An Amish Christmas

“It seems you’ve come to my rescue once again.”He held out his hand to seal the deal and gave her a crooked grin. It deepened the lines that bracketed his mouth lending him a boyish charm.With only a brief hesitation, she accepted his hand. Her pulse skipped a beat then pounded erratically as her small hand was swallowed by his large, warm one. It wasn’t soft, it was calloused and rough like the hand of a man who worked outdoors for a living. A blush heated her cheeks, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of him.She remembered him so clearly. The shape of his brow and the stone gray color of his eyes, even the way the stubble of his beard had felt beneath her fingers. She remembered, too, the husky sound of his voice when he told her she was beautiful.Something light and sweet slipped through her veins. An echo of a time when she’d been a giddy teenager smitten with a local boy. A time before she’d had to become a surrogate mother to her younger siblings and put her girlhood dreams away.