Christmas on Main Street by Susan Donovan, Alexis Morgan, Joann Ross, Luann McLane Read Free Book Online

me get through the holiday blues.”
    There was also the fact that she wasn’t getting any younger and thought it high time one of her grandsons provided her with some great-grandbabies to spoil.
    “Now, go.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “I need to call the Sea Mist and then I need to get hold of Doris and Dottie down at the Dancing Deer Two.”
    “Why them?”
    “So they can gather together some decent clothes for the girl.”
    Bernard’s gaze moved to the stage, where Kelli was on her knees, using black electrical tape to mark X’s on the polished wooden floor. “I think she looks great.”
    “Well, of course she’s always lovely. But she’s wearing another of those silly Christmas sweaters.”
    Two days ago, a holiday toy train filled with presents had decorated a red sweater. Yesterday’s was plaid, with a black Scottie dog wearing a red velvet ribbon around its neck. Today’s was even worse.
    “It’s Christmas. And the kids seem to like the sweaters,” Bernard said.
    “Of course they do,” she huffed with frustration. “They’re five years old.”
    Honestly, men could be so clueless. Time was wasting; she couldn’t stand here and explain every little thing to him.
    “Since I don’t remember her having such deplorable taste when she was younger, she no doubt bought them to brighten the holidays for her students. Which is a very sweet thing to do . . .
    “But think back to when we’d started courting. Would you have ever even thought about tumbling me if I’d been wearing a red sweater with a Christmas tree that lit up?”
    This time his grin was slow and, even after all these decades together, had the power to warm her the same way it had when she was an eighteen-year-old bride. “Like the song says, you can’t hide beautiful,” he said, the Louisiana delta drawl that he’d never entirely lost from his voice thickening like warm honey.
    “I’d have wanted to tumble you even if you were wearing a burlap sack from Comeaux’s Feed and Seed,” he said. “But if you
had
been wearing a light-up sweater, I would’ve paid it no heed, because you sure as heck wouldn’t have been wearing it long.”
    She felt the color rising in her face. “You shouldn’t talk to me that way in public.”
    “Okay,” he said, a bit too agreeably. He lowered his voice and leaned toward her, his lips against her ear. “I’ll wait until we get home to continue this conversation. In private.” He nipped at her lobe. “In bed.”
    “Oh, go on with you,” she said, even as her toes curled in that old familiar way. “You have shopping to do, and I have calls to make. On your way home from the Sea Mist, stop by the dress shop. Doris and Dottie will have the gift-wrapped boxes waiting. Then, because I don’t want things to be too obvious, drop them by the Carpenters’ house. It’ll seem more natural for them to be gifts from Kelli’s mother.
    “The freezer at the cabin’s already well stocked with meals. While you’re out, pick up some things for a traditional Christmas dinner from the market. Then, right after Kelli’s class finishes their part of the program, you and Lucien can run the things up there and make sure everything will be ready and in place when the two of them arrive tomorrow.”
    “If the president had put you in charge of planning military actions back when I was fighting in Korea, Del darlin’, that war would’ve been over and I would’ve been back home in two days.” He brushed her cheek with his lips, snapped a brisk salute, and headed up the aisle.
    As Adèle allowed herself the luxury of watching him make his way toward the door at the back of the school cafeteria, she thought, not for the first time, how lucky she’d been to have met this man while home on summer vacation from convent school in New Orleans.
    The moment he’d walked into the ice cream parlor—where she’d just bought a strawberry cone—romantically backlit by a late-June sun streaming in