Please Come Home for Christmas: A Novella

By Lenora Worth

In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas . . . and something fishy.

Her heart ought to be on the naughty list. Amy has hardly shown her son around the family horse farm or brushed a thoroughbred before she’s fraternizing with the enemy. It’s been awhile since her husband died, since her heart felt this way.

But after real estate developer Dan Wentworth has been so cozy with her sisters about selling their newly inherited property, Amy can’t be sure if he’s warming up to her. Or merely warming her up to the idea of letting the family homestead be bulldozed for a housing development.

She doesn’t want to hurt her sisters, but the money from Dan’s proposal could go a long way in making single-motherhood merry and bright.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683701231

Lenora Worth

Lenora Worth writes for Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense. She is a Carol Award finalist and a New York Times, USA Today, and PW bestselling author. She writes Southern stories set in places she loves such as Georgia, Texas,  Louisiana, and Florida. Lenora is married and has two grown children and now lives near the ocean in the Panhandle of Florida. She loves reading, shoe shopping, long walks on the beach, mojitoes and road trips.

Book preview

Please Come Home for Christmas

Written by Lenora Worth, originally published as part of the novella Sleigh Bells Ring

Published by Gilead Publishing, Grand Rapids, MI

www.gileadpublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-68370-123-1 (eBook)

Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Editors: Barbara J. Scott and Sandra D. Bricker

Cover and interior designer: Larry Taylor

Dear Amy,

I’m sure it will be a surprise to you if the investigator locates you and delivers this letter into your hands. You’re my oldest daughter, and I haven’t so much as looked into your eyes or heard your voice in years.

I want you to know that when I called you after coming back from overseas, I didn’t blame you for hanging up on me. You were old enough to understand how dramatically I failed the family when your mom and I split, and wise enough to know you didn’t want any part of me afterward.

I’m so sorry, honey. I wish we could have talked just one more time before the cancer took me. I feel sure you grew into a woman who’s strong and kind, and I only want to make sure you know that, with all my faults and weaknesses, I’ve loved you with my whole heart for my entire life.

I’ve left the horse farm to you and your sisters. Do with it as you see fit. Just know this: I’ve made my peace with the God your mom pointed toward every day of her life, and I want to believe I’ve made my peace with you as well. Sweet daughter, I’ll love you always.

Tuck

If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.

—John 20:23

Chapter One

Order up!"

Amy Tucker Brosseau folded the wrinkled piece of paper and put it back in the pocket of the old sweater she usually wore while working the early morning shift at the Garden District Dish Café. She’d read the letter from her now-deceased daddy several times over in the last few weeks, but the shock of seeing his words there on the stark white paper always left her feeling cold and empty.

Hey, I need more coffee.

Grabbing the French toast and bacon from the pass-through window, Amy hurried by the man holding up his coffee cup. Be right back, Mr. Purdue.

Amy set the order down on the old oak table that shined with an aged patina. Okay, anything else for you folks?

The newlyweds didn’t even bother answering. Instead, they both started cutting into the shared plate of thick brioche French toast while gazing into each other’s eyes with a sweetness that rivaled the powdered sugar on the golden bread. Amy envied their happiness . . . and their honeymoon.

New Orleans was beautiful during the Christmas season.

And the Garden Dish, as the locals liked to call the café, was always busy from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.

Amy’s feet hurt just thinking about the next couple of weeks of holiday frenzy. But she needed this job since Timothy had a long list ready for Santa. Amy’s focus had to be on her seven-year-old son, no matter how many times her sister Jo-Jo called to convince her that she was needed at the rundown, failing Kentucky horse farm their wayward daddy, Tuck, had left them after he died from cancer.

All three of her younger sisters were back in Bluegrass Crossing now. Joanna, Bella, and Sophie had all returned after they’d received letters from Tuck following his death. Over the last month, they’d come home one by one to decide what to do with the once-thriving horse farm. At first, they’d all agreed to sell it and be done. But in a twist that could only happen in the Tucker family, each of her sisters had found true love right there in good old Kentucky. Now they were all leaning toward keeping the ranch and making it grand again with the help of the men in their lives. She was the last holdout. No man, no urge to go back, and no energy to save the Tucker ranch.

Amy knew she should feel something for the daddy she called Tuck, but each time she thought of the ranch back in Kentucky, she also thought of her mama. And then she got angry all over again. She missed Mama with all her heart. But she couldn’t conjure up any sympathetic emotions for her father. Except maybe a side of regret to go with that simmering anger.

Robert J. Tucker had lived and breathed the Marine Corps and had served way beyond the call of duty while his wife and four girls tried to keep up the horse farm that had been in the Tucker family for generations. Even now, the ranch hobbled along as a rehab center for retired racehorses, a place where an aging star could be retrained to become a family horse or be trained as a therapy horse. People brought their children there to learn how to ride or to experience being around those truly magnificent animals.

But Amy left all of that behind after her mother died. She headed to Nashville with her high school sweetheart, Tim. After they were married, she worked part-time and took a couple of college courses before they moved to New Orleans. Tim was electrocuted two years back in a freak accident down at one of the shipyards. Now her daddy was gone, too. The Marine Corps father who’d