A Thousand Roses

At Christmas anything was possible...

"When the going gets tough -- get tougher!" That's what Perdita Nordstrand had learned growing up on the wrestling circuit with celebrities like Ravishing Ricky and Hugo the Horrible. So she wasn't about to be intimidated by a miserly Scrooge from Boston who was trying to claim her New Hampshire home at Christmas.

But when she came face-to-face with the tall, darkly handsome Ebenezer Squires, she actually felt frightened. Not because he came from a world of power and breeding so distant from hers.

It was the strange tantalizing force drawing them together that unnerved her.