Jingle All the Way by Fern Michaels

Author:Fern Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

THE 24 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

LINDA LAEL MILLER

CHAPTER ONE

The snow, as much a Thanksgiving leftover as the cold turkey in the sandwich Frank Raynor had packed for lunch, lay in tattered, dirty patches on the frozen ground. Surveying the leaden sky through the window of the apartment over his garage, Frank sighed and wondered if he’d done the right thing, renting the place to Addie Hutton. She’d grown up in the big house, on the other side of the lawn. How would she feel about taking up residence in what, in her mind, probably amounted to the servants’ quarters?

“Daddy?”

He turned to see his seven-year-old daughter, Lissie, framed in the doorway. She was wearing a golden halo of her own design, constructed from a coat hanger and an old tinsel garland filched from the boxes of Christmas decorations downstairs.

“Does this make me look like an angel?”

Frank felt a squeeze in his chest as he made a show of assessing the rest of the outfit—jeans, snow boots, and a pink T-shirt that said “Brat Princess” on the front. “Yeah, Lisser,” he said. “You’ve got it going on.”

Lissie was the picture of her late mother, with her short, dark and impossibly thick hair, bright hazel eyes, and all those pesky freckles. Frank loved those freckles, just as he’d loved Maggie’s, though she’d hated them, and so did Lissie. “So you think I have a shot at the part, right?”

The kid had her heart set on playing an angel in the annual Christmas pageant at St. Mary’s Episcopal School. Privately, Frank didn’t hold out much hope, since he’d just given the school’s drama teacher, Miss Pidgett, a speeding ticket two weeks before, and she was still steamed about it. She’d gone so far as to complain to the city council, claiming police harassment, but Frank had stood up and said she’d been doing fifty-five in a thirty, and the citation had stuck. The old biddy had barely spoken to him before that; now she was crossing the street to avoid saying hello.

He would have liked to think Almira Pidgett wasn’t the type to take a grown-up grudge out on a seven-year-old, but, unfortunately, he knew from experience that she was. She’d been his teacher, when he first arrived in Pine Crossing, and she’d disliked him from day one.

“What’s so bad about playing a shepherd?” he hedged, and took a sip from his favorite coffee mug. Maggie had made it for him, in the ceramics class she’d taken to keep her mind off the chemo, and he carried it most everywhere he went. Folks probably thought he had one hell of an addiction to caffeine; in truth, he kept the cup within reach because it was the last gift Maggie ever gave him. It was a talisman; he felt closer to her when he could touch it.

Lissie folded her arms and set her jaw, Maggie-style. “It’s dumb for a girl to be a shepherd. Girls are supposed to be angels.”

He hid a grin behind the rim of the mug.

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