Rescued by his Christmas Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’d have tohave lunch. Even before they started shopping. He could see the car show slip a little further from his grasp.
    And lunch with the first-grade teacher? His life, deliberately same as always since Cindy’s death, was being hijacked, and getting more complicated by the minute.
    â€œIt’s the closest mall,” Morgan said, and he could see she had a stubborn bent to her that might match his own, if tested.
    As if the careful script on the handwritten notes sent home hadn’t been fair enough warning of that.
    â€œAnd the best shopping.”
    â€œThe best shopping,” Ace breathed. “Could we go to The Snow Cave? That’s where Brenda Weston got her winter coat. It has white fur.”
    Nate shot his daughter an astonished look. This was the first time she’d ever indicated she knew the name of a store in Greenville, or that she coveted a coat that had white fur.
    â€œSurrender to the day,” he muttered sternly to himself, not that the word surrender had appeared in a Hathoway’s vocabulary for at least two hundred years.
    â€œPardon?” Morgan asked.
    â€œI said lead the way.”
    But when she did, he wasn’t happy about that, either. She drove one of those teeny tiny cars that got three zillion miles per every gallon of gas.
    There was no way he could sit in the sardine-can-size backseat, and if he got in the front seat, his shoulder was going to be touching hers.
    All the way to Greenville.
    And even if he was determined to surrender to theday, he was not about to invite additional assaults on his defenses.
    â€œI’ve seen Tinkertoys bigger than this car,” he muttered. “We’d better take my vehicle.”
    And there was something about Miss Morgan McGuire that already attacked his defenses. That made a part of him he thought was broken beyond repair wonder if there was even the slimmest chance it could be fixed.
    Why would anyone in their right mind want to fix something that hurt so bad when it broke?
    He realized he was thinking of his heart.
    Stupid thoughts for a man about to spend an hour and a half in a vehicle—any vehicle—with someone as cute as Morgan McGuire. He was pretty sure it was going to be the longest hour and a half of his life.
    Stupid thoughts for a man who had vowed when his wife died—and Hathoways took their vows seriously—that his heart was going to be made of the same iron he made his livelihood shaping.
    Out of nowhere, a memory blasted him.
    I wish you could know what it is to fall in love, Nate.
    Stop it, Cin, I love you.
    No. Head over heels, I can’t breathe, think, function. That kind of fall-in-love.
    Cindy had been his best friend’s girl. David had joined the services and been killed overseas. For a while, it had looked like the grief would take her, too. But Nate had done what best friends do, what he had promised David. He had stepped in to look after her.
    Can’t breathe? Think? Function? That doesn’t even sound fun to me.
    She’d laughed. But sadly. Hath, you don’t know squat .
    There was a problem with vowing your heart was going to be made of iron, and Nate was aware of it as he settled in the driver’s seat beside Morgan, and her delicate perfume surrounded him.
    Iron had a secret. It was only strong until it was tested by fire. Heated hot enough it was as pliable as butter.
    And someone like Morgan McGuire probably had a whole lot more fire than her prim exterior was letting on.
    But as long as he didn’t have to touch her shoulder all the way to Greenville he didn’t have to find out. He could make himself immune to her, despite the delicacy of her scent.
    It should be easy. After all, Nate had made himself immune to every other woman who had come calling, thinking he and Ace needed sympathy and help, loving and saving.
    He didn’t need anything. From anyone. And in that, he took pride.
    And some days it felt like pride—and