A knock sounded at the front door of Willa Murray’s townhouse. She jolted from her stance in front of the flickering fire and set her mug of hot tea on the whitewashed oak mantle above the hearth. She’d been using it to her warm her icy fingers. It had miserably failed to chase away the cold ache in her heart.

Though the nightlife in Tombstone, Arizona was in full swing at nine o’ clock, it was a fairly late hour for visitors. Frowning at the interruption of her trip down melancholy lane, she smoothed her hands over the full skirts of her purple velvet theater gown, forced a smile fit for the stage, and glided to the entry foyer. Her high-heeled boots clicked against the black and white marble tiles, echoing down the shadowy hall.

She cautiously peered through the peephole but could see no movement on the other side of the door. No person, no animal, nothing except the ghostly, swirling leaves from the trio of dying mountain laurels forming a soldierly straight line on her lawn. They provided the only nod to privacy between her front door and the busy city street beyond it.

Mystified, she threw the deadbolt and slid the door open a crack. A mid-November breeze whistled through the opening, making her shiver. Glancing across her empty covered portico, she was about to close the door when a small square package caught her eye.

From the glow of street lanterns, she could see it was wrapped in plain brown parchment paper with a bow of thin string securing it. What now? Accustomed to the fawning attention of adoring fans and an occasional stalker, she pushed the door open wider and threw another glance around the empty yard and portico before venturing onto the cobblestone walkway. She snatched up the small gift and hurried back inside with it clutched to her chest. She firmly shut the door and stood, panting and blinking back tears, with her shoulder blades pressed against its heavy wood paneling.

Harlan Stoneriver, may he rest in peace, had been fond of leaving her whimsical and impromptu gifts all seasons of the year and all hours of the day and night. But the odd little package couldn’t be from him unless the ghost of his Christmas past had scheduled an early holiday appearance. The truth was Harlan Stoneriver was never going to deliver her another half-limp cluster of wildflowers or quirky piece of pottery, because he’d died in a riding accident. Today was the four month anniversary of his tragic passing.

“What am I going to do without you?” she wailed to the empty foyer, letting her tears flow freely now that she was safely inside the walls of her luxurious home once more. “Best friends don’t leave best friends alone in the world like this. They just…don’t.”

He’d been her boss, her mentor, the owner of the thriving theater company she worked for. And now that he was gone, his younger brother had taken over — a man whose knowledge about the acting business wouldn’t fill a teacup. A man who couldn’t be bothered with trivial things like patron attendance records or ticket sales. He was too busy flirting with the female cast members, indulging himself in Harlan’s collection of fine wines from around the world, and installing his favorite niece as the next darling of Desert Productions.

Maybe if Willa had flirted back, he wouldn’t be working so hard to replace her. A familiar feeling of revulsion washed over her, staunching her tears. Over her dead body would that slimy excuse of a man paw her face or figure! If he were the last marriageable man on earth, she would choose a life of spinsterhood over him, no jest.

A prospect that was becoming more and more likely with her twenty-eighth birthday approaching and the closest thing she’d ever had to a beau resting beneath the frosty ground in Tombstone Cemetery…

Blowing a few loose strands of dark hair from her damp cheeks, she took a closer look at the package. A tiny card was threaded through the bow of string. Opening it, she was amazed at how spidery the signature appeared, as if someone very old had written it. Someone very old and very spicy from the heady scent of ginger and molasses wafting up from the paper.

She read the name, squinted at the smudged ink, then read it again. If her eyesight was to be trusted, the letter was from the North Pole! Unbelievable! Someone had to be playing a prank on her. It was from Mrs. Claus, to be exact, and it read:

Watch for the angel in disguise who will soon cross your path.

What a puzzling message! Thoroughly intrigued, Willa tore open the small package, dropped the paper to the floor, and stared at the delicate box cupped in her hands. It was white cardboard with an intricate eyelet snowflake pattern cut into each side. Whoever had sent it possessed a lovely eye for gift packaging. She lifted the fragile lid and gasped.

An iced gingerbread cookie ornament in the shape of an angel lay inside, nestled on a bed of snowy white felt. She lifted the box to breathe in the soothing aroma of gingerbread and holiday spices, and her heavy heart instantly lifted a few degrees.

Thank you, Mrs. Claus or whoever you are. I really needed a dose of holiday magic this evening.

