A Romance for Christmas is a sweet holiday romance
showcasing love, loss, and the spirit of giving. In this scene, the hero,
Scott, finds the dreaded ugly Christmas shirt, a gift from his mother.
In his old room,
Scott stripped out of his uniform and put on sweatpants and slippers. On his
bed was the loose T-shirt with a blond-haired elf on the front that his mother
had given him the year before. The elf was shirtless, wearing red boxer shorts
with holly on them, and he was licking a candy cane while dangling a round
ornament on one finger of his other hand.
Upon seeing the
shirt when Scott unwrapped it, a cousin had started singing, "Don we now
our gay apparel..." and had broken into riotous laughter. That didn't
stop the family from insisting he wear it. He was sure he'd asked Mary to give
it to Goodwill, so how it had shown up again this year he couldn't explain.
Yet, there it was. It could only have come from one person.
"The things
we do for our mothers." Scott slipped it on over his head and headed for
the kitchen.
He leaned against
the door jamb, enjoying the sight. His mother was chopping things for the
stuffing and adding them to her biggest bowl. His dad sat at the end of the
counter, reading a Popular Science magazine. Neither seemed to pay
attention to the other, but while his mother was cooking, Dad always kept her
company. She'd crochet in a wooden rocker in the garage while he worked on the
boat he was building. As if they couldn't bear to be parted from one another,
even though they didn't talk much. Maybe they didn't need words.
Scott had thought
he and his wife would be the same, but he and Mary had shared a different
lifestyle. Both were often busy, and sometimes saw each other only in passing.
He'd worked nights, and she'd worked days. She'd had a downtown office, working
as an architect for government housing. Time spent outdoors had given her a
great tan, but exposed her to hazardous toxins no one had known were in the old
buildings being demolished. When she fainted at work, the company sent her in
for a check up. After the diagnosis, the project had been shut down
immediately, but cancer took a quick toll. Mary was gone in six months. A
government investigation into the cause was still ongoing.
Scott now had sole
custody of a four-year old daughter and a job that took him into danger every
day. He'd shifted to the downtown beat and day shift because it seemed safer,
and he could still do what he loved doing: Helping people.
Grab a Free Christmas Coloring Book
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A Romance for Christmas
A sweet feel-good holiday romance that reaffirms all you
love about Christmas. It's Christmas Eve, and the end of a year in which everything
Dara loves was lost. Everything but her little girl and a fierce determination to
survive. When a cop brings Christmas to her door, he brings another gift she never
expected to get.
Kayelle Allen writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic
heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She's a US Navy
veteran and has been married so long she's tenured.
A highlight of Dickens On the Strand is the Victorian Bed Races. The beds have to be Victorian style with head and foot-boards.
