Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 30

She never should have said she’d have the inventory finished by Friday. She should have asked for another day at least. As much as she required his expertise, she’d just made it a point to accommodate Erik’s schedule any way she could.

Had she been thinking, she would have realized how impossible that deadline was. But she’d been too rattled by the needs she’d felt in his arms and the kiss he’d dismissed as inconsequential to consider everything else she’d committed to do before Friday—which happened to be Tyler’s last day at his current school.

Given the occasion, guilt over not having kept her word to Erik would have to wait. Her little boy was not taking this latest transition well at all.

The familiar faces and routines at Pine Ridge Day School were the last constants in the life they were leaving behind. As a child, she’d had considerable practice dealing with such separations. Her parents’ nomadic lifestyle had made a new school or two every year her norm, and they’d tried to ease those transitions. But her little boy had never known that sort of instability. Even after his father had died, she’d managed to protect him from the biggest upheavals and keep his routine as consistent as possible. Until they’d had to move, anyway.

As she’d feared he would, he started missing his playmates the minute he’d fastened himself into his car seat in the back of their car and they’d pulled out from the portico.

A quick glance in her rearview mirror caught his pensive expression. He looked the way he had driving away from their old house a couple of weeks ago. Solemn and a little uncertain.

“We can always come back for a visit, Ty,” she assured him, heading for the freeway and the ferry. “Just because you’ll be going to a new school doesn’t mean you won’t ever see your old teachers or classmates again.”

“They’ll still be there?”

“They’ll still be there,” she promised. It wouldn’t be like when he’d lost his dad. There wasn’t that sort of finality to this parting. She needed him to understand that. “We can come back after the holiday to say hi, if you want.”

“Will the tree be there, too?”

The tree. Ten feet of pine studded with a thousand white lights and draped with paper chains and cutouts of students’ handprints. It graced the main building’s foyer.

“The tree won’t be there, honey. Everyone takes Christmas trees down after the holiday. But everything else will be the same.”

“Nuh-uh,” he replied, picking at the knee of his khaki uniform pants. “I won’t be there anymore.”

No, she thought with a sigh. He wouldn’t be, and the silence that followed hinted at how very much that new change disturbed him.

Thinking the Christmas carols playing on the radio might distract him, she turned the volume up over the hum of the heater and encouraged him to sing along.

That didn’t work. Neither did any of her other attempts to console, cajole or otherwise ease away his dispirited expression.

Fighting discouragement herself, she finally conceded that she had no idea just then how to make everything better for her little boy.

That disheartening fact had just registered when her eyes widened on what should have been nothing more than the dusk-gray shapes of the road, the woods and the distant rectangle of Harbor Market & Sporting Goods.

Peering past the headlights, she heard Tyler’s sudden “Oh. Wow!”

Wow, indeed.

The market stood glittery bright in the encroaching dark. Every pillar, post and eave, its roofline, even the chimney had been outlined with twinkling white lights. The bare branches of the apple tree at the near end had been wrapped in peppermint stripes of white lights and red. It was the snowman beyond it, though, that had her attention. Glowing blue-white, his top hat cocked at an angle, the tall, grinning Frosty stood as bold and impressive as the only person she knew who would have put it there.

The light on her answering machine was blinking when she finally coaxed Tyler out of the cold and into the kitchen. Hitting Play, she heard Erik’s recorded voice say he was checking to see if she’d finished the inventory and ask when she’d be available to discuss the business plan. He mentioned nothing about the dazzling Christmas lights that hadn’t been there when she’d left that morning.

She hit Redial. Apparently taking his cue from the number on his caller ID, he answered with an easy, “You’re home.”

“We just got here. Erik,” she said, her tone half laugh, half hesitation, “I can’t believe what you’ve done.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know.” She honestly had no idea how to weigh her son’s reaction against her next electric bill.

“Does Tyler like it?” he asked while she figured it out.

“Like it?” This is ours, Mom? he’d asked, his eyes huge. “He hasn’t stopped grinning since we got here. He’s practically stuck to the window right now watching the icicle lights.”

