Holly tried to conceal her smile. “Would you like to go into the city this afternoon?” she asked as she added the butter she’d cubed to the sugar in the mixing bowl.

      Gabe turned around to look at her. “You aren’t going to make me go shopping, are you?”

      “No. I’ll take you to my office. Wouldn’t you like that?”

      “Yes,” he said halfheartedly.

      “I have to put up a few decorations. You can help me.”

      “Okay.” Again he showed a decided lack of enthusiasm.

      “The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is up,” she told him next.

      Now that caught his interest. “Can we go ice-skating?”

      “Ah...” Holly had never gone skating. “Maybe another time, okay?”

      Gabe shrugged. “Okay. I bet Billy and his dad will take me.”

      The kid had no idea how much that comment irritated her. However, Holly knew she had to be an adult about it. She hadn’t phoned Bill to discuss the fact that his son and her nephew were friends. She would, though, in order to arrange a playdate for the two boys.

      “I thought we’d leave after lunch,” she said, resuming their original conversation.

      “Okay.” Gabe returned to the computer and was soon involved in a game featuring beasts in some alien kingdom. Whatever it was held his attention for the next ten minutes.

      Using the electric mixer, Holly blended the sugar, butter and eggs and was about to add the dry ingredients when Gabe climbed up on the stool beside her.

      “I’ve never seen anyone make cookies before,” he said.

      “You can watch if you want.” She made an effort to sound matter-of-fact, not revealing how pleased she was at his interest.

      “When we go into the city, would it be all right if we went to Finley’s?” he asked.

      Holly looked up. “I suppose so. Any particular reason?”

      He stared at her as if it should be obvious. “I want to see Telly. He can do all kinds of tricks and stuff, and maybe Mrs. Miracle will be there.”

      “Oh.”

      “Mrs. Miracle said I could stop by anytime I want and she’d let me work the controls. She said they don’t normally let kids play with the toys but she’d make an exception.” He drew in a deep breath. “What’s an ‘exception’?”

      “It means she’ll allow you to do it even though other people can’t.”

      “That’s what I thought.” He leaned forward and braced his elbows on the counter, nodding solemnly at this evidence of his elevated status—at least in Mrs. Miracle’s view.

      As soon as the dough was mixed, Holly covered it with plastic wrap and put it inside the refrigerator to chill. When she’d finished, she cleaned off the kitchen counter. “You want to lick the beaters?” she asked.

      Gabe straightened and looked skeptically at the mixer. “You can do that?”

      “Sure. That’s one of the best parts of baking cookies.”

      “Okay.”

      She handed him one beater and took the second herself.

      Gabe’s eyes widened after his first lick. “Hey, this tastes good.”

      “Told you,” she said with a smug smile.

      “Why can’t we just eat the dough? Why ruin cookies by baking ’em?”

      “Well, they’re not cookies unless you bake them.”

      “Oh.”

      Her response seemed to satisfy him.

      “I’m going to roll the dough out in a few minutes. Would you help me decide which cookie cutters to use?”

      “I guess.” Gabe didn’t display a lot of enthusiasm at the request.

      Holly stood on tiptoe to take down the plastic bag she kept on the upper kitchen shelf. “Your grandma Larson gave these to me last year. When your dad and I were your age, we used to make sugar cookies.”

      Gabe sat up straighter. “You mean my dad baked cookies?”

      “Every Christmas. After we decorated them, we chose special people to give them to.”

      Gabe was always interested in learning facts about Mickey. Every night he asked Holly to tell him a story about his father as a boy. She’d run out of stories, but it didn’t matter; Gabe liked hearing them again and again.

      “You gave the cookies to special people? Like who?”

      “Well...” Holly had to think about that. “Once I brought a plate of cookies to my Sunday school teacher and one year—” she paused and smiled “—I was twelve and had a crush on a boy in my class, so I brought the cookies to school for him.”

      “Who’d my dad give the cookies to?”

      “I don’t remember. You’ll have to ask him.”

      “I will.” Gabe propped his chin on one hand. “Can I take a plate of cookies to Mrs. Miracle?”

      Holly was about to tell him that would be a wonderful idea, then hesitated. “The problem is, if I baked the cookies and decorated them, they’d be from me and not from you.”

      Gabe frowned. “I could help with cutting them out and stuff. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

      “Not if you don’t want me to.”

      “I don’t want any of my friends to think I’m a sissy.”

      She crossed her heart. “I promise not to say a word.”

      “Okay, then, I’ll do it.” Gabe dug into the bag of cookie cutters and made his selections, removing the Christmas tree, the star and several others. Then, as if a thought had suddenly struck him, he pointed at her apron. “I don’t have to put on one of those, do I?”

      “You don’t like my apron?”

      “They’re okay for girls, but not boys.”

      “You don’t have to wear one if you’d rather not.”

      He shook