Kitabı oku: «Rescued by his Christmas Angel: Rescued by his Christmas Angel / Christmas at Candlebark Farm»

Rescued by His Christmas Angel

By

Cara Colter
Christmas at Candlebark Farm

By

Michelle Douglas

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Rescued by His Christmas Angel

By

Cara Colter

Dear Reader,

I had a wonderful visitor for some of the Christmas vacation. My grandson Brayden was here. If you want to experience the magic of the season, there is nothing like sharing it with a four-year-old.

While I was making a grocery list, Brayden decided he needed his own list, and scribbled happily on a piece of paper beside me. Then he handed it to me and I asked him (not being that good at deciphering scribbles) what was on it. He told me chocolate meatballs.

Off we went to the grocery store. Brayden asked everyone—stock boys, clerks, grandmothers, other kids—where the chocolate meatballs were. He spread smiles from one end of the store to the other. But alas, to his grave disappointment, we could not find the one item on his list.

The night before Christmas, I made a label on my computer that said ‘Chocolate Meatballs’ and filled a baggie with those gorgeous round chocolates that look exactly like meatballs!

Though Brayden received an amazing number of gifts and toys, it is the look on his face when he opened his sock from Santa and found chocolate meatballs that I will never forget. His eyes round with absolute wonder, he whispered, “Santa knew where the chocolate meatballs were.”

And so that is what I wish for you this Christmas: moments of simple wonder, moments of delightful magic, and lots and lots of chocolate meatballs!

With best wishes for the holidays,

Cara

About the Author

CARA COLTER lives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in the “Love and Laughter” category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com

To Lynne and Larry Cormack with heartfelt gratitude for twenty-five years of friendship

Chapter One

TEARS. BOOKS THROWN. And pencils. Breakage. Namecalling. Screaming. Hair-pulling. It was like a scene from a bad marriage or the kind of drama that a reality television show adored, rife with mayhem, conflicts, conspiracies.

But it wasn’t a bad marriage, or bad TV.

It was Morgan McGuire’s life, and it didn’t help one bit that each of the perpetrators in today’s drama had been under four feet tall. The day had culminated with a twenty-one-child “dog pile on the rabbit.”

It was the kind of day they had failed to prepare her for at teacher’s college, Morgan, first-year first-grade teacher, thought mournfully.

And somehow, fair or not, in her mind, it was all his fault.

Nate Hathoway, father of Cecilia Hathoway, the child who had been at the very center of every single kerfuffle today, including being the rabbit in that unfortunate dog pile.

Now, Morgan McGuire paused and stared at the sign in front of her. Hathoway’s Forge. Her heart was beating hard, and it wasn’t just from the walk from school, either.

Don’t do it, her fellow teacher Mary Beth Adams had said when Morgan had asked her at lunch if she thought she should go beard the lion in his den.

Or the devil at his fire, as the case might be.

“But he’s ignoring my notes. He hasn’t signed the permission slip for Cecilia—”

“Cecilia?”

Morgan sighed. “Ace. Her real name’s Cecilia. I think she needs something feminine in her life, including her name. That was what the first fight this morning was about. Her hairstyle.”

Not that the haircut was that new, but today there had been a very unusual new styling for the haircut. How could he have let her out of the house looking like that?

“And then,” Morgan continued, “one of the kids overheard me ask her about the permission slip to be in The Christmas Angel. She didn’t have it.”

The production of The Christmas Angel was descending on Canterbury, Connecticut.

The town had been chosen by the reclusive, aging troubadour Wesley Wellhaven for his second annual Christmas extravaganza.

The fact that Mr. Wellhaven would be using local children—the first graders would be his backup choir if Cecilia managed to get her permission slip signed—had whipped the children into a frenzy of excitement and dramatic ambition.

“Morgan, rehearsals are starting next week! Mrs. Wellhaven is arriving to supervise the choir!” Mary Beth said this urgently, as if the fact could have somehow bypassed her fellow teacher.

“I know. And I already told the class that we are all doing it, or none of us is doing it.”

“That was foolish,” Mary Beth said. “Can’t Ace Hathoway just sit in the hall and read a book while the rest of the children rehearse?”

“No!” Morgan was aghast at the suggestion. But meanwhile, poor Cecilia was being seen as the class villain because she was the only one with no permission slip. “If I don’t talk to him, Cecilia is going to continue to suffer.”

Mary Beth shook her head. “Just let her sit in the hall.”

“It’s not just the permission slip. I have to address some other issues.”

“You know that expression about going where angels fear to tread? That would be particularly true of Hathoway’s Forge. Nate wasn’t Mr. Sunshine and Light before his wife died. Now…” Mary Beth’s voice trailed away and then she continued. “It’s not entirely Nate’s fault, anyway. Kids always get high-strung around Christmas. It’s hitting early because of all the hoopla around the whole Christmas Angel thing.”

Naturally, Morgan had chosen to ignore Mary Beth’s well-meaning advice about going to visit Nate Hathoway.

Now, taking a deep breath, she turned off the pavement and up the winding gravel driveway, lined by trees, now nearly naked of leaves. The leaves, yellow and orange, crunched under her feet, sending up clouds of tart aroma.

Morgan came to a white house, cozy and cottagelike, amongst a grove of trees. It was evident to her that while once it had been well loved, now it looked faintly neglected. The flower beds had not grown flowers this year, but weeds, now depressingly dead. Indigo paint, that once must have looked lively and lovely against the white, was peeling from the shutters, the window trim and the front door that was set deep under a curved arch.

Despite the fact light was leeching from the late-afternoon autumn air, there were no lights on in the house.

Morgan knew Cecilia was at the after-school program.

The road continued on to a building beyond the house. It dwarfed the house, a turn-of-the-century stone barn, but a chimney belched smoke, and light poured out the high upper windows. Morgan realized it was the forge.

She drew nearer to it. A deep, solid door, under a curved arch that mirrored the one on the house, had a sign on it.

Go Away.

That was the kind of unfriendly message, when posted on a door, that one should probably pay strict attention to.

