That Christmas Feeling

CATHERINE PALMER

is a bestselling author and winner of the Christy Award for her outstanding Christian romance. She also received the Career Achievement Award for Inspirational Fiction from
Romantic Times.
Raised in Kenya, she lives in Missouri with her husband and their two sons.

GAIL GAYMER MARTIN

is an award-winning author for Steeple Hill and Barbour Publishing. She is the recipient of a
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice Award, and her novel
The Christmas Kite
has been optioned for television by Hallmark. Visit Gail at www.gailmartin.com or write to her at P.O. Box 760063, Lathrup Village, MI 48076.

CHRISTMAS IN MY HEART
Catherine Palmer

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

CHRISTMAS MOON
Gail Gaymer Martin

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

“I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.”

—Ebenezer Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens

N
ever again, Claire Ross fumed as she stepped through the front door onto the porch of her aunt Flossie’s house. So much for spreading the Christmas spirit. Lifting the fragrant pine wreath she had brought as a gift, Claire jammed it onto a nail in the door and stomped across the sagging wooden floorboards.

She had never met a more irascible, heartless, crusty old windbag! The woman was impossible. Picking her way down the damp and splintered steps, Claire vowed that this first time she had visited her great-aunt would also be the last. No wonder the entire Ross family had disowned Florence Ross. She deserved it.

“And stay gone!” a voice crowed behind her.

Claire swung around in time to see Aunt Flossie point a double-barreled shotgun into the gray Missouri sky and pull the trigger. At the deafening blast, a pair of doves fluttered screeching out of a nearby oak tree, five yowling cats
hightailed it from under the porch and every dog in a three-mile radius of Buffalo, Missouri, began to bark. Stunned, Claire watched as her aunt grabbed the Christmas wreath off the front door and sent it sailing like a Frisbee across the yard.

“Don’t need Christmas ’round here!” Aunt Flossie shouted. “Don’t need it, don’t want it!”

Breathing hard, Claire stared at the tiny, white-haired woman. Flossie wore a faded pink bathrobe with its terrycloth loops picked into long strings by the horde of cats that lived in and around old Ross Mansion. The robe’s hem hung uneven and frayed around her thin ivory calves. Socks—one navy, the other black—were rolled to her ankles. And a pair of men’s leather work boots with steel toes and untied laces anchored her feet.

Hair splayed out like dandelion fluff, Flossie stared at her niece. Her sharp blue eyes narrowed as her mouth turned down. “This is my property,” she sneered. “You stay off!”

“Believe me, I have no intention of ever—”

A wailing siren drowned out Claire’s words as a blue car sped toward them down the narrow paved road. Emblazoned with the word
Police
in bold white letters on the side, the squad car pulled to a stop beside the gray picket fence that surrounded Flossie Ross’s yard. The siren died, the driver’s door swung open and a man Claire instantly recognized as Robert West, Buffalo’s police chief, stepped out.

“Miss Ross,” he called as he rounded the fence and strode down the driveway. “How many times have I told
you not to go firing guns inside city limits? Now, give me that thing!”

“You can’t have it, you ol’ turkey buzzard!” Shaking the weapon, Flossie tottered down the steps. “Get outta my yard!”

Claire’s fury at her aunt shifted to concern as the chief stalked toward the old woman. Rob West was not a man to defy. Six feet four inches tall, broad shouldered and narrow hipped, he had been quarterback of Buffalo High School’s winning football team and a state-champion wrestler. Though Claire had returned to her hometown the previous summer and had been teaching high school history since the start of the fall semester, she had yet to cross paths with Rob.

Not that she’d been looking for him. In school, Rob had been a popular, handsome athlete and the beloved boyfriend of the prettiest, blondest, curviest girl in their class—the sweetheart he had married the day after his graduation from the police academy. Until a teacher paired the two mismatched freshmen for an ongoing four-year research project, Rob had paid scant attention to Claire Ross with her coarse red hair, ghostly pale skin and rail-thin body. It didn’t help that she adored school, loved to read and made it perfectly clear she thought Rob West was as dumb as a Missouri mule.

Still, they had somehow ended up becoming friends—easily teasing each other, sharing ideas and even confiding secrets. He called her Clarence and sneaked her pieces of her favorite brand of bubble gum. She called him a nincompoop and a lamebrain, and she blew bubbles, which he mashed onto her nose.

In the course of the four years, Claire made sure the research project progressed, and eventually she even convinced Rob that Buffalo’s role in the Civil War really was an interesting topic. He made sure the other guys didn’t malign skinny Claire behind her back, and she actually ended up getting a date to her senior prom.

