Silhouette Christmas Stories Read online

  Silhouette Christmas Stories

  Ann Major

  Rita Rainville

  Lindsay Mckenna

  Kathleen Creighton

  A collection of stories

  Santa's special miracle by Ann Major

  All widowed Noreen Black's son wanted for Christmas was a daddy, but even Santa couldn't bring the man she loved into their family. Grant Hale's comforting arms almost made Noreen forget why she'd run from him years ago. Yet when he discovered the child she'd kept secret, only a miracle would grant a little boy's wish…

  Lights out! by Rita Rainville

  Despite a grandfather named Kris K. Ringle, Carroll Stilwell's holidays weren't starting out well. Grandpa's experiments with seasonal decoration kept putting out lights all over town, and their handsome new neighbor was complainting about the power failures. But despite his anger, Carroll kept wondering how he would look under her tree!

  Always and forever by Lindsay McKenna

  Fighter pilot Kyle Anderson waged a private war against desire for the one woman he could never have. Gale Taylor had sworn never to give her heart again…until a twist of fate at Christmas sne her into Kyle's arms for always.

  The mysterious gift by Kaltheleen Creighton

  Christmas looked bleak. Karen Todd was broke, with eight-year-old Andrew to support. Only mechanic – and guardian angel – Tony Angelo stood between her and total poverty. After all, no car, no job. Then Andrew asked Santa for a very special gift. Would Tony be an angel one more time?

  Ann Major, Rita Rainville, Lindsay McKenna, Kathleen Creighton

  Silhouette Christmas Stories

  © 1990

  Dear Reader,

  Christmas is a special season, and at Silhouette Books, we've created a special tradition to celebrate this time of giving-Silhouette Christmas Stories. This year marks the fifth volume of our Christmas collection, and I think you'll find it a treasure from start to finish!

  Ann Major has written a heartwarming story of a lost love and the miracle of wishes, Santa and Christmas in "Santa's Special Miracle." Rita Rainville's "Lights Out!" holds all the wit, charm and high-voltage humor we have come to expect from this talented author. Critically acclaimed for her military romances, Lindsay McKenna has created a touching portrayal of the power of love in "Always and Forever." In Kathleen Creighton's "The Mysterious Gift," two lonely people find that the magic of Christmas is really the magic of love when a mysterious gift appears.

  From beginning to end, these four gifted authors have created a special gift for you, their readers, with this collection. All of us at Silhouette Books thank you for your support, and wish you the very best this holiday season and in the coming year.

  Happy Holidays!

  Isabel Swift

  Editorial Manager

  SANTA'S SPECIAL MIRACLE by Ann Major

  A recipe from Ann Major:

  CHRISTMAS DATE-NUT FRUIT CAKE

  4 whole eggs

  2 lbs (8 cups) pecans (whole halves)

  1 lb (1/2 cups) whole Brazil nuts

  2 cups flour

  2 cups candied pineapple

  2 cups candied cherries, halved

  2 cups dates

  1 cup sugar

  1/2 cup rum or 1/2 cup bourbon (I use bourbon)

  2 tbsp vanilla

  2 tsp baking powder

  1/2 tsp salt

  In a large bowl, beat eggs. Gradually add sugar and vanilla. Cream together. Add flour, baking powder, salt, nuts and fruit, mixing well with large spoon after each addition.

  Line 2 bread loaf pans with wax paper, glossy side inward. Divide mixture between pans. Firmly mash into pans, making sure all air pockets are removed and mixture is compact.

  Place in cold oven. Set oven at 325° F. Bake for 1 hour or until knife inserted in center of cake comes out dry.

  Remove pans from oven and pour rum or bourbon over cakes while hot.

  Serve cake sliced into thin pieces as a snack or dessert, adding ice cream or whipped cream as desired. The nuts and fruit may make the cake appear like stained glass. Any way you serve it, this cake is beautiful in appearance and delicious in taste.

  Chapter One

  Oh, why had she let Sara and Jim and their children talk her into driving with them into San Antonio to shop?

