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Dear Diary,
The Matchmaking Mamas have found our latest project! There are lots of lonely hearts to heal this Christmas, but we’ve discovered a special two-some that we hope will meet under the mistletoe on December 25.
Keith O’Connell is a handsome lawyer who’s headed home for the holidays … but not to celebrate with his family. Sadly, he was estranged from his mother, who’s since passed away. Now he’s back in town to sell his childhood home.
So far, we have seen a few signs of Keith opening up to someone, a woman he’s known for years. She’s beautiful and smart, and she seems to be luring him out of his shell, bit by bit, this holiday season.
I know Kenzie Bradshaw had a crush on Keith back in junior high, but they’re both all grown up now. And she’s still got a thing for the guy in a buttoned-up suit with a closed-off heart. Keith is one puzzle that Kenzie is determined to unravel, but will they realize how perfect they are together in time for Christmas? I can’t wait to watch and find out.
Love,
Maizie
Matchmaking Mama Extraordinaire.
Coming Home
for Christmas
Marie Ferrarella
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.
To
Elliana Melgar,
Welcome
To
The
World.
Contents
It felt very odd to be back.
In all honesty, he never thought he’d be back here again. Not back in this city. Certainly not back in this house.
But then, he never thought his mother would become someone he’d be forced to think of in the past tense, either.
Granted, he and his mother hadn’t spoken in almost ten years. But despite his criticism the last time words—angry, hot words—had been exchanged between them, she had always struck him as being a force of nature. Forces of nature didn’t just cease to exist. They continued. Whether or not someone was there to witness the force, it continued.
Somewhere in his unconscious, he had thought his mother would be the same way. She would just continue.
But Dorothy O’Connell didn’t continue. Quite abruptly, without any warning, without any lingering diseases, her heart just suddenly gave out and she died. If it hadn’t been for the phone call he’d received from her neighbor, he wouldn’t even have known this had transpired.
Well, now he knew. Knew when there was nothing further he could do about it. Knew that there would never be an opportunity to mend the rift that had existed between them.
Not that there would have been much chance of that, even if she were still alive and they had another twenty years. The wounds had gone too deep.
And he had lost his mother long before he’d walked out of the house that day.
Keith sighed as he looked around the first-floor family room. You would think, after ten years—and knowing that she was gone—he wouldn’t expect to see her come walking into the room. Wouldn’t, on some level, strain to hear the sound of her voice as she called out to him, or to Amy.
Or both.
The house had always been filled with her voice and her presence. At least, he amended, for most of the years he’d lived in it. It was only after—after the car accident—after Amy wasn’t around anymore—that everything changed.
And somehow, in an odd sort of way, it had stayed the same. Except tenser. So much tenser. He supposed that part of it had been his fault, too.
Keith shrugged even though there was no one there to see him do so.