Be Mine at Christmas Read Free

never complained about Stephanie, but she didn’t overreact if Kayla made an occasional derogatory comment. The girl had a right to her anger. Stephanie had let them all down in the worst possible way. Sometimes Angela couldn’t believe that the friend she’d loved like a sister had made the choices she’d made.
    They drove in silence for several minutes. Angela was about to turn the music back up when Kayla spoke again.
    “Do you think you’ll ever get married?”
    “Maybe.”
    “You don’t date much.” The words sounded almost accusatory.
    “I’m too busy with work.”
    “Most people go out at night, ” she said. “You’re usually home by six, remember?”
    Angela shrugged. She didn’t like leaving Kayla home alone. “I’ll meet the right man eventually.”
    Kayla seemed thoughtful, almost brooding. “What if you find someone, and he doesn’t like me?”
    “I can’t imagine anyone not liking you.”
    Kayla’s attention shifted to the scenery flying past her window. “You’ve forgotten Barbie and her friends,” she said bitterly.
    “Shallow, mean girls don’t count.”
    “What about Jordan? He was nicer than everyone else. Until they started teasing him about me.” Her tone turned glum. “Now he won’t even look at me.”
    “That could change as you get older.”
    “Still. I know you feel like you owe Nana for taking you in, but I don’t want to be the reason you don’t have a life of your own. You’re not the one who got pregnant at sixteen.”
    Angela reached across the seat to squeeze Kayla’s hand. “Kayla, I love you. You’re a central part of my life, and no one will ever change that.”
    “But don’t you wish I had a father who’d come and take me off your hands?”
    “No, I don’t,” she said, and she realized as she spoke that it was true. As difficult as the past year had been, she didn’t want to lose Kayla. Kayla was her only family.

CHAPTER TWO
    M ATTHEW J ACKSON SAT with longtime friend and fellow firefighter Lewis McGinness at a table in the bar and restaurant on the first floor of the Old Virginny Hotel. With wooden oak floors, flocked wallpaper, a dark, ornately carved bar and a tin ceiling, the place had been restored to the glory it had known as a saloon in the booming silver era that had once made Virginia City the most important settlement between Denver and San Francisco. There was even a man dressed in nineteenth-century costume playing lively Christmas carols on a piano in the far corner, next to a Christmas tree adorned with paper chains and popcorn strands.
    It was all for the benefit of the tourists, of course—a group of whom stood brushing the snow from their coats and marveling over the glass case by the register, which contained a few items originally owned by the famous 1860s soiled dove, Julia C. The display was designed to generate interest in the Bullette Red Light Museum down the street, where folks could see more intimate items, as well as some nineteenth-century medical instruments, all for a buck.
    It was worth a buck, right?
    Matt shook his head. Heaven knew something had to stimulate new interest in this town. Cut into the side of a mountain almost two miles above sea level, with its houses and businesses sitting on as much as a forty-percent grade, it wasn’t a convenient place to live. Although, at its peak, the town had boasted nearly thirty thousand citizens, it was down to about fifteen hundred and had been struggling since the early 1900s, when the mines had played out. But Matt had never thought of it as desperately hanging on to what once was. It was home, pure and simple. And yet, as the snow piled higher and higher outside, he had to acknowledge that Virginia City had seen better days, even in his lifetime.
    In any event, it was turning out to be a long, cold year. After his older brother, Ray, and his wife had pulled up stakes and moved to Reno last October, Matt was beginning to feel a little like a stubborn holdout—which