Heather Graham (17 page)

“Merry Christmas, Cath!” he told her, and kissed her.

She hugged him, kissing him in return, while the kids all cheered.

“She’s pretty cool, huh?” he asked them all, pausing specifically to look at Brenden.

“Sure,” Brenden agreed.

“She’d make a great mom, huh?”

Brenden stiffened. “We won’t split up—”

“What did you say, Don?”

“I said you’d make a great mom.”

“Don!” Cathy breathed. “These are big guys!”

“All potty-trained.”

She gasped. “You mean it?”

Don turned on Brenden, wagging a finger sternly. “You get a sister, too. We can’t leave Cassandra out of this. And you all be decent to her, you hear?”

“All of us?” David said incredulously.

“We—we can deal with a sister,” Brenden said.

“All of us?” David said once again.

“All of you!” Cathy shrieked. Rising from the snow, she pounced on Don in return, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, his lips.

The kids cheered.

“Cathy, Cathy, let me up!” he pleaded.

She sat back. “Don, seven children?”

“Well, if you can’t handle it—”

“I can handle it, I can handle it!” she cried, staring at him. She shrieked again.

Pounced on him again.

Kissed him again.

Oh, God, he loved his wife.

He managed to bring them both back up, covered with the snow.

He looked at the group of kids, then to the sister who had been in charge of them.

“They are up for adoption, right?”

“Oh, yes!” She exclaimed, clapping her hands together gleefully. “Oh, yes! This is so wonderful.” There were tears in her eyes. “They just wouldn’t part from one another, you see, and it was impossible to get any sane person to—Oh!”

Don started to laugh. Cathy stared at him and started to laugh, too.

“If we admit we’re probably not completely sane, will you promise not to tell anyone else?” Don demanded.

“Never!” the sister swore, crossing herself.

Don looked at the kids.

“All of us?” David said yet again.

“All of you!” Cathy said.

“It’s going to be Christmas with the Angels, guys, from here on out, okay?” He ruffled David’s hair. “
All
of you.”

Cathy began to laugh. The sister began to cry happily and hug the kids.

David said, “You mean
all
of all of us?”

“Absolutely all!”

The sirens were ceasing to shriek. The injured were being taken away.

One of the men from fire-rescue walked by them, shaking his head.

“Can you imagine? This
mess
, and not a single soul killed. It’s a miracle!”

Don smiled. It was a miracle all right. A Christmas gift.

Long, long ago, there had been a gift to mankind.

A gift of love, the gift of life.

He and Cathy had received a very similar gift that night.

Life.

And love.

And both to be used to the fullest.

That darned car radio just kept playing and playing.

Christmas carols.

Don started to laugh again. His turn. He tilted back his head and shouted out a cry—to heaven.

He looked at Cathy. Smiled.

She shrieked.

He pounced. And they lay in the snow. Angels in the snow, he thought, and laughed and laughed …

Then kissed his Angel.

And wished her a merry, merry Christmas.

Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.

Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.

After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel,
When Next We Love
(1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.

In 1989 Graham published
Sweet Savage Eden
, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in
Runaway
(1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.

In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as
Tall, Dark, and Deadly
(1999),
Long, Lean, and Lethal
(2000), and
Dying to Have Her
(2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s
Haunted
she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.

Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.

Graham (left) with her sister.

Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.

Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.

Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.

Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.

Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.

Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.

Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.