A Christmas to Remember Read Online Free PDF

a single decoration in the house.
    “Of course!” He smiled again, sending her stomach into a whirl of flutters. “I’ve taken four days off over the holidays. My family is coming here since this is my first Christmas with the kids—they usually stay with their mother, but she’s off to Italy, the Amalfi Coast.” Did Carrie detect a wounded quality to his voice at the mention of his ex-wife? He cleared his throat. “My mother insists on coming, so you’ll have a house full of my relatives. Do not feel in the slightest that you need to entertain them. Your only duties are regarding the children’s needs.”
    Again, she’d be put in a situation that she’d never experienced: having to watch the children under the eye of Adam’s family. Were they like him—extremely successful, intimidating…? Was she going to be nervous the entire holiday? She looked at the man across from her and tried to envision what his parents would be like. Who had raised this wealthy man who worked all but four days at Christmas? Who had made him into the person he was? Had he built quiet block towers in a museum of a toy room or had he sunk his hands up to his elbows in paint to see what all the colors mixed together might look like? She imagined that he was probably the block-type, and that only heightened her nervousness regarding his family.
    “Are they staying through Christmas day?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “So… Were you planning to…” She didn’t want to offend him on day one, but she had to ask. After all, they were into the month of December. “Were you going to get a tree or anything?”
    “Ye-es,” he said slowly with thought behind it. It was clear that the idea had only just occurred to him. “I’m sorry. I haven’t had anyone here at Christmas before, and with the kids always at their mother’s, I never did anything special for the holiday. I was going to give you a credit card to order a few gifts for the kids online. From me…”
    Her eyes wanted to pop out of their sockets, her mouth wanted to hang down to the floor in exasperation, but she kept it all inside. What about Santa Claus? What about tree decorating and cookie baking? Didn’t he realize how important those experiences were? And didn’t he know what to buy his own children? No wonder they hadn’t run to him. They probably hadn’t spent enough time with him to feel anything for him! She hoped to goodness the kids got all those experiences at their mother’s because it was clear that Adam wasn’t going to do it. Then, she stopped herself. She was jumping to conclusions, judging Adam when she didn’t know all the facts yet, however clear to her they seemed.
    “May I have a small allowance for holiday activities?” she asked.
    “Absolutely. Buy whatever you’d like. And you can decorate the house too. It would make my mother easier to live with,” he grinned at her. So, he wasn’t completely closed off to the idea. Carrie wondered if, like the kids, he too just needed to get his hands in some paint to loosen up. She thought of his sleeves rolled up, his fingers covered in primary colors, the children beside him, that smile on his face… That perfect family picture she created started to spin anxiety through her stomach as she realized that she was fantasizing about someone who most likely would not ever put himself in that position. Then, quickly, she cleared her mind of it before the splotches returned.
    “David and Olivia have a Christmas pageant on December twenty-first. The family may want to attend, but just to be sure I’ve got all my ducks in a row, I’d like you to be in charge of getting the kids there. It’s at five o’clock.”
    She pulled out her cell phone and keyed in the date and time. As she did, she wondered if he was asking her to take them because he wasn’t planning on going. Wouldn’t he want to see his children dressed as little angels or the baby Jesus? Didn’t he realize that he only had a blip in his