Be Mine at Christmas Read Online Free PDF

school. “What do you want for Christmas?” he asked.
    “I’d like to find my dad.”
    Angela nearly gasped at Kayla’s answer. She’d never heard Kayla admit this to anyone else. Until she’d read that essay, she hadn’t realized how deeply Kayla missed having a father.
    But the words were already out, and there was no mistaking Matt’s surprise. “He’s not part of your life?”
    She shook her head. “No, he—he left us a long time ago. He said he loved my mom, and he promised her they’d be together forever. But then he couldn’t handle a crying baby in the house and changing diapers and all that.” She wrinkled her nose, basking in Matt’s attention. “So he walked out, and left my mom to raise me by herself.”
    Angela had stiffened at “he left us a long time ago.” Kayla had never been told any such thing. This had to be some kind of fantasy, something she figured would be more acceptable than the reality.
    Angela wanted to stop her before she could embellish any further but couldn’t say anything in front of Matt. A correction might cause Kayla to make some remark that would give them away. She was the one who’d lied first, when she’d introduced Kayla as her daughter.
    But, in a way, Kayla was her daughter now.
    “He was older, then?” Matt asked.
    “Yeah, uh…a lot older,” Kayla said. “We have no idea where he is.”
    Matt seemed to look more kindly at Angela, probably because he felt sorry for her.
    Only sheer will kept Angela from dropping her head into her hands. How had she expected this to go?
    Certainly not the way it was going…
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sincerely. “But he’s the one who’s missing out. You know that, don’t you?”
    “Time to eat!”
    Peggy’s announcement brought the conversation to an end, and Angela nearly cried in relief.
     
    M ATT COULDN’T BELIEVE that someone had taken advantage of Angela when she was so young. He knew she didn’t really have a family; everyone knew that. A foster child wasn’t common in Virginia City then or now, so her first appearance at school, when they were in the seventh grade, had caused quite a stir. If he remembered right, Betty Cunningham had given her a home because of some tenuous connection with Angela’s family, and Betty hadn’t wanted to see her become a ward of the state.
    But Betty, a widow herself, had already had her hands full. A bit eccentric, she’d taken in any stray animal that had crossed her path, so she’d had something like three dogs, a couple of cats, some hamsters and a ferret. Matt knew because Stephanie had lured him over to the house once with the promise of showing him the animals. When she’d come on to him, he’d gotten out of there right away, but he’d stayed long enough to see that the situation was unique. Besides caring for all those animals, Betty had had to deal with Stephanie, who’d always been getting into trouble, and Betty herself had been sick a lot.
    Suddenly, Matt felt guilty for being so hard on Angela. If Angela had helped to corner him the night he’d had sex with Stephanie, her involvement could only have been in a peripheral way, and it had no doubt been Stephanie’s idea. Anyway, Lewis was right—they’d all been so young.
    He caught her watching him from across the table and smiled. He hadn’t been very friendly to her so far, but it wasn’t too late. According to what she’d told him and Lewis, she was in town for two weeks.
    He had half a mind to make sure they were the best two weeks she’d ever known.

CHAPTER FOUR
    “A NGIE !”
    Angela rolled over to find Kayla standing at the side of her bed. “What?” She squinted in the light streaming through the sheers at the hotel window. They’d chosen the Gold Hill Hotel because Angela remembered it so nostalgically from when she’d lived in Virginia City before. “What time is it?”
    “It’s only eight. But I just talked to Matt. He’s off work on Mondays, and he says we want