LITMIR.BIZ

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case he was getting any other bright ideas, she told him firmly, “And I don’t want to go after, either. Brenda is having a skating party on Boxing Day. I hope I get new skates for Christmas. When am I going to see Santa?”

      He was pretty sure Ace and Brenda had been mortal enemies a week ago. So, Morgan had been right. Superficial or not, the clothes helped. His daughter was having a good week.

      That was worth something. So was the light in her eyes when she talked about being on television.

      Nate made a promise as soon as Santa set up at Finnegan’s they would go, and then he made a mental note about the skates. Then once she was in bed, he took the permission slip, signed it and shoved it into Ace’s backpack.

      It didn’t feel like nearly the concession it should have. He told himself it had nothing to do with Morgan McGuire and everything to do with Ace.

      An hour after Ace was in bed, his phone rang. It was Canterbury’s mayor, who also owned the local gas station. The Christmas Angel needed skilled craftspeople to volunteer to work on the set. Would he consider doing it?

      Before Morgan had arrived this afternoon his answer would have been curt and brief.

      Now he was aware he did not want to be a man indifferent to the hopes and dreams of his neighbors.

      What had she said? I don’t think you are the wrong man to trust, I think you just wish you were.

      It irked him that she was right. He should say no to this request just to spite her. But he didn’t.

      Small towns were strange places. Centuries-old feuds were put aside if tragedy struck.

      Four generations of Hathoways had owned this forge and as far as Nate could tell they’d always been renegades and rebels. They didn’t go to church, or belong to the PTA or the numerous Canterbury service clubs. Hardworking but hell-raising, they were always on the fringe of the community. His family, David’s and Cindy’s.

      And yet, when David had died, the town had given him the hero’s send-off that he deserved.

      And their support had been even more pronounced after Cindy had died. Nate’s neighbors had gathered around him in ways he would have never expected. A minister at a church he had never been to had offered to do the service; there had not been enough seats for everyone who came to his wife’s funeral.

      People who he would have thought did not know of his existence—like the man who had just phoned him—had been there for him and for Ace unconditionally, wanting nothing in return, not holding his bad temper or his need to deal with his grief alone against him.

      Sometimes, still, he came to the house from the forge to find an anonymous casserole at the door, or freshbaked cookies, or a brand-new toy or outfit for Ace.

      At first it had been hard for him to accept, but at some time Nate had realized it wasn’t charity. It was something deeper than that. It was why people chose to live in small communities. To know they were cared about, that whether you wanted it or not, your neighbors had your back.

      And you didn’t just keep taking that. In time, when you were ready, you offered it back.

      Nate wasn’t really sure if he was ready, but somehow it felt as if it was time to find out. And so that awareness of “something deeper” was how he found himself saying yes to the volunteer job of helping to build sets.

      Since the school auditorium was the only venue big enough to host The Christmas Angel, Nate knew it was going to put him together again with Morgan McGuire. He knew it was inevitable that their lives were becoming intertwined. Whether he liked it or not.

      And for a man who had pretty established opinions on what he liked and what he didn’t, Nate Hathoway was a little distressed to find he simply didn’t know if he liked it or not.

      Morgan marched her twenty-two charges into the gymnasium. The truth was, after being so stern with Nate about the benefits of The Christmas Angel coming to Canterbury, she was beginning to feel a little sick of the whole thing herself.

      The children talked of nothing else. They all thought their few minutes on television, singing backup to Wesley Wellhaven, meant they were going to be famous. They all tried to sing louder than the person next to them. Some of them were getting quite theatrical in their delivery of the songs.

      The rehearsal time for the three original songs her class would sing was eating into valuable class time that Morgan felt would be better used for teaching fundamental skills, reading, writing and arithmetic.

      Today was the first day her kids would be showing The Christmas Angel production team what they had learned. Much of the team had arrived last week, filling up the local hotel. Now The Christmas Angel’s own choir director, Mrs. Wesley Wellhaven herself, had arrived in town last night and would be taking over rehearsing the children.

      As soon as Morgan entered the auditorium—which was also the school gymnasium, not that it could be used for that because of all the work going on getting the only stage in town ready for Wesley—Morgan knew he was here.

      Something happened to her neck. It wasn’t so sinister as the hackles rising, it was more as if someone sexy had breathed on her.

      She looked around, and sure enough, there Nate was, helping another man lift a plywood cutout of a Christmas cottage up on stage.

      At the same time as herding her small charges forward Morgan unabashedly took advantage of the fact Nate had no idea she was watching him, to study him, which was no mean feat given that Freddy Campbell kept poking Brenda Weston in the back, and Damien Dorchester was deliberately treading on Benjamin Chin’s heels.

      “Freddy, Damien, stop it.” The correction was absent at best.

      Because it seemed as if everything but him had faded as Morgan looked to the stage. Nate had looked sexy at his forge, and he looked just as sexy here, with his tool belt slung low on the hips his jeans rode over, a plain T-shirt showing off the ripple of unconscious muscle as he lifted.

      Let’s face it, Morgan told herself, he’d look sexy no matter where he was, no matter what he was wearing, no matter what he was doing.

      He was just a blastedly sexy man.

      And yet there was more than sexiness to him.

      No, there was a quiet and deep strength evident in Nate Hathoway. It had been there at Cheesie Charlie’s, it had been there when he sat in the pink satin chair at The Snow Cave. And it was there now as he worked, a self-certainty that really was more sexy than his startling good looks.

      Mrs. Wellhaven, a pinch-faced woman of an indeterminate age well above sixty, called the children up onto the stage, and the workers had to stop to let the kids file onto the triple-decker stand that had been built for them.

      “Hi, Daddy!” Ace called.

      “Yes,” Mrs. Wellhaven said, lips pursed, “let’s deal with that first off, shall we? Please do not call out the names of people you know as you come on the stage. Not during rehearsal, and God knows, not during the live production.”

      Ace scowled. Morgan glanced at Nate. Father’s and child’s expressions were identically mutinous.

      Morgan shivered. In the final analysis could there be anything more sexy than a man who would protect his own, no matter what?

      Still, the choir director had her job to do, and since Nate looked as if maybe he was going to go have a word with her, Morgan intercepted him.

      “Hi. How are you?”

      Though maybe it was just an excuse.

      In all likelihood Nate was not going to berate the choir director.

      “Who does she think she is telling my kid she can’t say hi to me?” he muttered, mutiny still written all over his handsome face.

      Or maybe he had been.

      “You have to admit it

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