Michael gave the man a look that sent him scuttling.

It was not the kind of neighborhood where a woman should be working alone—especially not with every available space in the made-over store stuffed with, well, stuff. Teddy bears, MP3 players, trikes, dolls in cellophane wrappers, including those embarrassing two that had fallen into his hands.

She was the kind of woman who made a guy feel protective. Maybe it was because her clothes had been baggy, that she had seemed tiny and fragile. Still, even with the lumpiness of the dress, she hadn’t been able to totally disguise slender curves, a lovely femininity that might make her very vulnerable at this desperate end of Washington. And it wasn’t as if she would have the physical strength to protect herself. Her wrists had been so tiny he had actually wanted to circle them between his thumb and pointer finger to see if they were as impossibly small as they looked.

And those eyes! Intensely gray, huge, fringed with the most astonishing display of natural lash he had ever seen. Her eyes had saved her from plainness.

Something about her reluctantly intrigued him—maybe the fact that she so underplayed her every asset.

What was she thinking, being alone with all that stuff in this neighborhood? Was she impossibly brave or simply stupid? Still, you had to give it to someone who was shopping around for an elf. There were probably special angels who looked after people like that.

He frowned at the thought, renegade and unwanted. He, of all people, knew there were no special angels, not for anyone. So he had obeyed Mr. Theodore. He’d come to this address thinking he was going to find someone in worse shape than him.

It obviously had not been her.

She had not been beautiful, not even pretty, really, unless he counted her eyes. He thought of them again—luminescent, brimming with a light that could almost make a man forget she was wearing a sweater just like the ones his granny used to knit. Her hair had struck him as hopelessly old-fashioned, but for some reason he’d liked it. It was just plain light brown, falling in a wave past her shoulder, no particular style.

She was one of those kind of girls he remembered only vaguely from high school—bookwormish, smart, capable…and invisible. She was not the kind who pretended fear of spiders or dropped her books coquettishly when a male of interest was in the vicinity. She did not color her hair blond or paint her lips red or have fingernails that left marks on a man’s back, her lashes would not melt when she cried.

In other words, she was not the kind of woman he knew the first thing about.

Nor did he want to, though that fleeting thought of her fingernails and his back made him shiver, which was startling. He had not reacted to a woman in a very long time. He had probably never reacted to a woman who was anything like her: understated, intelligent, pure.

Women, he reminded himself, took energy. He had none. It was that simple.

And a woman like that one manning the Secret Santa Society office would take more energy than most because despite her plainness, those multifaceted eyes made him suspect a very complicated nature. Deep. Sensitive. Intelligent. Funny.

It annoyed him that he was even thinking of her. His assignment, if he could call it that, was to find someone in worse pain than himself.

Not Ms. Secret Santa, obviously, hunting for elves and brimming with faith that her good deeds alone could protect her from this neighborhood.

But there were kids out there who needed jackets, and the first true cold snap of the year had arrived. He wondered what kind of pain it caused a parent who was not to be able to buy a jacket for a child who was cold.

Not worse pain than his own, different pain than his own.

Maybe that was why Mr. Theodore had sent him, knowing there would be something here to keep him distracted as Christmas approached. Christmas, a time of family. A time of pain for families who had nothing.

And for a guy who had nothing instead of a family.

He drew his breath in sharply, forced himself to focus. It was one day at a time, one step at a time, one task at a time. Right now, his task was fifty jackets and an elf. Michael shook his head like a boxer who had been sucker punched.

It seemed like the most unlikely lifeline, but it was the only one he was being offered, and if he didn’t find something to give a damn about, and soon, that question was going to burn a little deeper into him.

How will I survive?

His world gone. Nothing left of it. The snow swirled around him, and he realized he should be cold, but he didn’t get cold anymore. Twice a year, he’d given up carpentry. The whole family put their lives on hold and headed to Alaska for the crab fishery.

After surviving six hours in the icy, gray waters of the Bering Sea, Michael did not get cold anymore. Or really ever warm, either. He was stuck in a place where it was neither hot nor cold. Purely a place of survival.

He focused on the task at hand, just as at Mr. Theodore’s house he focused only on what was in front of him: broken stairs, a rotten window casing, a leaky faucet. There were many ways to shut off the human mind. He stopped at the nearest phone booth. Most of the telephone book was gone, but his righteousness was being rewarded today. The clothing section of the yellow pages was intact.

But then he realized he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted. Big coats or small coats? Boys or girls? What about babies? Styles? Sizes?

He glanced back down the street. He could go ask her exactly what she wanted, but he didn’t want to. He found himself wanting to surprise her, because it had been clear from the look on her face she had no expectations of him at all. She didn’t even think he’d be back. Maybe didn’t even want him to come back, which was not the normal reaction he got from women.

And he still had that option, of not going back, of leaving that strangely engaging encounter one hundred percent behind him. Looking at coats some little kids needed might make him feel something, in fact he felt jumpy thinking about it. How could he do an assignment like this and not be touched in some way? It was a fact the crafty Mr. Theodore had probably already considered!

Didn’t Mr. Theodore know that if the dam inside of Michael ever broke open, the torrent would be dangerous and destructive, wrecking everything in its path?

No. He could not go shopping for coats. But, on the other hand, fifty kids without coats? He swore under his breath, and the word came out in a frosty puff that reminded him how cold it was getting. Michael realized he could not not go shopping for coats.

He said the word again, and realized it was not an appropriate word for an emissary of the Secret Santa Society, not even an unofficial one.

Michael looked again at the pretty much demolished phone book and guiltily tore out one of the few remaining pages, the one that listed coats on it. And then he tore out the preceding one, as well, the one that listed clowns. Clowns were related to elves, weren’t they?

Guilt, he thought with surprise. That was a feeling of sorts, the first one he’d had in a long time.

Unless he could count what he felt talking to Ms. Santa back there.

Not actual warmth, but a remembrance of warmth. A remembrance of what it was to want something. What had he wanted? He frowned. To connect with her. To share a little normal, everyday banter with another human being. He’d liked making her blush. It had been amusing.

It had been a long, long time since he had felt even the smallest shiver of interest in anything or anyone. So here he was less than an hour into his mysterious assignment, and having feelings sneak up on him.

But was it going to be enough to save him? Or would it destroy what was left of him? He decided to have a little tiny bit of faith, and realized with a sigh that was another concept that had been foreign to his world for a long, long time.