“What are you shooting at today, Miss Ross?” Rob asked. “Is a stray dog after your cats? Or are you mad at the garbage truck again?”

“It’s her.” Flossie pointed a thin finger at Claire. “She’s trespassing on my property.”

Rob’s bright blue eyes focused for the first time on the younger woman. His brow furrowed as he took off his hat. “Claire Ross? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” she said. “I drove all the way over here to bring my aunt a Christmas gift, and she—”

“She started right off griping about my cats!” Flossie cut in.

“Everybody in town gripes about your cats,” Rob retorted. “You’re in violation of city ordinances, Miss Ross. Only four cats are allowed per household. A city license is required. You’ve got to have proof of current rabies vaccinations for each cat. And it’s against municipal code to allow your pets to run loose off your property.”

“So what? They’re not my cats anyhow. People drop ’em here, and I take ’em in.” She gave a loud snort and shouted, “I’m a kindhearted animal lover, that’s all!”

“How many cats do you have now? It was sixteen the last time I came out here.”

“Who cares? Sixteen or twenty, what difference does it make? They’re not doing harm to anyone.”

“They stink, Miss Ross. Plain and simple, you’ve got an odor problem. Not only that, but your property is a public eyesore. You’ve got cats on the roof, cats in the trees, cats in the basement—”

“Not in the basement. I keep that locked.”

“The point is, ma’am, you’ve got to get rid of some of the cats and clean up this place.”

“Or what? You ain’t out here about the cats anyhow. You’re here to get that woman off my land!”

Rob glanced at Claire again. His face registered surprise for a second time, as if he’d failed to remember her from a moment before. She clamped her hands on her hips in frustration. Bad enough that she had been invisible in high school. But now? At twenty-eight, she thought she had improved a tad. She filled out her clothes in the right places, she had earned a master’s degree in history, she had been the assistant curator at a museum in Savannah, Georgia, and despite recently having her wedding canceled only a month before it was scheduled, she certainly had plenty of confidence.

“I’d heard you were back in town,” Rob said. “Teaching history at the high school, someone told me.”

“And trying to be a kind niece.” She glanced down at the pine wreath. It lay half in a puddle of icy water and half in the mud. Bright red berries, pretty ribbons and silver bells were forlornly buried in the fragrant branches. “It’s real, you know. I bought it at the florist shop and brought it over here for my aunt. I hoped it would cheer her up.”

“Cheer Miss Ross? You’ve got your work cut out for you there.” His mouth tilted into a grin. “But as I recall, Clarence, you never objected to hard work.”

So he did remember her after all. To her dismay, Claire felt her cheeks grow warm. “Well, I just didn’t expect—”

“You planning to arrest that woman, Chief West?” Flossie demanded. “She’s the one in violation of city code. She’s trespassing!”

Rob turned to the older woman again. “Miss Ross, Claire is your niece. It’s almost Christmas, and she’s trying to be neighborly.”

“Neighborly? I didn’t ask her to come over. I never invited her—and I don’t want her!” Flossie shook her fist. “Now, you just make her get off my land, because I don’t tolerate…”

“Did you actually go inside the house?” Rob asked Claire as her aunt ranted and stomped around on the porch. “I’ve never been able to get through the front door.”

Claire nodded. “The smell is awful. It can’t be sanitary.”

“I’ve sent social workers over here to check on her, but she won’t let them inside.”

“I barely set foot in the foyer before she went after her gun. All I saw was torn wallpaper, piles of newspapers and cats. Lots of cats.”

Claire mused for a moment, recalling stories she had heard told around the family dinner table. A clapboard confection of nineteenth-century turrets, gables, balconies and gingerbread, the old house had been built by a wealthy Ross ancestor in anticipation of a promised railroad that
never came to town. Generations came and went, and the family fortune dwindled. Now only Florence Ross and her cats remained in the dilapidated, sagging structure.

“When I was a girl,” Claire told Rob, “my father used to say that Ross Mansion was a showpiece inside. He believed it was filled with family treasures—artwork, antiques, historical items. But if that’s true, everything is probably ruined.”

“I’m afraid so.” Rob’s blue eyes clouded. “Your aunt is an animal hoarder, Claire. It’s part of the spectrum of mental illnesses known as obsessive-compulsive disorders. Miss Ross collects cats. Most of them are feral. She can’t turn them away, she won’t get them neutered or spayed and they’ve infested the house and grounds. People call me at all hours of the night to complain. The cats yowl and fight and dig up gardens and tear into trash cans—”

A second shotgun blast shattered the conversation and set the dogs barking all over again. “Hey, both of you trespassers!” Flossie screeched. “Get out!”

