A Small Miracle Happened Read Online Free PDF

with marketing. They sold quality products, including herbs and other organically grown food, and the business plan was solid. But since he’d been on-site, he’d started to realize those promising features were undermined by personality conflicts and a lack of management skills among the owners. There were days when Dan thought he could help them overcome those issues. Unfortunately, this hadn’t been one of those days.
    He set those thoughts aside as he pulled up in front of his condo. He smiled to see lights on in the place across the street. In spite of his mild hangover, he’d remembered to exchange phone numbers with Chris in the morning, and a text had arrived just after lunch. My place tonight? You bring the menorah, I’ll supply the dinner. Okay?
    That had been more than okay with Dan. Now he went inside to grab the menorah, matches, and four candles. After taking a few minutes for some primping—damn, if he’d known he was going to meet someone like Chris, he’d have gotten a haircut last week—he trotted across the street, then rang the bell. Chris’s chime wasn’t nearly as discordant as his.
    Chris’s expression was distracted when he opened the door, and he waved Dan toward the living room as he headed to the kitchen. “Why don’t you set the menorah up? I’ve got to get back to the kitchen. I just started heating the oil.”
    It was Dan’s first glimpse inside Chris’s place. The living room wasn’t so much decorated as filled with stuff. The sofa, chair, and tables had obviously been bought as a group, and they were fine in their bland way. The pictures on the walls were mostly framed photographs, and Dan immediately thought of three ways they could be better arranged. The focus of the room was a large flat screen. The cheap shelving crammed full of battered books said more about Chris’s personality than anything else there.
    Resisting the impulse to check out the titles of the books, Dan followed Chris into the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway. The room was messy, but nothing like the lazy and unsanitary disasters he’d found in too many bachelors’ apartments. This was the chaos only a busy cook could create. A cutting board and knife sat next to the sink, and a recently used food processor squatted on the counter next to a plate with some kind of breaded meat on it. A cast-iron frying pan on the stove was the source of the garlicky smell. But it was a bowl of batter that caught Dan’s attention. “What are you making?”
    “Latkes.” Chris had trouble with the word, as if it was the first time he’d said it out loud. “I looked up Hanukkah foods, and these seemed pretty easy. I didn’t have time to make anything fancy with them, so I tossed a salad, and I’m about to put some chicken breasts on. The site I looked at said fried foods are traditional.” He seemed nervous as he set a second frying pan on the stove. “There was something called kugel that looked interesting, but I thought I should stick with just one new recipe at a time.”
    Dan’s jaw dropped. “You can cook? I mean, really cook, not only microwave stuff?”
    “Can’t most people?” Chris looked over his shoulder as he picked up a cruet filled with oil.
    “I can’t. I’ve tried, but I can’t get past toast and coffee, and I still burn those. I live on takeout.”
    “Not tonight.” His assurance obviously restored by Dan’s expression of awe, Chris turned back to the stove. “Pour yourself a glass of wine and relax. This will take at least twenty minutes.”
    It took a little longer than that. Dan hung around the kitchen to admire until he realized he was making Chris nervous, so he offered to set the table. Chris had some nice dinnerware, inexpensive but attractive. The same couldn’t be said for the plastic tablecloth. Dan scolded himself again. He wasn’t trying to be critical—he just wanted to redecorate the place so Chris could relax in pleasant surroundings.
    Yeah. Right. He wanted to