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      Rescued by His Christmas Angel

      By

      Dear Reader,

      I had a wonderful visitor for some of the Christmas vacation. My grandson Brayden was here. If you want to experience the magic of the season, there is nothing like sharing it with a four-year-old.

      While I was making a grocery list, Brayden decided he needed his own list, and scribbled happily on a piece of paper beside me. Then he handed it to me and I asked him (not being that good at deciphering scribbles) what was on it. He told me chocolate meatballs.

      Off we went to the grocery store. Brayden asked everyone—stock boys, clerks, grandmothers, other kids—where the chocolate meatballs were. He spread smiles from one end of the store to the other. But alas, to his grave disappointment, we could not find the one item on his list.

      The night before Christmas, I made a label on my computer that said ‘Chocolate Meatballs’ and filled a baggie with those gorgeous round chocolates that look exactly like meatballs!

      Though Brayden received an amazing number of gifts and toys, it is the look on his face when he opened his sock from Santa and found chocolate meatballs that I will never forget. His eyes round with absolute wonder, he whispered, “Santa knew where the chocolate meatballs were.”

      And so that is what I wish for you this Christmas: moments of simple wonder, moments of delightful magic, and lots and lots of chocolate meatballs!

      With best wishes for the holidays,

       Cara

      About the Author

      CARA COLTER lives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in the “Love and Laughter” category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website: www.cara-colter.com

      To Lynne and Larry Cormack with heartfelt gratitude for twenty-five years of friendship

      Chapter One

      TEARS. BOOKS THROWN. And pencils. Breakage. Namecalling. Screaming. Hair-pulling. It was like a scene from a bad marriage or the kind of drama that a reality television show adored, rife with mayhem, conflicts, conspiracies.

      But it wasn’t a bad marriage, or bad TV.

      It was Morgan McGuire’s life, and it didn’t help one bit that each of the perpetrators in today’s drama had been under four feet tall. The day had culminated with a twenty-one-child “dog pile on the rabbit.”

      It was the kind of day they had failed to prepare her for at teacher’s college, Morgan, first-year first-grade teacher, thought mournfully.

      And somehow, fair or not, in her mind, it was all his fault.

      Nate Hathoway, father of Cecilia Hathoway, the child who had been at the very center of every single kerfuffle today, including being the rabbit in that unfortunate dog pile.

      Now, Morgan McGuire paused and stared at the sign in front of her. Hathoway’s Forge. Her heart was beating hard, and it wasn’t just from the walk from school, either.

      Don’t do it, her fellow teacher Mary Beth Adams had said when Morgan had asked her at lunch if she thought she should go beard the lion in his den.

      Or the devil at his fire, as the case might be.

      “But he’s ignoring my notes. He hasn’t signed the permission slip for Cecilia—”

      “Cecilia?”

      Morgan sighed. “Ace. Her real name’s Cecilia. I think she needs something feminine in her life, including her name. That was what the first fight this morning was about. Her hairstyle.”

      Not that the haircut was that new, but today there had been a very unusual new styling for the haircut. How could he have let her out of the house looking like that?

      “And then,” Morgan continued, “one of the kids overheard me ask her about the permission slip to be in The Christmas Angel. She didn’t have it.”

      The production of The Christmas Angel was descending on Canterbury, Connecticut.

      The town had been chosen by the reclusive, aging troubadour Wesley Wellhaven for his second annual Christmas extravaganza.

      The fact that Mr. Wellhaven would be using local children—the first graders would be his backup choir if Cecilia managed to get her permission slip signed—had whipped the children into a frenzy of excitement and dramatic ambition.

      “Morgan, rehearsals are starting next week! Mrs. Wellhaven is arriving to supervise the choir!” Mary Beth said this urgently, as if the fact could have somehow bypassed her fellow teacher.

      “I know. And I already told the class that we are all doing it, or none of us is doing it.”

      “That was foolish,” Mary Beth said. “Can’t Ace Hathoway just sit in the hall and read a book while the rest of the children rehearse?”

      “No!” Morgan was aghast at the suggestion. But meanwhile, poor Cecilia was being seen as the class villain because she was the only one with no permission slip. “If I don’t talk to him, Cecilia is going to continue to suffer.”

      Mary Beth shook her head. “Just let her sit in the hall.”

      “It’s not just the permission slip. I have to address some other issues.”

      “You know that expression about going where angels fear to tread? That would be particularly true of Hathoway’s Forge. Nate wasn’t Mr. Sunshine and Light before his wife died. Now…” Mary Beth’s voice trailed away and then she continued. “It’s not entirely Nate’s fault, anyway. Kids always get high-strung around Christmas. It’s hitting early because of all the hoopla around the whole Christmas Angel thing.”

      Naturally, Morgan had chosen to ignore Mary Beth’s well-meaning advice about going to visit Nate Hathoway.

      Now, taking a deep breath, she turned off the pavement and up the winding gravel driveway, lined by trees, now nearly naked of leaves. The leaves, yellow and orange, crunched under her feet, sending up clouds of tart aroma.

      Morgan came to a white house, cozy and cottagelike, amongst a grove of trees. It was evident to her that while once it had been well loved, now it looked faintly neglected. The flower beds had not grown flowers this year, but weeds, now depressingly dead. Indigo paint, that once must have looked lively and lovely against the white, was peeling from the shutters, the window trim and the front door that was set deep under a curved arch.

      Despite the fact light was leeching from the late-afternoon autumn air, there were no lights on in the house.

      Morgan knew Cecilia was at the after-school program.

      The road continued on to a building beyond the house. It dwarfed the house, a turn-of-the-century stone barn, but a chimney belched smoke, and light poured out the high upper windows. Morgan realized it was the forge.

      She