Free Home for Christmas (Willow Park #5) by Noelle Adams Page A

was a stranger. An
actual stranger. In bed with her. Getting her coffee.
    She wondered if she really knew him at all.
    She’d brushed the thought away and was smiling when he
returned.
    “What did you want to do today?” she asked, when he climbed
into bed beside her.
    “I don’t know.”
    She didn’t want him to just lie around all day, even though
it might be his first inclination. It felt like he needed something to do,
something to occupy his mind. She knew very well that, if one was unoccupied,
it was very easy to brood, and Mark was always a “doing” sort of person. “Why
don’t you come to the bookstore with me?” she suggested. “You can help out, if
you don’t have anything else in mind.”
    He actually looked relieved, as if the pressure of
decision-making had been taken away from him. “Okay. That would be fine.”
    Sophie smiled as she sipped her coffee.
    It was definitely a good day. Not only did she get to drink
coffee and watch the news with her husband, but she also got to go to work with
him.
    It wasn’t like it used to be—pretty soon, they’d have to
work on getting him back to his old self, where she didn’t always have to nudge
him into doing things—but, still, this was nice.
    ***
    The morning went really well.
    Her grandfather was kind and easy-going, and he was happy to
see Mark without trying to crowd him. Sophie let her grandfather handle the
cash register while she and Mark worked in the back room, re-organizing the
stock the way she’d been wanting to do for a while. They also switched out the
fall-themed knickknacks on the front shelves with Christmas-themed knickknacks.
Mark walked to the sandwich shop two doors down to get lunch for the three of
them, and Sophie was almost flushed with happiness at having such a good day
with him.
    When Thomas Morgan, Abigail’s husband, walked into the store
in the middle of the afternoon, Sophie was happy to see him. She wanted to
introduce him to Mark. She was hoping the two men could be friends.
    Thomas was a surgeon at the local hospital, and he always
came across as competent and self-possessed. He smiled when he saw Sophie. “I
need a Christmas present for Mia, and all she ever wants is more books,” he
said. “Do you have anything she hasn’t read yet?”
    Sophie made a face. Thomas and Abigail’s daughter read as
well and as much as a child twice her age. “I don’t know. She’s read through my
kid’s section.”
    “Abigail gave me strict instructions that I was to stick to
age-appropriate books.” He curled up his lip in a way that made Sophie chuckle.
    She glanced behind her to see if Mark was around, but he’d
gone to the bathroom and must not have come back out yet.
    Focusing on the problem at hand, she mentally scanned her
inventory. “Oh,” she said, walking over to the glass case in which they kept
the rare or more valuable books. She indicated a row near the bottom of the
case. “Has she read these?”
    Thomas leaned down to look. “No. I don’t think so. I’ve
never heard of them. Are they any good?”
    “Yes. I loved them. They’re about a hundred years old now,
but they’re so much fun, and they’re well written. They’re about girls who are
friends, and the books grow up with the girls, so the later books are a lot
harder.”
    Thomas had pulled the first book off the shelf. “This is too
easy for her.”
    “Yeah, but look at this one.” She pulled off one of the high
school books and opened it. “The reading level grows up with the girls. She
might not be ready to read the older ones yet, but she can definitely read the
first six.”
    “Okay.” He was scanning pages quickly, and Sophie was quite
sure he was reading them thoroughly at a very fast speed. Thomas was incredibly
smart. Sometimes intimidatingly so. That was obvious from just a simple
conversation. “This doesn’t look too shallow.”
    “I think Mia would really like them. But I can order them in
paperbacks if you want. These are