The sequential lights strung along the overhangs looked like dripping ice. Even the back of the house had been decorated. They’d noticed the lights wrapped around the side of the building the moment they’d driven up the rise. “He loves the snowman.”

“You said he would have liked the one my grandparents had,” he reminded her over the drone of what sounded like an electric saw. “My grandfather always put theirs facing the sound, but I had it put farther back on the lot, thinking Tyler could see it from the window.”

Truly torn by what he’d done, she dropped her scarf on the phone desk and unbuttoned her coat. When they’d talked about his grandparents’ traditions with the store, he’d seemed to see maintaining them mostly as a good approach to business. Yet her mentor’s gift clearly had less to do with marketing than with the little boy pressing his nose to the glass.

She didn’t want his thoughtfulness to mean so much. She just wasn’t able to help it. Not with her little boy so totally captivated.

“How did you get it done so fast?”

The drone beyond him grew quieter. Nearer, voices rose, then faded.

“This close to Christmas, lighting companies are usually finished putting up decorations and are just waiting to take them down. I called a company a client uses, told them what I wanted, gave them the building measurements and they did their thing.”

Just like that. With one phone call, he’d managed to do what she hadn’t been able to do no matter how hard she’d tried and totally distracted her son from his dejection.

“It’s just lights, Rory.”

The man had a serious gift for understatement. He’d used the same think-no-more-of-it tone right after he’d proved that the shell of control she fought to maintain around her life was about as thin as paper.

It was just a kiss, he’d said.

He was only being kind when he’d reached for her. Just as he was only being kind when he’d overlooked how she’d practically crawled inside his shirt when she’d kissed him back—shortly before he’d pointedly minimized the moment of comfort, security and whatever else she’d felt in his arms.

He, on the other hand, apparently hadn’t felt much of anything at all, other than anxious to get out of there.

But this wasn’t about them. Not that there was a them, she insisted to herself. This was about what he’d done for her child.

“It’s more than lights, Erik. To us, anyway.” He had to know that. “And Tyler loves them.” That was all that she would let matter at the moment. For her son’s sake, she wasn’t even going to panic over the electric bill. Yet. “So thank you. From both of us.”

“You’re welcome. Listen,” he continued over the thud of heavy boots on metal stairs, “I have to get back to the payroll right now, but we need to discuss your business plan and address inventory. I have to be in Tacoma before noon tomorrow, so let’s do it over the phone. Are you okay for an eight-thirty call? That’ll give us a couple of hours.

“You there?” he asked when she hesitated.

“Can we make it Sunday?”

“Sunday’s not good for me.”

“Actually,” she began, wondering if Sunday involved the woman he’d taken out last week, “I’m not quite finished with the inventory.” She hated telling him that. “I’d have finished last night, but we had to bake cookies.”

With the bang of a door, the noise and conversations beyond him died.

“Had to?”

“I told Tyler’s teacher I’d bring treats for his class today. And I’d promised him he could help. So, yes,” she insisted. “I had to.”

She’d also brought cookies for the staff—which meant she’d spent the past two afternoons and evenings baking and filling tins and decorating twenty-two gingerbread girls and boys. With Tyler’s help, the project had taken twice as long as it might have, but she’d wanted something for him that she’d never had as a child, holiday memories of flour on noses, sugar sprinkles, the air scented with vanilla and spice. Her mom’s idea of baking had been heating a muffin in the microwave.

“What about tomorrow? Will you have it finished by then?”

Juggling guilt and priorities, she rubbed the ache brewing beneath her forehead. “I told Tyler we’d get our tree tomorrow. I’m going to work in the store tonight after he goes to bed,” she explained, hoping to minimize the delay to Erik’s schedule. “After we get the tree decorated, I’ll finish whatever I haven’t done in the store. I’ve been working out there after he goes to sleep, but I ran out of hours in the past couple of days.

