A Magical Christmas by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

thirteen, nearly a woman. She heard her mother’s voice, heard the soldier.
    Heard what had happened.
    Saw her mother ride away.
    No!
    She raced for the door.
    Aunt Rachel came running down the stairs. “Wait, sweetheart, where are you going—”
    “My mother has just ridden—”
    “You must stay here.”
    She should fight Aunt Rachel. She never did such things, of course, but these were desperate circumstances. She knew it, deep in her heart. She had to follow her mother.
    Or never see her father alive again. She knew.
    Aunt Rachel wasn’t that much bigger than she was.
    Uncle Andrew was.
    Hmm…
    “Fine, Aunt Rachel,” she said, subdued. She lowered her head. “I’ll wait by the window.”
    “I’ll find Uncle Andrew and he’ll see to it that we find out just what’s going on,” Aunt Rachel promised.
    She nodded, and pretended to be the perfectlady, sitting with tremendous protocol on the love seat by the bay window.
    She waited, with outward impatience.
    Until Aunt Rachel was gone.
    Then she fled from the house.
    She was going to follow her mother.
    She was going home.

Chapter Three
    T here were extra cars in front of Jon Radcliff’s house when he finally made it home. He swore softly to himself. The last thing he wanted tonight was company, and surely Julie would know that.
    But then, Julie didn’t care a heck of a lot what he wanted anymore.
    He irritably switched off the ignition of his car and sat staring at the house for a minute, hearing the echo of whatever tune had been playing on the radio.
    Court had been horrible. The meeting with his fellow counselors afterward had been worse. After all his years of schooling and now more than fifteen years as a practicing attorney, he was still just learning to accept the fact that the law wasn’t perfect, that there was often no way that justice was going to prevail. Deep in his heart he believed that, though the system wasn’t perfect, it was still thebest to be had in the modern world. Guilty men might walk, but the law tried very hard to see to it that innocent men didn’t hang—or weren’t electrocuted, executed by lethal injection, or cut down by a firing squad. Or even incarcerated unfairly. Still, it was damned hard to see it when a guilty man went free because of a technicality, which was stupid.
    Until five years ago, he had worked in the D.A.’s office, and though he’d been exhausted and underpaid, he’d been happy.
    Then he’d had a great job offer. And he’d gone from being a prosecutor to being a defense attorney for one of the most prestigious law firms in town.
    And now he was defending Bobo Vinzetti. They called it the Vinzetti pizza case—the media had started it, now the people on the streets followed the media. It was a horrendous case. In Jon’s opinion, Bobo Vinzetti—decked out in a ski mask to disguise himself—had willfully and with malicious intent attempted to smother his philandering wife with a cheese and pepperoni pizza. But Jon was obliged by the law to defend Vinzetti, and that very fact was making him crazy. His cocounselors thought he was insane. Defense attorneys defended the accused. That was life. It was unlikely Bobo Vinzetti would ever attempt to kill again, his cocounselors said. His wife intended to divorce him and move to Tahiti the minute the case was over.Bobo should be no threat to society. Unless, of course, he were to marry a philandering blonde once again.
    Jon’s firm was trying hard to get a continuance on the case. They had agreed the best course of action would be for Vinzetti to admit his guilt and make a plea—since the pizza trail led straight to him despite the disguise he had worn.
    Vinzetti, however, was certain that good attorneys could get him off.
    And he might just be right.
    The fact that the entire country—other than the city in which he lived and worked—was having a good laugh over the case didn’t much help Jon’s continual feeling of absolute frustration.
    And his wife