Sugar Pine Trail--A Small-Town Holiday Romance

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Davy was the first one to notice her. He beamed and waved.

  “You’re finally up!” Davy chirped. “Yay! Now we can go get a Christmas tree, right? You said we could on Saturday.”

  At his words, Clint and Jamie both turned around, and she wanted to disappear. If she looked half as disgusting as she felt, it was a wonder he didn’t jump up and run screaming from her house.

  He, on the other hand, was as gorgeous as ever. He smiled at her, and her knees threatened to give way.

  “Morning. How are you feeling today?”

  “Better,” she croaked. It was true enough, though better still seemed a long way from human.

  “You’re looking a little wobbly on your pins there. Let’s get you to a chair.”

  As he grabbed her arm and helped her to a kitchen chair, she felt ancient, as old as the residents of the Shelter Springs nursing facility, where she’d served Thanksgiving.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, aware she sounded as if she’d been chain-smoking a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. “Did I sleep through the doorbell?”

  “Jamie slept on the sofa in the living room,” Clint announced. “We found him this morning when we went in there to watch TV.”

  She stared. “What? Why?”

  He shrugged, looking more than a little embarrassed. “I was worried about leaving you and the boys alone when you weren’t feeling well. I was worried you might wake up in the night and need help.”

  A delicate, sweet warmth seeped through her. Her entire adult life, she had been the one watching over her parents. It felt inexpressibly lovely to know that he had been willing to step up to watch over her, to inconvenience himself all night long just in case she might need something.

  “I... That was very kind of you. Thank you.”

  “How are you feeling this morning? You still look fairly pale.”

  “Better,” she said.

  “So can we go get a Christmas tree today?” Davy asked. “You said we could before, then we didn’t because you were sick.”

  The logistics completely overwhelmed her. Going out in the cold, picking a tree, tying it on to her Lexus, then bringing it home and setting it up. She barely had the energy to make it from her bedroom to the kitchen. How was she going to handle setting up a tree?

  “I’m afraid that might have to wait,” she admitted.

  “But you promised!” Davy said. His voice had a hint of a whine, and she had to remind herself that all children disliked disappointment, and he and Clint had endured more than their share.

  “I know, but that was before I got sick.”

  She hated to see the disappointment in both boys’ eyes, but she didn’t know how she could give them what she had promised.

  “It’s okay,” Clint said. “We understand. Plans change sometimes.”

  There was a brief pause, then Jamie spoke. “If you trust me to pick out your Christmas tree, I can take the boys. We can set it up and put the lights on for you today, then when you have a little more strength and are feeling up to it, you can decorate it with them.”

  It took her several seconds to process the offer, and she still couldn’t quite believe he had made it. “Really? You would be willing to do that?”

  “I totally understand if you want to have the fun of picking the tree out yourself. I have the day free, though, and would be happy to help out, if you want.”

  This man was utterly impossible to resist, on so many different levels.

  “Can we, Julia? Can we?” Davy asked. “I can’t wait to have our Christmas tree!”

  Clint didn’t say anything, but he looked just as eager as his younger brother to add a little festive spirit to their home.

  In the face of their excitement, how could she refuse Jamie’s kind offer?

  “I... Yes. That would nice. As long as you’re sure you don’t mind.”

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to do it,” Jamie assured her.

  He turned to the boys. “Finish up your breakfast and load your plates into the dishwasher, then bundle up. This will probably be a crowded day at the Christmas tree farm, and we want to go as early as we can, while they have the best selection.”

  “I’m done,” Davy said, jumping up to clear his plate before racing from the room.

  “Me, too.” Clinton followed his brother’s lead, scraping his plate into the garbage, then rinsing it and loading it. Before he left the room, he turned as if on an afterthought. “Thanks for breakfast,” he said to Jamie. “It was really good.”

  With that, he raced out, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen. She again wanted to disappear. If she had at least showered, maybe she wouldn’t be feeling at a complete disadvantage.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “The boys will survive if we don’t pick up a tree until later in the week.”

  “I hope I’m not depriving you of some kind of Winston family tradition you were looking forward to sharing with them.”

  She shook her head. This time the room only jiggled a little. “My parents didn’t do much to decorate for Christmas. I suppose they didn’t see much reason to fuss.”

  They had been set in their ways by the time she came along. Julia often wondered how her life might have been different if she had entered her parents’ world five or ten years earlier.

  They had been wonderful parents in their quiet way, just perhaps without the same energy of younger parents in their twenties and thirties.

  “I can’t say they didn’t have any traditions,” she went on. “My mom always made me a new stocking on Christmas Eve, and filled it with little gifts. Nothing grand, just things that held special meaning.”

  She had, in turn, done the same thing for her parents after she reached adulthood. She would have to make stockings for the boys this year. For now, they had to start with a Christmas tree.

