Angels at the Table: A Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy Christmas Story

  Something unavoidable must have come up. Aren reached for his phone to call Jack and find out what was up. To his surprise he discovered that he’d inadvertently turned off the ringer and had missed a number of calls. As he was scanning the numbers, preoccupied with the task at hand, he bumped into someone behind him.

  “Excuse me,” he said, turning to apologize. The words froze on his lips. “Lucie?”

  “Aren?”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, his mind spinning.

  “I got a text …”

  She got a text? “So did I.”

  “I didn’t recognize the phone number … I wasn’t going to come but then I found myself in a taxi and the driver said it would be impossible to get here before four but we did and he said it was a Christmas miracle, like the parting of the Red Sea, which I don’t think happened in December, but then I don’t know for sure.” She stopped abruptly as she realized she was jabbering. “Oh, Aren, Aren, I’m so happy to see you.” With that she threw her arms around his neck.

  Caught off guard, Aren stumbled two steps back. He didn’t know what had happened or how they both happened to be at the same place at the same time, but he was in no mood to question it. He was simply too pleased to care. Looping his arms around her waist, Aren closed his eyes and held Lucie close to his heart.

  She said she’d received a Christmas miracle with some crazy taxi ride. Well, he’d gotten one of his own and that was Lucie clinging to him and chattering away so fast he could barely understand a word she said.

  “I was being silly and foolish and—”

  Aren eased her away and silenced her by placing his finger against her lips. Immediately she stopped talking and blinked several times. Smiling down at her, Aren brushed the hair from her face.

  “We were both being silly and foolish,” he said.

  “My life is crazy … the restaurant means everything. It has to succeed, but I can’t walk away from you. I just can’t.”

  “Good.” He kissed her then and it felt as if it’d been months since he’d experienced anything even close to the contentment he found with Lucie in his arms. “I can’t walk away from you either.”

  “I tried to call you.”

  “When?”

  “Just now and it went to voice mail and I thought … I assumed you didn’t want to talk to me and I thought I’d ruined everything.”

  “My ringer got turned off. I don’t remember doing that, but apparently I did.”

  “Who sent you the text, because I don’t know who it was that sent mine?” she asked, looking up at him, her eyes bright with happiness.

  “Jack.”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  “Josie’s soon-to-be husband. They just recently got back together. I assumed he was going to propose to my sister a second time.”

  “A second time?”

  “Don’t ask, it’s a long story.”

  Lucie reached for her cell in the side pocket outside her purse and showed Aren her text. “Is this Jack’s number?”

  Aren looked at it and frowned. “No. That number belongs to my sister.”

  “How did Josie get my cell number?”

  “I have no idea.” For Josie to have the contact information for Lucie was as much a mystery to Aren as it was to Lucie. “What I can tell you is fairly obvious. My sister and Jack teamed up to bring us back together.”

  “It worked. Oh, Aren, Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, my love.”

  “Your love. You mean you’re willing to give us another chance?”

  “Definitely.”

  Lucie blinked back tears. “I swear, this is the best Christmas of my life.”

  “Mine, too.” Closing his eyes, he kissed her forehead. “The last time I was here I waited, hoping with all my heart that you’d show. This time I had no expectation of seeing you and here you are.”

  “I’m so glad I’m here … and even happier that you are, too.”

  “Good.”

  Then, as if it suddenly dawned on her, she said, “You’ll come home with me, won’t you? Mom will be ecstatic to see you. She’s got the most wonderful dinner planned. It’s far more than the two of us could ever eat, so please say you’ll join us and then later there’s church. The music is just beautiful and I can’t think of a better person to spend Christmas Eve with than you.”

  Aren couldn’t think of a better way either.

  “You’ll have dinner with us, won’t you?” Her eyes widened as she pleaded with him.

  Aren nodded.

  Lucie hugged him tight. “I’ve been so miserable and too stubborn to admit it. I’ve learned so much about myself. Aren, oh, Aren, I’ve been such an idiot.”

