A Knights Bridge Christmas

by Carla Neggers

  “Volunteer for a double shift. A triple shift. Anything.”

  “I don’t need to. I’m visited by Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts at night. They’re trying to get me to change my approach to Christmas, maybe to life.”

  “They only visit when you’re in Knights Bridge, right? Not here in Boston.”

  “Here as well as at home.”

  “Home.” Paul grimaced, finishing his beer. “Logan.”

  “Did I just call Knights Bridge home? Damn. It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s a cute town. A picnic on the town common, a stroll in the shade—”

  “There’s a skating rink on the common in winter.”

  “I hate ice-skating. I got ten stitches once when my brother tripped me. He says it was an accident. I don’t believe him.” Paul shrugged. “Okay, maybe it was a couple of Band-Aids but it felt like stitches. Loads of blood. I think I decided to go into medicine then.”

  “You loved it,” Logan said, amused. “You felt like a hockey player.”

  “Dylan McCaffrey lives in Knights Bridge now. He was a hell of a hockey player. I hear he’s made a fortune since then.”

  “Let’s change the subject.”

  The temperature had dropped when Logan headed back to his apartment. He hit a wind tunnel, a gust of frigid air slamming into him. He half expected one of Scrooge’s Christmas ghosts to ooze out of the shadows. Old Ebenezer had most feared the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Do I fear him? Logan asked himself. Would he become a workaholic doctor with a string of divorces and estranged children? Would he face burnout alone and bitter?

  And Clare Morgan. She was content with her life in Knights Bridge, but she was lonely. What would the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come show her?

  Logan shook off such thinking. He buttoned his jacket and walked faster. He hadn’t planned anything special for Christmas before deciding to go to Knights Bridge. Work, a movie, sleep. He’d have called his family and not thought twice about the kind of life he was leading. His ability to shut out everything and focus on the present was an asset in emergency medicine. He could be impatient and irritable but he didn’t have a noisy mind.

  Did that make him shallow, destined to live an unexamined life?

  He thought of his grandfather’s note to his grandmother. The love—the depth of that love.

  He crossed Boylston Street, glad to be out of the wind. He walked down to the tall, beautifully lit Christmas tree outside the Prudential Center. A long day at work and a good evening with a friend, but he thought of how much Owen Morgan would enjoy the tree...and Clare.

  Logan shut his eyes, but it was as if she were here with him, with her smile, with her translucent skin, pale hair and shapely body.

  He gritted his teeth. He was an idiot.

  He needed to go home, get some sleep, go to work tomorrow and regroup.

  And plan Christmas Eve dinner.

  Fifteen

  “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!”

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  LOGAN HAD CHRISTMAS Eve lunch with his grandmother and her friends in the Rivendell dining room. Clare saw him laughing with the white-haired women as she dropped off books. She didn’t interrupt them, just left quietly and returned to the library.

  Owen, Aidan and Tyler Sloan, and a handful of other children arrived for story hour.

  It was snowing lightly when she closed the library and she and Owen walked down South Main Street toward the Farrell house.

  “That’s Logan,” Owen said, pointing across the street at a man on the common.

  Logan waved to them. Clare took Owen’s hand and ran across the street with him.

  “I want to show you something,” Logan said.

  They walked to the town’s World War II memorial. Carved in the granite were names of Knights Bridge men who’d served during the war, and the one who’d died?

  Angus Robert Farrell.

  Logan touched his great-uncle’s name. “I found a picture of him at the house.”

  “He looked a lot like you,” Clare said.

  “The librarian at work?”

  “I found a notice about him...”

  “His obituary,” Logan said. “He died during Operation Market Garden. It was a long time ago to us. To the women I had lunch with, it must feel like yesterday.”

  “I’m glad Daisy told you the story about the candle.”

  “I am, too.” He looked up at the gray sky, the snow easing. Then he turned to Clare and took her hand. “What do you say the three of us go ice-skating before dinner?”

  Owen was all for it. Clare couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on skates, but she realized she was excited about the idea. And he’d obviously been planning it, since he’d borrowed skates for her from Maggie Sloan.

  With Dylan McCaffrey and Olivia Frost’s Christmas Eve wedding, the skating rink was quiet. Logan glided out onto the ice with Owen as Clare got used to being on skates again.

  “It’s like riding a bike,” she said, laughing as she eased onto the ice.

  Owen found a stray hockey puck and hockey stick and busied himself pretending he was an NHL player. Logan eased in next to Clare, sweeping an arm around her and spinning her out onto the ice.

  The snow picked up again, glowing in the Christmas lights as dusk descended on the village.

  When they finally crossed South Main Street to the Farrell house, it was almost dark. Logan had the dining room table set for dinner and a sweet-potato-and-apple casserole, baked salmon with chive-and-parsley butter, green beans and rolls set to go.

  “Dessert’s hot chocolate and marshmallows,” he said. “I’m not much on baking.”

  After dinner, they went into the front room. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the Christmas tree twinkled with its strings of lights. Logan set the half-melted pillar candle on the windowsill—the same candle Betty Farrell, his great-grandmother, had made in her farmhouse kitchen and lit on Christmas Eve through the war that had claimed her older son.

