Small Town Christmas (Blue Harbor #4) - Olivia Miles Page 0,71

sitting on his favorite recliner, slow to stand.

He looked around the room that was decorated with all of his grandmother’s most treasured decorations, ones that he still remembered from that one perfect Christmas, to the movie playing on the big screen in the corner, and the tree, that contained no gifts under it.

Yet.

He handed her the bag that Cora had given him, knowing that he had made the right choice in coming here.

“We don’t want you to be alone on Christmas ever again,” he said, squeezing his grandmother’s hand as her eyes filled with tears.

And the same went for him, he thought, taking his daughter’s hand with the other.

15

Even before Cora flipped her Christmas quilt off her flannel reindeer-printed pajamas and slid her feet into her matching slippers, she knew that it was going to be a good Christmas. Maybe not the best, maybe not perfect, but it was going to be good, because a long time ago she’d resolved to always make this one day of the year good, despite any other heartache.

She put on her robe and wandered into her living room, looking up at the big tree that and she and Phil and Georgie had decorated together, only this time, she didn’t let her thoughts drift back to that special evening, or the disappointment that she felt since then. She looked up at the angel tree topper, sitting on a tree in an apartment that would soon be vacant, rather than in the big waterfront Victorian where it had always been, and she knew that change was inevitable, but that somehow, in the end, things did find a way of working out.

She had to believe that, not just to keep her spirits up, but because it was Christmas.

And Christmas was a time for hope.

From downstairs, she heard a knocking at the back door, and she checked the clock as she hurried on the stairs, wondering if she’d slept in and one of her cousins or sisters had already come to collect her. She and Gabby had decided to drive over to the house together, seeing as they lived so close.

But it was Bart at the door.

For a second, Cora thought of what Candy had said about love not just showing up at the door, and wondered…

But no. Bart was a friend. A fellow Christmas enthusiast, at least part of the year. And he was a part of this town she loved so much.

“Still in the Christmas robe, I see,” he said by way of hello.

She grinned. “Hey, it’s Christmas. If there’s any day I should get a free pass, it’s today.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “And on that note, I wondered if you had figured out who sent the tree to you yet?”

Cora froze, remembering one of her theories, and if it was true, if Bart had sent her the tree. If she’d had love and romance all wrong all this time. Given the way that Phil had betrayed her, maybe she had.

But looking at Bart, tall and rugged, in his parka, she didn’t feel anything more than a friendship.

“I wanted to tell you that when I was packing up last night, I came across the printed invoices and I saw who sent you the tree,” he continued. “No digging or investigation. It was right there, so I thought, if you wanted to know…”

She nodded. It was Christmas. The tree would come down soon. And besides, she’d like to properly thank whoever had cared enough about her to think she needed it.

Because she did.

And so did that angel tree topper.

“It was that guy who was in town with his daughter. I saw you talking to him at the tree lot one night. Phil Keaton.”

Cora blinked at him. Her mouth felt dry as she tried to process what he was saying. “Phil Keaton sent me that tree?”

Her mind was spinning, trying to think of why he’d done it, what motive he might have had. Why he hadn’t ever confessed to doing it.

And despite everything that had happened, and everything he’d done, she knew that he hadn’t sent it to ease the blow. He’d sent it because he cared.

And that maybe she hadn’t been so wrong about love after all. Maybe sometimes it just wasn’t meant to last.

*

After Bart left, complete with his annual gift—a new ornament for his own tree back home, because what else do you give to a guy who sells trees for a living—Cora walked through her shop, stopping to admire her favorite displays, the treasured