  “I have been, too.”

  “No,” she argued, intent on accepting the blame. “You were more than reasonable and I was—”

  He stopped her the only way he could think of and that was by taking her in his arms and kissing her senseless until they were interrupted by the guard.

  “Hey, folks, I hate to interrupt a romantic moment, but we’re closing down for the night.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Lucie whispered.

  Aren wrapped his arm around her waist. Holding on to each other they took the express elevator down to the ground floor. As soon as they were outside Aren reached for his cell.

  “Who are you calling?” Lucie asked.

  “My sister, seeing that she arranged all this.” He tapped his contact list and scrolled down to her name. It rang three times before she answered.

  “This better be important,” Josie whispered. “Jack’s here and he just gave me my engagement ring back.”

  “I wanted to thank you, actually both Lucie and I send our appreciation.”

  “Ah … for what?”

  “The text you sent her and the one Jack sent me.”

  “What text?”

  “Come on, Josie, the jig is up. Lucie got your text and I got the one Jack sent. The two of us met up at the Empire State Building just the way you planned.”

  “Hold on, bro. I didn’t send Lucie any text.”

  “You didn’t?” This wasn’t making any sense. “Check your phone, will you?”

  “Sure, but it won’t do any good. I know what I sent and it wasn’t anything about the Empire State Building, and for that matter how would I get Lucie’s cell number?”

  Good question, and one Aren had already considered. “Okay,” he said, “I guess there’s been more than one Christmas miracle. Congratulations to you and Jack. I’m heading over to Lucie’s for dinner and church, but will connect with you in the morning.”

  “Merry Christmas, Aren.”

  “Merry Christmas.” His sister sounded like the happiest woman in the world. He understood because he was walking on cloud nine himself.

  “Do you want to explain how Josie got Lucie’s cell number?” Gabriel asked Mercy and her friends. They’d gathered in the choir loft of the Brooklyn church for the Christmas Eve services. Aren, Lucie, and Wendy sat in the pew midway up on the left-hand side.

  Aren and Lucie shared a hymnal. Their voices blended beautifully as they sang the classic Christmas carol “Silent Night.” Unfortunately they had yet to hear the angel choir, which was beyond anything on earth, but thankfully they would one day.

  “Ah …”

  “Mercy, why do I think this is your doing?” Gabriel pressed.

  “We had to do something,” Will explained. “I felt personally responsible for this mess, so we tweaked a few of your instructions and made it work.”

  “What’s going to happen with them?” Goodness pried. “You know the future. We don’t.”

  “You answer my question first,” Gabriel demanded.

  “Well, you said we couldn’t interfere in their lives,” Will said, although a reminder wasn’t necessary.

  “Interfere in their lives again,” Gabriel corrected.

  “Right,” Will added.

  “And so …” Gabriel fixed his gaze on
Mercy.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asked, doing her utmost to look as innocent as a budding rose.

  “Because you have always been the ringleader when it came to mischief.”

  “Me?” Mercy was downright offended. Of the four of them she was the one who kept everyone in check. “That is grossly unfair,” she protested. “I have prevented more interferences on Earth than you will ever know about.”

  “She has,” Goodness said, coming to Mercy’s defense.

  “Mercy has done her best to keep us in line.”

  Gabriel frowned. “Apparently with little success.”

  Mercy’s wings sank all the way to the floor. “Should … do you want me to …”

  “Mercy, no,” Goodness cried and came to stand at her friend’s side.

  “If anyone should go, it’ll be me,” Shirley insisted, coming to stand on the other side of Mercy.

  “Or me,” Will chimed in. “I can probably get a transfer.”

  Gabriel held up his hand, putting an end to their chatter. “In light of the season I think we might be able to overlook certain transgressions.”

  “We could?” Mercy asked with a heart filled with hope. Apparently Gabriel was in a generous mood.