She sashayed her way back to the parlor and ever so gently propped the precious gift on her mantle. It leaned against the wall like a delicious morsel of hope drizzled in white icing. She reached for her mug, only to carry it to the kitchen and dump the remaining contents in the sink. Her fingers were no longer cold.

She retired to her bed chamber, where her part-time maid had so thoughtfully drawn her a steamy bath. You’re an angel, Tilly, if I ever met one! Not one in disguise, though. She bathed, changed into her white silk night robe, and lounged against the mountain of quilted lilac pillows on her antique four-poster bed. An hour later, she was still wide awake, unable to get the angel cookie ornament out of her mind.

Gingerbread always reminded her of Christmastime and home. Home was Pinetop, Arizona, a small town she hadn’t visited near often enough since her launch to stardom. Her acting career had taken her to theaters all over the world the past ten years. Sure, she tried to squeeze in a quick visit home now and then, but Christmas? The last time she’d been home for Christmas was…

Ugh! She sat up and rubbed her eyes, making her down-filled mattress puff up a bit around her legs. It had been so long she was having trouble pinpointing the exact time. Six years? Maybe seven? Too long.

I really should go visit my folks. Mother and Father would be overjoyed to spend the holidays with their only child.

She stared across her enormous moonlit chamber and allowed the endless months of loneliness and homesickness wash over her. She certainly had the time for a visit home this holiday season. Thanks to the new owner of Desert Productions replacing her lead role in the upcoming Christmas play with his niece, she had the next several weeks to do whatever she wished. She wasn’t scheduled to work again until January.

Yes, indeed, it was time for a visit home — not one of those rushed stopovers between productions either. A real visit. The several week kind.

Her mind made up, Willa plopped back on her pile of pillows, scattering several across the bed. One dropped to the wood floor with a soft, muted thud, and she was finally able to fall sleep.

She rose at dawn, attempted to throw together a quick travel bag, and gave up in defeat. She simply didn’t possess the ability to pack quickly or lightly. She might be staying in Pinetop for six weeks or longer. That required some careful planning when it came to her gown selection, shoes and accessories, toiletries, and comfort items like scented candles, books, and that spare theater prop or two a girl never knew she needed until she did.

She was surrounded by mountains of hat boxes and shoes by the time her maid made her morning appearance.

“Land sakes, child!” Tilly Cassidy took one look at the towering piles of female belongings, smoothed her white ruffled work cap farther back on her pile of red hair, and dove in to set the room to rights.

Her mother hen attitude never failed to amuse Willa, considering she was a good five to six years younger than her employer.

Regardless, her maid had the chaos sorted and her mistress ready for the road in a half hour sharp. “There now, love. My cousin, Paul, can drive you to the train station. He’ll be here shortly to fetch me like he always does, and the station is right on our way to the Rileys.”

Willa could tell by the young woman’s slight grimace that she wasn’t looking forward to her daily grind at the Riley mansion, and no wonder. Their four stair-step daughters she was attempting to teach needle point weren’t exactly the best behaved little poppets.

She spun around to her oval dressing mirror to pat a stray dark ringlet back in place. Then she tipped her wide-brimmed, navy felt travel hat to a sassier angle. Large bonnets were the rage these days, but Willa possessed a style of her own. A hat was what she was in the mood to wear home, so a hat was what she was wearing. It had been custom designed for a part she’d played recently on stage as a vigilante. It was a wee bit on the roguish side, which made her adore it all the more.

Most of her gowns were also specially commissioned, and today’s travel gown was no exception. It was a military cut with severe, straight gathers that ran down her blue brocade bodice and ended in a point just above the flair of her full skirts. She couldn’t abide the enormous bell-shaped skirts that made it impossible to sit comfortably or move around freely without bumping into something, so she wore a single petticoat beneath her travel gown. She never used fashion as an excuse to torture her naturally slender frame with whale-boned bodices or tight corsets like so many other women did.

“Here you go, love.” Tilly held out a double breasted gray frock coat with shiny gold buttons. Her heart-shaped features were squished into an I-don’t-understand expression, but she was too polite to comment on her mistress’s choice of jackets.