  Lights and red and gold velvet streamers sparkled from the ceiling of San Antonio's River Center Mall. A festive, last-minute mania infected the shoppers and salespeople who hustled and bustled everywhere.

  But Noreen Black couldn't get into the Christmas spirit. Instead she felt a quiet desperation, an aching loneliness. Oh, sure, she'd bought half a dozen gifts. Sure, she was being jostled along in the crowd like everybody else during the holiday season. And right now she was struggling to keep a tight grip on Darius's little hand as well as manage her huge shopping sacks. But unlike everyone else who seemed in a joyful mood, Noreen felt only despair.

  Suddenly through the crowd Noreen saw a tall man with broad shoulders and darkly handsome good looks threading his way toward her.

  It couldn't be! No! Not Grant! Not after all these years. Not when she had Darius clinging tightly to her fingers.

  She wanted to run, to cry out. Instead her panic overwhelmed her, and she did the most foolish thing of all. She simply froze.

  Then, right before he headed into a luxurious lingerie shop, the man turned and saw her. She felt an instant sensation of doom. For a fleeting second he studied her with one of those quick, assessing, male glances. He saw a beautiful woman in her early thirties who was tall and delicate of feature. A woman who had enormous, dark, frightened eyes. A woman with a shocking mass of jet-black hair bound untidily in a lopsided knot. A woman who wore a bright animal-print scarf and baggy sweater and had a Bohemian air about her. But she was not someone he knew. He smiled briefly and vanished inside the shop.

  He was just a stranger. A stranger with gray eyes instead of Grant's vivid, beautiful blue ones. A stranger who probably thought her too dull in her unfashionable clothes, or too skinny. He wasn't Grant. Wasn't even remotely like Grant. Still, it took a second for Noreen's shock to subside.

  Just being in San Antonio was enough to make Noreen as nervous as a cat, and today, despite her cheery pretenses, had been no different. San Antonio was part of her past, part of that other life that she had deliberately walked away from five years ago, part of Grant. Even the briefest visit to the city could fill her with an intense sensation of loss and loneliness and leave her depressed for days. A part of her had died here, and she had never recovered.

  Of course, living as she did only fifty miles away in a Texas town so small and so poor that it had no doctor or shopping facilities, she had to come into the city from time to time. Never once had she run into Grant or his mother, but the threat of that happening had always been in her mind. She found herself look-ing around with a strange mixture of excitement and dread in the pit of her stomach, as if she were unconsciously searching the crowd for Grant's black head, for his tall, wide-shouldered form.

  Darius suddenly yanked free of his mother's grip, and Noreen felt close to panic again. Then she saw that he was racing for the line of children waiting to talk to Santa. Darius loped ahead of her as eagerly and trustingly as a puppy, his short quick legs spraddling everywhere, shoestrings snapping in all directions, sure his mother would follow at her proper adult pace.

  Watching him, she smiled fondly. Instead of Velcro fasteners, he insisted on shoelaces because his best friend's teenage brother, Raymond Liska, had laces. It did no good to tell Darius that big brothers could have laces because they were
able to tie them.

  There was an empty bench right in front of Santa's Workshop, and Noreen sank down on it, piling her bundles beside her. Her feet ached all the way up her calves to her knees. She loosened her scarf. It wasn't even noon yet, and she was exhausted from shopping and from chasing Darius-two jobs she vowed long ago never to take on simultaneously.

  But Christmas was coming soon, and all four-year-old boys had to talk to Santa at least once. Darius had talked to five Santas since Thanksgiving. Every time he had done so, his big blue eyes had grown huge as he'd leaned into Santa's ear and whispered. When she'd asked him what he wanted he'd refused to tell her.

  "Santa knows," he would say wisely.

  Today Noreen had dragged him to every toy store in the mall. With huge shining eyes, Darius had handled the toys, at first with exuberant enthusiasm, until she'd asked him, "What do you want?" Then he had reluctantly set the toys back at cockeyed angles on the shelf. His darling baby-plump face had become still, and his answer had been reverent and enigmatic.

