Lanoha’s Nursery
Omaha, Nebraska

Nick Morrelli pulled out a credit card. He knew his sister Christine was watching him so he tried not to wince, flinch or clear his throat. All signs she would be looking for.

She had already told him that he didn’t have to pay for the fresh-cut nine-foot Fraser fir Christmas tree. In fact, she had told him three times, leading him to insist, making him pretend that it was no big deal. And why would it be a big deal? Never mind that he had just left a prominent position with the Suffolk County prosecutor’s office in Boston to move back to Omaha. It wasn’t like he was fired or let go. The decision had been entirely his choice.

Choice, not impulse.

Impulse was the word his mom and Christine used.

“Your father knows you love him, Nicky,” his mom had said when he told her he was moving back to Nebraska. “He doesn’t expect you to leave your life and be at his side.”

At the time Nick wanted to tell her that the old Antonio Morrelli would want that exactly. He’d want everyone to uproot and rearrange their lives to accommodate his schedule especially now when he appeared to be near death. A massive stroke had left Nick’s father paralyzed and bedridden several years ago. Now his only means of communication were his eyes. Maybe it was simply Nick’s imagination but he swore he could still see that same disappointment and regret in those eyes—now watery blue instead of ice blue—every single time the man looked at him.

Nick had tried most of his life to do what his father expected, tried to fill the huge shoes. His father had played quarterback for the Nebraska Huskers, so Nick made sure he played quarterback for the Nebraska Huskers, but Nick only played for one season. A disappointment to his father who had redshirted as a freshman. His father had gone to law school, so Nick went to law school, only he had no interest in practicing law or filling the vacancy his father had left for him in the law firm his father had started.

Nick had even run for and had been elected county sheriff, the position the elder Morrelli retired from as a living legend. But Nick had embarrassed his father, again, by tracking down a killer his father had allowed to go undetected under his own watch. It should have made up for all the rest. Nick had succeeded after all. But that wasn’t the way Antonio Morrelli looked at it. Instead he saw it as his son embarrassing him, showing him up and making him look bad publicly.

Nick’s move to Boston had probably been the first thing he had ever done on his own and for himself without the influence of the elder Morrelli. His father had never been a district attorney. Had never argued high-profile cases involving anything close to what Nick found himself a part of, from drug trafficking to double homicides. These were the types of cases Nick tackled on a regular basis as a Deputy County Prosecutor for Suffolk County. And yet it wasn’t enough. Apparently it wasn’t, because here he was, returning home still searching for something. Hopefully his father’s approval didn’t remain on that search list.

It must have been what his mother was thinking. She made it sound like Nick was moving back to be close to his father whose deteriorating condition would most likely make this his last Christmas. And his sister, Christine, seemed to think Nick had moved back to play role model to her fatherless teenaged son. That was partly true. He cared about Timmy and wanted to be in the boy’s life. But the truth was, at least when Nick admitted it to himself, his reasons were not quite so lofty or noble. In fact, they were fairly selfish.

Yes, he wanted to be close to his family during this last holiday together but he also wanted to be away from the sudden loneliness in his life. There was an emptiness that permeated his Boston apartment and even leaked over into his job. It definitely felt as though he had lost something, but it wasn’t his ex-fiancée Jill Campbell. Surprisingly, her absence from his life had little to do with the loneliness he was experiencing. What was worse, leaving Boston didn’t help either. The emptiness followed him. This hollowed-out feeling was something that he was carrying around with him. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to describe it but it was definitely what it felt like.

His new job at a high-level security corporation kept him distracted. He liked the new challenge. And the position actually paid very well…or at least it would. Eventually. He had only started a month ago.

“I know you’re a little miserable,” Christine said, interrupting his thoughts.

“I’m not miserable.”

“It’s okay to admit it.”

“I’m not miserable.”

She was giving him that look, that “you’re so full of crap” look.

Okay, so maybe he was a little miserable. Miserable went well with hollowed out.

“It’s understandable.” Christine seemed to think they should discuss his life in the middle of Lanoha’s Nursery. “You recently broke off your engagement. What’s it been? Five months?”

“I’m not miserable because of Jill,” Nick insisted through clenched teeth, hoping his sister would get the idea to lay off and at the same time realizing he had probably verified her accusation. If she knew him as well as she thought she did, she’d know it had nothing to do with Jill.

“If it’s not Jill,” Christine said, pretending to keep it casual by fingering the price tags on some holiday wreaths, “then it must be Maggie.”

It was like she stuck a dagger in his side and Nick had to keep from wincing. He had spent the last month convincing himself that Maggie O’Dell had moved on and had no interest in being a part of his life. He had given it his best shot. Anything more and he’d become some psycho stalker. It was over. Time to move on. He told himself this over and over. His head heard him loud and clear. It was his heart that ignored him.

“I know,” Christine said, taking his silence as confirmation. “It’s complicated.”

But it wasn’t all that complicated. Nick had met Maggie four years ago, working a case when he was sheriff of Platte City, Nebraska. She dropped into his life as an FBI profiler, smart and witty, tough but beautiful. Nick had known a lot of women—he’d been with a lot of women—but he’d never met anyone quite like Maggie O’Dell. There had been instant chemistry. At least that’s how Nick remembered it. But she was married then.

They’d stayed in touch and after her divorce he gave her plenty of opportunity to be charmed by him, even advertised that he was open to a relationship. A real relationship, something Nick Morrelli rarely considered. But Maggie turned him down for whatever reason. Perhaps she just wasn’t ready. That’s what he wanted to believe. Being rejected was a new concept for him.

But last summer they crossed paths again. Another case with ties to the one four years ago and for Nick it brought back all those memories and some feelings he didn’t realize he still harbored. Feelings that slammed him hard. Hard enough that he canceled his wedding engagement.

Then he did the only thing he knew how to do. He pursued Maggie with cards, e-mails, flowers, requests to spend time together despite her living in the D.C. area and him in Boston. Nick thought he was being the proper suitor. That is until he discovered there was someone else in her life. He had let her slip away, blown his chances. This time it was too late.

He’d let her slip away to a guy named Benjamin Platt. Nick had looked up the license plate on a Land Rover he saw parked outside of Maggie’s house. Platt was an army colonel, a medical doctor, a scientist, a soldier. He wasn’t sure that even a tall, dark and charming quarterback-turned-lawyer stood a chance to compete with that.

“Can we concentrate on Christmas?” he asked after too much silence. He could already see Christine knew she was right. He took no pleasure in the fact that to his big sister he seemed to be an open book.

Before Christine could respond two store clerks interrupted them, coming into the center of the store.

“There’s been an explosion at Mall of America,” one of them announced. “There may be dozens of people dead.”

Customers throughout the store came up the aisles to hear the news.

“That’s one of ours,” Nick told Christine. He barely got his cell phone out of his jacket pocket when it began to ring.