we don’t have a dishwasher. So Daddy washed our dishes last night, himself, and put everything away.”

      Lily waited for a continuation of their onerous list of chores, but it didn’t come. Either the list was limited to two not-very-challenging tasks or their attention had drifted elsewhere.

      Meanwhile, she had better get going before Carson the ogre came out of the cabin. Even though she needed to check on Pam’s twins, she didn’t want to get sucked into even a superficial friendship. Not when she had secrets to keep. “It was nice talking to you girls,” she said, getting into her car and starting it up.

      The girls still stood next to her car, and Sunny’s lips were moving, so she lowered her window.

      “Maybe we’ll see you in town,” Sunny said.

      “That would be...fun,” Lily said. Not. She would drive down to town, get the coffee and coffee maker she needed now even more desperately than before—her headache was getting worse—and then drive back up and hide out in her cabin for the duration of Christmas Eve.

      Spending the holiday by herself seemed a little bit lonelier after talking to Skye and Sunny, but Lily pushed the feeling away. She put the car into gear and started cautiously down the icy road.

      The car picked up speed on the incline, and she hit the brake reflexively. The car fishtailed a little, even though her pace was slow. Her heart beat faster, and her hands on the cold steering wheel were slick with sweat. If she went off the road, who would help her?

      You’re tough; you’re a soldier. She just had to remember that you braked gently in icy conditions.

      She gathered her courage and took her foot off the brake. The car started moving again.

      There was a shout behind her, and when she looked into the rearview mirror, she saw the two little girls running after her. That wasn’t safe. What if they got too close and the car went out of control? She braked, harder this time, and the antilock tick-tick-tick-tick didn’t stop the car from sliding sideways. It stopped just at the edge of a two-foot dropoff. Not deadly, but... She put the car into Park and got out just as the girls reached her.

      “We saw your car slide and we told Daddy!” Sunny said.

      “And he said you could ride to town with us.” Skye looked up, her brown eyes round and hopeful. “We have a big truck.”

      “Oh, no, it’s okay.” She walked to the front of her car, and it was, in fact, okay. About three inches from being not okay, but okay.

      She looked back toward her cabin and saw Carson Blair striding toward them, flannel-shirted and boot-clad and looking nothing like any preacher she’d ever seen.

      More like a lumberjack.

      Weren’t there social media sites and photo calendars about good-looking lumberjacks?

      She shoved that ridiculous notion away, her face heating as Carson reached them.

      “Everything okay?” He patted each twin on the back and then walked around to look at the front of her car.

      “It’s fine,” she said.

      “But her car went sliding. Like a sled!” Sunny demonstrated with a complicated hand motion.

      Carson nodded. “I like the rear-wheel-drive Camaros,” he said, tapping the hood, “but they’re not the greatest on snow and ice.”

      “I didn’t think of that before I came,” she admitted. “Not much snow in Phoenix. But it’s no big deal for me to get to town,” she added while her body cried out for caffeine.

      “Daddy’s a good driver,” Skye said earnestly.

      “You should come to town with us!” Sunny was wiggling her excitement, which seemed to be her normal state of being. “You could come to church!”

      “Oh, I...” She trailed off, part of her noticing that the girls seemed enthusiastic about church and life in general, nothing like abused children were likely to be.

      “You’re welcome to join us,” Carson said. “We’re picking up a couple of things at the hardware store and then going to church for Casual Christmas Eve.”

      That made sense of Carson’s lumberjack attire and the girls’ outdoorsy clothing. “Are you staying until midnight? Because I can’t...can’t do that.” Can’t deal with you and your girls for that many hours in a row.

      Carson waved a hand and smiled, and he went instantly from good-looking to devastatingly handsome. “I scored this year. Got the afternoon service, and the other church in town—Riverside Christian—they’re doing the evening services.” He held out his hand. “Come on. I’ll drive your car back up, and you can ride into town with us.”

      His comfortable, take-charge manner both put her at ease and annoyed her. It was nice to think of someone else driving on the slippery roads—and it was

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