“Since Sunday isn’t good for you,” she hurried on, easily able to imagine a scowl etched in his too-handsome face, “I’ll be ready Monday for sure.” That would also give her time to read the business plan she’d tried without much luck to study on the ferry and after Tyler had gone to bed. Having to look up terms like gross margin, inventory turns and marketing mix had also slowed her down considerably. So did being so tired her eyes blurred.

She hated the plea that entered her quiet “Okay?”

Leaning against the edge of his desk, Erik stared past the schematics on his drafting table to the black-framed photos of Merrick & Sullivan racing sloops lining the pearl-gray wall. To his left, the windows of his office, like those of the other offices lining the catwalk, overlooked the production floor a story below. Those on his right exposed the lights of other industrial buildings lining the night-darkened waterway.

The pleasure he’d felt knowing the snowman had been a hit with Tyler had rapidly faded to something far less definable.

When he’d left her place the other night, his only thoughts had been about doing what he could to make the kid’s Christmas a little better, and his need for physical distance from the boy’s mom. He’d wanted to focus on his work and his world and to get her out of his head for a while. He was good at that. Focusing his thoughts, his energies.

He usually was, anyway. His days were crowded enough to prevent more than a fleeting thought of her undeniably feminine shape, or the way her bottom lip curved when she smiled. But she was messing with his nights, too, driving him from his bed to pace the floor or exhaust himself with his weights before sleep would finally drive her from his mind.

He never should have kissed her. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t know the sweetness of her mouth, the feel of her satin-soft skin, how perfectly her body fit against his.

Now, frustrated on a number of levels, he pushed from his desk, jammed his fingers through his hair.

“Forget Monday,” he muttered. Just because he would have preferred she keep her focus on his schedule didn’t mean she could make it her priority.

In roughly two weeks she’d lost her job, sold her home and was settling into a place that hadn’t even been on her radar until his amazingly generous neighbor had decided to help them both out. In between, she seemed to be doing everything she could to ease the transition for her son while dealing with the former in-laws from hell and getting a business she knew nothing about back up and running.

No way could he justify pushing her just because he wanted his obligations there over and done with.

“The store can wait for now. We’ll pick up after Christmas.”

Pure skepticism shaded her quiet “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he echoed. “You and Tyler have a good time picking out your tree. There’s a great tree lot on Sydney Road. It’s only a few miles from you. Old family operation. Tell them you bought John and Dotty Sullivan’s store. I imagine they’ll give you a good price on a little one.”

“I’ll do that. And thank you. Thank you,” she repeated, sounding relieved beyond belief by the reprieve he’d offered. “But the tree can’t be little. Tyler has his heart set on the tallest one we can fit into the room.”

Erik’s voice went flat. “The ceilings in there are nine feet high.”

“Then I guess we’re getting an eight-foot tree. That’ll leave room for the angel.”

“And you’re hauling it how?”

“The only way I can,” she replied, ever so reasonably. “On my car.”

The thought of eight feet of freshly cut conifer atop twelve feet of rounded, lime-green Bug drew his quick frown.

“Have you ever driven with a tree strapped to your roof?”

“Not exactly. No,” she finally admitted, leaving him to assume that her husband had been behind the wheel. He also figured that the guy had transported prior trees on something considerably larger than what she drove now. Or they’d had it delivered, given what she’d said about the sort of family she’d just shed.

“Then you need to know that the weight affects the way a car handles. Especially if it’s windy, and we have a wind advisory for the weekend. Make sure they net it for you. It’ll be easier to manage that way. And take a blanket to protect your roof. Have someone help you secure it, too. You want it tied tight so it doesn’t slip.”

She hadn’t thought about the weather. Rain at least part of the day was a given. It was the Northwest. She didn’t like wind, though. It made inclement weather that much more miserable.

“Did you promise Tyler you’d have it up tomorrow?”

“It was the only thing I could think of to take his mind off having to change schools.”

“Did it work?”

Her little boy hadn’t budged from the window. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket.

“Not as well as your lights did.”

The admission would have made him smile, had he not just caught the hint of defeat in her voice. Or maybe what he heard was simply fatigue.

