Val had started to drift off when Horace released another piteous whimper.

Oh, bloody hell.

Rolling onto his side, he unlatched the bag and fished out one of the gifts his brother deposited on his desk every Christmastide Season. “Here,” he muttered, handing it over.

The dog ripped off the light cloth wrapping, and a peculiarly crafted ball attached to a rope fell out of the packaging.

Val peered at the oddly shaped object.

Horace briefly nosed around the peculiar toy, then slapped a large paw on the side of Val’s mattress, which sagged slightly.

“Not even that will make you happy,” he mumbled, and then abandoning all hope of sleep, he proceeded to withdraw and unwrap gift after gift, until a series of crudely made but specialty dolls lay at Horace’s feet.

Val stared at the collection.

His brother . . . had had toys made for Horace.

Emotion welled in Val’s throat, making it hard to swallow.

It was one of the damnedest, most thoughtful gifts Sidney could have ever given, and Val had been a miserable lout to him every time.

Still, his brother had returned again and again, eager to welcome Val back into the folds of their family, and he’d resisted.

Only, those same walls he’d erected that had managed to keep his brother and mother out had been effectively toppled by a curly-headed pixie who’d managed to fell a pair of thieves and was never without a carol on her lips, and who’d also cried his name to the rafters over and over throughout the night as he made love to her.

His body hardened at the memory. He’d marry her, of course.

The terror he expected that should accompany such a thought did not come. Instead, he felt a mystifying lightness throughout every corner of his previously dark soul. It spread inside, leaving him almost giddy.

He wanted Myrtle not just in his bed. He wanted her in his life, and in his home. He wanted to sing carols with her, and find a renewed joy in Christmastide and in simply . . . being alive.

They’d made love . . . and yet that was not the reason he’d ask her to wed him. It was because he loved her.

In the short time they’d spent together, she’d hammered away at the protective walls he’d built about his heart, smashing them into fragments of dust, obliterated so completely that she’d left him utterly and completely hers.

He loved her.

Myrtle, with her smile of sunshine and the freeness with which she spoke about anything and everything.

Val flipped onto his side to tell Myrtle—

Myrtle, who was missing.

And then he registered . . . the absence of her body next to his.