  He got the candle lit just as carolers arrived in front of the house.

  Clare took his hand. “Come on. Let’s join them.”

  The snow had stopped, just an inch or so freshening up the landscape. Pleased to have a six-year-old in their midst, the carolers asked Owen what he would like to sing. “‘Jingle Bells,’” he said happily, then smiled up at Logan and his mother. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

  And so it would be, Clare thought, feeling Logan’s arm come around her and realizing that she was in love with him.

  A Recipe for Baked Sweet Potatoes and Apples

  Sweet potatoes, apples, butter and apple cider are all handy staples. Combined, they’re irresistible. Old-fashioned cider mills like the one Justin Sloan plans to renovate dot the New England countryside. Some are still in use, producing fresh apple cider.

  3 medium sweet potatoes

  2 apples

  ¾ cup apple cider

  4 tablespoons butter, cut in pieces

  Preheat oven to 350°F. Parboil sweet potatoes, then drain, cool, peel and slice about ¼" thick into buttered casserole, alternating with apples, also sliced about ¼" thick. Pour cider over all and dot with butter. Bake until apples and sweet potatoes are soft, about 45 minutes.

  For added sweetness, add about ½ cup of brown sugar to the cider. For added spiciness, add ½ teaspoon each of ground nutmeg and allspice to the cider.

  A Recipe for Chive-and-Parsley Butter

  Chives and parsley are easy to grow in pots through the winter, and fresh herbs are readily available in supermarkets. Herb butters have many uses, from adding to mashed potatoes to melting atop grilled or baked salmon.

  1 cup unsalted butter

  1 teaspoon salt (optional)

  2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

  2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

  Mi
x all ingredients together and chill for at least 2 hours to blend flavors. May be frozen for up to a month.

  Epilogue

  ... And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  Almost four months later

  APRIL SHOWERS MIGHT bring May flowers, Logan thought, but they also brought mud. He’d at least had the sense to change into his running shoes before leaving Boston. His emergency department had dealt with a mass casualty incident—a multiple-car pileup on Storrow Drive—and he was bone tired. But he couldn’t imagine anywhere he wanted to be more than Knights Bridge.

  He entered his grandmother’s house. The Christmas decorations were long put away, and the tree and boughs ground up for mulch. He could continue to divide his time between here and Boston, but he had options in emergency medicine closer to Knights Bridge.

  Closer to home.

  Clare would be at the library, getting ready for the spring book sale. The appraisal of A Christmas Carol had come back, and it was, indeed, a first edition. It almost certainly had come from George Sanderson’s collection. It was worth a great deal, and it helped that Tom Farrell had written his note to his sweetheart separately and not on the pages of the old copy of the Dickens classic he’d grabbed for his book report.

  He smiled when he went into the front room and discovered stacks of swatches and paint chips on the coffee table. Clare’s doing, with the help of her Knights Bridge friends. The house wasn’t going on the market. It was staying in the Farrell family, and he couldn’t be more pleased—but no one was happier than Daisy Farrell.

  The place needed infrastructure work—a new furnace, updated wiring, a new roof—but Clare was far more interested in the cosmetic changes. In addition to her friends, she was getting advice from Daisy, Audrey, Grace and a few other elderly women at Rivendell. There was a lot of wisdom in that facility, if also a lot of wrinkles.

  Logan was staying out of the decorating. Clare could decide to paint every room purple and he wouldn’t care.

  Well, maybe purple would be going too far.

  He had hired Mark Flanagan, the local architect married to Randy and Louise Frost’s younger daughter. Logan wasn’t worried about extensive work on the house getting started. He and Clare would have her little sawmill apartment when needed.

  He had it all planned out in his head, this new life of his.

  But when he heard Clare running up the porch steps, he realized his palms were sweating and his heart was beating rapidly, a rarity for him even during his medical school days.

  She came inside, smiling as she greeted him.

  “Marry me,” he said. “Clare... Clare, Clare, Clare. I love you. I had this big speech planned, but that’s all there is to it. I love you, and I want you to be my wife.”

  She put her hand over her mouth, clearly speechless.

  They’d declared their love numerous times since Christmas, but this was different. This wasn’t just about sex and the emotions of the moment. This was about commitment. About their lives together.

  And about Owen. The little boy was already lobbying for a little sister or brother.

  Clare and I can make that happen, Logan thought.

  He took her fingers into his and kissed them. “Let’s try that again. Clare Morgan, will you marry me?”

  She nodded, tears in her eyes. “Yes, Logan Farrell, I will marry you.” She slipped her arms around him. “I love you. I love you so much.”

  * * *

  Clare had promised to help Maggie lead a candle-making workshop at Rivendell. The story of Daisy’s candle had inspired the seniors. Logan just hoped they didn’t set the place on fire, but they’d taken proper precautions.

  Daisy and her friends had gathered in a small meeting room, and Maggie had set up for the workshop. Instead of seeing geriatric issues—aging organs, forgetfulness, chronic disease—Logan focused on the smiles and laughter. The past, present and future had come together in that small room.