“Tell you what.” Totally sabotaging his plan to stay away, he did a quick reschedule. “I’ll only be a half an hour away from you tomorrow. What time will you be at the lot?”

“About the same time you said you have to be in Tacoma.”

“I’m just picking up parts from a machinist. I’ll leave earlier and be at the lot about twelve-thirty.” It would take an hour to pick up the tree, an hour plus to get back. That left him plenty of time to drop off the parts at the boatworks, get home, shower, change and get to yet another client’s holiday party. At least this time he didn’t have to pick up a date. He didn’t have one.

“You don’t have to do that, Erik. You’ve done enough,” she insisted, obviously referring to the lights. “We’ll manage.”

“We? You mean you and Tyler?”

“We’re the only we here.”

“Look.” He was really getting tired of the I-don’t-want-to-be-obligated-to-you tone that had slipped into her voice, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to argue with her. “You’ve said you want this Christmas to be good for your son. I assume that means you don’t want him to have memories of his mom having a meltdown because his tree fell off the car and the car behind her hit it and turned it into kindling. Or because the thing weighs a ton and she can’t get it into the house. Or into the tree stand, for that matter. You have a tree stand, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. And I don’t have meltdowns,” she replied. “Especially in front of my son.”

“No. You probably don’t,” he conceded, not at all sure whom he was annoyed with. Her. Or himself. “You just suck it up and try to deal with everything on your own. It’s fine if you want to be independent, Rory. I’m sure you have your reasons for being that way. But this isn’t about creating an obligation, or you owing me if I help you. It’s about Tyler. All I want to do is help with the tree. For him. Okay?”

Silence.

About the time he thought she might simply hang up, she said, “Okay. For Tyler.”

“Good. I’ll be at the lot tomorrow with my truck.” With a glance at his watch, he winced. “Right now I’ve got to get to this payroll. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

He should probably apologize.

The thought crossed Erik’s mind every time he noticed the wary way Rory watched him the next afternoon. He just wasn’t sure exactly what he should apologize for. He hadn’t said a word to her that wasn’t absolutely true. And she’d definitely needed the help.

The rain came in fits and starts. The weather was cold, the temperature dropping, the wind blowing, and the tree Tyler had selected after carefully checking out the small forest under the huge canvas tent was not only the eight-foot maximum she’d given him, but rather wide. Even tied up to make it more manageable and tarped to keep it dry, with the heavy wind gusts, getting it to her place on the rounded roof of her car would have presented a definite challenge. So would the task of her and Tyler unloading the thing and carrying it into the store to get it into its heavy iron stand, a task that involved sawing off a couple of lower limbs and trimming the thick trunk to make it fit before tightening the screws into place.

Mother and son wrestling it into the house on their own would have presented its own set of frustrations. Especially since carrying it into the house through the store—which had been easier than putting it in the stand in the garage and carrying it through the mudroom—involved hoisting the stand end of the eighty-plus pounds of bushy branches, trunk and iron to his shoulder while she brought up the rear with the top end and Tyler ran ahead of them to open the door.

He said nothing about any of that, though. It wasn’t necessary. The process proceeded far easier with his truck and his help, and that was all he’d wanted: to make something a little easier for her and her son—and to offset his guilt over having pushed her about the store to the point where she’d given up sleep.

“Where do you want it?” he asked.

“In the corner by the fireplace. On the towel so the stand doesn’t stain the carpet.”

“Can I help?” called Tyler.

“Just stay back for a minute, sport. I’ve got it.” He told Rory, “You can let go.”

Behind him, Rory stepped back as the weight lifted from her shoulder. With a quiet whoosh of branches and the thud of heavy metal on towel-covered broadloom, the stand hit the floor and the tree popped upright.

The whole room suddenly smelled like a pine forest.

Beside her, her little boy grinned. “It’s really big, huh?”

Not just big. For the space, it was huge, definitely larger than what they would have wound up with had Erik not been with them. Fuller, anyway.

She’d realized within minutes of arriving at the tree lot that what she’d promised her son would have been a nightmare to manage on her own. On their own, they also would have wound up with something more in the five-foot range.

