Merry's Christmas: Two Book Set (Amish)
Read Merry's Christmas: Two Book Set (Amish) Online
Authors: Susan Rohrer
MERRY’S CHRISTMAS: a love story &
BRIGHT CHRISTMAS: an Amish love story
Two Book Set
(Redeeming Romance Series)
Written by Susan Rohrer
Adapted from Rohrer’s original screenplays
Kindly direct all
professional inquiries about screenplays or novels to:
Readers may contact author at:
shelfari.com/susanrohrer
Excepting brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book set may be reproduced or used in any form without prior written permission from the author.
These novels are works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or drawn from the public record and used in a wholly harmless and fictitious way. Any resemblance of this fictional work to actual locations, events, organizations, or persons living or dead is coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.
Cover Image: Courtesy of Indigo Valley Photography
Author photo: Jean-Louis Darville (with permission)
Copyright © 2014, Susan Rohrer, all rights reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1502567840
ISBN 10: 1502567849
Infinite Arts Media
Published in the United States of America
First Edition 2014
MERRY’S CHRISTMAS: a love story
(Redeeming Romance Series)
Written by Susan Rohrer
Adapted from Rohrer’s original screenplay
Kindly direct all
professional inquiries about screenplay or novel to:
Readers may contact author at:
shelfari.com/susanrohrer
Excepting brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without prior written permission from the author.
Lyrics excerpted all Christmas carols included
are drawn from the public domain.
This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are drawn from the public record and used in a wholly harmless and fictitious way. Any resemblance of this fictional work to actual locations, events, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or publisher.
Redeeming Romance Series logo & dingbats:
Copyright © 2013 Susan Rohrer.
Cover Images: Courtesy of Indigo Valley Photography and Sandra Martin Hudgins
Author photo by Jean-Louis Darville
Copyright © 2014, Susan Rohrer, all rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America
First Edition 2014
To every heart
that hangs onto hope
in the miracle that is Christmas.
one
P
erhaps it didn’t make sense to throw open the window and let the scant heat of a drafty studio apartment escape into the brisk December air. But for Merry Hopper, responding to the fullness of her heart trumped what made sense to most other people on a regular basis.
No matter what anyone thought, said, or did, and most especially on this particular morning, everything in Merry sang out in celebration. This was the season—her season. She knew it, with a conviction as dependable as the elevated train rumbling by hourly, as certain as the rent she had no way to pay, and as insistent as the calico cat at her feet, meowing for breakfast.
“There they are, Rudy!” Merry scooped up the feline for a peek out the window. “Look. See? It’s already starting.”
Indeed, just across the street, city workers bustled about, festooning the eaves of the train station with machine-wrought pine boughs and enormous extruded bows. Clearly, the decorations had weathered many a year, but the sight of their return was still a welcome reminder of the coming Yuletide season.
Even though Merry had been both born and abandoned on Christmas day almost twenty-nine years prior; even though she’d been bounced around the foster care system without ever having a family to call her own, Christmas was a time when Merry liked to think that all the world was celebrating her birthday, too. Jubilantly, she threw open the sash.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Grabinski!” Merry called out, the winter blast whipping through her well-worn pajamas.
Fastidious to a fault, the apartment super barely looked up at her. “Merry Schmerry.” He continued to sweep balsam and pine bits into compulsive little piles on the walk. “I’m barely picked up from Thanksgiving and already they got needles all over creation.”
Suddenly, Merry’s eyes widened incredulously. It couldn’t be happening, but it was. Just beyond Mr. Grabinski, a stocky, middle-aged man leaned over the business end of a tow truck. He was well into hooking up a faded red Volkswagen Beetle.
To call the vintage Bug red was, at most, a generous way of acknowledging what the color once was, long before the oxidation and saltings of too many Chicago winters had had their way with the paint. Still, it was Merry’s—almost paid for with her meager base as a waitress. It would be all hers in just a couple of months, if holiday tipping measured up to her hopes.
“No! No, no, hey that’s... Wait!” Merry ducked inside, disappearing from the window. Tattered curtains billowed out of the abandoned portal.
“The window, Merry! I’m not heating the whole free world!”
Hearing him, Merry circled back to close the window, and then dashed through her humble dwelling. She scrambled to throw on a coat that had seen far too many seasons, knocking an overflowing box of decorations onto the floor in the process.
“Wait, wait, wait... I’m coming!” Merry shouted, as she leapt over her calico cat, Rudy, and ran out of her apartment door, down the stairs, and out the front door.
At curbside, the tow truck guy continued to secure Merry’s Beetle to his rig, undeterred by her protests. He hoisted the front end so the wheels left the ground.
Merry skidded to a stop. “Mister, please, I’m good for it! I get paid this afternoon!”
“Then you can take it to the impound.” He pulled up the waistband of his sagging pants.
“Come on, it’s Christmas time. How am I supposed to get around?”
The expression on his face told Merry that this guy had heard it all. What was worse, he refused to look at her. “Sounds like the upside of living under a train.” In a snap, he had locked off the car.
Merry was well accustomed to dealing with grouchy men. She had a way of breaking through the even gruffest of hearts to the soft, gooey center underneath. “Please.” Merry paused. “Okay, okay, just... Come on, look at me like a human being in completely genuine need and don’t do this.”
Finally, he turned to her. For a moment, it seemed he might relent. “No, you look at me.” He pointed greasy fingers toward himself. “I don’t take the Bug, I don’t get paid, then I got nothin’ at all to put under the tree for my kids this year.”
Merry stopped in her tracks. She had a soft spot for kids, especially kids who had to do without, the way she’d had to do for so many years. “But...” Merry continued, her conviction to fight for herself waning as the man headed toward the cab of his truck. She followed him as he plopped into the driver’s seat and stuck his keys in the ignition. “Seriously? Kids, huh?”
