Because of You

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Maddie Winslow met the man of her dreams the same day that her friend Olivia introduced Maddie to her new boyfriend. Which would have been splendid, except that the man of Maddie’s dreams was Olivia’s new boyfriend.

If the Venn diagram depicting Maddie’s dream man and Olivia’s actual man hadn’t overlapped in the middle in the person of Leo Donnelly, then perhaps Maddie would be living her happily-ever-after with Leo right at this very instant.

As it was, Olivia had snagged Leo first.

Which was why Maddie felt a bit like she’d been both shaken and stirred by the words the associate pastor with the microphone had just spoken.

“Maddie Winslow and Leo Donnelly,” the pastor repeated, “will form team number three.” He lifted a hand to shade his eyes as he scanned the crowd, even though they were inside Bethel Church’s Fellowship Hall, where there was no sun. “Maddie and Leo? Are you here?”

“Here,” Maddie called, raising her hand. Belatedly, she realized that she probably looked like an overeager third grader.

“Here” came a masculine voice from the far back corner of the room.

Maddie twisted around and immediately spotted Leo.

He gave her a polite smile.

Her heart did what roller coasters do when they go upside down. She turned back to face the front.

“Maddie and Leo, please see Janice after the meeting so that she can hand you a Mission:Christmas folder about the family you’ve been assigned.

” Bethel’s holiday ministry connected church members with families in the area facing financial difficulty or serious illness.

“Now on to team number four, Hope Jackson and Walter Murray.”

As the pastor continued to announce pair after pair, Maddie worked to keep her face and posture neutral. Internally, she felt anything but.

Her friend Britt’s two older sisters were standing alongside her. Willow, the oldest, arched an eyebrow at Maddie in speculation. In response, Maddie projected fake calm.

Leo had signed up to volunteer for Mission:Christmas? Obviously, he had.

Ordinarily, she could spot him from a mile away and locate him through intuition, even when he popped up in unexpected places. But her Leo Sense had failed her tonight. She’d had no inkling that he’d slipped into the room on (what had been until now) an ordinary Wednesday evening.

He was wearing his black jacket with the hood, which might mean that he’d just arrived or that he’d simply forgotten to take off his jacket—either explanation was likely.

The tie he’d knotted over a pale blue dress shirt looked as though it had been loosened.

Black belt. Gray flat-front pants. Chukka boots.

His sandy blond hair, which was shortish on the sides and longer on top, was in a mild state of disarray.

She never knew whether to call the scruff on his cheeks heavy five o’clock shadow or a short beard.

Whatever it should be called, it suited him.

He looked painfully appealing both in his weekday history professor attire and in his casual weekend clothing.

Today, she was experiencing a slight preference for his professor garb.

Charlie, Leo and Olivia’s three-year-old son, wasn’t with Leo currently, which probably meant he was attending the programming the church offered on Wednesday night for peewees. The only thing more slaying than Leo in professor garb was Leo in professor garb, holding Charlie.

Maddie caught herself anxiously kneading the knuckle of her right index finger, something she did when unsure of herself. She dropped her hands.

A big part of her wanted to feel elated over the fact that she’d be working on Mission:Christmas with Leo. She put a lid on her elation, however. Platonic pleasure. That would be a more appropriate thing to feel.

She and Leo had always gotten along wonderfully. Easily. Approvingly. Maddie had with Leo the kind of relationship she had with all of her friends’ boyfriends and husbands—familiar in some ways and very distant in others.

There were lines that a girl did not cross when dealing with a man her friend loved. Maddie had never come close to crossing those lines with Leo, despite her six-year-long crush on him.

Despite that Olivia had been killed by a drunk driver two and a half years ago.

Maddie had been a bridesmaid in Leo and Olivia’s wedding, and she still thought of Leo as Olivia’s husband. It seemed to her that he belonged to her good friend, who’d been outgoing and fashionable and gorgeous. Who deserved to be remembered and respected.

Maddie would need to find a way to survive her partnership with Leo without falling even deeper under his spell.

She was twenty-seven years old. Already, she’d sunk the majority of her twenties into pining for him.

Just last month, she’d determined that her fairy-tale, unrealistic “Leo standards” were wrecking her chance at happiness with anyone else.