“That does it.” Rob swung around and marched up onto the porch. “Hand over your weapon. Do it now, Miss Ross, or I’ll take you in.”

With one hand he grabbed the shotgun. With the other he dipped into the gaping pocket of Flossie’s shaggy pink robe and took out a fistful of unspent shells.

“I’ve got a rifle inside the house!” she squalled at him. “It’s a .22, and I’ve got a pistol, too. I have the right to bear arms!”

“Not in my town you don’t. Not anymore.” He stepped around her and pushed open the front door. “I’ll just go in there and—”

“Don’t go in! Don’t go in!”

He vanished, the old woman scurrying through the door behind him. Claire let out a breath. But her relief evaporated when Rob reappeared again immediately, his face contorted.

“That house is a public menace,” he scolded Flossie, who stood glaring up at him. “I can’t even breathe in there without a face mask.”

“Good!” she snapped back. “Don’t breathe. You can just die, for all I care!”

“Miss Ross, your neighbors have been pestering me about you for years, but I’ve been patient. Too patient. Today you’ve pushed me over the edge. I want this place cleaned up by Christmas, or I’ll ask the city to condemn it and evict you. The cats have to go. The waste has to be cleaned up—and I don’t mean with mop water. You’d better get some disinfectant. And paint. I want you to paint these outside walls and the picket fence, too. You hear me?”

“I don’t hear a thing!”

“And no more gunshots!”

As he strode toward his squad car, Claire caught his arm. “Wait, Rob, you can’t do this! Aunt Flossie is too old to clean and paint the house. And she’s too mean to obey you.”

“Then we’ll have to evict her.”

“How can you even say that? If you turn her out of the house, what’s to become of her?”

“She can move in with you,” he retorted.

“Are you crazy?” she called after him as he opened his car door.

“Not as crazy as your aunt.”

As the blue car made a U-turn and sped off in a cloud of dust, Claire clenched her jaw. That dumb Rob West always had been too big for his britches! What an ego—calling Buffalo
his
town, threatening to evict Aunt Flossie and ordering Claire to take her in. As if Claire would ever consider opening her pristine little bungalow, her precious sanctuary and refuge, to that impossible woman and her umpteen smelly cats!

No way. Absolutely not! She owed Aunt Flossie nothing. The woman had never played any part in Claire’s life. A lifelong spinster, Flossie had avoided family gatherings, never invited anyone over and certainly made it clear she wanted to be left alone. So clear, in fact, that the whole Ross family had readily agreed to deed her their stakes in the mansion. Despite its rumored treasures, the house held no claim on anyone’s affections. Not if that meant encountering Florence Ross and her bitter, biting tongue.

“He stole my gun!” Flossie fumed, turning her small blue eyes on her great-niece. “Did you see that? The police chief stole my shotgun!”

Claire hesitated. Her urge to rebuke the bedraggled creature was mitigated only by the knowledge that Rob West always meant exactly what he said. If Flossie didn’t get rid of the cats and clean up the house, he would have it condemned. Claire’s parents were out of town for the winter, and as her great-aunt’s nearest living relative, she would then become legally responsible for the elderly woman.

“Aunt Flossie, do you know who I am?” she asked.

“Of course I do. You’re Jim’s girl. Listen, you better tell your daddy to get his sorry hide over to the police station and bring me back my shotgun!”

Picking up the muddy wreath, Claire shook her head in frustration. She had come here to be kind, not to take abuse. Life had been difficult enough lately. While preparing for her wedding only nine months before, Claire had learned that her fiancé was seeing another woman. After canceling the nuptials, she’d stayed on in her job at the museum as long as she could. But her deep-seated unhappiness had convinced her she needed a new beginning.

At first the idea of coming home to Missouri felt like a step backward. When her mother mentioned that a teaching position had opened up in Buffalo, Claire immediately rejected the idea. She was a museum curator, not a high school history teacher. And she had no interest in returning to the little town she once had so eagerly fled. But the chance to escape the pain of her broken engagement and start life over changed her mind. After talking with her pastor and praying about the situation, she had embraced the opportunity and made the move.

As it turned out, Claire found she enjoyed teaching and appreciated Buffalo far more than she’d expected. Most important, as the darkness in her heart began to fade, a new dream took its place. Why not open a small museum dedicated to the town’s unique history? To that end, Claire already had approached several of the city aldermen. If they could find a suitable location, she explained, then she would help gather the necessary historical artifacts and set
up displays. Volunteers could staff the museum during visiting hours. Local schoolchildren certainly would benefit, and a small entrance fee might help the museum pay for its upkeep. Though the aldermen were skeptical that such an expense could be justified, they had agreed to look into it.