  “It isn’t like you did anything outrageous, like kidnap a camel and lead it outside a theater? That would be incomprehensible.”

  Goodness sucked in her breath and held it so long she was in danger of turning blue. Mercy slapped her friend’s back and Goodness exhaled so loudly the pipe organ let out a B flat all on its own. Several people in the congregation turned toward the choir loft.

  “It could have been worse. Right?” Gabriel asked, tapping his toe impatiently.

  The four all stared down at their feet as if searching for a lost button, looking in every direction except at Gabriel.

  “Right?” Gabriel asked again.

  “Right,” Mercy answered weakly.

  “One of you might have done something really crazy, like interrupt a Broadway play and suspend the actors in the air without any visible means of support.”

  Mercy swallowed uncomfortably.

  “We’d never do anything like that,” Goodness muttered.

  “Or play a tuba.”

  “I didn’t play the tuba,” Will insisted. “I just looked at it.” Then realizing what he’d said, he slapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Well, my friends,” Gabriel said, smiling now. “Despite everything, you managed to answer Wendy’s prayer. Lucie and Aren are together and they were able to meet at the Empire State Building.”

  “Does their relationship last?” Will asked.

  Gabriel nodded. “Yes. They will be married in October next year.”

  “Oh good.”

  “Children?”

  “Two. A boy and a girl.”

  “What about the restaurant?”

  “What about Aren? Will he continue to write for the newspaper?”

  “One question at a time, my friends,” Gabriel said, leaning over the choir railing to look down upon Aren and Lucie. He smiled and then turned to look at the four Prayer Ambassadors. “The restaurant will do exceptionally well and Wendy’s investment will pay rich dividends. The two will sell Heavenly Delights for twice what they put into it in five years’ time, after Lucie delivers her daughter.”

  “That’s wonderful, but what will Lucie do without the restaurant? She loves to cook.”

  “She won’t abandon her career entirely. She’s going to become a recipe developer for some of the better-known celebrity chefs across America. It’s the perfect job for her as she’ll be able to stay home with the children.”

  “What about Aren?”

  “Now, that’s a bit of a surprise.”

  “How so?” Goodness asked.

  “Aren will leave the newspaper shortly after he sells his first novel.”

  “Aren writes fiction?”

  “It’s a secret passion he has. He’s been working on this book in his spare time for several years and when it sells, it will be an instant success beyond anything he or Lucie could imagine.”

  “Does he get a movie deal?” Goodness asked. “Oh, Gabriel, can we be in it? Can we, oh, can we?”

  The look Gabriel cast her was all the answer they needed.

  “This is just wonderful.” Mercy rubbed her palms together with delight. It was even better than she’d imagined.

  “They will have a good life together, and so will Josie and Jack.” Gabriel spread his massive wings over the four. “Are you ready to head back to heaven?” he asked.

  “We are,” Mercy said, answering for them all.

  And so they returned to the realms of glory. As they drew near, Mercy could hear the strains of music unlike anything ever heard on Earth. The celebration of the infant born in a stable over two thousand years earlier was just getting started.

  To

  Diane DeGooyer Harmon

  and

  Kathy Huard

  Two special angels God

  sent into my life when

  I needed them most

  PEPPERMINT BARK

  8 medium-sized candy canes

  12 oz (about 2 cups) good quality semisweet chocolate (bars or chips)

  12 oz (about 2 cups) white chocolate (bars or chips). Choose the ones made with cocoa butter.

  Finely crush the candy canes, using a plastic bag and rolling pin or a food processor.

  Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Gently melt the semisweet chocolate in a double boiler or in a bowl in the microwave on 50 percent power. Begin with 1 minute at 50 percent power, stir, and follow by repeat cycles of 30 seconds at 50 percent power—stirring between cycles—as often as needed until melted and smooth. Gentle melting prevents burning and helps preserve the tempering of the chocolate.

