Читать книгу The Magic of a Family Christmas - SUSAN MEIER, Susan Meier - Страница 9

THEY stepped out into the parking lot and Cullen motioned to the right. “That’s my rental car.”

“And it’s a fine car,” Wendy said, “but with power lines down, we can’t drive. We don’t want to become part of the problem.”

Cullen ignored her sarcasm in favor of more pressing concerns. “Part of the problem?”

“We could get halfway home, come across a tree that’s down and either have to leave our cars in the middle of the road or drive back here and walk anyway.”

She faced him. Sunlight sparkled off the thick ice on the trees surrounding the parking lot, encircling her with a glow that made her look like a shimmering angel. He shook his head to clear the haze, but there was no haze. She truly sparkled in the icy world they were caught in.

“So what do you say we skip the first few steps we know might not work, and just walk?”

Great. Maybe a little exercise would help him get himself back to normal around her. “Fine.”

“Good. You can carry Harry.”

He gaped at her. “Carry Harry?”

“It’s a ten-minute walk. And he’s a fortypound kid. Are you telling me that rich guys are too soft to carry forty-pound kids?”

He snatched the little boy off the ground and hoisted him to his shoulder. Not that he took her bait about him being soft. He liked Harry. Who wouldn’t? The kid had suffered the kind of loss that would flatten most adults, yet he was taking it like a man. He deserved a little special treatment.

“You have a smart mouth.”

She grimaced. “Not usually.”

He didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to know that she was behaving out of character in his presence. It was confirmation that she was attracted to him, too. If they were attracted to each other and about to spend the night together that might be trouble. Of course, if she was being smart with him it could be because she didn’t like the attraction any more than he did—which should make them perfectly safe.

Occupied with his thoughts, Cullen slipped on the ice and bobbled Harry, who squealed with delight. “This is fun!”

“Always happy to oblige,” Cullen told Harry, before he leaned toward Wendy and whispered, “Italian loafers weren’t made for walking on ice.”

“It’s a very short walk. Ten minutes tops.” She pointed to the grassy strip beside the sidewalk. “But if I were you I’d walk in that.”

He stepped into the bumpier grass and found the footing a little more solid. Harry groaned. “Darn.”

With his hands on Harry’s thighs, holding him on his shoulders, Cullen shook his head. “Kids. You think the weirdest things are fun.”

Harry giggled. Cullen’s spirits unexpectedly lifted, but he told himself to settle down. He might want to make Harry’s life a little brighter, but he wasn’t here for fun and games. He had to work with Wendy Winston for the next few weeks. He had to be nice to her, but he also had to keep his distance. He didn’t want to accidentally start a relationship that would have to end when he left.

He stayed quiet the rest of the way to her home. Walking on the grass, he managed to slip only a time or two, but that provided Harry with a few laughs, and Wendy with something to talk about with Harry.

Suddenly she turned up an icy walkway to the right, and Cullen stopped.

Oh. Dear. God.

“Come on.”

Swallowing back a protest, Cullen carefully navigated the walkway and the five icy stairs to the wide front porch. They stepped inside a freezing-cold foyer with beautiful hardwood floors, a new paint job and a modern table holding a ginger-jar lamp and a stack of unopened mail.

She stripped off her coat. “As soon as I light the fireplace and turn on the oven, the downstairs will be toasty warm.” Heading for the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, “If you’re cold, don’t take off your coat until the place heats up.”

He slid Harry to the floor. The little boy immediately shucked his coat, found the hall closet and tossed it inside. Cullen grimaced. He’d look like a real wimp if he stayed in his coat, so he shrugged it off and followed Harry into the kitchen.

Wendy beamed at Harry. “Oh, you took off your own coat!”

Harry nodded. “I saw you put it in the closet before so I know what to do now.”

Cullen caught the exchange but he was too busy staring at the kitchen cabinets to comment.

Wendy winced. “I know they’re ugly.”

“My father hated them, too.”

Her pretty green eyes widened. “This was your house? Your family was the rich family that left town and neglected it?”

“That would be us.”

“And your mother is responsible for this floor?”

He shrugged. “It was the eighties. Linoleum was all the rage.”

“Yeah, but now I’m stuck with it. I should shoot at least one of you.”

Cullen heard her, but didn’t respond. Memories of conversations over breakfast with Gabby, the Barrington’s housekeeper, came tumbling back.

Are you ever going to learn to make pancakes?

No.

I like pancakes!

Little boys aren’t supposed to get everything they want. Makes them spoiled.

Gabby hadn’t been mean about it. She’d laughed. She was a fun, easygoing woman who sometimes even sat at the table and ate scrambled eggs and toast with him before she drove him to school.

“I asked if you wanted anything to drink.”

Hearing Wendy’s question, he spun to face her. Standing by the open refrigerator, she held a pitcher of something pink. “What is it?”

