LITMIR.BIZ

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      She was stunned at herself.

      Four years. Virtually a nun. Wanting it that way. The breakup of her sister Becky’s marriage—a love Kirsten had unabashedly idolized—had broken something in Kirsten, too. Becky and Kent had begun dating just after the James fiasco, and just as Kirsten’s own parents were ending their twenty-year union. Still a teenager, impressionable, hopeful, naive, Kirsten had transferred her need to believe in love—in forever—to Becky and Kent. Instead, in the end, they had reinforced her deepest fear: things that seemed strong could be so, so heartbreakingly fragile.

      “Is that why you’re here?” she said, not trying to hide her incredulity. “To volunteer?”

      He hesitated, nodded. Sort of nodded, the slightest inclination of his head. “I’m a carpenter by trade. Anything you need built?”

      She sighed. Even if she took his offer more practically, there was so much she needed done. Sixteen tricycles to begin with. Of course he wasn’t really here to help her, though there was nothing she could use right now like a strong, healthy man to unload trucks, to put heavy items up on high shelves. And a carpenter? Every year they built a sleigh to deliver gifts. It was built on top of the rickety flat-deck trailer in the warehouse. Every year she was amazed someone didn’t get hurt, and that it didn’t rattle apart.

      But to invite a temptation like him into her space? This was her world. It was where everything was in her control—and she wasn’t surrendering that for a better sleigh!

      Besides, she found it hard to believe he’d come here to volunteer. He just wasn’t the type. No, he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, and decided to amuse himself at her expense for a few moments.

      In a fairy-tale world, he would be the answer to unassembled trikes and a safe sleigh for Santa. In a fairy-tale world he would be the answer to everything including the fact that sometimes in the night she awoke and felt almost weak with loneliness.

      But she had learned the brutally hard way there were no fairy tales, and a woman was wise to be totally independent, to rely only on herself.

      She folded her arms firmly over her chest.

      What was it, lingering just beneath that ice in his eyes, that made her think something else was there? Something that you could trust with your secret burdens?

      Something that would break your heart in two more likely, she warned herself.

      As if her heart wasn’t already broken in two. Hers. Her sister’s. Her brother-in-law’s. Her nephew’s. A world that had seemed so strong, a vow that had seemed unbreakable, gone in one second.

      She turned back toward her office, remembering the relative safety of all her pressures, not wanting to dwell on things broken, a category this man seemed like he might fit in. She had no time for an encounter like this one, nor was she brave enough to find out exactly what his offhanded offer might mean.

      “I have to find an elf,” she said, dismissing him, yet again. “And fifty kids’ winter jackets would be nice. That’s what I need done.”

      There. That should be enough to scare him off.

      Then again, he did not have the look of a man easily scared. Silence. She glanced back at him. He had not moved, there was a little puddle on the floor where the snow was melting off of him. He was wearing a black leather jacket, worn, and not warm enough for today, and jeans with a hole clear through the knee, not a day to be showing bare skin, either.

      Rather than making him look poor, the old jacket and the worn jeans had a certain cachet.

      She realized she was looking at a man who didn’t care—not about what he looked like, not about the cold, maybe not about anything at all.

      He was exactly the kind of man her mother had always warned her about. But then that was one of the illusions she’d had to leave behind. That her mother knew best.

      Her mother, who couldn’t glue her own marriage back together, her mother who had approved of Kent for Becky…Kirsten shook her head, looked away from him, troubled, looked back in time to see him nod, once, curtly. He turned and disappeared back out the door, leaving another frosty wave in his wake.

      She was aware of craning her neck to see where he went, but the snow was still coming down hard, and he disappeared into it with a phantomlike quality, as if maybe he had never been in the first place.

      She frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened there.

      “Strange encounter of the weird kind,” she said, shrugging it off and moving back to her office. She looked at her calendar. Thirty-nine days!

      Way, way too much to be done, and not nearly enough time left to do it. She had not one second to spare on thinking about green eyes like those ones. What was in them? Loneliness. No. Aloneness.

      Closer. The aloneness of a man who had seen hell, she decided. To feel sympathy for him, to be drawn toward the mystery in those eyes would be the most dangerous thing of all.

      Not one second, she chided herself. The door opened again, and she whirled back, disgusted that she wanted it to be him.

      But it wasn’t. It was Mr. Temple, the neighborhood postman, only these days he wasn’t just delivering her mail.

      “Those Johansson kids are poor. They don’t expect nothin’, they don’t even hope. Imagine those poor little mites not hopin’ for anything. I told them to just pretend it could happen.”

      “And?” she said.

      He passed her a note, a glisten in his eyes, her most enthusiastic researcher, neighborhood spy and conspirator.

      It had the boys’ address on it, she recognized it as a particularly dilapidated apartment on Fifth Street. Hans wanted a bike. Lars wanted a basketball.

      “Got it,” she said, and for a moment she felt the weight of these new wishes that had been entrusted to her. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t enough money or time. Every year it seemed she would run out of both, and every year miracles happened. A few more phone calls, a few more letters, a few more radio shows. Besides, it was always a relief to get requests that could be fulfilled. She had a file—the Impossible Dreams File—of ones that could not.

      “I’ve got something else for you, Kirstie.” He held it out with pleasure.

      She couldn’t believe it. “Where on earth did you get this?” she asked, taking the catalog reverently from him.

      “I’d tell you,” he kidded, “but then I’d have to kill you.”

      It was the Little in Love Special Christmas Catalog. Only those who had reached the tier of Serious Collector of the precious figurines received it, and Kirsten was fairly sure she would never be one of those. Currently she ranked on Tier One, a Little Fan. On the tiny salary she was paid here, she could manage only one new figurine a year. Including gifts, and the odd find at a secondhand store, Kirsten now owned twelve of the hundreds of figurines that were available.

      Little in Love was a collection of hand-painted porcelain bisque figurines that artist Lou Little had created in the 1950s. All the figurines were of a young couple, Harriet and Smedley, and depicted delightful scenes of their love. Little had captured something that captured hearts: innocence, wonder, delight in each other, and he never seemed to run out of material.

      Trying not to appear too eager or too rude, Kirsten scurried back to her office and shut the door. She opened the catalog with tender fingers and gasped.

      In an astonishing departure from tradition, the new Christmas collectibles were called A Little History and showed Harriet and Smedley in different times in history: here he was a World War I flying ace, leaning out of his plane to kiss Harriet goodbye, here he was as a pioneer building a Little house, Harriet looking on.

      Then she saw it. A Knight in Shining Armor. She thought it was the most beautiful Little piece she had ever seen with Smedley, visor up, astride a magnificent white horse, leaning down to

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