  Pour the melted semisweet chocolate onto the aluminum foil and spread it to a size of about 8” × 10”. The sizing isn’t etched in stone. You can make the bark thicker or thinner, depending on what you prefer. Refrigerate the semisweet chocolate layer while you’re preparing the white chocolate/peppermint layer.

  Melt the white chocolate using the same melting method as for the semisweet. Once it’s melted, stir in about ¾ of the crushed peppermint candy. Set the mixture aside at room temperature (to cool a little) until the semisweet layer is ready. The chocolate should still be a little soft, a little sticky, but not at all liquid.

  Pour the white chocolate onto the semisweet chocolate layer and gently spread it evenly toward the edges. Sprinkle the remainder of the crushed peppermint on top, then refrigerate until the chocolate is hardened. You can then break it by hand, or score it and break it.

  The peppermint bark refrigerates well, freezes well, ships well, and tastes quite wonderful at room temperature … ideally with a cup of coffee or tea and a good book.

  Get ready to return to Blossom Street …

  Read on for a sneak peek at STARTING NOW, the next charming novel in Debbie Macomber’s Blossom Street series.

  Forthcoming from Ballantine Books

  Chapter One

  This was it. Surely it must be.

  The instant Libby Morgan heard her paralegal tell her “Hershel would like to see you in his office,” she knew. Oh, there’d been rumblings around the office about layoffs and early retirements. Such gossip simply verified what she felt in her heart Hershel was sure to tell her. She’d waited for this moment for six very long years.

  Libby had always wondered how she’d feel when she finally got the news. She longed to hold on to this sense of happy expectation for as long as possible. In retrospect she must have intuitively known something was up because she’d worn her best pin-striped suit today, choosing the pencil skirt over her normal tailored slacks. And thankfully she’d had a salon appointment just the day before. Getting her hair cut was long overdue, but seeing how good it looked now, she felt it was worth every penny of the hundred dollars Jacques had charged her. A good cut did wonders for her appe
arance. She wore her dark brown hair parted in the middle in an inverted bob so that it framed her face, curling around her jawline. Jacques had mentioned more than once how fortunate she was to have such thick hair. She hadn’t felt that way when he’d insisted she have her eyebrows plucked. But he’d been right; she looked good. Polished. Professional. She promised herself not to go so long between appointments again.

  Libby didn’t see herself as any great beauty. She was far too realistic and sensible, was well aware of her physical shortcomings. At best she was pretty, or at least Joe, her ex-husband, had told her she was. She knew she was probably no better than average. Average height, average weight; brown hair, brown eyes, with no outstanding features, but on the inside she was a dynamo. Dedicated, hardworking, goal oriented. Perfect partner material.

  Reaching for her yellow legal pad, Libby headed toward the managing partner’s opulent office. Outwardly she remained calm and composed, but inwardly her heart raced and her head spun.

  Finally. Finally, she was about to be rewarded for the hard choices and sacrifices she’d made.

  Libby was in her sixth year of an eight-year partnership track. Hopefully she was about to achieve the goal that she had set her heart on the minute she’d been accepted as an associate in the trusts and estates department at Burkhart, Smith & Crandall, a high-end Seattle-based law firm. She was about to be made partner even earlier than anticipated.

  While she didn’t want to appear overly confident, it went without saying that no one deserved it more than she did. Libby had worked harder, longer, and more effectively than any other attorney employed by the firm. Her legal expertise on the complex estate planning project for Martha Reed hadn’t gone unnoticed either. Libby had provided a large number of billable hours, and the older woman had taken a liking to her. Over the past month two partners had stopped by her office to compliment her work.

  Libby could almost feel her mother looking down on her from heaven, smiling and proud. Molly Jo Morgan had died of breast cancer when Libby was thirteen. Before dying, Libby’s mother had taken her daughter’s hand and told her to work hard and to never be afraid to go after her goals. She’d advised Libby to dream big and warned her there would be hard choices and sacrifices along the way.