“Five.”
Suddenly, everything in Merry flip-flopped. She did look at the tow truck guy. She looked at him hard. He didn’t seem nearly as heartless as he had at first. He wasn’t her enemy. He was just a dad, working a thankless job in a tough economy to put food on the table for his family.
“Just take it.” Merry heaved a sigh.
And take Merry’s car, he did. Without another word, he started the truck and puttered away with Merry’s not-so-very-red Beetle bouncing along in tow behind him.
Merry’s face fell as the only thing of value she almost owned disappeared into the distance. It was like losing a friend of sorts, and she promised herself that somehow she’d get it back.
Merry turned. Despite the cold, heat flashed to her cheeks. Mr. Grabinski had observed the entire incident. He narrowed his gaze at her. “Monday’s the first. You got rent.”
She drew her coat close. “I know, I know.”
Merry scurried back to her apartment and closed the door, choking back tears. Her cat, Rudy, studied her. He was that special kind of animal that seemed to understand when her life got to be overwhelming.
Outside the vintage Downtown Diner, Skeeter Jeffries held up a cardboard sign that read: “Will Work for Food. God Bless You!” Merry kept an eye out for Skeeter through the plate glass window while she worked. He was a daily reminder that there were those who faced challenges even greater than hers.
Pedestrians routinely passed Skeeter by, refusing so much as to make eye contact. But over time, Merry had watched Skeeter as he’d developed something of an arms’ length relationship with the diner’s regulars, and how they’d come to be good for bits of loose change after they’d filled their own growling stomachs.
Merry had gotten to know Skeeter over the four long years since he’d been laid off from his job with the city’s Sanitation Department. A younger man might have found another position, she realized. But Skeeter was near retirement age and had long since accepted his lot in life. He had acclimated to making his way on the street and to the cardboard box behind the diner that he had come to call home.
Inside the diner, Merry waited as the barrel-bodied owner and short-order cook, Arthur Biddle, stacked freshly grilled hotcakes onto a plate. Merry had known for a long time that Arthur wasn’t one to do the niceties. There might have been an unrefined gruffness to his exterior, but in Merry’s experience, Arthur had always been a stand-up guy. He’d given her a job when she needed it and a helpful hand on more occasions than she could count.
“My offer, it still stands,” Arthur announced, scooping a dollop of butter onto the steaming stack of cakes.
As nonchalant as he was about it, one would have thought Arthur was referring to an advance on Merry’s pay or an arrangement for vacation time. But Merry knew exactly what offer Arthur meant immediately. It wasn’t something they talked about. They hadn’t spoken a word of it since the day Arthur had first flipped those Four Words onto the table.
He hadn’t gotten down on one knee. There had been no candlelight dinner or romantic stroll on the waterfront. Merry knew that, with Arthur, there was no pretense. He was a no-frills guy. You saw exactly what you got. He had said those Four Words a woman longs to hear in the kitchen of the diner, his forearms shiny with grease, in the process of yanking the giblets out of a turkey’s hind parts.
Taken off guard, Merry had brushed it off, as if Arthur must have been kidding. She’d tap danced her way around really answering back then, not wanting to hurt his feelings or to make things too awkward at this job she so desperately needed. But this time around, as casual as Merry tried to keep things, she knew she owed the man an actual answer.
“Arthur, you know I adore you—”
Arthur shook his head. “Yeah, I can hear that
but
rolling up. But. But this, but that. That’s what you’re gonna say, am I right?”
“I’m gonna say that, I just—I’m in this crazy-making situation and—I’m not going to marry to solve a problem, Arthur. I kind of want to marry for love.”
“Who says love ain’t a problem?” Arthur asked. The man was way smarter than he looked.
Far across town in a decidedly upscale bistro, Daniel Bell leaned over the remains of Eggs Benedict to kiss his date, Catherine Strong, goodbye. As he pulled away, she lingered.
“You know what your problem is, Daniel? You’re pathologically responsible, that’s all.”
Daniel straightened up congenially and signed to cover the check. As beautiful as Catherine was, he found her coy wit to be every bit as appealing as her pale blue eyes and her lithe, feminine form. Rising, he stroked Catherine’s arm affectionately. “Much as I hate to tear myself away, I’m sure your father would appreciate it. ‘Tis the season, you know.”
As Daniel rose to leave, Catherine checked her lipstick. “Daddy shouldn’t work you so hard,” she pouted.
“I do believe he’s testing me.”
“Grooming you,” Catherine corrected. “There’s a difference. He’s been hinting about retiring.”
Daniel had supposed as much.
At seventy, Catherine’s father had been dialing back time spent at the office gradually. The president of the bank that had stayed in his family for generations, Catherine was his sole heir and the apple of his eye. A shrewd man, he’d begun to entrust more and more responsibility to Daniel, with a not so subtle approving nod toward the developing relationship between his star vice president and his one-time jet-setting daughter.
It had seemed strange at first to Daniel. As a widower of almost three years, Daniel hadn’t dated or even desired to for such a very long time. It had been all he could do to function after losing his wife. Suddenly a single parent, he had thrown himself into his work, which was precisely where he’d eventually met Catherine, fresh off a break-up and ready to keep her feet on the ground for a while. Finally, the cloud of grief had lifted for Daniel, and his lonesome heart had found a way to move on again.
“Would you be up for an early dinner?” Daniel inquired.
“I believe I could swing that. Could we try someplace new?”
Daniel smiled knowingly. He steeled himself to take the plunge. “Actually, I was thinking my place. It’s time you met the children.”