All They Want for Christmas by M. K. Stelmack

Author:M. K. Stelmack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-06-15T19:45:45+00:00

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WEDNESDAY FLEW BY for Bridget with hardly a second to herself, much less with Jack. The night’s event of tree decorating at the house was the closest they’d come to being together all day. Bridget fastened the lights on the tree, while he fed her the strand.

“I could’ve done this yesterday on my day off,” Krista said from her station with Mara setting up the Christmas village on the mantel. “You made it out that there was this big secret to putting up lights. Once I had to put lights on twelve Christmas trees for this store display. They were huge. And I had to do them by myself. I didn’t have an assistant, like you do.”

“If I’d known what an exhausting experience this is,” Jack said, “I would’ve been there for you, Krista.”

His experience was to hold coils of light while Bridget fixed them to the branches. She paused to face him. “Flown halfway around the world to put up Christmas lights?”

“Seeing how absolutely riveting it is to circle this tree a hundred times, of course I would’ve dropped everything.” Definite sarcasm, but there was warmth behind it that made her own cheeks heat up.

She glanced away to catch Deidre studying them with open speculation. Deidre was in charge of setting out the Christmas books Auntie Penny had saved from when she was a girl.

Deidre made a soft exclamation. “I’d forgotten all about this one!”

She held up a Little Golden book with its classic golden embossed spine. Walt Disney’s Santa’s Toy Workshop. “Our mother read this to us, and then when we could read, Penny and I read it to each other. Penny always fussed about why Santa and his wife had to rely on elves instead of their kids helping.”

“That’s easy,” Krista said. “The kids grew up and moved away and never came back.”

“Like sisters,” Bridget couldn’t help mumbling.

“We’re back now, aren’t we?”

They were. To stay.

“I’ll read it to the girls tomorrow night,” Bridget said. Jack had pushed up the girls’ bedtime tonight by a half hour by eliminating storytime, with the promise that tomorrow they’d wake to a Christmas miracle in the living room.

On the sofa, Deidre flipped through the pages. “I cared more that Santa got to travel the entire world in a single night. Penny spun stories about how Santa discovered his long-lost parents. Something to do with how the cookies laid out for him tasted exactly like those when he was a little boy.”

Krista was setting down a church with a rickety steeple as she observed, “That’s ironic, considering how she sort of turned Jack into the same kind of Santa.”

Bridget felt Jack tense. Rejection sucked, whether it hit you at six years of age, or as an adult. She unlooped a coil of lights, her fingers skimming his, and he visibly relaxed.

“Honestly, I can’t even wrap my head around the fact that Penny is my mother. That you two are my cousins.”

Krista pointed playfully at Bridget. “You three.”

“No kissing cousins here,” Deidre said.

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