  “This will mean a great deal to them. Thank you for being willing to take them. And thank you also for staying the night—though if I had been aware of it, I would have told you it wasn’t necessary.”

  Actually, the very nature of that statement probably indicated it had been necessary. A man had spent the night in her living room, and she’d had absolutely no idea, which probably meant she hadn’t been in anything resembling a fit state to care for two little boys.

  “My pleasure, on both counts. Now, I hope you don’t take this wrong, but you look like you’re going to fall over. While we’re gone, why don’t you take advantage of the quiet and go back to bed for a few hours?”

  Her head had begun to pound again, just in these few moments she had been sitting here.

  Before she could answer, the boys came rushing in, jostling each other through the door to be first inside.

  “I’m ready!” Davy said, proudly holding up his mittens.

  “So am I,” his brother said.

  “Give me five minutes to go up to my place for my coat,” Jamie said.

  “Okay, but hurry,” Davy said. “I can’t wait to get our Christmas tree.”

  Jamie laughed and rubbed his head. The sweetness of the gesture made her insides quiver, which she tried to chalk up to the flu.

  After they left, she considered doing as he suggested and sliding back beneath her warm covers. As strongly as her bed called her, she thought perhaps taking a shower would be more prudent. That way she could at least feel somewhat normal again.

  It turned out to be a good choice. The steam helped unclog her headache, the hot water worked magic on her aching joints, and by the time she dressed and combed through her wet hair, she felt stronger than she had in days.

  Something warned her it was a temporary improvement, but she figured as long as she was upright, she might as well take advantage of her renewed strength by finding the Christ
mas tree stand and box of lights Jamie would need when he and the boys returned. It would be easier to find it for them than to explain where it was.

  Julia managed two trips from the garage to the living room before her small burst of energy seeped out, and her headache returned. Her bed called to her, but she knew if she gave in she would be there all day. Instead, she decided to curl up on the sofa with a book and wait until she caught her second wind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “OKAY, HERE’S HOW this is going down.”

  In the driveway of Julia’s house, Jamie turned around to face his two partners in crime.

  “How?” Davy asked eagerly, as if they were planning a bank heist together.

  “I’m going to lift the merchandise down from the vehicle, give it two or three good shakes, then it’s your job to make sure we get all the snow off—every bit of it—before we take the tree inside.”

  “Why?” Clinton asked, his features concerned. “What happens if it still has some snow on it?”

  “The snow would melt all over the floor, which Julia probably wouldn’t like very much.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Davy said. “If our boots have snow on them, she makes us leave them in a little tray in the mudroom.”

  “She says we have to protect the wood floors because they’re antique.”

  “Exactly. We have to do this right. Are you ready?”

  The boys both nodded solemnly, and Jamie grinned at them. “We can do this.”

  He climbed out of the vehicle, then opened the back door for them. A moment later, he lifted the big tree down and tapped it hard several times on the concrete of her driveway, releasing a shower of snow that made Davy laugh.

  It was a lovely scotch pine, about eight feet tall, with soft needles and a perfect conical Christmas tree shape.

  “What do you think? Did we pick a good one?”

  “Maybe it’s too big,” Clinton said, brows knit with worry.

  “It’s not.”

  “Are you sure? Julia won’t like it if we bring home a tree that doesn’t fit in her house.”

  “This one will be perfect. Trust me. You’ll see. Julia’s house has high ceilings, so this tree will be exactly right. A smaller tree would look weird. Okay, now help me brush off the snow while we’re out here. Gently, so you don’t knock any more needles off than necessary.”

  The boys took their charge seriously, batting at any remaining clumps of snow with their mittens until the tree had been completely cleared.

  “I cut a tree down with our dad once,” Clinton confided. “We went to a farm and used a chain saw and everything. It was the last Christmas before he died.”

  “I was too little to go,” Davy said. “Or at least I don’t remember it.”

  His heart ached for both of them.

  “Do you think our mom has a tree, wherever she is?” Clinton asked seriously.

  How was he supposed to answer that? He had no idea where their mother was. He could only pray police found her soon and could get her the help she obviously needed.

  “I hope so,” he answered, his voice gruff. “Are you guys ready to take this inside?”

  “I have a question,” Davy said. “How does the tree stand up by itself?”

  Shoot. He hadn’t given that a thought and felt stupid now for not picking up a stand at the Christmas tree farm. “We’ll have to see if Julia has a stand. If she doesn’t, we might have to run over to the hardware store.”

  “You go ask her. Davy and me will watch the tree to make sure nobody steals it.”

  That suspicion probably stemmed from living in Sulfur Hollow, where people quite possibly could steal an unattended Christmas tree. This quiet neighborhood wasn’t immune from crime, but he wasn’t too worried about it.

  “She might be asleep,” he warned. “There’s a good chance we’ll have to wait until she wakes up.”

  The boys didn’t seem to have a problem with that. “Go see,” Clint ordered. His bossy tone made Jamie smile as he hurried to comply.