But Morgan hadn’t come this far to go away. She drew a deep breath, stepped forward and knocked on the door. And was ignored.

She was absolutely determined she was not going to be ignored by this man anymore! She knocked again, and then, when there was no answer, turned the handle and stepped in.

She was not sure what she expected: smoke, darkness, fire, but the cavernous room was large and bright. What was left of the day’s natural light was flowing in windows high up the walls, supplemented by huge shop lights.

In a glance she saw whiskey-barrel bins close to the door full of black wrought iron fireplace pokers and ash shovels, an army of coat holders, stacks of pot racks. Under different circumstances, she would have looked at the wares with great interest.

Nate Hathoway, she had learned since coming to Canterbury, had a reputation as one of the finest artistic blacksmiths in the world.

But today, her gaze went across the heated room to where a fire burned in a great hearth, a man in front of it.

His back was to her, and even though Morgan suspected he had heard her knock, and even heard her enter, he did not turn.

From the back, he was a breathtaking specimen. Dark brown hair, thick and shiny, scraped where a leather apron was looped around his neck over a denim shirt. His shoulders were huge and wide, tapering perfectly down to a narrow waist, where the apron was tied. Faded jeans rode low on nonexistent hips, hugged the slight swell of a perfect masculine butt.

Even though his name was whispered with a kind of reverence by every single female Morgan had encountered in Canterbury, she felt unprepared for the pure presence of him, for that masculine something that filled the air around him.

She felt as if the air was being sucked from her lungs and she debated just leaving quietly before he turned.

Then she chided herself for such a weak thought. She was here for the good of a six-year-old child who needed her intervention.

And she was so over being swayed by the attractions of men. A bitter breakup with her own fiancé after she’d had the audacity to consider the job—her own career—in Canterbury still stung. Karl had been astonished that she would consider the low-paid teaching position in the tiny town, then openly annoyed that his own highpowered career didn’t come first. For both of them.

Morgan was making a new start here. No more stars in her eyes, no more romantic notions.

Her mother, whom Morgan had thought liked Karl, had actually breathed a sigh of relief at Morgan’s breakup news.

Darling, I do wish you’d quit looking for a father figure. It makes me feel so guilty.

Not guilty enough, however, to postpone her vacation to Thailand so they could spend Christmas together. In lieu of sympathy over her daughter’s failed engagement her mother had given her a book.

It was called Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman.

Surprisingly, given that she had initially resented the book being given to her in the place of some parental direction about how to handle a breakup, Morgan found she was thoroughly enjoying Bliss.

It confirmed for Morgan the absolute rightness of her making the break, learning to rely only on herself to feel good. Not her boyfriend. And not her mother, either.

Two and a half months into her teaching career and her new location in Canterbury, Morgan loved making her own decisions, living in her own home, even buying the groceries she liked without living in the shadow of a nose wrinkling in disapproval—Do you know how many grams of sugar this has in it?

Just as Bliss had promised, every day of being an independent woman who answered to no one but herself felt like a new adventure.

But now, as the man at the forge turned to her, Morgan was stunned to find she had no idea at all what the word adventure meant.

Though something in the buccaneer blackness of his eyes promised he knew all about adventures so dark and mysterious they could make a woman quiver.

One who wasn’t newly dedicated to independent living.

Morgan fervently reminded herself of her most recent joy—the absolute freedom of picking out the funky purple sofa that Karl, and possibly her mother, too, would have hated. Amelia Ainsworthy, author of Bliss, had dedicated a whole chapter of the book to furniture selection and Morgan felt she had done her proud.

But now that moment seemed far less magical as this man, Nate Hathoway, stood regarding her, his eyes made blacker by the flicker of the firelight, his brows drawn down in a fierce lack of welcome that echoed the sign on the door, his stance the stance of a warrior. Hard. Cynical. Unwavering.

One hand, sinewy with strength, held a pair of tongs, metal glowed orange-hot at the end of them.

Morgan felt her breath catch in her throat.

Cecilia’s father, Nate Hathoway, with his classic features, strong cheekbones, flawless nose, chiseled jaw, sensuously full lips, was easily the most handsome man she had ever set eyes on.

“Can’t you read?” he growled at her. “I’m not open to the public.”

His voice was rough, impatient and impossibly sexy. It shivered across the back of Morgan’s neck like a touch.

Ignoring her, he placed the hot iron on an anvil, took a hammer and plied his strength to it. She watched, dazed, at the ripple of disciplined muscle as he forced the iron to his will. His will won, with ease.

“Um, Mr. Hathoway, I can read, and I’m not the public. I’m Cecilia’s teacher.”

The silence was long. Finally, his sigh audible, he said, “Ah. Mrs. McGuire.” He shot her a look that seemed uncomfortably hostile and returned his attention to the metal. He doused it in a bath. It sizzled and hissed as it hit, and he turned his eyes back to her, assessing.

Maybe it was just because they were so dark that they seemed wicked, eyes that would belong to a highwayman, or a pirate, or an outlaw, not to the father of a fragile six-year-old girl.

Morgan drew in a deep breath. It was imperative that she remember the errand that had brought her here. The permission slip for Cecilia to participate in The Christmas Angel was in her coat pocket.

“It’s Miss, actually. The kids insist on Mrs. I corrected them for the first few days, but I’m afraid I’ve given up. Everybody over the age of twenty-one is Mrs. to a six-year-old. Particularly if she’s a teacher.”

She felt as if she was babbling. She realized, embarrassed, that it sounded as if she needed him to know she was single. Which she didn’t, Amelia forgive her!

“Miss McGuire, then,” he said, not a flicker in that stern face showing the slightest interest in her marital status.

He folded those muscular, extremely enticing arms over the massiveness of his chest, rocked back on his heels, regarded her coolly, waiting, the impatience not even thinly veiled.

“Morgan,” she said. Why was she inviting him to call her by her first name? She told herself it was to see if she could get the barrier down in his eyes. Her mission here was already doomed if she could not get past that.

