BLURB
Pete Cochran, a war veteran with both visible and invisible scars,
is mostly a loner. Then a special woman with a young son walks into his life as
he works at his father's Christmas tree lot–a woman with problems he can't
ignore.
Maria Sanchez and her son Miguel eke out an existence on her
part-time earnings, but share an abundance of love, except when terrorized by
her drug addict relative. When she meets Pete, she sees him not as a
frightening man, but a wounded hero returned from war. Her son seems immediately
drawn to the unusual Christmas tree vendor.
Will a special tree–a
wishing tree–contain enough magic to fulfill all their Christmas desires?
EXCERPT
Her eyes met his and she smiled. It was a smile he'd not been
expecting; a genuine greeting so sincere he wondered if he may have known her
from the past. She seemed familiar to him, somehow. But if he'd known her, he
never would've forgotten. She was too beautiful–inside and out–for him to have
misplaced that memory. Even with two years in Iraq and the war wounds that
separated his normal life before and
what passed for normal now.
He smiled back, reflexively, without conscious thought or effort,
and her grin widened. A few feet away from him, she stopped and closed her
eyes, taking a deep breath.
Pete's smile faded. He'd been just about to speak when she'd
stopped in her tracks like that.
"That's one of the most beautiful scents on this earth,"
she said, looking straight into his one good eye. "I've always loved the
smell of Christmas."
There was no rejection in her face–she looked
at him the way people used to–before the war. When he'd had both eyes, and no eye patch.
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