Baby By Christmas (The McIntyre Men Book 5) by Maggie Shayne & Jessica Lewis

Author:Maggie Shayne & Jessica Lewis [Shayne, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thunderfoot Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2017-11-27T18:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Eight

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Logan felt like he’d been transported into a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie. Allie’s family decorated a pine tree in her living room as if it was the most important task on the planet. Nothing about the world around him seemed real. Even the handful of things that he’d thought he understood, things about family were completely different than what he’d thought.

He’d pictured people, and a nice home, and meals at a table, and parents who attended school functions. But he’d never ever once imagined the love of the thing. It was like a big, glowing, sphere that emanated from each of them and encompassed all of them.

And somehow or other, it encompassed him, too.

He looked at his best friend, who stood there arranging silver tinsel, one delicate strand at a time. A month ago, tough-as-nails Captain Adam Wakeland had been riding beside him in a Humvee over rutted dirt roads in Afghanistan.

His gaze wandered back to Allie. It didn’t stay very long on anything or anyone else. She held a decoration in her hand, a tiny gold frame in the shape of a house with a picture of her family inside. The photo showed grade-school versions of Allie, Angie and Adam with their parents, younger than they were now but every bit as much in love. It glowed from their eyes and gleamed in their smiles.

Logan had always thought of Christmas ornaments as just colorful balls in red and green, but the ornaments in this house were different. Most of them were the kinds of things kids make in school. Paper plate snowflakes, clothespin reindeer, popsicle-stick sleds, and candy canes made from red and white pipe cleaners all twisted together. Logan had made them as a kid too, but no one had been around to wrap his hand-made creations in tissue paper and save them for Christmases to come. He’d rarely even had a tree to hang them on, and usually left them in the classroom.

Mixed in with the school projects were special ornaments that Allie’s parents had bought for each of their children every year. They’d kept some of them, and divided the rest between Allie and Angie, who traded them back and forth each year. Adam would join in that tradition once he was home long enough to have a Christmas tree of his own to decorate. Allie explained all that.

Because her family couldn’t stand the idea of Allie decorating her tree alone, they always joined her to put it up and add ornaments before taking their own trees home.

They recited memories as they hung each ornament. A tiny pink cradle from the year Allie was born. A pair of ballet shoes to honor her first dance recital. A baseball bat for the time Adam’s team had won the regionals. There were dozens of memories hanging from the tree in short order, a visual timeline of their family history.

It made Logan wonder about his own parents. He wondered if they’d had other kids—which would mean he might have siblings.

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