But part of her knew that wasn’t the total truth. The total truth was that she did not want to be seen only as the new first-grade teacher, and all that implied, such as boring and prim. Part of her, weak as that part was, was clamoring for this man to see her as a woman.

There was an Amelia Ainsworthy in her head frowning at her with at least as much disapproval as Karl ever had!

But that’s what the devil did. Tempted. And looking at his lips, stern, unyielding, but somehow as sensual as his voice, she felt the most horrible shiver of temptation.

“It’s obvious to me Cecilia is a child who is loved,” Morgan said. It sounded rehearsed. It was rehearsed, and thank goodness she’d had the foresight to rehearse something, or despite her disciplined nightly reading of Bliss, Morgan would be standing here struck dumb by his gorgeousness and the fact he exuded male power.

Now, she wished she had rehearsed something without the word love in it.

Because isn’t that what fallen angels like the man in front of her did? Tempted naive women to believe maybe love could soften something in that hard face, that maybe love could heal something that had broken?

He said nothing, but if she had hoped to soften him by telling him she knew he loved his daughter, it had not succeeded. The lines around his mouth deepened in an expression of impenetrable cynicism.

“Cecilia has the confidence and quickness of a child sure of her place in the world.” Originally, Morgan had planned on saying something about that quickness being channeled somewhere other than Cecilia’s fists, but now she decided to save that for a later meeting.

Which assumed there would be a later meeting, not that anything in his face encouraged such an assumption.

She had also planned on saying something like in light of the fact her mother had died, Cecilia’s confidence and brightness spoke volumes of the parent left behind. But somehow, her instinct warned her not to speak of the death of his wife.

Though nothing in his body language, in the shuttered eyes, invited her to continue, Morgan pressed on, shocked that what she said next had nothing to do with the permission slip for The Christmas Angel.

“It’s the mechanics of raising a child, and probably particularly a girl child, that might be the problem for you, Mr. Hathoway.”

It’s none of your business, Mary Beth had warned her dourly when Morgan had admitted she might broach the subject while she was there about the permission slip. You’re here to teach, not set up family counseling services.

Morgan did not think sending the odd note home qualified as family counseling services. Though Nate Hathoway’s failure to respond to the notes should have acted as warning to back off, rather than invitation to step in.

Obviously, he was a man who did not take kindly to having his failings pointed out to him, because his voice was colder than the Connecticut wind that picked that moment to shriek under the eaves of the barn.

“Maybe you’d better be specific about the problem, Miss McGuire.”

Cecilia needed her, and that made Morgan brave when it felt as if courage would fail her. “There have been some incidents of the other children making fun of Cecilia.”

In half a dozen long strides he was across the floor of his workshop, and staring down at her with those mesmerizing, devil-dark eyes.

She could smell him, and the smell was as potent as a potion: the tangy smell of heat and hard work, molten iron, soft leather. Man.

“What kids?” he asked dangerously.

Morgan had to tilt her chin to look at him. She did not like it that his eyes had narrowed to menacing slits, that the muscle was jerking in the line of his jaw, or that his fist was unconsciously clenching and unclenching at his side.

This close to Nate Hathoway, she could see the beginning of dark whiskers shadowing the hollows of impossibly high cheekbones, hugging the cleft of his chin. It made him look even more roguish and untamable than he had looked from across the room.

His lips were so full and finely shaped that just looking at them could steal a woman’s voice, her tongue could freeze to the roof of her mouth.

“It’s not about the kids,” she managed to stammer, ordering her eyes to move away from the pure sensual art of his mouth.

“The hell it isn’t.”

“You can’t seriously expect me to name names.”

“You tell me who is making fun of Ace, and I’ll look after it. Since you haven’t.”

Morgan shivered at his accusing tone, but felt her own strength shimmer back to life, her backbone straightening. She was as protective as a mother bear with cubs. All of those children were her cubs. Sometimes, looking out at the tiny sea of eager faces in the morning, it still stunned her how tiny and vulnerable six-year-olds could be.

And, after a day like today, it stunned her how quickly all that innocence could turn to terror on wheels. Still, she was not going to sic him on her kids!

She took a deep breath, tried not to let her inner quiver at the expression on his face show. “We are talking about six-year-olds. How would you propose to look after that, Mr. Hathoway?”

“I wasn’t going to hunt them down,” he said, reading her trepidation, disdain that she would conclude such a thing in the husky, controlled tone of his voice. Still, he flexed one of the naked muscles of his biceps with leashed anger.

Morgan’s eyes caught there. A bead of sweat was slipping down the ridge of a perfectly cut muscle. She had that tongue-frozen-against-the-roof-of-her-mouth feeling again. Thank goodness. Otherwise she might have involuntarily licked her lips at how damnably tantalizing every single thing about him was.

“I wouldn’t deal with the children,” he continued softly, “but I grew up with their parents. I could go have a little talking-to with certain people.”

The threat was unmistakable. But so was the love and pure need to protect his daughter. It felt as if that love Nate Hathoway had for his daughter could melt Morgan as surely as that fire blazing in the background melted iron.

“Mr. Hathoway, you just need to take a few small steps at home to help her.”

“Since you are unable to help her at school?”

The sensation of melting disappeared! So did the tongue-stuck-to-the-roof-of-her-mouth feeling. She was not going to be attacked!

“That’s unfair!” She was pleased with how calm she sounded, so she continued. “I have twenty-two children in my class. I can’t be with every single one of them every single second, monitoring what they are saying among themselves, or to Cecilia.”

“What are they saying?”

There were old incidents she could bring up: the fun they had made of Cecilia’s hair before he had cut it, how someone had cruelly noticed how attached she was to a certain dress. Though it was always clean it was faded from her wearing it again and again. With boys’ hiking boots, instead of shoes. They were situations that had caused teasing. Cecilia was no doormat. She came out fighting, and looking at the man before her, Morgan was pretty sure where she’d learned that!

Still, Morgan had prided herself on creatively finding a remedy for each situation. Only it was becoming disheartening how quickly it was replaced with a new situation.

Morgan had to get to the heart of the problem.

