Holiday Wishes by Nora Roberts

feeling proprietary about her students and was looking forward to her first after-school session with her chorus.
    She was determined to create a holiday program that would knock the town’s socks off.
    The battered piano was center stage. She walked to it and sat. Her students would be filing in shortly, but she had a moment.
    She limbered up her mind and her fingers with the blues, an old Muddy Waters tune. Old, scarred pianos were meant to play the blues, she thought, and enjoyed herself.
    “Man, she’s so cool,” Holly Linstrom murmured to Kim as they slipped into the rear of the auditorium.
    “Yeah.” Kim had a hand on the shoulder of each of her twin cousins, a firm grip that ordered quiet and promised reprisals. “Old Mr. Striker never played anything like that.”
    “And her clothes are so, like, now.” Admiration and envy mixed as Holly scanned the pipe-stem pants, long overshirt and short striped vest Nell wore. “I don’t know why anybody from New York would come here. Did you see her earrings today? I bet she got them at some hot place on Fifth Avenue.”
    Nell’s jewelry had already become legendary among the female students. She wore the unique and the unusual. Her taste in clothes; her dark gold hair, which fell just short of her shoulders and always seemed miraculously and expertly tousled; her quick, throaty laugh and her lack of formality had already gone a long way toward endearing her to her students.
    “She’s got style, all right.” But, just then, Kim was more intrigued by the music than by the musician’s wardrobe. “Man, I wish I could play like that.”
    “Man, I wish I could look like that,” Holly returned, and giggled.
    Sensing an audience, Nell glanced back and grinned. “Come on in, girls. Free concert.”
    “It sounds great, Miss Davis.” With her grip firm on her two charges, Kim started down the sloping aisle toward the stage. “What is it?”
    “Muddy Waters. We’ll have to shoehorn a little blues education into the curriculum.” Sitting back, she studied the two sweet-faced boys on either side of Kim. There was a quick, odd surge of recognition that she didn’t understand. “Well, hi, guys.”
    When they smiled back, identical dimples popped out on the left side of their mouths. “Can you play ‘Chopsticks’?” Zeke wanted to know.
    Before Kim could express her humiliation at the question, Nell spun into a rousing rendition.
    “How’s that?” she asked when she’d finished.
    “That’s neat.”
    “I’m sorry, Miss Davis. I’m kind of stuck with them for an hour. They’re my cousins. Zeke and Zack Taylor.”
    “The Taylors of Taylor’s Grove.” Nell swiveled away from the piano. “I bet you’re brothers. I see a slight family resemblance.”
    Both boys grinned and giggled. “We’re twins,” Zack informed her.
    “Really? Now I bet I’m supposed to guess who’s who.” She came to the edge of the stage, sat and eyed the boys narrowly. They grinned back. Each had recently lost a left front tooth. “Zeke,” she said, pointing a finger. “And Zack.”
    Pleased and impressed, they nodded. “How’d you know?”
    It was pointless, and hardly fun, to mention that she’d had a fifty-fifty shot. “Magic. Do you guys like to sing?”
    “Sort of. A little.”
    “Well, today you can listen. You can sit right in the front row and be our test audience.”
    “Thanks, Miss Davis,” Kim murmured, and gave the boys a friendly shove toward the seats. “They’re pretty good most of the time. Stay,” she ordered, with an older cousin’s absolute authority.
    Nell winked at the boys as she stood, then gestured to the other students filing in. “Come on up. Let’s get started.”
    A lot of the business onstage seemed boring to the twins. There was just talking at first, and confusion as sheet music was passed out and boys and girls were assigned positions.
    But Zack was watching Nell. She had pretty hair and nice big brown eyes. Like Zark’s, he