Blessings of the Season Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t help but wish that somebody would help him get the one thing he wanted most in the world. A real family.
    Doc Goodwin noticed Jesse’s longing. He bent down and spoke to the boy, who nodded then cocked his head and whispered something to the stout bald man.
    That’s all Nate ever really wanted to do. To help others, to help kids in the way he had never had anyone help him. Deep down he knew he wasn’t going to get that at the posh L.A. school where he had landed his one and only job interview since finishing his doctoral degree last spring. Maybe it was a good thing he was staying. Maybe it was worth a few days’ vacation and enduring a little holiday cheer if it meant Nate had a chance to make a difference in Jesse’s life. And Addie’s.
    He turned his attention to her again. She smiled broadly and said, “What do you think?”
    He thought he should have been listening more intently, but the women really hadn’t gone to great lengths to include him. Under other circumstances he might have been tempted to just smile and tell them it sounded great but…
    He looked at Santa’s chair again and remembered his promise. No matter how much he wanted to help, he couldn’t see himself, a guy who really didn’t care for Christmas, playing Santa. So to make sure that didn’t happen, he just asked outright, “What’s my role in all this?”
    A few minutes later Nate sat in the offices on the top floor of the Goodwin’s Department Store building. Docwas still keeping Jesse occupied until he and Maimie got the details extending Nate’s work as the boy’s manny worked out.
    Addie had slipped out of her coat and was hanging it up on a row of hooks on the wall, just like a dutiful employee settling in for a full day’s work. Though he did think she was taking a little too much time messing with her coat collar trying to get it just right, maybe. Or maybe she was just trying to make herself unobtrusive in the austere office while Maimie Goodwin made the case for his participation in this unconventional publicity-stunt idea of theirs.
    â€œYou said you’d go so far as to dress up as Santa Claus in order to help Ms. McCoy keep her job.” Maimie paced slowly from one end of the large cherry-wood partner’s desk to the other. “If you think about it, what we’re asking isn’t nearly that drastic.”
    â€œOr at least not as potentially itchy.” Addie turned from her coat. Something silver and sparkly but also white and glittery was cupped in her hand as she rubbed her knuckles along her cheek. “You know, with the fake beard and all.”
    â€œWell, you got me there. That’s generally what I look for in temp work—a low itch factor.” He frowned. The truth was that he’d been far less picky than that about the kind of temp work he’d done to supplement his way through college and grad school. Dishwasher. Blood donor. Amusement park ride operator. But with his future on the line and the reality that he couldn’t look for aid to either of his parents, who now had new families to support, he’d been highly motivated then.
    Not that there weren’t certain motivations to do this. He looked at Addie practically trembling in her grown-up girl shoes as she struggled to fasten her snowflake pin she must have just retrieved from her coat onto her sweater. All the while she kept her eyes trained on him.
    She needed a break. Nate had always espoused the virtues of making your own breaks. Wasn’t that just what Addie had done?
    â€œOh!” Her hand suddenly jerked back, sending the pin flying to the floor by his chair. “Little mishap,” she explained with a nervous laugh as she rushed to pick the trinket up again.
    He bent down to rescue the Christmas object for her as he shook his head. If she could propose this wild idea to a total stranger, surely she could find somebody else