“Just for an example, this morning Cecilia arrived with a very, er, odd, hairstyle. I’m afraid it left her open to some teasing even before she revealed her secret holding ingredient.”

“She told me it was hair gel.”

“It was gel, but not hair gel.”

He looked askance at her.

“She didn’t know gel wasn’t gel. She used gel toothpaste.”

He said a word people generally avoided using in front of the first-grade teacher. And then he ran a hand through the thick darkness of his own hair. Her eyes followed that motion helplessly.

“Didn’t you say anything to her about her hair before she left for school?” she managed to choke out.

“Yeah,” he said ruefully, the faintest chink appearing in that armor. “I told her it looked sharp.”

It had looked sharp. Literally. But if she planned to be taken seriously, Morgan knew now was not the time to smile.

“Mr. Hathoway, you cannot send your daughter to school with a shark fin on top of her head and expect she will not be teased!”

“How do I know what’s fashionable in the six-year-old set?” he asked, and a second chink appeared in the armor. A truly bewildered look slipped by the remoteness in his dark eyes. “To be honest, her hair this morning seemed like an improvement on the raised-by-wolves look she was sporting before she finally let me talk her into cutting her hair.”

Remembered hair battles flashed through his eyes, and Morgan found her gaze on those hands. It was too easy to imagine him trying to gentle his strength to deal with his daughter’s unruly hair.

But the last thing Morgan needed to do was couple a feeling of tenderness with the animal pull of his male magnetism!

“It was not an improvement,” she said firmly, snippily, trying desperately to stay on track. “The children were merciless, even after I made it clear I wanted no comments made. The recess monitor told me Cecilia got called Captain Colgate, Toothpaste Princess and Miss Froggy Fluoride.”

“I’ll bet the froggy one was Bradley Campbell’s boy,” he said darkly. “Ace told me he’s called her Miss Froggy before, because of her voice.”

“Her voice is adorable. She’ll outgrow that little croakiness,” Morgan said firmly. “I’ve already spoken to Freddy about teasing her about it.”

Nate glowered, unconvinced.

Morgan pressed on. “To make matters worse, today at lunch break someone noticed her overalls. They said she had stolen them, that they belonged to an older sister and they were missing.”

“Somebody accused Ace of stealing?”

Morgan thought he was going to have problems with the joint in his jaw if he didn’t find a different way to deal with tension.

“Cecilia said she had taken the overalls from the lost-and-found box.”

“But why?” he asked, genuinely baffled.

“When’s the last time you bought her clothes?” Morgan was aware of something gentling in her voice. “Mr. Hathoway, I sent you a note suggesting a shopping trip might be in order.”

“I don’t read your notes.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t need a little fresh-out-of-college snip like you telling me how to raise my daughter. Oh, and I also don’t do shopping.”

“Obviously! And your daughter has suffered as a consequence!”

He glared at her. A lesser woman might have just touched her forelock and bowed out the door.

But blessed—or cursed—with the newfound strength of a woman who was working her way through Bliss and making careful notations in the margins, and who had purchased a sofa in a rather adventurous shade of purple, she plunged on.

“Cecilia told me that’s why she took the overalls from the lost-and-found box…to spare you a shopping trip. She doesn’t have anything that fits properly. She wears the same favorites over and over. She wears hiking boots with skirts, Mr. Hathoway! Haven’t you noticed that?”

He said that word again, and something besides hardness flickered in those eyes again. It was worse than the hardness. Pain so deep it was like a bottomless pool.

“I guess I didn’t notice,” he said, the warrior stance shifting ever so slightly, something defeated in his voice. “Ace could have said something.”

“She seems to think if she asks nothing of you, she’s protecting you in some way.”

The smallest hint of a smile tickled across lips that had the potential to be so sexy they could make a woman’s heart stop.

“She is protecting me in some way. Grocery shopping is tough enough. I have to go out of town for groceries to avoid recipe exchanges with well-meaning neighbors.”

Whom, Morgan was willing to guess, were mostly female. And available. She could easily imagine him being swarmed at a market in a small town where everyone would know his history. Wife killed, nearly two years ago, Christmas Eve car accident. Widower. Single dad.

“The girl’s department is impossible,” he went on grimly. “A sea of pink. Women everywhere. Frills.” He said that word again, softly, with pained remembrance shadowing his eyes. He shook his head. “I don’t do shopping,” he said again, firmly, resolutely.

“I’d be happy to take her shopping.”

It was the type of offer that would have Mary Beth rolling her eyes. It was the type of offer that probably made Morgan’s insanity certifiable. Could she tangle her life with those of the Hathoways without dancing with something very powerful and possibly not tamable?

But whatever brief humanity had touched Nate’s features it was doused as carelessly as he had plunged that red-hot metal into water.

“I don’t do pity, either.”

Good, Morgan congratulated herself. She had done her best. She should leave now, while her dignity was somewhat in tact. Mary Beth would approve if she left without saying another single word.

Naturally, she didn’t.

“It’s not pity. I happen to love shopping. I can’t think of anything I would consider more fun than taking Cecilia on a shopping excursion.”

Chapter Two

I CAN’T THINK of anything I would consider more fun than taking Cecilia on a shopping excursion.

Mary Beth is going to think I’m crazy, Morgan thought.

Plus, standing here in such close proximity to his lips, she could think of one thing that would be quite a bit more fun than taking Cecilia on a shopping excursion. Or maybe two.

“I’ll look after it,” Nate Hathoway said, coolly adding with formal politeness, “thanks for dropping in, Miss McGuire.”

And then he dismissed her, strode back across his workshop and turned his back to her, faced the fire. He was instantly engrossed in whatever he was doing.

Morgan stared at him, but instead of leaving, she marched over to one of the bins just inside the front door. It contained coat hooks, in black wrought iron.

She picked up a pair, loved the substance of them in her hands. In a world where everything was transient, everything was meant to be enjoyed for a short while and then replaced—like her purple sofa—the coat hooks felt as if they were made to last forever.

Not a word a newly independent woman wanted to be thinking of anywhere in the vicinity of Nate Hathoway.

