A Home for Christmas: Home to Collingsworth, #7

By Kimberly Rae Jordan

Over the years, Rose Collingsworth watched her aunts and uncles fall in love and marry, and now she wants that for herself. Too bad the man she's set her sights on is more interested in keeping his distance. 

When Declan Gallagher first came to Collingsworth, all he wanted was a place to do his carpentry and pillow to lay his head. His past left him resolved to avoid any emotional entanglements. But from the first moment he'd seen Rose Collingsworth, his heart had tested that resolve.

Will Declan be able to recognize his fear and rise above it? Or will his determination to never trust or love again win out? Wanting Declan in her life, Rose soon realizes that there is nothing more she can do but trust God to work things out and hope that it's His will that she and Declan be together. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Three Strand Press
• Release date: Jan 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386331506

Book preview

A Home for Christmas

A Home to Collingsworth Novella

by

Kimberly Rae Jordan

Copyright © 2015 by Kimberly Rae Jordan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher. An exception may be made in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events in purely coincidental.

A man, a woman & their God.

Three Strand Press publishes Christian Romance stories

that intertwine love, faith and family.

Always clean. Always heartwarming. Always uplifting.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This is book 7 in the Home to Collingsworth series. Though each story does stand alone, there are storylines that began in book 1 and will continue through this book. If this is the first book you’ve picked up in the series and you wish to fully experience and enjoy this series, please start with book 1,

Home Is Where the Heart Is.

CHAPTER ONE

R

OSE COLLINGSWORTH glanced at the timer sitting on the counter beside several dozen cooling sugar cookies. One more batch and she’d be done. Hopefully, this last dozen would be out before her appointment showed up. Well, technically, it was Jessa’s appointment, but her aunt had called to bail at the last minute.

As if her thoughts brought it on, the doorbell chimed. 1:28 left on the timer. She’d have to answer the door and get back to the kitchen quickly. Not exactly how she wanted her first meeting with Declan Gallagher to go. Rose hurried to the front door, her heart skipping a beat when she opened it to see the man standing on the porch. His dark eyes widened briefly when he saw her.

He wore a pair of faded blue jeans and heavy work boots. His black jacket was thick and added to the muscular bulk Rose knew he carried in his chest. A gray knit cap covered most of his dark brown hair, but a few curls peeked out from beneath the ribbed edge.

I’m here to see Jessa Collingsworth-Evanston. He held out his hand as his gaze swept from the top of Rose’s head down to her mismatched sock-clad feet. I’m Declan Gallagher.

Rose took his hand, which—though cold—enveloped hers in a firm and strong grasp. The calluses on his fingers were rough against hers as her hand slipped away from his. This was the hand of a working man.  Pressing her palms together as if to capture the feel of his hand, Rose fought the urge to place one foot on top of the other to hide the fact that she hadn’t been able to find matching socks when she’d gotten dressed earlier. But doing so now would likely just draw more attention to the fact, so she kept her feet firmly planted on the floor.

Jessa wasn’t able to make it. I’m Rose Collingsworth, and I run the wedding chapel with her. She called and told me to go ahead and share with you what we want. Rose was actually relieved that Jessa couldn’t be there for the appointment. They hadn’t agreed one hundred percent on the design for the wedding arch, but now she’d be able to convey what she wanted without Jessa interfering. Because, while they had started out jointly running the wedding chapel, Rose had taken over most of the responsibilities as Jessa’s life with Lance and the kids had gotten busier. Can you come inside for a minute before we go to the chapel? I have a pan of cookies coming out of the oven. It’ll just be another minute.

The man nodded as she moved back so he could step onto the mat inside the door. I’m a little early.

You can come with me or if you want to wait here, I’ll be right back. The beep of the timer drew her back toward the kitchen.

Rose didn’t wait to see if Declan followed her as she hurried to the oven and jerked it open. She grabbed a mitt off the hook next to the oven and slipped it on. Taking a quick look at the cookies, she was pleased to see that they had turned out perfectly.

After putting the pan on the wire rack to cool, she looked up to find the kitchen empty. Fighting a small pang of disappointment, Rose slipped the apron up over her head and dropped it on the counter. Smoothing her hand over her hair to catch any flyaway strands, she took a deep breath then went back to the foyer.

Sorry about that, she said as she opened the closet door and reached inside for her jacket.

Rose quickly slid her arms into the sleeves and lifted it onto her shoulders. After zipping it up, she grabbed her scarf and wound it around her neck while she shoved her feet into her boots. The man’s silence as she got ready was a bit unnerving. She glanced over and found his attention wasn’t on her but on the clipboard he held in his hands.