  He knocked softly on the back door. When she didn’t answer after a minute or two, he let himself inside and made his way through the kitchen to the living room.

  It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darker interior, but when he did, he discovered Julia stretched out on the same sofa where he had spent the night. She was fast asleep on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek like a child. The throw had slipped down, and so he carefully drew it back up to cover her shoulders.

  He didn’t have the heart to wake her. He would try to convince the boys they could wait a little longer to set up the tree.

  When he turned to go, he discovered a couple of cardboard boxes across the room. He also spied a Christmas tree stand, situated in a perfect spot for a tree, directly in front of the bay windows. She had even repositioned a rocking chair to make room.

  He went to investigate and discovered the boxes were filled with fairly ancient lights, but since he had picked up four new strands at the store next to the tree lot, he wasn’t too worried about that.

  They could do this. It would be tough, but he wanted to think he and Davy and Clint were up to the challenge. The look on her face would be worth it.

  He hurried back outside to where the boys were now struggling to form snowballs out of the loose, powdery snow. “Guys, good job watching the tree. Anybody try to take it?”

  Davy shook his head. “The neighbor’s dog wanted to come over and pee on it, I bet, but we scared him away.”

  “Good work. We have a little situation.”

  “Do we have to go buy a Christmas tree stand now?” Clint asked in a resigned tone.

  “Actually, no. There’s one in the living room. Julia must have found it, but then she fell asleep on the sofa. If we try to set it up, I’m afraid we’ll wake her up.”

  “We won’t!” Davy assured him. “We can be super quiet.”

  “We can be as quiet as ninjas,” Clint added, which made Davy laugh and reminded Jamie of that night Julia had tried to take him on in the entryway of her house.

  “I don’t know. Setting up a tree and hanging lights might be hard to do without making a sound.”

  He had vivid memories of the process during his childhood, listening to Christmas music while his mother made cookies and Pop gave the occasional Gaelic curse when the light strands didn’t work and his brothers and Charlotte squabbled about whose turn it was to hang the star.

  “Can we try?” Davy begged. “Maybe we could put the lights on in the glass room and then carry the tree into the living room.”

  That would probably end up spreading needles all over the house.

  “Use your quietest voice. We’ll try,” he said.

  He had a feeling she must be out of it on flu medicine. It was the only thing that explained how she possibly could have slept through the ruckus they made. Though the boys tried to be quiet, they were boys, after all. They bickered in stage whispers about whether the tree was straight, about how even the lights were, about which of them was more hungry for lunch.

  She moved positions a few times but didn’t awake in the forty minutes it took them to set up the tree and string the lights. Just as they finished, big, fat snowflakes began to fall outside.

  He was about to suggest they go find some lunch when one of the cats wandered in and jumped onto the sofa before he or the boys could stop her.

  “Hey. Get off,” Julia mumbled, batting at the cat, which made Davy giggle.

  Something about that particular giggle did what all the others couldn’t. She blinked a few times and opened her eyes. For a few seconds, she seemed disoriented as she looked at them standing by the glowing tree, then her eyes widened.

  “What? How did you...?”

  This time, both boys giggled.
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br />   “We did the whole thing, and you didn’t even wake up.” Davy grinned. “Jamie said you would, but you didn’t! We were so quiet.”

  “You must have been.” She sat up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyes began to lose that unfocused look, and she smiled at them. “That is a beautiful tree. Good job.”

  “Me and Clint picked it out,” Davy informed her. “It was the prettiest tree on the whole lot—and they had about a jillion of them.”

  “That many?”

  “More like three hundred,” Clint said honestly.

  “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to choose. You did well. All of you.”

  Her smile included him, and he felt that odd tenderness again.

  “We had fun, didn’t we? Thanks for having the stand out. I ended up replacing your lights, since most of them wouldn’t have worked unless we replaced half the bulbs.”

  “They’re ancient. I was afraid of that. Thank you.” She gazed at the tree with astonishment in her eyes. “I can’t believe you did all that without making a sound.”

  “We made plenty of noise, trust me. You were sleeping pretty soundly. How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she said after a moment. “I think I’m through the worst of it. Thank you for stepping up.”

  She smiled, and he couldn’t seem to look away. She looked adorable, all sleepy and mussed, with her cheeks flushed and those gorgeous eyes bright.

  She was lovely. Why didn’t she seem to realize that?

  He thought again of that list he’d seen the night before and how he wanted to put the wheels into motion to help her reach some of those goals.

  Not all of them. There was one particular item he really had to stop thinking about.

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re through the worst of it. We left the tree for you to decorate—though if you want to point me to your ornaments, the boys and I can tackle that, too.”

  “You’ve done enough for today,” she said firmly. “I’m sure you have plenty of other things planned for your day.”

  He really didn’t, other than a quick trip to his hangar in Shelter Springs to check on the progress of some work being done to one of his planes.