A Home for Christmas Read online

  Praise for Deborah Grace Staley and

  A HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

  “Deborah Grace Staley has a true storyteller's voice.“

  –JoAnn Ross, New York Times bestselling author of Out of the Blue

  “Staley writes the type of stories that stay with you long after you've turned the last page.”

  –Fallen Angel Reviews

  “A great Christmas time story.”

  –Roundtable Reviews

  “Want to get in the Christmas spirit? Read A Home for Christmas.”

  –Robin Thomas, MyShelf.com

  “A HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is a feel good community talk in the best tradition of storytellers like Debbie Macomber.”

  –Romance Junkies

  “Ms. Staley shows us the wonderful magic of love.”

  –Romance Designs

  “Poignant.”

  –The Romance Studio

  Other Bell Bridge Books titles by the author:

  ONLY YOU, Book One, The Angel Ridge Series

  Visit Deborah Grace Staley at deborahgracestaley.com

  A Home for Christmas

  By

  Deborah Grace Staley

  Bell Bridge Books

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 30921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2004 by Deborah Grace Staley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A mass market edition of this book was published by Echelon Press Publishing in 2004

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact us at the address above or at [email protected] www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

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  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Cover photo credits:

  Winter trees - © Chee-onn Leong | Dreamstime

  Ornament - © Photowitch | Dreamstime.com

  House - © Steve Holsderfield | Dreamstime.com

  Texture - © Peter Zaharov | Dreamstime.com

  :Mz:01:

  Dedication

  For my husband, Fred Staley,

  whose love has given my heart a home.

  Acknowledgments

  To my girlfriends who keep me sane and grounded: Charis Wolfe, Janene Satterfield, Kim Thompson, Beth Catchot, Beth Eason, Patty Harrison, and Teressa Gregory. I don't know what I'd do without you! For Susan Sipal. Your vision and focus make the stories so much stronger. You're the best! For Ruth and Keith Law, my thanks for allowing Blake to live in your house. Last, but certainly not least, for the readers who have embraced this series, your enthusiasm keeps me writing.

  Welcome

  Hi, y'all. Excuse me a sec, would ya?

  “Hey, boys. Come on in and have a seat. I'll be right with you.”

  “No hurry, Dix. Take your time.”

  Sorry about that. Lunchtime's busy around here, but I've always got time for you newcomers, and you return visitors, too. Welcome to Angel Ridge! Dixie Ferguson's the name. As you can see, I run Ferguson's Diner. You won't find better food or service in any fancy-schmancy restaurant you'd care to compare us with. I hear tell folks pay good money for insects, toads, and crawdads in some of them places. Crazy. Anyway, let me tell you a bit about the place I've called home for most of my life.

  Angel Ridge. Population three hundred forty-three—soon to be three hundred forty-four seein' as how Sally Crawford's expectin' any day now. Yeah, Angel Ridge is a fine place to put down roots and raise a family.

  It was established along the Little Tennessee River in 1785. In the early days, its first families—the McKays, the Wallaces, the Houstons, the Jonses, and the Craigs—built plantations along the river. Well, all except for the Craigs. They were traders and craftsmen. Men of commerce, if you will. Meanwhile, the town developed above the river on a high ridge.

  In the early 1970s, the Flood Control Board bought up all the property along the river so they could put in a dam. Some folks say they was forced out of their homes, and I guess they were. So those rich folks down in the valley moved up to the ridge with everyone else. Course they built elaborate Victorian mansions such as this quaint little town had never seen. Stick out like a sore thumb if you ask me, but I digress.

  Most of the families I mentioned earlier are still around. You'll recognize their names on the businesses along Main Street. These folks are hardy people. Why, in all the time they've lived here, they've endured Indian attacks, floods, divided loyalties in the Civil War, and yes, even feuds. The older folks are still marked by the hardships of the past. I suppose you could call 'em old-fashioned, but don’t count my generation out. We're makin' our mark, too. We can respect the past, but you know, we gotta make our own way in this old town.

  Well, enough with the history lesson. I don't want to bore you and I can see you're anxious to get on with your visit. You've picked a fine time to visit our town. Christmastime . . . I just love it. We dress everything up with real greenery here. No shiny tinsel-shaped bells or flashing snowflakes hanging from our lampposts. Our gas-burning street lamps decorated with red velvet bows from the town florist do just fine.

  If you want to see displays of the electric variety, several of the old Victorians up on Ridge Road really do it up right. Particularly my brother's, Blake Ferguson's place. Not that I'm prejudiced or anything.

  Ah, yes. This is what you could call an enchanted time in Angel Ridge. A time of miracles. It's also when folks feel loss and loneliness more than any other time of the year.

  I guess you could say this is a story about loneliness and figuring out where you belong. A heartwarming story about a hometown boy and a city girl. Yep, I've got a feelin' that this year a couple of lonely hearts will find something they've been waitin' a long time for. Who knows? If they open themselves up to the magic of Christmas and our resident angels, their hearts might just find a home.