Still, his work with the black iron was incredible, flawless. The metal was so smooth it might have been silk. The curve of the hanger seemed impossibly delicate. How had he wrought this from something as inflexible as iron?

“I’ll trade you,” Morgan said on an impulse.

He turned and looked at her.

“My time with your daughter for some of your workmanship.” She held up the pair of coat hooks.

She could already picture them hanging inside her front door, she already felt as if she had to have them. Even if he didn’t agree to the trade, she would have to try and buy them from him.

But she saw she had found precisely the right way to get to him: a trade in no way injured his pride, which looked substantial. Plus, it got him out of the dreaded shopping trip to the girls’ department.

He nodded, once, curtly. “Okay. Done.”

She went to put the coat hooks back, until they worked out the details of their arrangement, but he growled at her.

“Take them.”

“Saturday morning? I can pick Cecilia up around ten.”

“Fine.” He turned away from her again. She saw he was heating a rod of iron, and she wished she had the nerve to go watch how he worked his magic on it. But she didn’t.

She turned and let herself quietly out the door. Only as she walked away did she consider that by taking the coat hangers, she had taken a piece of him with her.

Morgan was aware she would never be able to look at her new acquisition without picturing him, hammer in hand, and feeling the potent pull of the incredible energy he had poured, molten, into manufacturing the coat hangers.

“I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into?” she asked out loud, walking away from the old barn, the last of the leaves floated from the trees around her. And then she realized just how much Nate Hathoway had managed to rattle her when she touched a piece of paper in her coat pocket.

And realized it was the permission slip for The Christmas Angel, still unsigned.

“Ah, Ace,” Nate said uneasily, “you know how I promised I’d take you to the antique-car show this morning?”

His daughter was busy coloring at the kitchen table, enjoying a Saturday morning in her jammies. They were faded cotton-candy pink. They had feet in them, which made her seem like a baby. His baby.

He felt a fresh wave of anger at the kids teasing her. And fresh frustration at the snippy young teacher for thinking she knew everything.

He had tried to think about that visit from the teacher as little as possible, and not just because it made him acutely aware of his failings as a single parent.

No, the teacher had been pretty. Annoying, but pretty.

And when he thought of her, it seemed to be the pretty part he thought of—the lush auburn hair, the sparkling green eyes, the wholesome features, the delicate curves—rather than the annoying part.

Ace glanced up at him. Her shortened red hair was sticking up every which way this morning, still an improvement over the toothpaste fin of last week, and the long tangled mop he had tried to tame—unsuccessfully—before that.

“We’re not going to the car show?” she asked.

Nate hated disappointing her. He had been mulling over how to break this to her. Which is probably why he hadn’t told her earlier that her plans for Saturday were changed. Sometimes with Ace, it was better not to let her think things over for too long.

“We’re not going to the car show?” she asked again, something faintly strident in her voice.

Just as he had thought. She was clearly devastated.

“Uh, no. Your teacher is coming over.” He had an envelope full of cash ready to hand Morgan McGuire for any purchases she made for Ace. His guilt over changing the car-show plans was being balanced, somewhat, by the incredibly wonderful fact he didn’t have to go shopping.

The devastation dissolved from her face. “Mrs. McGuire?” Ace whispered with reverence. “She’s coming here?”

“It’s not like it’s a visit from the pope,” he said, vaguely irritated, realizing he may have overestimated the attractions of the car show by just a little.

“What’s a pope?”

“Okay, the queen, then.”

“The queen’s coming here?” Ace said, clearly baffled.

“No. Miss McGuire’s coming here. She’s going to take you shopping. Instead of me taking you to the car show.”

The crayon fell out of Ace’s fingers. “I’m going shopping with Mrs. McGuire? Me?” Her brown eyes got huge. She gave a little squeal of delight, got up and did a little dance around the kitchen, hugging herself. He doubted a million-dollar lottery winner could have outdone her show of exuberance.

Okay, he admitted wryly, so he had overestimated the appeal of the car show by quite a bit.

Nate felt a little smile tickle his own lips at his daughter’s delight, and then chastised himself for the fact there had not been nearly enough moments like this since his wife had died. Slippery roads. A single vehicle accident on Christmas Eve, Cindy had succumbed to her horrific injuries on Christmas day. There was no one to blame.

No one to direct the helpless rage at.

Ace stopped dancing abruptly. Her face clouded and her shoulders caved in. It was like watching the air go out of a balloon, buoyancy dissolving into soggy, limp latex.

“No,” Ace said, her voice brave, her chin quivering. “I’m not going to go shopping with Mrs. McGuire. I can’t.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because Saturday is our day. Yours and mine, Daddy. Always. And forever.”

“Well, just this once it would be okay—”

“No,” she said firmly. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’ll be okay, Ace. I can go to the car show by myself.”

“Nope,” she said, and then furiously insisted, “it’s our day.” She tried to smile, but wavered, and after struggling valiantly for a few seconds to hide the true cost of her sacrifice, she burst into tears and ran and locked herself in the bathroom.

“Come on, Ace,” he said, knocking softly on the bathroom door. “We can have our day tomorrow. I’ll take you over to Aunt Molly’s and you can ride Happy.”

Happy was a chunky Shetland pony, born and bred in hell. Her Aunt Molly had given the pony to Ace for Christmas last year, a stroke of genius that had provided some distraction from the bitter memories of the day. Ace loved the evil dwarf equine completely.

But Happy was not providing the necessary distraction today. There was no answer from the other side of the bathroom door. Except sobbing. Nate realized it was truly serious when even the pony promise didn’t work.

Nate knew what he had to do, though it probably spoke volumes to his character just how reluctant he was to do it.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, hoping some miracle—furnace exploding, earthquake—could save him from finishing this sentence, “since it’s our day, I could tag along on your shopping trip with Miss McGuire.”

No explosion. No earthquake. The desperate suggestion of a cornered man was uttered without intervention from a universe he already suspected was not exactly on his side.

Silence. And then the door opened a crack. Ace regarded him with those big moist brown eyes. Tears were beaded on her lashes, and her cheeks were wet.

