LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      The flashing neon light from the sign outside Tucker Maddock’s Alexandria, Virginia, office window seemed to assault him in one-second intervals with its disgustingly cheery message.

      Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

      Yeah, right. He hadn’t had a merry Christmas since…well, there was no need rehashing all the losses he’d endured during what was supposed to be the happiest season of the year. The overtime work did little to ease the discomfort that gripped him lately. As a corporate executive, he was one of the best decision-makers in the business. His troubleshooting skills frequently attracted the attention of corporate headhunters who regularly approached him with employment offers at competing companies. He only wished he could clear away the troubles in his own life as effectively as he did on the job.

      Last year had dealt him the final and most difficult holiday blow when a Christmas Eve tragedy had taken the lives of Chris, his best friend, and Chris’s parents. They’d been like his own family. And now he missed them. Wanted to be close to them. Wanted to fill the aching, gaping hole in his spirit with their memory.

      Tucker stood and began clearing his desk. The flashing sign filled the semidarkened room with its alternating green-and-red eerie glow. The light seemed to pulsate within him, filling his mind and soul with its unwanted message. Filling his heart with an insatiable urge to be with the loving family who had opened their hearts and home to him.

      The heck with this. If he couldn’t be with them, he could at least return to the place that held their memory. Tucker dashed off a note to his secretary, then opened a drawer and swept his forearm across the surface of the desk, effectively clearing it of papers, folders and scribbled notes. He would sort them out when he got back. But right now, he couldn’t bring himself to open another card, smile at another caroler or wallow in the home-and-hearth happiness that was supposed to pervade the season.

      If he didn’t get away from all the tinsel and glitter and glad tidings in the city, he was going to go crazy. And at times like this, he’d found it was best to follow his heart…follow it back home to Willow Glen.