  So have yourself a cup of cheer, sit back, and enjoy your time in Angel Ridge.

  Chapter 1

  They say you can never go home.

  Janice Thornton glided up to the curb in front of the old two-story Victorian and killed the engine. It looked much the same—gingerbread trim in the eaves, wide wraparound porch with wicker furniture. The house was huge, but in the short time she'd spent here as a child, it had felt cozy to her.

  Sitting here looking at it through adult eyes, she realized the appeal had never been the house itself, but the home her grandparents had made in it. Their house had been her ideal of what a home should be. A home she'd longed for as a child. A home she'd never had with her own parents.

  Janice slid her sunglasses off and laid them in the empty passenger seat next to her. She always got sentimental around the holidays. She didn't know why. Her formative years had been spent at exclusive boarding schools. Christmases always involved a trip, either with her parents, or more often, with school friends. Each year, her grandmother had invited her to spend Christmas break in Angel Ridge, but her mother wouldn't hear of such a thing. She'd always been embarrassed by her humble roots and didn't want her daughter revisiting them.

  Janice hadn't been in Angel Ridge, Tennessee since she'd gone behind her parents' backs and borrowed a friend's car when she
was sixteen to come during her spring break. It hadn't changed much. Tall, old houses lined one side of a street that ran high above the Tellassee River, with church steeples just visible a few blocks over. It was a sleepy little town that time seemed to have forgotten, but for some reason, it burned in Janice's memory like a warm, inviting fire on a cold winter morning.

  A movement in her peripheral vision made her refocus on the old Victorian. She noticed that a man had appeared from behind the house carrying a ladder. The sun glinted off a pile of tangled Christmas lights, bunched near the steps of the porch, drawing her attention. Janice smiled. She was glad to see that this man, whoever he was, continued her grandfather's tradition of decking the house out in grand style for Christmas.

  The man leaned the ladder against the house. As he turned toward the mound of lights, he noticed her and smiled. Her breath caught and hung inside her chest. It was an easy smile, full of good humor that enticed a person to come sit a spell on the porch and enjoy the unseasonably warm, late autumn sunshine.

  Tall and lean with whipcord muscles, he wore faded and well-worn jeans with a T-shirt that looked like it had once been black, but now was more a soft charcoal dotted with paint stains. A tan leather tool belt slung low across his narrow hips. A lock of thick, dark hair fell across his tanned forehead as he bent to retrieve the lights.

  Janice shifted and the leather seat creaked. A sheen of sweat misted her forehead, and she cracked the window.

  What must the home's owner be thinking? But he acted as if seeing a strange woman in a new, silver BMW parked outside his house was an every Saturday morning occurrence. He turned, and without giving her a second glance, started up the ladder. Stopping about eight rungs up, he leaned to his right, toward one of the bay windows on the ground floor.

  Shifting the lights to his other hand, he reached out to pull at something above the window. He teetered. One foot went up in the air as he tried to shift back to find his balance. But the ladder tipped sideways with the movement, and Janice watched in horrified disbelief as he began to fall.

  Years of medical school, emergency room rotations, residency, and private practice had honed her instincts so that she didn't even give it a conscious thought. She was out of her car and at his side almost before he hit the boxwoods and rolled to the ground.

  “Ah, jeez . . . ” he groaned.

  Janice had already clicked into professional mode. “Don't worry, I'm a doctor. Try not to move.” She ran her hands down his arms, checking for broken bones. “Where does it hurt?”

  The man chuckled. It was a low rumble that had a crazy effect on her. And that smile . . . it should be registered as a lethal weapon.

  “If I said everywhere, would you keep doing that?”

  Her hands froze on his hard, muscled thigh. Get a grip, she told herself. The man had fallen at least ten feet. He needed to be checked out. Thoroughly. She gave him what she hoped was a look that conveyed that this was a serious matter and continued down his leg. Firm muscles contracted and bunched beneath the soft, nearly threadbare denim.

  Janice cleared her throat and tried to speak around the knot that had formed there. “That was quite a fall. Does anything feel broken? Strained? Any pain at all?”

  The man tried to sit up, but she restrained him with a firm hand at his shoulder. “You really shouldn't move.”

  “Dr., um . . . ”

  “Thornton. Janice Thornton.”

  “Dr. Thornton, I'm fine. Really,” he insisted, grabbing her hand as she began checking his other leg. “I'd have to fall further than that to hurt anything other than my pride.”

  Janice frowned. She was almost completely distracted by the crinkles at the corners of his eyes that said a smile came easy to him, but she knew that often one could have injuries that didn't present with pain after a fall like that. She turned her attention to his head. “You could have a concussion.”

  She sank her fingers into his thick, dark hair at the place where a nearly indiscernible sprinkling of gray fanned out from his temples. His scalp felt warm, and her fingers tingled as she checked for knots. She faltered when she looked into his eyes. Fringed by incredibly long, inky eyelashes, they were a striking silvery blue that stood out against the framing of his dark hair and skin.

