LITMIR.BIZ

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outside. Apparently she found the scene as mesmerizing as he had earlier. Although he made every effort to ignore Christmas, it stared back at him from the street, the city, the park. New York was always intensely alive but never more so than in December.

      The call connected with the dispatcher. “How may I help you?”

      Jake identified himself and gave his account number and address, and was assured a car would be there in fifteen minutes.

      “I’ll ride with you,” Jake told her when he’d hung up the phone.

      His offer appeared to surprise her. “You don’t need to do that.”

      “True, but I’d like to,” he said with a smile.

      She smiled shyly back. “I’d like it, too.” Walking away from the window, she sighed. “I don’t understand why, but I feel like I’ve known you for ages.”

      “I feel the same way.”

      “Was it only yesterday morning that you paid for my latte?”

      “You were a damsel in distress.”

      “And you were my knight in shining armor,” she said warmly. “You’re still in character this evening.”

      He sensed that she wanted to change the subject because she turned away from him, resting her gaze on something across the room. “You know, you have the ideal spot for a Christmas tree in that corner,” she said.

      “I haven’t celebrated Christmas in more than twenty years,” Jake blurted out, shocking himself even more than Holly.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      Jake went back into the kitchen and found that his throat had gone dry and his hands sweaty. He never talked about his mother and sister. Not with anyone. Including his father.

      “You don’t believe in Christmas?” she asked, trailing after him. “What about Hanukkah?”

      “Neither.” He’d dug himself into a hole and the only way out was to explain. “My mother and sister were killed on Christmas Eve twenty-one years ago. A freak car accident that happened in the middle of a snowstorm, when two taxis collided.”

      “Oh, Jake. I’m so sorry.”

      “Dad and I agreed to forget about Christmas from that point forward.”

      Holly moved to his side. She didn’t say a word and he was grateful. When people learned of the tragedy—almost always from someone other than him—they rarely knew what to say or how to react. It was an uncomfortable situation and still painful; he usually mumbled some remark about how long ago the accident had been and then tried to put it out of his mind. But he couldn’t, any more than his father could.

      Holly slid her arms around him and simply laid her head against his chest. For a moment, Jake stood unmoving as she held him. Then he placed his own arms around her. It felt as though she was an anchor, securing him in an unsteady sea. He needed her. Wanted her. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he lifted her head and lowered his mouth to hers.

      The kiss was filled with urgency and need. She slipped her arms around his neck, and her touch had a powerful effect on him.

      He tangled his fingers in her dark shoulder-length hair and brought his mouth to hers a second time. Soon they were so involved in each other that it took him far longer than it should to hear the ringing of his phone.

      He broke away in order to answer; as he suspected, the car was downstairs, waiting. When he told Holly, she immediately put on her coat. Gabe continued to sleep as Jake scooped him up, holding the boy carefully in both arms.

      George opened the lobby door for them. Holly slid into the vehicle first, and then as Jake started to hand her the boy, he noticed a movement on the other side of the street.

      “Jake?” Holly called from the car. “Please, there’s no need for you to come. You’ve been so kind already.”

      “I want to see you safely home,” he said as he stared across the street. For just an instant—it must have been his imagination—he was sure he’d seen Emily Merkle, better known as Mrs. Miracle.

      Chapter Six

       Forbidden fruit creates many jams. —Mrs. Miracle

      The phone rang just as Holly and Gabe walked into the apartment after church the next morning. For one wild second Holly thought it might be Jake.

      Or rather, hoped it was Jake.

      Although she’d been dead on her feet by the time they got to Brooklyn, she couldn’t sleep. She’d lain awake for hours, thinking about the kisses they’d shared, replaying every minute of their time together. All of this was so unexpected and yet so welcome. Jake was—

      “Hello,” she said, sounding breathless with anticipation.

      “What’s this I hear about you turning my son into a girl?”

      “Mickey!” Her brother’s voice was as clear as if he were in the next room. He tried to phone on a regular basis, but it wasn’t easy. The most reliable form of communication had proved to be email.

      “So you’re baking cookies with my son, are you?” he teased.

      “We had a blast.” Gabe was leaping up and down, eager to speak to his father. “Here, I’ll let Gabe tell you about it himself.” She passed the phone to her nephew, who immediately grabbed it.

      “Dad! Dad, guess what? I went to Aunt Holly’s office to help her decorate and then she took me to see the big tree at Rockefeller Center and we watched the skaters and had hot chocolate and then we walked to Central Park and had hot dogs for dinner, and, oh, we went to see Mrs. Miracle. I helped Aunt Holly roll out cookies and.” He paused for breath.

      Evidently Mickey took the opportunity to ask a few questions, because Gabe nodded a couple of times.

      “Mrs. Miracle is the lady in the toy department at Finley’s,” he said.

      He was silent for a few seconds.

      “She’s really nice,” Gabe continued. “She reminds me of Grandma Larson. I gave her a plate of cookies, and Aunt Holly gave cookies to Jake.” Silence again, followed by “He’s Aunt Holly’s new boyfriend and he’s really, really nice.”

      “Maybe I should talk to your father now,” Holly inserted, wishing Gabe hadn’t been so quick to mention Jake’s name.

      Gabe clutched the receiver in both hands and turned his back, unwilling to relinquish the phone.

      “Jake took us on a carriage ride in Central Park and then.” Gabe stopped talking for a few seconds. “I don’t know what happened after that ‘cause I fell asleep.”

      Mickey was asking something else, and although Holly strained to hear what it was, she couldn’t.

      Whatever his question, Gabe responded by glancing at Holly, grinning widely and saying, “Oh, yeah.”

      “Are you two talking about me?” she demanded, half laughing and half annoyed.

      She was ignored. Apparently Gabe felt there was a lot to tell his father, because he cupped his hand around the mouthpiece and whispered loudly, “I think they kissed.“

      “Gabe!” she protested. If she wanted her brother to know this, she’d tell him herself.

      “Okay,” Gabe said, nodding. He held out the phone to her. “Dad wants to talk to you.”

      Holly took it from him and glared down at her nephew.

      “So I hear you’ve found a new love interest,” Mickey said in the same tone he’d used to tease her when they were teenagers.

      “Oh, stop. Jake and I hardly know each other.”

      “How’d

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