“Pink lemonade.”

“Got any bottled water?”

“I have tap water.”

“That’s fine.”

“Glasses are in the cupboard.” She pointed at the one by the sink. “Help yourself.”

Walking to the sink, he watched her pour a drink for Harry and one for herself then carry eggs, butter and milk to the center island after storing the lemonade. He tried to remember his mom even being in the kitchen, let alone cooking, and not one memory surfaced.

“We’re baking cookies, if you want to help.”

He turned at Wendy’s question. Her smile was forced. Her eyes not as bright as they had been. She obviously didn’t want his help and he wasn’t really in the mood to remember things that only made him a weird combination of angry and sad.

“No, if you have a book somewhere I wouldn’t mind passing the time reading.”

She relaxed. “I have a roomful of bookcases stuffed with just about anything you could want. Third door…”

“On the right. I know. It used to be a library and office. That’s why there are built-in bookcases.”

“Okay. Just open the drapes. When it starts to get dark, we’ll break out the candles and flashlights.”

“Great.”

He entered the library feeling a mix of nostalgia and disappointment. His mother had worked in this room every night and most weekends. But Wendy didn’t have a desk and leather chairs. Instead, a chaise sat by the bay window. A well-worn yellow comforter lay across the foot. The room that had been a place of work was now a place of peace and quiet. He scanned her titles, found a thriller by a favorite author, and settled in on the chaise.

After an hour, the scent of fresh-baked cookies drifted into the room. He closed the book and inhaled deeply before rising from the chaise and walking into the kitchen.

“Smells good in here.”

Green icing on the tip of his nose and flour across one cheek, Harry grinned at him from his chair beside the kitchen island. “I’m painting stained-glass windows on a church.”

Cullen laughed. “No kidding!”

Wendy looked offended. “Hey, I can get pretty fancy with my cookies.”

Glancing at the rows of already painted cookies on the far end of the island, Cullen nodded. “So I see.”

Harry nodded. “You paint one, Mr…”

“This is Mr. Barrington,” Wendy supplied.

“Since we’re kind of in close quarters and unusual circumstances I think you might as well call me Cullen.”

“Okay, Cullen!” Harry said, handing him a cookie. “You paint this one. It’s a bell.”

“I see that.”

“So paint it.”

“With frosting,” Wendy qualified. “But you should also wash your hands first.”

He was going to say no. He’d never done anything like this in his life and he was too old to start now. But just the mention of the word frosting squeezed his heart. Unable to catch every word said about him, Harry had repeated what he thought he’d heard and had called himself a frosting child. In a way he was. He was a sweet little boy left in the hands of a cold, sterile system. How could Cullen turn away the request of a child who’d just lost his mother?

“Okay.”

He washed his hands, picked up his cookie again and chose a paintbrush from those assembled beside the colorful cups of frosting. He watched Wendy dip her brush into the yellow icing and paint the bell she held a bright yellow, then switch brushes to add red icing to create a bow. He mimicked her movements, except he dipped his brush in blue. He covered his cookie in pale-blue frosting and painted the bow shape at the top white.

Harry approved it with a smile. “I like it.”

“I like it, too, but you know what? I’m kind of getting hungry.”

Wendy said, “Let me finish up here and I’ll make hamburgers.”

“Actually, I make a great hamburger. You said your gas stove will work, right?”

She nodded. “That’s how we made these cookies.”

“Then you guys just go ahead and keep painting. I’ll make burgers and by the time you’re done, dinner will be ready.”

Wendy smiled. Cullen’s heart tripped over itself in his chest. Now that they were in a comfortable environment, he’d begun thinking of things a little more normally. But that wasn’t necessarily good. Instead of envisioning off-the-wall images like sparkling angels when he looked at her, he was now thinking how he’d like to kiss the lips that had pulled upward into a smile. They were a soft reddish color. Untarnished by lipstick or gloss. Very real. Plump. Tempting.

But that was wrong. They’d be working together for the next weeks. Visions of angels were one thing. Actually wanting to kiss his employee was another. Anything he said or did could turn into a sexual-harassment suit. He had to stop this and stop it right now.

He walked to the refrigerator and pulled out the hamburger. “What’s going to happen to everything in your refrigerator if the power stays out for a long time?”

“If we don’t open the refrigerator often, lots of it will be okay. Plus, I have blocks of ice in the freezer for times when this happens. It acts like a big cooler. Everything in there will stay frozen and I can put the important things from the refrigerator in there, if I need to.”

“You’re pretty smart.”

Holding a cookie she’d just painted with bright-red frosting, she laughed. “Yeah. Right.”

Happy to have their minds back on work, he said, “You are. All your performance appraisals say that.”

“You read my performance appraisals?”

“I read your file this morning. You are my administrative assistant for the next four weeks. I figured I’d better know who I was getting.”

