Once Upon a Christmas Read Free Page B

little better.
    “You guessed it. I’m going to win Brad back. I’ve
    already got it all planned out. And I’ll need your help to do it.”
    Clarissa smacked her palm against her forehead. “Lord
    help us. That’s just what I was afraid of.”
    Sam McKenzie had always loved the last day of school. His
    final act as a student each year had been to haul everything out of his locker
    and cram it in a backpack for the trip home—where it would sit, untouched,
    until September. Now, as the college English professor he’d become, things
    weren’t much different.
    Sure, these days it was his desk he emptied out, and his
    things were going in a battered old box instead of a backpack. But as he wedged
    the last file folder beneath his weighty American Literature text, Sam doubted
    he’d crack a book again before January rolled around.
    For much of the semester, he’d been filling in for Professor
    Alvarez, who—until this week—had been on maternity leave. Now that she was
    back, Sam had cut his own semester short to turn her students over to her
    again.
    The decision left him at loose ends, with no classes to
    teach until winter term—not that he minded very much. Somebody had needed to
    fill in for Lupe, so Sam had volunteered. They were friends, and he’d never
    been on the tenure track, anyway. He didn’t much care about impressing the
    faculty. All he cared about was teaching.
    Okay, teaching and his family. Which explained why
    Sam was leaving Tucson for a couple of months, headed back to his hometown of
    Saguaro Vista, where a temporary job with his dad’s construction company
    waited.
    Working for McKenzie & Sons was something Sam tried to
    do on a regular basis, especially now that his father’s arthritis was kicking
    up more often. He liked working with his hands, liked mixing it up with the
    carpenters and roofers and bricklayers. They reminded him of where he’d come
    from and what was real …as did the inevitable
    get-a-haircut-and-get-a-real-man’s-job lecture from his father that was the
    price of admission. Until after the holidays, Sam would belong to that world
    again. Just as soon as he said good-bye to this one.
    He hefted the box in his arms. “Okay, I’m outta here.”
    Malcolm Jeffries, campus advisor for returning students and
    Sam’s officemate for the past semester, sniffed vaguely but didn’t bother to
    look up. He’d made his disapproval of what he called Sam’s “unorthodox
    teaching methods” plain from the start, and Malcolm was nothing if not
    unvarying in his opinions. It had made for a bumpy partnership.
    Today, not even Malcolm’s standardized-test-approach to life
    could get to Sam. “Hey, have a good rest of the semester,” he told
    Malcolm with a grin. “See you next year.”
    The grunt he received in response could have meant anything.
    Optimistically decoding the sound as, “You, too,” Sam turned toward
    the door and all but ran into one of his students, Jillian Hall.
    Affectionately known to the student body as Jiggly Jillie,
    Jillie lived up to her nickname and then some. Even when standing still, Jillie’s
    blond froth of permed curls, combined with the twirl of her short skirt and the
    sway of her breasts beneath her T-shirt, somehow gave the impression of
    perpetual motion. It was quite a phenomenon.
    “Professor McKenzie, I’m so glad you’re still here,”
    she said breathlessly. “I wanted to talk to you about my research paper.”
    She watched him so earnestly, it looked as if her wide blue
    eyes might cross at any second. Sam shoved all jiggly thoughts aside and
    assumed a more professorial demeanor.
    “Sure, Jillie. What’s on your mind?”
    “Well, there must have been some kinda mistake on my
    research paper. I can’t have gotten a D,” she wailed, holding up a stack
    of typed pages for him to see. “If I don’t do better than that in this
    class, my financial aid is history!”
    Sam took the papers she waved at him. He recognized them