“Would you, Daddy?” she whispered.

The truth was he would rather be staked out on an anthill covered in maple syrup than go shopping with Ace and her startlingly delectable teacher.

But he sucked it up and did what had to be done, wishing the little snip who was so quick to send the notes criticizing his parenting could see him manning up now.

“Sure,” he said, his voice deliberately casual. “I’ll go, too.” Feeling like a man who had escaped certain torture, only to be recaptured, Nate slipped the envelope of shopping cash he had prepared for the teacher into his own pocket.

“Are you sure, Daddy?” Ace looked faintly skeptical. She knew how he hated shopping.

Enough to steal overalls to try and save him, he reminded himself. “I don’t want to miss our day, either,” he assured her.

Inwardly, he was plotting. This could be quick. A trip down to Canterbury’s one-and-only department store, Finnegan’s Mercantile, a beeline to girls’ wear, a few sweat suits—Miss McGuire approved, probably in various shades of pink—stuffed into a carry basket and back out the door.

He hoped the store would be relatively empty. He didn’t want rumors starting about him and the teacher.

It occurred to Nate, with any luck, they were still going to make the car show. His happiness must have shown on his face, because Ace shot out of the bathroom and wrapped sturdy arms around his waist.

“Daddy,” she said, in that little frog croak of hers, staring up at him with adoration he was so aware of not deserving, “I love you.”

Ace saved him from the awkwardness of his having to break it to Miss Morgan McGuire that he was accompanying them on their trip, by answering the doorbell on its first ring.

Freshly dressed in what she had announced was her best outfit—worn pink denims and a shirt that Hannah Montana had long since faded off—Ace threw open the front door.

“Mrs. McGuire,” she crowed, “my daddy’s coming, too! He’s coming shopping with me and you.”

And then Ace hugged herself and hopped around on one foot, while Morgan McGuire slipped in the door.

Nate was suddenly aware his housekeeping was not that good, and annoyed by his awareness of it. He resisted the temptation to shove a pair of his work socks, abandoned on the floor, under the couch with his foot.

It must be the fact she was a teacher that made him feel as if everything was being graded: newspapers out on the coffee table; a thin layer of dust on everything, unfolded laundry leaning out of a hamper balanced perilously on the arm of the couch.

At Ace’s favorite play station, the raised fireplace hearth, there was an entire orphanage of naked dolls, Play-Doh formations long since cracked and hardened, a forlorn-looking green plush dog that had once had stuffing.

So instead of looking like he cared how Morgan McGuire felt about his house and his housekeeping—or lack thereof—Nate did his best to look casual, braced his shoulder against the door frame of the living room, and shoved his hands into the front of his jeans pockets.

Morgan actually seemed stunned enough by Ace’s announcement that he would be joining them that she didn’t appear to notice one thing about the controlled chaos of his housekeeping methods.

She was blushing.

He found himself surprised and reluctantly charmed that anyone blushed anymore, at least over something as benign as a shopping trip with a six-year-old and her fashion handicapped father.

The first-grade teacher was as pretty as he remembered her, maybe prettier, especially with that high color in her cheeks.

“I’m surprised you’ll be joining us,” Morgan said to him, tilting her chin in defiance of the blush, “I thought you made your feelings about shopping eminently clear.”

He shrugged, enjoying her discomfort over his addition to the party enough that it almost made up for his aversion to shopping.

Almost.

“I thought we’d go to the mall in Greenville,” Morgan said, jingling her car keys in her hand and glancing away from him.

Why did it please him that he made her nervous? And how could he be pleased and annoyed at the same time? A trip to Greenville was a full-day excursion!

“I thought we were going to Finnegan’s,” he said. Why couldn’t Ace have just been bribed with Happy time, same as always?

Why did he have an ugly feeling Morgan McGuire was the type of woman who changed same as always?

“Finnegan’s?” Morgan said. “Oh.” In the same tone one might use if a fishmonger was trying to talk them into buying a particularly smelly piece of fish. “There’s not much in the way of selection there.”

“But Greenville is over an hour and a half away!” he protested. By the time they got there, they’d have to have lunch. Even before they started shopping. He could see the car show slip a little further from his grasp.

And lunch with the first-grade teacher? His life, deliberately same as always since Cindy’s death, was being hijacked, and getting more complicated by the minute.

“It’s the closest mall,” Morgan said, and he could see she had a stubborn bent to her that might match his own, if tested.

As if the careful script on the handwritten notes sent home hadn’t been fair enough warning of that.

“And the best shopping.”

“The best shopping,” Ace breathed. “Could we go to The Snow Cave? That’s where Brenda Weston got her winter coat. It has white fur.”

Nate shot his daughter an astonished look. This was the first time she’d ever indicated she knew the name of a store in Greenville, or that she coveted a coat that had white fur.

“Surrender to the day,” he muttered sternly to himself, not that the word surrender had appeared in a Hathoway’s vocabulary for at least two hundred years.

“Pardon?” Morgan asked.

“I said lead the way.”

But when she did, he wasn’t happy about that, either. She drove one of those teeny tiny cars that got three zillion miles per every gallon of gas.

There was no way he could sit in the sardine-can-size backseat, and if he got in the front seat, his shoulder was going to be touching hers.

All the way to Greenville.

And even if he was determined to surrender to the day, he was not about to invite additional assaults on his defenses.

“I’ve seen Tinkertoys bigger than this car,” he muttered. “We’d better take my vehicle.”

And there was something about Miss Morgan McGuire that already attacked his defenses. That made a part of him he thought was broken beyond repair wonder if there was even the slimmest chance it could be fixed.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to fix something that hurt so bad when it broke?

He realized he was thinking of his heart.

Stupid thoughts for a man about to spend an hour and a half in a vehicle—any vehicle—with someone as cute as Morgan McGuire. He was pretty sure it was going to be the longest hour and a half of his life.

Stupid thoughts for a man who had vowed when his wife died—and Hathoways took their vows seriously—that his heart was going to be made of the same iron he made his livelihood shaping.