“Thank you.” Willa smothered a chuckle, knowing her maid much preferred to see her in frilly princess-style ballgowns and cloaks. She shrugged on the coat then spun around to bid a silent goodbye to her spacious bed chamber. Even though her parents were well off, they didn’t own a residence nearly as sumptuous as hers. She would dearly miss the extra space. Her old bedroom, where she would be staying in Pinetop, was less than half the size of this one. Instead of six wardrobes lined end to end, she would have to fit the contents of her many travel bags into one. There would be no lounge on the side of her old room either, no private clawfoot tub behind an Oriental screen, and no maid to spoil her.

Which reminded her…

Sighing, she reached for the long white envelope resting on the edge of her roll-top writing desk. “I have a little something for you before I go.” It was the first item of business she’d attended after waking.

Tilly tore into the envelope with the gusto of a small child opening a gift on Christmas morning. “Why, Miss Willa!” Her eyes bulged with excitement. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s your next six weeks of wages,” she explained softly. “I’ll not be having you replace me with another family while I’m out of town.”

“You know I would n-never…” Tilly’s lips began to tremble. “I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this. It wouldn’t be right, since I didn’t earn it.” She tried to hand the envelope back, but Willa could see what it cost her. Her normally clear gray eyes locked on the money and took on a desperate tinge. It was obvious she needed the funds.

Not for the first time, Willa burned with curiosity about her mysterious, well-spoken maid. How a woman of her obvious culture and breeding came to be in the service of others in the first place… “It’s a gift, my friend. You don’t need to earn gifts. If it makes you feel any better, I am likely to return from Pinetop with a mountain of mending to tend, which means you’ll be putting in extra hours soon enough. You know how hard I can be on my dresses at times.”

With a moan of surrender, Tilly launched herself at her mistress, throwing her arms around her and squeezing her tight. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

A fist pounded on the front door.

“That’ll be Paul.” She dropped her arms and dabbed at her eyes.

She looked so forlorn standing there in her simple gray work dress and white ruffled apron that Willa’s heart went out to her. “Maybe you can visit Pinetop with me some day.”

Her maid gave her a sad smile. They both knew she wasn’t at liberty to take off work whenever she pleased. Families like the Rileys would let her go in a heartbeat if she tried.

“Maybe some day,” she agreed softly.

From the window of her private train car, Willa watched the overcrowded streets of Tombstone disappear. She’d never noticed it before but the lone schoolhouse and ice cream parlor almost seemed to be swallowed up by the endless rows of saloons and gambling halls. Even the Desert Dreams Theater where she worked looked a wee bit dismal on a Saturday morning. The front doors were locked, its enormous chandeliers of newfangled incandescent lightbulbs were quenched, and the wide columned portico was empty of carriages dropping off and picking up guests. Too excited to nap, she drank in the arid scenery flying past her windows — miles of sand dunes tinged pink by the morning sun, clusters of palo verde trees stripped naked by the cooler temperatures of late autumn, and towering rosy ridges and mesas.

It took nearly four hours of northward travel for the desert terrain to transition to the cooler plateaus of the highland region. Up here, the countryside was punctuated by mountain ranges and scattered forests.

Pinetop was nestled atop one of the lower lying mountains, hidden from the surrounding deserts by junipers, firs, and pines. Willa’s excitement rose several notches as the train slowed and began its final ascent to her hometown. It was a mid-sized town, not near as big as Tombstone but a far cry from rural. There was no place in the world quite like it.

Growing up there had been like being immersed in Christmas magic year-round. Main Street was dotted with festive storefronts. Their wide picture windows boasted fresh baked goods, hand-spun candies, sweet and spicy meats, festive hats, fancy shoes and boots, fashionable dresses and smart business suits, a watch maker and clock repairman as ancient as Santa himself, a semi-famous dog breeder advertising cuddly adoptions, and dozens more fascinating and alluring goods and services. Citizens travelled here from all over the state to shop and vacation, but even more so during the holidays.

As the first city street rolled into view, nostalgia clogged Willa’s throat. In Pinetop, she’d had everything a child could dream up — two adoring indulgent parents, a gingerbread-like two-story chalet, mountains of toys, private singing and dancing lessons, a nanny-turned-companion as she grew older, and a circle of friends from the town’s most elite citizens. Bankers’ children, attorneys’ children, the mayor’s son and daughter. All of whom were long-since married to other well bred and highly accomplished young men and women. They now had homes of their own and children of their own.