  "Santa knows."

  "You must tell Mommy."

  "Why?"

  Little did he know that she had almost nothing for him under the tree. That was the main reason she had let the Liskas persuade her to come into San Antonio.

  As Noreen watched Darius jump joyfully into Santa's plump red velvet lap she thought, At least he'll sit still for a second and I can catch my breath.

  "Silent Night," her favorite Christmas carol, was being piped over the sound system. For the first time since seven that morning when she'd climbed into the Liskas' Suburban, she relaxed. She glanced down at her wristwatch. She and Darius still had an hour to shop before they were to rendezvous with the Liskas and their four children for lunch on the river at Casa Rio.

  Noreen groaned inwardly as she watched Darius unwrap the peppermint candy cane that Santa had given him and whisper into Santa's ear at the same time. Santa was going to have sticky ears. Sugar made Darius absolutely hyper. He wouldn't eat lunch, and he probably wouldn't nap on the way home.

  "So what special present do you want Santa to bring you this year, young man?" Santa asked.

  "Special?" The word was new. Darius licked his candy cane thoughtfully.

  "The best present you've ever gotten?" Santa prompted.

  Darius whispered again, but Santa couldn't make out the whisper and told him so.

  Darius's eager, piping voice rang through the store. "The best present ever? A daddy that's even better than Leo's, that's what!"

  Noreen looked up sharply at her son, all the old sorrow upon her. Her brown eyes grew bleak. She had tried to explain so many times to Darius that his father was in Heaven. She'd framed her favorite picture of Larry and kept it in Darius's room.

  Noreen scarcely heard Santa's low rumble. But she heard her son's matter-of-fact reply. "Nope. Just a daddy."

  "What about a toy truck or a car?"

  Darius shook his black head as stubbornly as his father would have. As stubbornly as any Hale.

  Santa was setting the child down, helping him get his balance as Noreen came over and gently took Darius's hand.

  "You could have told me what you wanted," she said softly to her son, her voice immeasurably sad.

  "Do you think Santa can really bring me a daddy?"

  "Honey, I told you how your father died. You have his picture on that little table by your bed."

  Darius's big blue eyes, so like his father's and his Uncle Grant's, grew solemn at that memory. "But I need a real live daddy, too."

  She rumpled Darius's black hair. "A daddy is… well… er… That's a very complicated present."

  "That's why I asked Santa, Mom. 'Cause he's magic."

  Noreen remained silent. She turned helplessly back to Santa, who had been eavesdropping. But Santa was no help. With a merry jingling of tiny bells, he just tipped his hat and gave her an audacious wink.

  For a moment she remembered her marriage, Larry's death, Grant, the bitter loss of it all. And suddenly she was so cold inside that she could feel nothing else.

  Noreen was in a hurry now, a hurry to leave the mall and make it to the Casa Rio by one-thirty to meet Sara and Jim and their brood. She had shopped in a frenzy ever since she'd found out what Darius really wanted for Christmas. She couldn't provide the father he wanted, but she could get him other things. Now she was so loaded down with bags that she could no longer hold them all, and Darius was even carrying the two he'd bought for Leo and another friend.

  They were on the escalator when the nightmare she had dreaded for five long years became a reality.

  There was no time to prepare. No time to run. She and Darius were trapped on that gliding silver stairway.

  They were going down.

  Her ex brother-in-law was going up.

  Fortunately, Grant wasn't looking in her direction when she saw him. She went rigid with shock, turned her head away, and lifted her shaking hand to cover her features. But not before his harsh, set face had etched itself into her brain, and into her heart and soul, as well.

  He looked tired. Tired and haggard in a way that wrenched her heart.

  But he was as handsome as ever. He was taller than other men, and broader through the shoulders. So tall he dwarfed her in comparison. His face was lean and dark, his hair as thick and black and unruly as her own, his eyes the same dazzling blue she remembered, his mouth still as beautifully shaped.