She had initially been thrilled when Jessa had mentioned who she’d wanted to hire to build a new arch for the wedding chapel. Over the past few months, she’d been trying to work up her nerve to introduce herself to Declan Gallagher. First, she’d had to find out who the man was who sat in the very back row of the sanctuary at church each Sunday. His shoulders slightly hunched, his interlaced fingers resting between his knees. He stood when everyone else stood and sat when instructed to, but otherwise he didn’t move. He just sat there each week, his attention on the stage at the front of the sanctuary. Never a change of expression on his serious—but handsome—face. She’d been able to observe all of that because she’d purposely started sitting at the back on the other side of the sanctuary so she could see him, abandoning the pews nearer the front where her family usually sat.

He had roused her curiosity. Though Collingsworth wasn’t small enough that she knew everyone who lived there, Collingsworth Community Church wasn’t so big that she hadn’t been able to discover his identity with a few discreet queries.

Declan Gallagher. The assistant pastor’s younger brother. A carpenter. An ex-convict. And—according to a few gossips in the church—not someone a good girl would want to hang around with.

And Rose was nothing if not a good girl. And yet...the first time their gazes had met she’d seen something there. Something that had reached into her heart and told her that she needed to get to know this man better. Unfortunately, while it seemed every other Collingsworth female of her generation could turn on the charm like nobody’s business—particularly Addy, who had just turned twenty-one a few weeks earlier—that just wasn’t her. Rose only had three years on Violet and Dean’s daughter, but most the time she felt as if she was a good decade older. Quite likely the by-product of spending the first ten years of her life around people who were all much older than her.

Without the outgoing personality to make an introduction easy, she’d had to settle for just making sure that anytime their gazes met she smiled at him. And it seemed that without fail, that would happen at least once when they were in the same room. He never returned the smile, but it seemed the tension in his face would ease for a moment before he’d look away. All Rose knew was that in that brief moment of connection with Declan each week, something deep within her recognized the fleeting emotion in his eyes. Now if she could just get the man to want to get to know her as much as she wanted to get to know him.

She’d thought this meeting that Jessa had set up with him would be the perfect time to get acquainted with Declan Gallagher, but now Rose wasn’t so sure. Given his reaction—or lack thereof—to seeing her a few minutes ago, Rose was beginning to think she may have imagined it all. Clearly, he hadn’t known who she was. She may have gone to the trouble to find out about him, but he’d obviously not been interested enough in the person who smiled at him each week to find out her name. She knew she wasn’t the type of girl to draw men’s attention, and she’d been just fine with that until right at that moment. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

Rose pushed her disappointment aside as she opened the front door and stepped out onto the wide porch. We can follow the path to the chapel at the back of the property.

She pulled on her gloves and then glanced over at Declan with a smile as she headed for the steps that would lead to the shoveled path that ran along the front and then the side of the manor. The sound of the crunching snow beneath heavy boots let her know he was following her. She resisted the urge to look back at him. Should she even try to convey her interest to this man? He was unlike anyone she’d ever met before. Not that she had all that much experience with guys in general.

While girls in high school had been interested in boys and dating, Rose had been more comfortable with her sketch pads, pencils, and paints. Even when she’d taken some art courses at the college, she’d kept to herself, not getting involved in activities that may have brought her into social settings with more people. Now that she ran the Collingsworth Manor Bed & Breakfast and the wedding chapel, she came into contact with a lot of different people. However, not many of them were single men.

As they neared the chapel, Rose sent up a prayer that somehow she’d be able to make a connection with this man. Please, God, if this is a desire You’ve placed in my heart, help me.

***

Wondering if this was really a job he should take, Declan followed the woman along a neatly shoveled walk to a large log building set back against a bank of trees. Hopefully, she hadn’t realized how surprised he’d been to see her when she’d answered the door. The woman with the large gray eyes and long dark curls who smiled at him at church each week had been in his thoughts more than he liked to admit. And then suddenly, she was right there, smiling and introducing herself. It was a good thing he’d been under no illusions that she was someone he could have in his life. Because if he had thought that, realizing she was a Collingsworth would have knocked that idea right out of his head.

And yet...he couldn’t seem to dismiss her completely from his mind, especially since she was walking right in front of him. Over the past few months, her warm, friendly smile had touched him. He’d purposely not tried to find out her name, knowing it would make her more real to him. But...here she was. Rose.

If he’d been smart, he would have postponed the meeting until Jessa—the woman who’d originally contacted him—had been able to meet with him. Of course, he could still refuse the job. However, he wasn’t really in any position to turn away work.

When they stepped into the foyer of the building, she tugged off her gloves and stuffed them into her pockets. Her chocolate brown hair sprang free in loose curls as she unwound her scarf and pulled it off.

She looked at him, her light gray eyes large in her face, a face that wasn’t strikingly beautiful but yet held an allure that drew his gaze. Do you want to hang up your jacket?

I’m fine, Declan told her. He needed to wrap this up as quickly as possible and get back to his place. Uneasiness sat heavy in his gut. Did this