Unlike Willa, who had neither of those things. Instead, she laid her head on the pillow of professional success each night.

During the first few years of her acting career, coming home had been like attending a non-ending parade. There were special dinners in her honor, small speeches and long autograph lines at the local library, and even a tiny collection of memorabilia in her honor sold at one of the side booths in the General Store. Coming home with her twenty-eighth birthday looming and her acting career in its twilight hours was a different story. She would have preferred to slink through some sort of private, back entrance gate. One that led straight to her parents’ home, safe from the inquisitive townspeople who couldn’t wait for the latest tidbit of news about their local celebrity.

Then again, perhaps wearing her newest navy and purple travel gown and one-of-a-kind hats wasn’t the best way to achieve anonymity. The moment Willa stepped off the train, she was thronged.

“Lord ‘ave mercy, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” Flash Billings, the local postman, made a wobbly dash in her direction. He smelled of cigar smoke and eggnog and didn’t look a day older than a hundred and two with his nearly knee-length white beard. “I jes’ delivered a letter to your Mum. She didn’t say nothin’ about you comin’ home for th’ holidays.”

A pang of guilt rattled its way across Willa’s conscience. She hadn’t written home in awhile.

“They don’t know,” she admitted, hugging him back. “It was…” A bit last minute, even for her. “Supposed to be a surprise,” she finished a trifle lamely, adoring the old familiar grain of his work jacket against her cheek. It smelled like the tobacco he stuffed into his nightly pipe. He was closer to seventy-two than a hundred and two, but he liked to keep his age a secret since he posed as the town’s Santa every year, preferring the children to believe he was much older.

“Willa Murray!” Bea Ashburn squealed, edging her way in front of a pair of shop keepers who were waiting to greet her. “How dare you show up looking like a queen and catching me in my old shopping togs. That’s rather unfair of you!” The moment Flash finished hugging her, Bea leaned in to press a cool, November kiss on her cheek. Her arms were too full of packages for a proper embrace.

“My apologies, love.” Willa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Bea, one of her closest childhood friends, didn’t own anything old or anything that even minimally qualified as a “tog.” Every item of clothing in her extensive wardrobe was tailor made by the best seamstresses in the state. Her goldenrod silk walking gown and oversized lacy bonnet were no exceptions. Not a stitch, ribbon, or strand of hair was out of place. Even in the light breeze, her glossy blonde ringlets seemed to bounce against her high cheekbones in perfect unison.

A distance had sprung between them over the years, the kind born of spending months apart in lives traveling in opposite directions. Willa had chosen a career over having a family, while Bea had chosen a family over a career…in a manner of speaking. A live-in nanny was helping raise her twin six-year-old daughters, while she reined as the town princess in the highest social circles.

A position Willa used to hold. Back when she was a citizen of Pinetop. An insider. Which she no longer was.

The excited babble of her impromptu welcoming party dimmed as a tall, broad-shouldered man standing across the crowded train platform caught her eye. She didn’t recognize him, which was odd since she knew almost everyone in town. His sun-kissed bronze features and black unbuttoned sack coat, which revealed a daring red and black plaid waistcoat, seemed a little out of place among the more sedately dressed townsfolk. However, no one was giving him any undue attention. He lounged against an extinguished light pole, arms folded, nodding and greeting an occasional passerby. They tipped their hats in return as they hurried past.

Like the cluster of people gathered around her, it appeared he’d paused to witness her arrival, though he obviously preferred doing it from a distance.

She didn’t realize she was staring until he turned his head to ensnare her gaze. It was a slow, lazy movement that her instincts screamed was deliberate and calculated. Not a big surprise. She was accustomed to being flirted with by handsome and mysterious men. However, she wasn’t prepared for the glint of taunting humor when his dark gaze clashed with hers. It reminded her way too much of a certain cocky, eight-year-old braggart from grammar school who’d been the bane of her existence once upon a time.

Angel Castellano.

He’d sworn to her entire circle of classy, well-dressed friends that he was going to marry her someday. To her distress, they’d laughed the proud little urchin to scorn.

She squinted at the man in the sunlight, but her brain simply couldn’t connect the undernourished, poorly dressed son of a migrant worker she used to know with the much older, impeccably dressed, and highly polished gentleman smirking at her now.

No, it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be him. It just couldn’t!