“Oh.” She placed her cookie on the aluminum foil that lined the far end of the island and reached for another one. “So, how did you learn to cook?”

He grimaced. “Our housekeeper taught me.”

“That’s right. Your mom was the last company president.”

He nodded. “My dad owned an investment firm and my mom ran the factory, so my parents were overly busy. Our housekeeper was the one who fed me, nudged me to get dressed, drove me to school…” He pointed at the stove. “And taught me to cook. Nothing fancy, just the basics. Eggs. Hamburgers.” He shrugged. “That kind of stuff.”

“So that makes you pretty handy to have around the house.”

He laughed. “And also a good roommate for everybody in college.”

“Where did you go to school?”

He could tell she was only making casual conversation, but he nonetheless felt odd, as if he were bragging and he winced. “Harvard.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Community college for two years, then I met my husband and realized I could be an administrative assistant while he did his internship at the local hospital. When he died, I probably should have gone back for a degree.” She shrugged. “But I just never found anything I wanted to study.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

With her focus on choosing the next cookie to paint, Wendy shrugged again. “It’s all right.” She said the well-practiced words easily, but the emptiness that shuddered through her contradicted them. Still, as she’d told Harry, she shouldn’t dwell. She’d moved on. Gotten tougher, smarter. “It’s been two years since Greg died.”

Surveying the cookies to be painted, Harry casually said, “Cullen’s mom died this year.”

Wendy spun to face the stove. “Now, I’m sorry.”

“As you said, it’s all right. She actually died in January. So my dad and I are pretty much beyond it.”

Finished patting the hamburgers into shape, Cullen poked through cupboards, looking for a frying pan. Wendy watched him, feeling a shift in the funny catch she got in her heart every time she looked at him. Hearing about his mom’s death reminded her that he was as human as everybody else. But was it really good to begin seeing him as a normal man? Wasn’t it wiser to continue thinking of him as a super-good-looking but unapproachable playboy?

By the time the hamburgers were ready, Wendy and Harry had finished painting their cookies, and laid them on the island to dry. Wendy pulled paper plates from the pantry and handed them to Harry.

“Since we’re not sure when we’ll get power again, it’s probably a good idea for us not to dirty too many dishes.”

Harry scurried to the round table in the corner of the room and arranged the plates in front of three chairs. Cullen set a platter of hamburgers in the center.

Wendy found the plastic cutlery and carried it to the table along with a bag of hamburger buns and a bag of potato chips. “We can eat reject cookies for dessert.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cullen said, pulling a seat up to the table.

But Harry stopped him. “I want to sit there!” he said, shifting Cullen to the left, to the place beside Wendy.

Wendy looked over at the little boy. He didn’t seem upset. He seemed to genuinely want the seat on the end. So she said nothing. They passed the hamburgers and buns around the table, then the chips. Pale light filtered in from the windows in the top half of the back door. The sun was setting.

“I think I might need to get a candle.”

“Do you want some help?”

“No, I’m fine. I just have a feeling it’ll be dark before we’re done eating.” She rose from the table and found the big round candles and matches she kept for times the electricity failed. She lit one of the fat beige candles, set it between the hamburgers and the chips and took her seat again.

As they ate, the light from the window faded and the candle’s light replaced it, creating an unfortunately romantic glow. Wendy stole a look at Cullen. He was stealing a glance at her. A sizzle of electricity arced between them. Time stood still as they simply stared into each other’s eyes.

“My head looks like a watermelon,” Harry said with a giggle, pointing at a shadow cast by the flickering candlelight.

Wendy laughed. It was exactly the comic relief they needed. “So does mine.”

Cullen turned to see the wall behind him. He laughed. “So does mine.”

Harry settled into his seat again. “I like this.”

One of Cullen’s black eyebrows rose. “Eating in the dark?”

“No. Laughing.”

Wendy glanced at Cullen, again just as he looked at her. This time, instead of chemistry sparking between them, understanding did. This little boy had spent the past months of his life not doing anything, not going anywhere, probably never laughing.

Cullen rose and unexpectedly grabbed Harry, hoisting him over his shoulder and tickling the strip of belly exposed when his T-shirt rose. “Yeah, well, if you like to laugh so much how about this?” He tickled him again and Harry giggled with delight.

Wendy’s heart melted in her chest. Never in a million years would she guess somebody like Cullen could be so perceptive, but he was and she was grateful.

“I have a good idea,” she said, rising from the table. “Why don’t we throw away these dishes and take the cookies into the living room? The fireplace is already lit. We’ll put our sleeping bags down on the floor and make popcorn.”

Cullen swung Harry to the floor. “Or we could tell ghost stories.”

As Harry’s small feet touched down he said, “Ghost stories?”

Cullen smiled evilly. “Oh, I know plenty. I spent some time in Gettysburg.”