“Thank you,” she said to Erik’s back.

He turned, pushing his windblown hair back from his forehead.

“No problem. This is the fourth tree I’ve hauled this month.” He wanted her to know that what he’d done wasn’t a big deal. Not to him, anyway. Certainly nothing she needed to feel obligated to him for. “The one at work, a neighbor’s and one of Pax’s cousins’.”

“Do you have a tree?” Tyler wanted to know.

“I don’t usually put one up.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m not home in the evenings much this time of year and I go to my folks’ for Christmas.”

Her little boy’s brow pinched. Before he could voice whatever had him looking so concerned, Erik motioned to the single green bin sitting near the fireplace.

“You want the rest of those?” he asked her, referring to the others still stacked in the store.

She started to tell him she could bring them in herself. Thinking it wiser to accept his help than risk resurrecting the tension that had ended their phone call last night, she said, “Please,” and hurried after him to help.

Tyler wanted to help, too, so she had him carry in their new two-foot-high, red-velvet-clad Santa with its price tag still attached while they brought in the bins filled with the lights and ornaments she’d need for the tree.

The only other thing she needed, other than for the heavy caution between them to ease, was to start a fire in the fireplace to take the deepening chill off the room. While Erik went back for the last bin, she crumpled newspaper under some of the kindling she and Tyler had found by a cord of split logs in the lean-to behind the garage.

Erik had barely walked back in when he shot a narrowed glance at the parka she still wore. Tyler hadn’t taken his off yet, either.

“Did you turn off the heat?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t gone that far in her efforts to conserve.

“I turn it down when we leave, but it’s always colder when the wind blows. It just hasn’t been this windy. Or this cold. It’s freezing out there.”

The house had always been drafty. As his grandmother had done on especially cold days, Rory had closed her heavy drapes over the big expanses of glass to insulate from the chill. With the wind that blew the rain against the windows stirring the fabric, he figured he should probably check the weather stripping.

Just not now. For now, all he’d do was make sure she had enough firewood and get out of there.

“There’s plenty,” she assured him when he said he’d bring some in. “Tyler and I carried a load into the mudroom this morning.”

“Can we decorate now?” Tyler asked. “If you don’t have a tree,” he said to the man checking his watch, “you can help decorate ours. Mom said she’d show me her magic ornaments. You want to see ’em?”

“Magic ornaments?”

“Uh-huh. They’re in here.” With his arms still wrapped around the Santa, he bumped his little boot against a bin she’d brought in that morning. “She showed me a heart and a bell. I get to see the rest when we put them on the tree.”

He looked eager and hopeful and was still running on a sugar high from the hot cider and big candy cane he’d been given at the tree lot.

“We’ve kept Erik long enough, honey.” She hated to burst his little bubble, but with Erik frowning at the time, it seemed apparent he was anxious to go. She felt anxious for him to go now, too. Every time she met his glance she had the uncomfortable feeling he was wondering how she would ever manage there on her own. Or thinking about how much longer the project had taken than he’d probably planned. “He said he had to leave by four,” she reminded him. “Remember?”

“But he doesn’t have his own tree, Mom. We’re s’posed to share.”

They were indeed, which left Rory at a loss for a reasonable rebuttal. She didn’t doubt her child’s disappointment. Yet that disappointment didn’t seem to be only for himself. It was as much for the man she sincerely doubted needed anything from them at all.

“I suppose I could stay a little longer,” he said to Tyler, touched by the child’s concern, ignoring her. “How much do you think we can do in thirty minutes?”

“We have to put the lights on before we can do anything,” she pointed out to them both. Thirty minutes would barely get them going.

“Then I guess that’s where we start.” He looked to where she suddenly stared back at him. “Unless you hadn’t planned on doing this right now.”

He had accomplished his mission: delivering the tree. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d even want to stick around and decorate the thing. Especially with Rory stuck somewhere between grateful for his help, not wanting to have needed it and uncomfortable with his presence. Her little boy’s excitement with the process, though, and his innocent desire to share that experience with him held far more appeal just then than heading home to get ready for yet another evening of schmoozing and champagne. Even if he didn’t leave for another half hour, he’d barely be late. He just wouldn’t stop by the boatworks.