Out of nowhere, a memory blasted him.

I wish you could know what it is to fall in love, Nate.

Stop it, Cin, I love you.

No. Head over heels, I can’t breathe, think, function. That kind of fall-in-love.

Cindy had been his best friend’s girl. David had joined the services and been killed overseas. For a while, it had looked like the grief would take her, too. But Nate had done what best friends do, what he had promised David. He had stepped in to look after her.

Can’t breathe? Think? Function? That doesn’t even sound fun to me.

She’d laughed. But sadly. Hath, you don’t know squat.

There was a problem with vowing your heart was going to be made of iron, and Nate was aware of it as he settled in the driver’s seat beside Morgan, and her delicate perfume surrounded him.

Iron had a secret. It was only strong until it was tested by fire. Heated hot enough it was as pliable as butter.

And someone like Morgan McGuire probably had a whole lot more fire than her prim exterior was letting on.

But as long as he didn’t have to touch her shoulder all the way to Greenville he didn’t have to find out. He could make himself immune to her, despite the delicacy of her scent.

It should be easy. After all, Nate had made himself immune to every other woman who had come calling, thinking he and Ace needed sympathy and help, loving and saving.

He didn’t need anything. From anyone. And in that, he took pride.

And some days it felt like pride—and Ace—were all he had left.

But even once they were all loaded into his spacious SUV, even though his shoulder was not touching Morgan’s, Nate was totally aware of her in the passenger seat, turning around to talk to Ace.

And he was aware the trip to Greenville had never gone by more quickly.

Because Morgan had switched cars, but not intent. And Nate saw she was intent on making the day fun for Ace, and her genuine caring for his daughter softened him toward her in a way he did not want to be softened.

For as much as he resisted her attempts to involve him, it made Nate mildly ashamed that on a long car trip with Ace he had a tendency to plug a movie into the portable DVD player.

Nate glanced over at Morgan. Her eyes had a shine to them, a clearness, a trueness.

He was aware that since the death of Cindy he had lived in the darkness of sorrow, in the grip of how helpless he had been to change anything at a moment when it had really counted.

Morgan’s light was not going to pierce that. He wasn’t going to allow it.

“With an oink, oink here, and an oink, oink there,” Morgan McGuire sang with enthusiasm that made up for a surprisingly horrible voice.

It was written all over her that she was young and innocent and completely naive. That she had never known hardship like his own hardscrabble upbringing at a forge that was going broke, that she had been untouched by true tragedy.

“Oink,” she invited him, and then teased, “you look like you would make a terrific pig.”

He hoped that wasn’t a dig at his housekeeping, but again he was taken by the transparency in her face. Morgan McGuire appeared to be the woman least likely to make digs.

“—here an oink, there an oink, everywhere an oink, oink—”

He shook his head, refusing to be drawn into her world. No good could come from it. When soft met hard, soft lost.

The best thing he could ever do for this teacher who cared about his daughter with a genuineness he could not deny, was to make sure he didn’t repay her caring by hurting her.

And following the thin thread of attraction he could feel leaping in him as her voice and her scent and her enthusiasm for oinking filled his vehicle, could only end in that one place.

And he was cynical enough to know that.

Even if she wasn’t.

Morgan glanced across the restaurant table at Nate Hathoway. Nothing in the time they had spent in the truck lessened her first impression of him standing alone bending iron to his will.

He was a warrior. Battle-scarred, self-reliant, his emotions contained behind walls so high it would be nearly impossible to scale them.

So, being Morgan, naturally she tried to scale them anyway.

She had been aware that she was trying to make him smile as they had traveled, deliberately using her worst singing voice, trying to get him to participate. She told herself it was so Ace could see a softer side of her father, but she knew that wasn’t the entire truth.

She had seen a tickle of a smile at his forge on their first meeting. She wanted to see if she could tempt it out again.

But she had failed. The more she tried, the more he had tightened his cloak of remoteness around himself.

Though Morgan had not missed how his eyes found Ace in the rearview mirror, had not missed he was indulging her antics because his daughter was enjoying them.

Really, Nate Hathoway was the man least likely to ever be seen at a Cheesie Charlie’s franchise, but here he was, tolerating a noise level that was nothing less than astonishing, his eyes unreadable when the menus were delivered by a guy in a somewhat the worse-for-wear chicken suit.

He ate the atrocious food without comment, slipped the waiter-chicken a tip when he came to their table and serenaded them with a song with Ace’s name liberally sprinkled throughout.

“Well, wasn’t that fun?” Morgan asked as they left Cheesie Charlie’s.

“Yes!” Ace crowed. Even she seemed to notice that nothing was penetrating the hard armor around her father. “Daddy,” she demanded, “didn’t you think that was fun?”

“Fun as pounding nails with my forehead,” he muttered.

“That doesn’t sound fun,” Ace pointed out.

“You’re right,” he said, and then sternly warned, “don’t try it at home.”

Morgan sighed as Ace skipped ahead to where they had parked. “How did you allow yourself to get talked into coming? I’m beginning to see you did not volunteer for this excursion.”

He hesitated, and then he nodded at Cecilia. “We always spend Saturday together. It’s our tradition. Since her mom passed. I was willing to forgo it, just this once. She wasn’t.”

“Somewhere under that hard exterior is there a heart of pure gold, Nate Hathoway?”

She finally got the smile, only it wasn’t the one she’d been trying for. Cynical. Something tight around the edges of it. His eyes shielded.

“Don’t kid yourself.”

Instead of scaling his wall, she’d managed to get him to put it up higher! And for some reason it made her mad. If she couldn’t make him laugh, then she might as well torment him.

“If you thought Cheesie Charlie’s was fun, you’re going to love The Snow Cave,” Morgan promised him.

He gave her a dark, lingering look that sent shivers from her ears to her toes.

The Snow Cave proudly proclaimed itself as haute tot.

If he had looked out of place at Cheesie’s, Nate Hathoway now looked acutely out of place in the exclusive girls’ store. He was big and rugged amongst the racks and displays of pint-size frilly clothing in more shades of pink than Morgan was certain the male mind could imagine.