She’d really like a boyfriend of her own—someone to snuggle with and go to parties with and eat potato chips with. Someone to lift heavy stuff and empty the trash. After taking a long, hard look at her dating life, she’d firmly decided to do whatever it was women did when they moved on.

This infatuation with Leo? The opposite of moving on.

The meeting wrapped, and Leo fell in step next to her in the line before the table where Janice was handing out folders. “Good to see you,” he said. His eyes appeared every bit as sad as usual, his lips every bit as beautiful as usual.

“Good to see you, too.” Holy cow, what was he seeing when he looked at her?

After she’d left Sweet Art, the chocolate shop she managed, she’d grabbed a to-go salad, driven to the church, eaten her salad inside her car, then dashed to the meeting.

It occurred to her that she hadn’t remembered to reapply lipstick after her rushed meal.

She had on jeans, Converse, and a long-sleeved gray top she’d owned for at least four years. She’d kept the shirt because it flattered what she considered to be her best feature, her fairly well-endowed chest. The rest of her was mostly average.

Her stylist had put golden-brown balayage highlights into her brunette hair recently. And she’d finally figured out how to style her current shoulder-length cut into the artless waves (which took effort to make look artless) that her stylist had intended.

Until this moment she’d been satisfied with her appearance today. Now she wished she’d made more of an effort. Olivia would have.

“So you signed up to volunteer with Mission:Christmas, too?” she asked.

“I did. When I read about it in the church bulletin, it seemed like something I could do.” One of his shoulders lifted. “To help.”

“Of course! I think you’ll really enjoy it.” Several single women were shooting her glances zinging with degrees of jealousy and wistfulness.

“Have you volunteered with Mission:Christmas before?” he asked.

“This will be my third year.” She’d participated each Christmas since returning to Merryweather, Washington, after her lackluster stint in San Francisco.

“That’s reassuring. You know the ropes.”

“I do!” That sounded entirely too merry. She couldn’t even blame spiked eggnog.

“I can be your assistant,” he said.

“Fabulous. I’ve always wanted an assistant. My Christmas wish has already come true.”

“Happy to oblige.”

Once Janice handed them their folder, Maddie and Leo found a quiet spot near the side wall.

She pulled free the two sheets of paper that offered pertinent details about the family that had been entrusted to them.

“It looks like we’ve been given a single mom named Kim Huntington and her two daughters.

Kim lives here in Merryweather and was let go from her job a few months back.

” Sympathy squeezed Maddie as she imagined trying to face Christmas as a single mom without paychecks coming in.

She handed one of the sheets to Leo. They each read their sheet, switched, then read the second sheet.

“What’s our plan of attack?” Leo asked.

“In the past, my partner and I have kicked things off by meeting with the recipients so they can let us know how we can help.” Maddie slid the papers back into the folder.

“Sounds good.”

He met her eyes and for a split second she got lost in the cloudy gray of his irises. It was a cool shade, soft like the sky over the Pacific Ocean in the morning.

By rights, God should have given the bookish and academic Leo a nerdy exterior.

Instead, God had given him the sort of blatant good looks ordinarily reserved for Formula One drivers and South American soccer players.

Thus, women swooned over him at every turn while Leo—when he stopped thinking about French Revolutionary history long enough to notice—wondered why they were swooning.

He looked down.

Olivia’s confidence level had been at a 99. Maddie and Leo were both very competent in their professions, but socially Maddie’s confidence level hovered around 85 and Leo’s around 70.

“The church will lend a hand with fundraising,” Maddie said.

“They’ll divide the proceeds from their Christmas Bazaar and their Jingle Bell Walk evenly between all the teams. Even so, my partner and I have also held a garage sale on our own in past years.

That’s been great because it’s increased our Mission:Christmas budget, and it’s also given me and the rest of my family a reason to clear out our clutter. ”

“I’m up for a garage sale. After that, we go shopping?”

“Yes. Then we deliver everything to the Huntingtons in time for Christmas.”

“Got it.”

“If it’s all right with you, I’ll go ahead and call Kim Huntington and find out when she can meet with us.”

“Sure.”

“Awesome.”

He studied her, his attention both steady and kind. “Is everything going well at the chocolate shop?”

“Very well.”

“And your family?”

“They’re good. This is my mom’s favorite time of year. She loves all the Christmas parties.”

He nodded.

“How’s my favorite boy?” Maddie asked.