“Take your hands off my daughter before I bean you,” Nate said.
Mrs. Wellhaven turned and gave him a look that could have slayed dragons. But he went right by her and scooped up his daughter in his arms.
Ace’s tears flowed down his neck.
“I ruined it, didn’t I, Daddy? I ruined The Christmas Angel?”
He could hear Brenda’s sweet voice filling the auditorium.
“No, sweetheart, you didn’t. You made me really proud. That was a good, good thing to do. The kind of thing only someone with a good heart would think of.”
“I didn’t wreck it?”
“No. I think you made it the best Christmas show, ever.”
He and Morgan and Ace stood there, in the back of the stage, Ace’s tears sliding down his neck as Brenda sang the song, and then Wesley’s powerful voice joined hers as they sang the final number together.
In a moment, as the voices faded, thunderous applause filled the auditorium.
And when it died completely, someone out there yelled, “We want the redheaded angel.”
It was a small town, and someone else provided her name.
“We want Ace. We want Ace Hathoway,” a man called out.
Now it was like thunder, a chant that was picked up and called out. “We want Ace. We want Ace. We want Ace.”
When it could not be ignored a moment longer, when it felt as if the very roof would fall in under the tremendous volume of that demand, Morgan tugged at his sleeve and ducked under the curtain, bringing him with her.
He looked out at the sea of faces. He saw his friends and his neighbors. And he saw they were on their feet, whistling and stamping.
And he got it.
These people saw Ace’s spirit, her willingness to give even though it hurt her, her willingness to put another’s well-being ahead of her own.
He remembered her words the night after she had had the dream.
Ace had told him her mommy was going to save Christmas. That her mommy was going to show people what it was really all about.
And he could see that’s exactly what had happened. He saw the true spirit of Christmas in his daughter’s generous spirit. In the people cheering for her. In Wesley Wellhaven’s brave, brave choice to choose a less than perfect Christmas Angel.
And he saw it in Morgan, in the way she was looking at them both, with such love, smiling through her tears.
And the Light broke apart the darkness and chased it from him, like the sun chasing away the last of the storm.
His daughter had just taught him something that was not just a lesson for Christmas, but a lesson for life.
Love gave. Love didn’t ask what it was getting back. Love didn’t say, you might hurt me, so I’m not going to try at all.
Love said, give everything you’ve got, every single minute that you’ve got it. Love said, time is short. Don’t waste one precious moment of it being afraid, or protecting yourself.
Love said, risk all. It’s worth it to know Me.
And in that moment of illumination, Nate knew Wesley was right. And so was Morgan.
Miracles did happen. They came in the form of people, and insights and moments of inspiration. They came on the magnificent voice of a humble man, and the humble voice of a magnificent girl.
Wasn’t that what Christmas did? Reminded people, all over again, especially the weary, especially those who had forgotten, especially those who felt downtrodden, especially those who felt beaten, to hope for a miracle. And to believe it would come.
But a person had to be open to that miracle coming. He had to be willing to see.
Or they would slip away if they were not acknowledged. And maybe after a while, if a man turned his back on enough miracles, maybe they wouldn’t come back anymore at all.
As if to show how easily things could slip away, Morgan moved away from him and Ace, and over to her first graders. She was instantly surrounded in their clamor. Even from here he could here them calling for her attention.
“Mrs. McGuire. Mrs. McGuire.”
She went down on her knees and opened her arms. In a moment he could not see her for all the wriggling bodies trying to get close to her, to hug her, to cuddle with her.
A man could make his own darkness. And he could live in it forever.
But Nate Hathoway wasn’t going to. Not anymore.
What seemed to be a long time ago, Morgan had told him she was going to spend Christmas alone.
And he had known she wasn’t.
Now he knew she wasn’t ever going to again. Not as long as she lived and breathed. Not as long as he lived and breathed.
If she said yes.
Standing there on that stage, with his daughter in his arms and the woman he loved with that head-over-heels kind of love that made it impossible for a man to breathe or think or function, with the whole town on their feet whistling and clapping, he felt a breath on his neck.
And heard her whisper, once, yes.
He glanced at Morgan and realized she had not said a word.
And he realized, his heart swelling, that he and his daughter and the woman he loved stood among angels.
Morgan looked around her tiny house sadly. She snapped her tiny suitcase shut, put her book Bliss: The Extraordinary Joy of Being a Single Woman on top of it.
She was going to cry. She knew it.
Just thinking of those last moments on stage—not Ace’s performance, or Brenda’s, either—but the moment those children had surrounded her. She had hugged each and every one, only she knowing the truth.
Goodbye.
When she thought of not seeing her kids again, or her friends at the school, when she thought of not seeing Nate and Ace, the lump in her throat grew so large she could not even swallow.
Of course, she was going to cry for the rest of her life every single time she thought of Ace, The Christmas Angel, giving up her dream so that her friend could have hers.
She was going to cry for the rest of her life every single time she thought of these days before Christmas that she had spent with Nate.