Harry’s nose wrinkled. “You were in prison?”

Cullen and Wendy both laughed. Wendy said, “No! Gettysburg is a famous battlefield. But rather than ghost stories,” she said, giving Cullen a look, hoping he’d understand, “why don’t we tell funny stories?”

Harry jumped up and down. “I love funny stories!” Then he raced out of the kitchen, toward the living room.

Obviously realizing his mistake, Cullen rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Sorry. I forgot his mom just died or I never would have mentioned ghosts.”

“That’s okay. I’ve slipped up a time or two myself today.”

He glanced around. “Have you got any marshmallows?”

Dipping into the pantry and then out again, she displayed a bag of fat white marshmallows. “I always keep a bag on hand in case I ever want to make s’mores.”

“We’ll start toasting those over the fire and tell funny stories and he’ll forget all about the ghosts.”

Wendy smiled her agreement, but her smile faded when he turned away, gathered the catsup and mustard and walked to the refrigerator as if it were very normal for him to be in her kitchen. In a way she supposed it was. This had been his home. But she had the oddest feeling that he was right where he was supposed to be.

And so was she.

Blaming that feeling on the fact that they both called this house home, she shook her head, told herself to stop acting like an idiot and carried the marshmallows to the living room where Harry eagerly awaited her.

They spent the next hour roasting marshmallows and teasing Harry. Then Cullen realized he’d not only have to sleep in his uncomfortable clothes; he’d also have to wear them the next day unless he went to his car.

Wendy grabbed two flashlights from the kitchen and met him at the front door.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“It’s a ten-minute walk to my car, remember? I hadn’t yet checked into my hotel, so I can grab my duffel bag and be back in twenty-two minutes.”

As he spoke, he smiled down at her, and she suddenly knew why she kept getting these odd feelings. In the office when he was Cullen Barrington, owner of Barrington Candies, he was an unapproachable playboy. But here in this house where he was comfortable, with a little boy he couldn’t resist being kind to, she was seeing a side of him she would bet few people—if any—had ever seen. And she was beginning to like him.

She quickly looked away and stepped back. She didn’t want to like this guy. At least not romantically. This time next month, he’d probably be on a beach or in a casino. There was no sense forming an attachment. But more than that they came from two different worlds, saw life two different ways, probably had totally opposite beliefs about most things. Liking him was just wrong.

“See you when you get back.”

He opened the door and pointed at his Italian loafers. “Wish me luck.”

Wendy couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Luck.”

While he was gone, Wendy went to the storage room and found the two sleeping bags that she and her husband had used on camping trips. Because there were only two, she grabbed blankets from the linen closet and brought them along, too.

After she and Harry laid the open sleeping bags on the floor to serve as a cushion, they covered them in blankets. She took Harry upstairs, helped him wash up and eased him into his pajamas. On the way back to the living room they stopped in the library and found a tattered copy of A Christmas Story.

By the time Cullen returned, she’d begun reading it aloud to Harry. Cullen took his duffel bag upstairs and returned dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Not interrupting her reading, he slid under the blanket on the other side of Harry. She read a few chapters until Harry’s eyelids began to droop and eventually closed completely.

Wendy slid the blanket up to his chin. He snuggled into the pillow.

She glanced over at Cullen and whispered, “This wasn’t exactly how I’d hoped our first night would turn out.”

“This was your first day with him?”

She nodded.

He laughed softly. “I don’t think Harry minded.” He pulled in a breath. “And I have to thank you, too. I’d have been sleeping on your boss’s lumpy couch tonight if you hadn’t come to my rescue.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, another employee might have been too intimidated to invite me. I appreciate that you not only opened your home, but you didn’t make a big deal of it.”

Cullen rose from the makeshift bed and tossed another log on the fire. Levering his hand on the coffee table, he lowered himself to the floor again, but as he pulled his hand away he jarred the table enough that the silver bell decoration in a Christmas flower arrangement rang.

Hearing the bell, Harry squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly.

Please, let Miss Wendy and Cullen get married and adopt me.

He made the wish quickly, just as he had the other two times he’d wished.

The first time he’d wished they’d get married and adopt him had been at the door of Miss Wendy’s work, when she’d slipped on the ice. He’d seen her and Cullen look at each other funny like Jimmy Franklin’s mom and dad looked at each other, and he knew they could be a mom and dad. His mom and dad. So he’d wished and when he was done wishing the bell rang.

Then, when she came back from getting the radio, she and Cullen had looked at each other funny again, he’d wished again and church bells had rung.

He snuggled more deeply into the pillow, a plan forming in his head. What if he made the wish every time he heard a bell ring? He’d tried to wish that his mom would get well and that wish hadn’t worked. But maybe that was because he didn’t have a bell? So this time, he’d wish every time he heard a bell. And maybe his wish would come true.