Both males expectantly waited for her reply. That Erik seemed to want to stay caught her totally off guard. Considering how he’d practically bolted out the back door the last time he’d been there and how annoyed he’d sounded with her on the phone yesterday, she’d thought for sure that he’d be on his way as soon as he’d delivered Tyler’s tree.

Not about to deliberately disappoint her son, and determined to not upset the precarious equilibrium between her and her mentor, she lifted both hands in surrender. “If we’re doing lights, we need a chair,” was all she had to say before Tyler started pulling off his coat and Erik started heading toward the dining room table.

On his way, he pulled his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans.

“I need to tell Pax I won’t be in today,” he told her, punching numbers. They didn’t need the parts until Monday, but his partner would be expecting him. “Just give me a minute.”

Taking her animated little boy’s jacket, she slipped off her own and headed into the mudroom to hang them up. As she passed Erik, she heard his easy “Hey, buddy” before he relayed his message, told him where he was and added that he’d see him “later at the party.”

Marveling at the man’s social life, and unsettled to find herself wondering yet again about the woman he’d taken out last week, she walked back into the kitchen moments later to see him still on the phone.

“No, I’m not ‘seriously preoccupied,’” he good-naturedly defended. “I’ve just been getting a tree into a stand. What are you talking about?

“You’re kidding,” he muttered, and headed for the dining room window.

The moment he pulled back the closed drape, she heard a soft ticking against the glass. Little was visible in the gray light beyond. Blowing rain obscured the view.

His brow furrowed. “Turn on the TV, will you?” he asked her.

“What’s going on?”

“Everything’s closing down,” was all he said before she grabbed the TV’s remote.

With Erik joining her on her left, still listening to Pax, and Tyler smashed against her right leg, hugging Santa, the three of them watched the churning weather map on the screen while the authoritative voice of the weatherman warned everyone to stay off the roads. The ticker on the bottom of the screen listed temperatures in various degrees of freezing in Seattle and surrounding areas as the voice went on about predicted accumulations of freezing rain or sleet. Another voice took over as the picture switched to a weather cam with a blurry image of a multicar pileup on I-5.

A viewer video showed the sleet-shrouded image of a ferry rocking at its landing.

“What about the Narrows Bridge?” she heard Erik ask Pax.

The furrows went deeper. “Got it. Sure. You, too, man,” he concluded, and ended his call.

Sensing the adults’ concern, Tyler pressed closer as he looked up. “Is this a bad thing, Mommy?”

It wasn’t good. “It’s okay, honey. The weather is just causing a few problems,” she explained even as more personal complications dawned.

“Nothing you need to worry about, sport.”

Peering around his mom, Tyler looked to the man smiling over at him.

“All you need to worry about is finding a place to put that big guy.” Erik nodded to the Santa that was nearly half Tyler’s size. “Then we can start on the lights.”

His concerns appeased, Tyler plopped his Santa on the floor beside him. Suggesting he put the decoration somewhere a little more out of the way, Erik turned to Rory.

“Pax said they’re closing the airport, bridges, ferries and freeways. The roads are all iced.” His partner had gone over to their client office. The one by Cornelia’s. Now he was stuck there.

Given that the bridge he himself needed to take to get back was closed and that the ferry would be down, he seemed to be stuck where he was, too.

He could usually roll with anything. He just wasn’t quite sure how the woman who’d just drawn a deep breath and turned away felt about having him there for a little longer then she’d expected. She didn’t say a word as she knelt beside one of the bins and popped off the lid to reveal dozens of neatly wrapped strings of lights.

“We’re having soup and sandwiches for dinner,” she finally said.

Lifting out two strings, she stood up, turned to face him. “Since it seems you’re here for the night, you can stay in my room.”

His left eyebrow arched.

Mirroring his expression, determined to prove she could hold her ground with him, Rory added, “I’ll sleep with Tyler.”