  He stood back as Clare, confident and still a bit red-cheeked from his proposal, announced that she and Logan were engaged. No one seemed surprised, only happy. Love and weddings were in the air lately in Knights Bridge.

  As they got on with their candle making, Logan swore he saw the Farrell brothers laughing in the corner, together again as they watched the girls they’d loved, now old women.

  But maybe it was just the spring sunshine and shadows.

  The nub of a candle was still in the front window on South Main. It had been his idea to leave it there. He and Clare would light it tonight, one last time before they had new candles to light.

  His eyes connected with hers, and she smiled. He smiled back, with a love that would take them through many Christmases yet to come...and was forever.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from ECHO LAKE by Carla Neggers.

  Author Note

  EVERY DECEMBER, WE watch A Christmas Carol. There are many great adaptations, but our favorite is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. But we also love the Muppet version. Who can forget Rizzo the Rat?

  Candles are a big part of our Christmas celebrations, but we leave the candle making to others. I remember one Christmas when the power went out, and we gathered around the woodstove to stay warm and lit candles as we sang carols.

  A Knights Bridge Christmas is part of my Swift River Valley series. The story takes place the same Christmas as Olivia Frost and Dylan McCaffrey’s wedding, which is featured in my enovella, Christmas at Carriage Hill. It is also the same winter that Heather Sloan meets her match in Brody Hancock in Echo Lake. In my upcoming The Spring at Moss Hill, reclusive Kylie Shaw has a secret that relentless private investigator Russ Colton is determined to find out.

  For more information about the Swift River Valley series and all my books, please visit my website and sign up for my newsletter, and join me on Facebook and Twitter.

  Merry Christmas!

  Carla

  www.carlaneggers.com

  “Neggers does the near impossible: she brings a small-town, family-loving heroine and a footloose hero together in an engaging romance that has its fair share of surprises.”

  —Library Journal on Echo Lake

  Looking for more small-town tales of family, friendship and love from

  New York Times bestselling author Carla Neggers? Return to Swift River Valley, where unexpected romance could be just around the next corner...

  Secrets of the Lost Summer

  That Night on Thistle Lane

  Cider Brook

  Christmas at Carriage Hill (novella)

  Echo Lake

  “Neggers captures readers’ attention with her usual flair and brilliance and gives us a romance, a mystery and a lesson in history.”

  —RT Book Reviews, Top Pick, on Secrets of the Lost Summer

  Complete your collection!

  Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Harlequin.com/newsletters

  Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

  Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

  HarlequinBlog.com

  Echo Lake

  by Carla Neggers

  One

  As much as Heather Sloan loved a bright New England winter day, chasing a puppy through knee-deep snow in seventeen degrees wasn’t her idea of fun. Rohan—the runaway puppy, a twelve-week-old golden retriever—wasn’t quickly tiring of his romp or sticking to the plowed driveway and shoveled walks, either. Not a chance. She spotted his tracks, leading through the woods straight for quiet, frozen Echo Lake.

  She wasn’t following a rabbit or deer by mistake. They definitely were puppy tracks. She paused, noting that the trail veered to the right, parallel to the lake. Something must have caught Rohan’s attentio
n. A bird, a breeze, a noise.

  Great.

  Heather followed the tracks through a deeper drift, but they disappeared under the low-hanging, snow-laden branches of two gnarly hemlocks. Rohan could easily fit under them. She couldn’t. The trees grew so close together that trying to squeeze between them meant getting snow down her back. Going around them would risk a delay in finding the tracks again.

  She was already cold. She wasn’t dressed for a puppy rescue. Ankle boots, leather gloves, a wool scarf and her three-quarter-length chocolate-brown wool coat. Why? Of all days, why hadn’t she worn her Carhartt jacket and L.L. Bean boots? It wasn’t as if her attire would impress Vic Scarlatti, the newly retired diplomat whose renovations she was overseeing. His 1912 lake house was out of sight now, up through the trees past a small guesthouse. He was searching the garage, shed and porches. Adrienne Portale, the wine-expert daughter of one of Vic’s Foreign Service friends, was searching the house, in case Rohan hadn’t slipped outside, after all.

  But he had, and he would be in serious trouble in this cold if Heather didn’t get to him soon. What was a little snow down her back? With five older brothers, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to. They’d had an epic snowball fight on New Year’s Day.

  She plunged between the hemlocks, moving as fast as she could, but there was no way to avoid disturbing the snow clinging to the evergreen branches. She got a spray in her face and a clump down her back and almost lost a boot, but when she emerged on the other side of the hemlocks, she was practically standing in Rohan’s tracks.

  She went still, quieting her breathing as she listened. Her cheeks were numb, and her fingertips and toes ached with the cold. She’d pulled her scarf over her head as best she could in lieu of a hat, but it was loose now, one end dangling down her front. The late-January afternoon sky was cloudless, the air as crisp and clear and cold as it had been since the latest storm earlier in the week. She glanced to her left toward the snow-covered lake. Echo Lake wasn’t big, but it was one of the largest lakes in out-of-the-way Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.