They had a shine to them that was imprinted on her soul.
She was exhausted. She should probably wait for morning, but the thought of waking up alone on Christmas morning in this sweet little house was more than she could bear.
Just as she moved toward the door, there was a tap on it. Morgan froze, thinking she might have imagined it, thinking that maybe a branch had tapped the window.
But no, there it came again.
She tiptoed to her front window, craned her neck and could see her doorstep. Nate stood there.
Now what?
She was determined to go, to give this independent life a genuine shot. To make it a success this time. To not be swept from her chosen path.
He had gotten in the way before, a test that she had failed.
Maybe he was still testing her. And she wasn’t going to fail this time.
Hoping only she would ever know her boldness was a complete pretext, she went and threw open the door.
“Hi.”
“Nate.”
His eyes drank her in, like a man who had crossed the desert, and she was a long cool drink of water.
Then his eyes left her, found the suitcase, went back to her. He frowned.
“Did you decide to go spend Christmas with your family after all?”
“Yes,” she lied. So much easier than saying, I am running away from you who wants no part of me or the kind of dreams I offer.
Something in her voice tipped him off, because his eyes went back to her face, suddenly skeptical. Without being invited, he moved by her and stood in her living room.
“What happened to your tree?”
“I took it down. I didn’t want to come home—” her voice caught on the word home, but she rushed on “—to find a pile of needles on the floor.”
He was looking now at the boxes packed neatly on top of the purple couch. His eyes scanned her living room.
�
��Where’s all the highly breakable bric-a-brac?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“Are you leaving?”
She couldn’t look at him. Her shoulders were shaking. She looked down at her feet. She was mortified to see a teardrop on the end of her shoe.
His feet moved into her line of vision. One lean finger came under her chin and lifted it.
“You can’t leave,” he said huskily. “We’ve just begun.”
But it was him who wasn’t leaving. He took off his jacket and hung it on one of their coat hangers. He set down a wrapped Christmas package beside it.
“You said you didn’t need me or my kind of dreams,” she reminded him shakily, as he turned back to her and regarded her with those steady eyes.
We’ve just begun? That weakness was sweeping her, that longing was knocking the legs right out from under her.
She pulled away from him, caught a glance of her book sitting on top of her luggage, a stern reminder of the bliss that awaited her if she could just get through this.
“Did you know,” she told him, “whole cultures are dispensing with relationships?”
He folded his arms over the mightiness of his chest, she suspected to keep himself from shaking her, but she bravely went on.
“In some Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Iceland, women are choosing not to get married anymore. They still have children, they’ve just dispensed with the, er, bothersome part.”
“You mean men?” he asked grimly.
“Yes,” she said, tilting her chin at him, “the bothersome part.”
“Ah. The insensitive part.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The part that tends to run and hide when something like commitment begins to look likely.”
“Exactly.”
“The part that looks for an excuse to drive people away when they start getting too close.”
Was he talking about him or about her? Because wasn’t that what she was doing? Literally driving away because she had gotten too close. Her relationship with Karl had never asked this much of her, but she had driven away from that one, too.
“Well, dispensing with men is probably all well and good, we are a bothersome lot, but who puts up their coat hangers?”
“I’m sure they hire it out.”
“Ditto for Christmas trees?”
“I haven’t got to that part of the book, yet.”
“And who deals with the stubborn ponies?”
“Not everyone has a stubborn pony to deal with.”
“Who do they teach to make cookies?”
“Their children.”
“Ah, the children that they dispensed with the bother of giving a father. How do the children feel about that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, a little querulously. “I don’t know any Scandinavian children. Or Scandinavian women for that matter.”
He moved closer to her, stared down at her.
“Who holds them in the night, Morgan? Who do they laugh with? Who do they hold hands with? Who do they kiss? Who makes the loneliness go away? Who makes the sun come out when it’s raining?”
“You can’t make the sun come out when it’s raining!” Oh, hell. They weren’t even talking about him. They were talking in general terms. Why had she said that?
But he moved closer to her. “Try me,” he breathed.
“It’s not raining.”
“It is in my world, Morgan. The thought of you going away is making it rain in my world.”
And then he closed the small distance between them, bent, cupped his hand at the back of her neck and drew her lips to his.
She willed herself to pull away in the interests of being the woman she should be.
But it seemed when her lips met his, she discovered, anew, exactly who that was.
“It’s working for me,” he said softly against her lips. “The sun is coming out for me, Morgan. And I know. Because I’ve been without it for a long time. Do you have to go there? Do you have to see for yourself what a lonely place the world can be?”
His lips took hers again before she could answer.
“I’ve been married,” he said to her, a whisper. “And I’ve been single. A good marriage is the best, Morgan. You live with your best friend. You aren’t lonely anymore.”
She could feel something stilling in her, rising up to meet him.
“And you know what else, Morgan? You don’t have to be afraid.”
And that said it all. All her life she had thought she was afraid her dreams would not come true.
