His for Christmas: Rescued by his Christmas Angel / Christmas at Candlebark Farm / The Nurse Who Saved Christmas

Morgan wished she had refused, too. The drink filled her with a sense of warmth and well-being as the talk flowed around her. About the farm and the forge, the coming production of The Christmas Angel.

“Did you hear they were deciding who gets to go by a lottery system?” Molly asked.

Morgan confirmed that. There were only three hundred seats available in the auditorium, so the seats would be given away by a lottery system. But she told them that there would be a live feed to the community center and one of the local churches so that everyone who wanted could see it.

“And have they chosen the Christmas Angel yet?” Molly said, casting a worried look at her sleeping niece. “She’s called me several times about it. Tonight’s the first night I haven’t heard her mention it.”

“I understand Mr. Wellhaven will announce the choice at his welcome party. It’s a skating party at the pond, a week from tonight. He’s been sent video of some of the rehearsals.”

“I’d like it to be over with,” Molly said.

“Me, too,” Nate said. “I hate to think how disappointed she’s going to be.”

“Who knows?” Morgan said. “Maybe she won’t be disappointed. Maybe it will be her.”

Molly’s and Nate’s mouths fell open in equal expressions of shocked disbelief.

“Ace?” they said together.

“I’ve told all the girls they have an equal chance of being chosen.”

“But that’s not true,” Nate said grimly. “Ace can’t sing a note, and she doesn’t look like anyone’s idea of an angel.”

“Her singing has actually improved quite a lot under Mrs. Wellhaven’s tutelage.”

“She sings all those songs around the house all the time. I haven’t noticed any improvement.”

“Well,” Morgan said firmly, “there has been. And I think anyone with a little imagination could see she would make a perfectly adorable Christmas Angel.”

“I don’t want her getting her hopes up for something that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.”

It was the first grim note in a perfect day, so Molly quickly changed the subject, but the mood had shifted.

A few minutes later, saying goodbye on the doorstep, Nate cradling the sleeping child against his chest, it seemed to Morgan as if she had never had a more perfect day. She realized it was not the toddy alone that allowed her to feel this sense of warmth and well-being. It had only allowed her to relax into the feeling instead of analyzing it.

“Nate,” she said, as they drove through the snow, “it’s so nice that you still are so connected with them, with Cindy’s family.”

He shot her a surprised look. “Family is family. They became my family the day I married Cindy.”

Morgan shivered. She had always known he was a forever kind of man. Not like in her own family, where loyalties shifted with each new liaison. She could feel herself longing for what he represented.

Morgan realized tonight had been the kind of night she had always dreamed of.

A simple night of family. And connection. A feeling of some things not being temporary.

“I still think it’s nice,” she said.

“We had already lost Cindy. It would have just made everything so much worse if we lost each other. Ace is what remains, she’s what Cindy is sending forward into the future. I could never keep her from her aunt, from her mom’s sister.”

But Morgan thought of all the people—including her own family—that when something happened, like a divorce, that’s exactly what they did.

“When my mom and dad divorced,” she told him, “it was like my dad’s whole side of the family, including him, just faded away.”

“You didn’t have any contact with your dad?”

“A bit, at first. Then he moved for a job, and then he remarried. So, it was a card and some money on my birthday. He always paid my mother support, though.”

“Yippee for him,” Nate said darkly. “There’s a lot more to being a dad than paying the bills.”

“Yes,” she said. “I can see that in the way you parent.”

“Now you like my parenting?” he teased her. “What about the notes?”

“You haven’t gotten one for a while!”

“I kind of miss them.”

“You do not.”

They were in front of her house now, but he made no move to get out of the truck. “What your dad did? That was wrong,” he said, after a long time. “And sad.”

She liked that about Nate Hathoway. He had a strong value system. He knew what was right and what was wrong, and he would never compromise that.

“Nate, tell me if it’s none of my business, but did someone else die, besides your wife? Molly said something.”

For a long moment he didn’t answer. Then he said gruffly, “There were three of us who grew up together. Me, Cindy and David. Cindy and David had been in love since they were about twelve. I mean really in love. The head-over-heels kind. Some people outgrow things like that, other people don’t. They didn’t.”

He was silent for a long, long time. “David joined the army. Before he left he made me promise I’d look after her. If anything happened.”

“Something happened,” Morgan guessed when he was silent for a long time again.

He cast her a look that said it all, that confirmed that strong value system.

“David was killed in Iraq,” he said roughly. “And I looked after Cindy, just like I promised.”

She wanted to ask if he loved her, but it was so evident from the agony on his face that he had loved her. Loved both his friends.

“You are a good man,” she whispered. She wanted to ask, Did she love you? The really-in-love kind? The head-over-heels kind? But she could tell by the set of his face he already felt he might have said too much.

He shrugged it off uncomfortably, and they pulled up to her house. He shut off the truck, and leaped out, not wanting to discuss it anymore. Still, he walked her up to her front door, helped her with the key.

“Thank you, Nate,” she said softly. “It was such a perfect day.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to go down off her stoop.

Maybe it was the hot rum toddy.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was that he was a good, good man, who had made a vow to his best friend and kept it. Maybe it was because she thought he deserved to be really in love and suspected that he had sacrificed that feeling in the name of honor.