Chapter One

      “You can’t have that Christmas tree. It’s mine.”

      The voice came at Gabrielle from between two low-slung branches. A foot stomped down, hard, on her instep. Startled, she tightened her grip on the scratchy bark.

      Chin jutting out, a pint-size male face scowled at Gabrielle. “So put it back, you hear?” He wrapped stubby fingers around the branch nearest him and jiggled impatiently.

      Needles sputtered onto the soggy ground. “Me and my dad already chose this tree. It’s ours. You gotta find another tree.”

      Not wanting to encourage the scamp, Gabrielle bit back her laughter and surveyed the small bundle of determination.

      His shirt was carefully tucked into new blue jeans, his face was clean, and his eyes, dark brown and anxious, glared back at her. Someone had made a valiant attempt to slick down the cowlick at the crown of his head. The shoelaces on pricey new athletic shoes were double-tied.

      Someone had taken pains to spiffy the boy up. Clearly, he didn’t need her pity, but some thin edge of desperation or loneliness underneath his tenacity called to her.

      Maybe it was only Christmas, the lights and smells of hope reaching out to her, making her vulnerable to this belligerent, wide-eyed waif. Or maybe it was her own loneliness and need for a perfect Christmas that shone back at her from this boy’s eyes.

      “So, lady, you understand? Right? You gotta find yourself another tree, okay?”

      She heard the aggression, heard the rudeness. And in the soft darkness of a Florida night sweet-scented with pine and cinnamon and broken only by the glow of twinkling lights strung high from utility poles, she saw the bone-deep anxiety deepen in those eyes frowning up at her.

      It was that anxiety and his dogged insistence that got to her. Bam. Like a hand reaching right into her chest, his need squeezed her heart.

      But it was her damnable curiosity, which had been a besetting sin all her life, and maybe amusement that kept her interest as she watched him stiffen his shoulders and glower at her, waiting for her answer.

      He was a pistol, he was, this tough little guy who wasn’t about to give an inch just because she was bigger than he was. She took a deep breath. Somewhere in happy song land, elves were shrieking in glee because Santa had asked Rudolph to lead his sleigh. But here in Tibo’s tree lot, as she stared at the pugnacious urchin, Gabrielle felt like the Grinch who was about to steal Christmas.

      Wanting to erase that dread from his face, she dropped her hand. The tree wobbled, and she reached out to steady it. The boy’s face scrunched in alarm as she grasped the tree again, and she released it as soon as she saw he was able to keep it upright. “How do you know I didn’t see it first?” she asked, curious to see what he’d say.

      “‘Cause I was standing here guarding it. That’s why.” His not-Southern voice dripped with disbelief that she could be so dumb. He let part of the tree’s weight rest against him. “My daddy’s over there.” Keeping his grip on the tree, the child jerked his chin toward the front of the lot “He went to get Tibo. Tibo’s gonna saw off the bottom so the tree can get enough water and last a-a-all Christmas,” he said, finishing on a drawn-out hiss of excitement. “And in case you got any ideas, lady, you better not mess with my tree or with me ’cause my daddy’s real tough. You’ll be sorry,” the boy said, never blinking. “You don’t want to tangle with me and my daddy ’cause we’re a team and we’re tougher ’n a piece of old dried shoe leather.”

      “I see.” Hearing the adult’s voice in the childish treble, Gabrielle bit her lip to keep from smiling. “That’s tough, all right”

      “Da-darned straight.” The square chin bobbed once, hard. “Nobody tangles with us. Not with me and my daddy, they don’t, not if they know what’s good for ’em.” Sticking out his chest, he pulled his shoulders so far back that Gabrielle was afraid he’d pop a tendon.

      This boy was definitely used to taking care of himself. His sturdy, small body fairly quivered with don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Still, in spite of his conviction that he could handle anything, Gabrielle wasn’t comfortable leaving him by himself. He couldn’t be more than five, if that. Well, perhaps older, she thought, reconsidering the look in his eyes, but innocent for all his streetwise sass. And it was a scary world out there, even in Bayou Bend.

      How could the father have walked off and left this child alone in the dark tree lot—in this day and age? It was none of her business, she knew, but she wouldn’t be able to keep from telling the father that little guys shouldn’t be left alone, not even in Tibo’s tree lot.

      “I’m sorry, but I really think I saw the tree first,” she said, not caring about the tree, only trying to keep his attention while she scanned the empty aisles, looking for one tough daddy.

      “Nope.” He tipped his head consideringly but didn’t move a hairbreadth from where he was standing.

      “What, exactly, would your daddy do?” she asked, prolonging the moment and hoping the urchin’s daddy would appear. “If I’d messed with—your tree?”

      “Somethin’,” her argumentative angel assured her. “Anyways, I know we seen it first. You was nowhere around.”

      “I saw this tree right away. I liked the shape of it.” She fluffed a branch but made sure she didn’t let her grasp linger as the boy’s gaze followed her movement. “And it’s big. I wanted a big tree this year.” Her gaze lingered on the truly awful ugliness and bigness of the tree, and her voice caught. “I wanted a special tree.”

      He shifted, frowned and finally looked away from her, sighing as he glanced up at the tree. “Yeah. Me, too.”

      Again Gabrielle imagined she heard an underlying note of wistfulness in his froggy voice.

      This stray had his reasons for choosing Tibo’s sucker tree. She had hers.

      The singing elves gave way to a jazzed-up “Jingle Bells,” which boomed over her, and Gabrielle sighed. She and her dad had always made a point of dragging home the neediest tree they could find just to hear her mama rip loose with one of her musical giggles.

      Last year, dazed and in a stupor, they had let Christmas become spring before either one of them climbed out of the pit they’d fallen into with her mama’s death.

      Christmas had always been Mary Kathleen O’Shea’s favorite day.

      Gabrielle and her dad hadn’t been able to wrap their minds around the vision of that empty chair at the foot of the big dining room table. No way for either of them to fake a celebration, not with that image burned into their brains.

      And so, in spite of a sixty-degree, bright blue Florida day that enticed Yankee tourists to dip a toe into the flat blue Gulf of Mexico, Christmas last year had been a cold, dark day in the O’Shea house.

      This year, the giggles might once again be only a memory, but everything else was going to be the way it used to be. They’d have the right tree, the brightest lights strung on all the bushes around the old house, the flakiest mincemeat pie. Everything would be perfect. They’d find a way to deal with the empty chair, with all that it meant. In hindsight, she wondered if they shouldn’t have forced themselves to face that emptiness last year, get past it. They hadn’t, though, and the ache was as fresh as it had been barely a year