Now, she could see, she was much more afraid they would. What could ever live up to the expectation she had in her mind, after all? How long before the disillusionment set in? How long before one of them crashed out the door in the middle of the night and never came back?
Stunned, she realized she was repeating the pattern of her childhood. She was abandoning the ship because of exactly what he had just said.
Morgan was afraid.
He looked at her, and in his eyes, she knew he could see her fear. He took her hand, and guided it gently to his face.
And found what he had said was true.
She did not have to be afraid anymore.
She touched his face with her fingertips, explored it. The word beloved came to her mind and stayed.
“Don’t go, Morgan. Stay. Stay and marry me. I love you. I have loved you from the first moment you ignored my Go Away sign.”
“You didn’t. You were annoyed by me.”
“Some part of me may have been annoyed. Another part knew that you had come to get me. To pull me out of the darkness. And now, I’m coming to get you, Morgan. I don’t care what they do in Iceland. I don’t want you to be alone.”
She could hardly believe what she had just heard, what he had just offered, but when she saw his face, she knew it was true.
“Look,” he said. “I got you a Christmas present.”
He handed her the package he had set on the floor.
“This is one of the worst wrapping jobs I’ve ever seen,” she said, tears, this time of joy, sparking in her eyes.
“You have a lifetime to teach me how to wrap parcels. And bake cookies.”
The wrapping fell away, and she saw the hammer he had picked for her. And tied to its sturdy handle with a fine piece of gold wire was a ring.
“And I have a lifetime to show you,” he continued softly, “how to hang coat hangers and choose the right hammer. I have all kinds of skills you don’t know about, too.”
She could feel herself blushing, and he grinned wickedly.
“Well, there is that. But I’m also a champion diaper changer. You don’t get that in every man.”
And that the miracle she had waited her whole life for had just come. To have someone to lean on. To belong. To love.
“Will you?” he asked softly. “Will you come and spend Christmas Eve out at Molly and Keith’s? And spend Christmas Day with us?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We’ll start there, then,” he decided. He took the hammer from her, carefully unwound the sparkling diamond ring and slid it onto her finger.
She held up her hand, and the ring twinkled, and diamond sparks of light flew from it.
That matched the sparks of light that flew from his eyes.
“Yes,” Morgan whispered again. Not just to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but to a life spent beside this man, bathed in the Light.
Epilogue
THE GRAVEYARD WAS QUIET and cold, a little daylight lingered in a cobalt-blue sky. The deep snow muffled his footprints. It was not where everyone would spend a Christmas Eve, but Nate had been drawn here tonight.
“I hope not to escape my mother-in-law,” he muttered wryly.
But, of course, it was partly to escape her. Morgan’s mother, who used to be plain old Anne, but had changed her name to Chosita after her long stay in Thailand. She said she had adopted the new moniker because everyone had called her that there. She said it
meant happiness.
Morgan elbowed Nate in the ribs hard, when he said, coincidentally they had a pony by the same name and that he had almost exactly the same disposition. Nate had since found out that Chosita could indeed mean happiness, but it was sort of the American equivalent of “Hey, lady!”
Morgan’s mother drove him nuts, wearing her Thai sarongs in downtown Canterbury where she improved stocks in the bookstore by adding to her substantial self-help collection.
But Ace adored her, and Morgan was thrilled that her mother was here to spend Christmas with them. Morgan genuinely hoped the baby, due any day, would put in an appearance while her mom was here.
Nate exacted subtle revenge on Chosita for what he saw as her astoundingly poor parenting throughout Morgan’s childhood and adolescence. This afternoon, for instance, he subjected her to the longest sleigh ride in Happy history. He’d made sure to ply her with several buckets of tea first, too.
He smiled, now, just thinking of it, then knelt beside the two stones.
He knew flowers couldn’t handle the cold, so he always brought sprigs of holly, and a fir bough with a candle in it that he would light before he left, and that would burn through to Christmas morning.
“I know, I know,” he said, as he brushed the snow from the two stones, “I’m being uncharitable for Christmas. It’s just her, really.”
The wind howled.
“Okay, so I’ve never warmed to Mrs. Wellhaven, either.”
He had just gotten a thank-you note from the Wellhavens for the intricate iron fireplace grate he had sent them. He never forgot Wesley, or the debt he felt he owed to the man who had not left him in the darkness that Christmas Eve two years ago.
As it had turned out, the whole economy of Canterbury had not been saved by the production of The Christmas Angel, but it had certainly been helped over the hump.
As it had turned out, the second annual Christmas production had been the last one Wesley gave.
Shortly after The Christmas Angel, Wesley had gone back into retirement to lead the quiet reclusive life he enjoyed. There had been no more Christmas productions, and people thought he did not sing at all. Every now and then one of the tabloids would run a story about the tragic loss of his voice.
But of course Nate knew that not to be true, because on the finest day of his life, when he had stood at the altar waiting for the woman who would be his wife to come toward him, that voice had filled the cathedral. Between the beauty of that voice and the beauty of his bride, there had not been a dry eye in the house that afternoon, including his own.
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