Free Special Delivery by Danielle Steel

didn't want to feel that way about him, she found that she loved being with him.
    They talked about it that night, in the car, on the way home, and he confessed that she was not at all what he had expected her to be, once he got to know her. She was funny and warm and kind and compassionate, and so vulnerable. Everything she said or did made him want to protect her.
    Can you stand just being friends for a while, she asked him honestly, or maybe even forever? I don't know that I'll ever want to get involved again. I'm just not sure I could ever do that.
    No one's asking you to make that decision, he said sanely, and she calmed down and stopped feeling quite as guitly. He came in for a while, and they drank mint tea in her kitchen, and then eventually he lit a fire in the living room, and they talked for a long time about the things that were important to them.
    It was two o'clock when he left, and she didn't know where the night had gone. The hours seemed to fly by when they were together. The next morning he was busy at the store, and she spent the day doing all the last-minute details of getting ready for Christmas. She had already bought the tree, and she was decorating it that night when he called her.
    What are you doing? he asked, sounding tired. He had been at the store for twelve hours, and he was exhausted.
    Decorating the tree, she said, but she sounded sad, and she had put carols on the stereo, which suddenly seemed even sadder. It was her first Christmas without Matt, her first as a widow.
    Do you want me to come by? I'm leaving the store in half an hour, and you're on my way home. I'd love to see you.
    I don't think we should, she said honestly. She still needed time to mourn, and this was one of those private moments. Instead, they talked for a while, and when they hung up, she felt a little better, and he felt worse, and suddenly desperately lonely. He wondered if she was ever going to let go of Matt, or be ready to let someone in behind her walls. He knew that he had glimpsed into her heart, but she was still afraid to let him approach her, and maybe she always would be.
    Jack drove slowly past her house on the way home, and he could see the lights blinking on the tree inside, but he couldn't see her. She was sitting in her bedroom, crying, because she was desperately afraid she was falling in love with Jack and she didn't want to. It wasn't fair to Matt, and more than anything, she didn't want to betray him. After twenty-six years she owed him more than that, more than just falling for the first man who came along, no matter how charming he was. And what would happen if she did turn out to be one of the girls in his chorus line? She would have cheapened herself for nothing. And she knew with absolute certainty that, for Matt's sake, and her own, she couldn't let that happen.
    Jack called her when he got home, but she didn't answer the phone. She knew instinctively that it was him, and she didn't want to talk to him. She wanted to end this even before it happened.
    She turned out the lights that night, and went to bed, and left the music on, and the strains of Silent Night drifted through the house as she cried, for two men, one she had loved for so long, and the other she would never know. It was hard to tell at that exact moment which pain was greater, and which of them she most longed for.

Chapter Five

    Jack only called her once or twice over the next few days. He could sense what was happening to her, and he knew how hard it was for her over the holidays. Dori had died in November, and he had stayed drunk for an entire week between Christmas and New Year's.
    He wisely left Amanda alone to cope with her feelings privately, but on the morning of Christmas Eve, he had a Christmas gift dropped off for her. It was a small eighteenth-century sketch of an angel that she had admired in the store, and it was very pretty. He wrote a brief note to go with it, and told her that he hoped an angel would be watching over