  He propped himself up on one elbow so that his torso almost touched hers. When she felt his breath, warm and enticing against her cheek, she stopped breathing. He reached out to touch her face, but Janice sat back on her heels.

  “There doesn't seem to be any knots. No bruising or contusions.” She couldn't stop herself from removing a sprig of rich, green boxwood leaves from his hair. “Um, what about your neck? Does it hurt?”

  Before he could answer, she slid her fingers around to the back of his neck and grasped his chin with her free hand. He had a strong jaw. She'd always been a sucker for guys with strong jaws. “Gently,” she whispered, as she turned his head from one side to the other. “Any pain?”

  She felt a sensual web forming around them, powerless to extricate herself from its seductive weave. Janice watched in fascination as the Adam's apple bobbed in the tanned column of his throat.

  He wrapped a big, callused hand around her wrist and said, “I wish, because despite the fact that I know your interest here is purely professional, I'm enjoying having your hands on me…too much.” He turned his head then, and with his fascinating mouth slightly opened, pressed a warm kiss against the pulse point at her wrist.

  She stood and shoved both hands into her pockets.

  He stood as well, immediately contrite. “I'm sorry. I—I don't know what got into me.”

  Ignoring that and the tingling spot on her wrist that his lips had just touched, she said, “You're lucky those boxwoods broke your fall. You could have been seriously injured.”

  A lopsided grin lent his chiseled features a boyish charm. “Happens all the time in my line of work.”

  “What would that be?” Janice found herself asking.

  “I'm a carpenter, but I make a living as a contractor.”

  “I see.”

  He was the most physically appealing man she'd met in . . . Well, she'd never felt this sort of sudden, intense elemental attraction. He also had her feeling off-balance. She couldn't remember not being in control of a situation since she'd reached adulthood.

  He nodded towards her car. “I thought when I saw you sitting over there that you must be an insurance salesman. They like to make their rounds on Saturday mornings when folks are usually home.”

  She felt herself blushing. She couldn't remember the last time she'd blushed either. “I hope you don't mind. I have an appointment in Angel Ridge later today. I came early because I wanted to see this house. My grandparents used to live here.”

  He rested his hands lightly on his hips. “No kidding? The Prescotts were your grandparents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really? Man,” he said softly, “it's been a while since they passed on.”

  “Yes.” She inclined her chin and sucked in a deep breath. The thought of never seeing them again still brought pain, even after all these years.

  “Oh, I'm sorry.” He reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder. “I could have handled that better. Guess the fall addled my good sense.” He smiled.

  She smiled, too, to put him at ease. “Did you know them?”

  “No. We were just passing acquaintances. I grew up just outside of town, so I didn't know the folks up here too well.”

  She nodded her understanding. “Well, I don't want to keep you.” She took a couple of steps back. “Be careful on that ladder,” she called over her shoulder as she retraced her steps to her car.

  “Wait. Why don't you stay awhile? I mean, you drove all this way.”

  Turning, she squinted into the bright morning sun to look at him.

  “That is, I'm guessing you drove a long way.”

  “I drove in from Knoxville,” she confirmed, “but I don't want to trouble you. I can see you're busy.
”

  He took a step forward. “You live in a house there?”

  Janice frowned. What did her living arrangements have to do with anything? “I live in a condominium,” she heard herself saying.

  “See there,” he said. “You won't get a chance to hang lights at your place unless you do it from the inside. I bet it's in one of those big high rise complexes.”

  “Yes.” Her smile widened.

  He got a mock serious look on his face then. “Everyone should get a chance to help hang out Christmas lights, don't you think? It just isn't Christmas without 'em. And besides, I'd like to hear about your grandparents. Your memories of the place must be strong to bring you back here after all these years.”

  She looked up at the house, remembering. “Yes.” As a little girl, Janice had desperately wanted to meet the grandparents who'd cared for her despite the fact they'd never met her.

  “Good. So, you'll stay.”

  It wasn't a question. He gathered up a jumbled mass of lights and held them out to her. “Think you could straighten this out?”

  Blake gave the woman standing on his front lawn a sideways glance as he busied himself righting the ladder. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. A cool, green-eyed blonde wearing expensive dark slacks, leather loafers, and some kind of a silky, loose white blouse that shimmered in the soft breeze and caught his imagination, starting all kinds of forbidden fantasies spinning around in his head.

  She laughed. “Don't you think we should be properly introduced first?”

  “Oh, sorry. Blake Ferguson.”

  He held out a hand, and she shifted the lights to her other arm so she could extend hers to him.

  “Janice Thornton.”

  “It's a pleasure,” he said, and meant it. It was pure pleasure standing there holding her soft hand in his. He wondered what her hair would look like hanging loose around her shoulders instead of pulled back in a long ponytail . . . She gave a gentle tug, and he reluctantly released her hand.