  As if she could have forgotten him.

  As if any woman could.

  Her heart was beating like a mad thing gone wild. She was almost safe. They were gliding past each other. She would probably never see him again. Why would she? He was a Hale and, no doubt, by now one of the most powerful lawyers in San Antonio. She was a nobody, a small-town librarian.

  How many nights had she dreamed of him? He had probably never given her another thought.

  A fatal impulse possessed her. Forgetting her fears for Darius, forgetting she was risking her new life in doing so, she couldn't resist glancing over her shoulder for one last glimpse of him.

  She did so just when Grant was looking back.

  Their eyes met.

  And so did their souls. One fleeting instant of mutual longing bound them before other, darker emotions stormed to the surface.

  Slowly his black brows drew together-in a smoldering rage or in hate, she did not know which. Terror welled up in her.

  Fortunately, the moving escalators were crowded. Fortunately, the railing was high, and Grant couldn't see that she was with a child.

  "Norie!"

  The husky sound of his voice crying her name cut her like a knife.

  Grant shouted a second time as she scrambled to get off the escalator, pulling Darius, juggling packages.

  One of her packages fell. She looked back. Her new pair of sparkly red high heels had tumbled out of their box. But she raced on, into the nearest store where she grabbed a wild assortment of jeans and tops and took Darius with her into a tiny dressing room.

  There she stayed for an hour, reading to Darius in a whispery voice from one of the storybooks she.had bought for the school library.

  A long time later, a saleslady called to them. "Does anything fit?"

  She heard male voices in the next fitting room, saw a pair of male legs on the other side of the divider of her stall. It was only then that Noreen noticed she'd grabbed men's jeans, and she and Darius were hiding in the men's fitting room.

  She began to laugh silently, a little hysterically, and Darius watched her with huge worried eyes.

  When Noreen and Darius were a breathless thirty minutes late to the Casa Rio, the Liskas were too dear to criticize.

  They were a handsome couple. Jim was tall and dark, gentle and strong. His wife had soft brown hair, brown eyes, and a sweet face. They'd been high school sweethearts and had one of the happiest marriages Noreen had ever seen.

  Noreen sank down beside them, offering neither excuses nor explanations, and let Jim order her lunch.
<
br />   Sara, who'd grown up in a small town and simply adored gossip, studied Noreen's white face with avid curiosity.

  Fortunately, before Sara could start quizzing her, the children took over. First Leo knocked over his soda. Then Darius tried to feed a chip dipped in hot sauce to a pigeon, leaned back too far in his chair, and nearly fell into the river.

  At last the chaos of lunch was over and the Liskas had bribed Raymond to take his younger siblings and Darius off to ride the paddleboats.

  The table was set in a cool and shady spot. Mariachi music was being played softly in the background. Sunlight sparkled on the river and shimmered in the golden leaves overhead. Jim, who worked as a science teacher at the same school Noreen did, was finishing the last of his beer. Sara was holding his hand. Noreen sipped her cup of tea.

  "We'd better enjoy this before the kids come back," Sara said. "Noreen, the kids were terrible in the mall. I guess it's just that they're all so excited. Leo wanted everything in sight. Raymond kept teasing him, telling him he'd been so bad Santa was bringing switches this year. How was Darius?"

  "He told Santa that he wants a daddy."

  Jim put down his beer bottle. His dark eyes lit with humor. "That's certainly going to set the town on its edge. I can just see the headline now: Town's Mystery Librarian Gets Son A Daddy!"

  Noreen didn't smile. "Darius is getting older. He wants things that I can't always give him. I'm not quite sure what to do about him anymore."

  "No parent ever is," Sara said.

  A devilish half smile curved Jim's mouth as he pulled his hand free of Sara's and leaned toward Noreen. "I think Darius has a good point. He does need a daddy. But no more than you need a husband."

  "What? If ever I heard a chauvinistic remark-"

  "Jim's full of them," Sara said placidly.

  "You've practically buried yourself alive these past five years," Jim continued.