Ignoring his discomfort, at the same time as enjoying it immensely, Morgan sorted through the racks until she had both her and Cecilia’s arms heaped up with selections: blouses and T-shirts, socks, slacks, dresses, skirts.

“Great,” he said when it was obvious they could not carry one more thing. “Are you done? Can we go?”

“She has to try everything on.”

“What?” He looked like a wolf caught in a trap. “What for? Just buy it all so we can leave.”

Not even a little ashamed for enjoying his misery so thoroughly, Morgan leaned close to him and whispered, “This store is very expensive. You should allow her to pick one or two items from here and we’ll get the rest elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?” He closed his eyes and bit back a groan. “Just buy the damn stuff. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t want to go elsewhere.”

She waited to feel guilty, but given how easily he had resisted her efforts to charm, she didn’t.

Not in the least. This was a show of spunky liberation from needing his approval that even Amelia would have approved of!

“That’s not how it works,” Morgan said firmly. “We’ve been shopping for all of ten minutes. Don’t be such a baby.”

His mouth dropped open in shock, closed again. Morgan was sure she could hear him grinding his teeth before he finally said, “A baby? Me?”

“And could you try not to curse? Cecilia tends to bring some of your words to school.”

“You consider damn a curse?” he said, clearly as astonished by that as by the fact that she’d had the audacity to call him a baby.

“I do,” she said bravely.

He stared at her as if she was freshly minted from a far-off planet. He scowled. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He looked longingly at the door. And then Ace danced up, with one more find.

“Look! Sparkle skinny jeans that will fit me!”

He sighed with long suffering, shot Morgan a dark look that she answered with a bland, uncaring smile, and then allowed Ace to take his hand and tug him toward the change area.

Which, like everything at The Snow Cave, was designed to delight little girls. The waiting area, newly decorated for Christmas, was like the throne room in a winter palace fantasy.

And so there sat Nate Hathoway front row and center, in a pink satin chair which looked as if it could snap into kindling under his weight. But as Cecilia danced out in each of her new outfits, the scowl dissolved from his face, and even if he didn’t smile, his expression was at least less menacing.

It was hours later that they finally drove through the darkness toward Canterbury and home. Ace fell asleep in her booster seat in the back instantly, nearly lost amongst the clothing bags and shoe boxes that surrounded her. They could have gone in the back of Nate’s huge SUV, but she had insisted she had to have each of her purchases close to her.

Ace wore her new coat: an impractical pure-white curly fur creation that was going to make her the absolute envy of the grade-one girls. She had on a hair band with a somewhat wilted bow, and little red patent-leather shoes on her leotarded feet.

“She’s worn right out,” Nate said with a glance in the rearview mirror. “And no wonder. Is the female of the species born with an ability to power shop?”

“I think so.”

“So how come you didn’t get anything for yourself?”

“Because today wasn’t about me.”

He glanced at her, and she saw a warmth had crept past his guard and into his eyes. But he looked quickly away, before she could bask in it for too long.

Looking straight ahead, as snow was beginning to fall gently, Nate turned on the radio. It was apparently preset to a rock station, but he glanced at the sleeping girl, and then at Morgan, and fiddled with the dial until he found a soft country ballad.

“Why do you call Cecilia ‘Ace’?” Morgan asked.

He hesitated, as if he did not want to reveal one single thing about himself or his family to her.

But then he said, “Her mom had started calling her Sissy, short for Cecilia, I guess. There are no sissies in the Hathoway family. Nobody was calling my kid Sissy.”

And then he sighed. “I regret making an issue over it, now.”

Morgan heard lots of regret in his voice. She had heard about the accident, and knew one minute he’d had a wife, and a life, and the next that everything had changed forever. What were his regrets? Had he called, I love you, as his wife had headed out the door for the last time?

His face was closed now, as if he already had said way more than he wanted to. Which meant he was the strong one who talked to no one about his pain.

She wanted to reach across the darkness of the cab, and invite him to tell her things he had told no one else, but she knew he would not appreciate the gesture.

Silence fell over them. Despite the quiet, there was something good about driving through the night with him, the soft music, the snow falling outside, his scent tickling at her nose.

Normally, particularly if she was driving by herself, the snow would have made Morgan nervous, but tonight she had a feeling of being with a man who would keep those he had been charged with guarding safe no matter what it took, no matter what it cost him.

But he hadn’t, and he wore that failure to protect his wife around him like a cloak of pure pain.

Even though Morgan knew he had not been there at the accident that killed his wife, she was certain he would in some way hold himself responsible. Did he think he should have driven her that night? Not let her go into the storm?

She could not ask him that. Not yet. Which meant she thought someday maybe she could. Why was she hoping this shopping trip was not the end of it?

Because she felt so safe driving with him through the snow-filled night?

Amelia wouldn’t have approved, but it was nice to rely on someone else’s competence. Even though it might be weak, Morgan felt herself savoring the feeling of being looked after.

She glanced at his strong features, illuminated by the dash lights. He looked calm, despite the snowfall growing heavier outside, the windshield wipers slapping along trying to keep up.

Nate Hathoway might not smile much, but Morgan suddenly knew if your back was against the wall and barbarians were coming at you with knives in their teeth, he was the one you would want standing right beside you.

It was weariness that had allowed an independent woman such as herself to entertain such a traitorous thought, Morgan defended herself. And then, as if to prove it, the warmth inside the vehicle, the radio, the mesmerizing fall of snow—and the sense of being safe and taken care of—made it impossible for her to think of clever things to say. Or even to keep her eyes open.

When she woke up, it was to absolute stillness. The sound of the radio was gone, the vehicle had stopped moving, the dashboard lights were off, and the vehicle was empty.

She realized there was a weight on her shoulder, and that it was his hand, not shaking her, just touching her.

Even through the puffiness of her parka, she could feel his warmth, and his strength. It made her want to go back to sleep.

“Morgan, we’re home.”

For home to be a place shared, instead of a place of aloneness, felt like the most alluring dream of all.