Almost An Angel

by Judith Arnold

  Or else hire babysitters to bake with them. Software design came easily to him. Baking, not so much.

  “I didn’t know we had Christmas sprinkles,” he said, admiring the festively decorated cookies.

  “I brought those with me,” Eliza admitted. “Just in case.”

  He didn’t want to ask just in case what. He was too enthralled by the charming domestic scene in his kitchen, the tantalizing fragrance of the cookies, the cheerful child. The gorgeous woman.

  “Taste one, Daddy,” Amy ordered him. “I had one. Eliza said it wouldn’t spoil my appetite.”

  So Amy was calling the school psychologist Eliza. Was that a problem? If they weren’t in school, if she wasn’t treating Amy as a patient, if they bonded…if Eliza was destined to be his friend…

  He didn’t want to analyze Amy’s use of Eliza’s first name. What he wanted, he conceded, was to eat a cookie. He lifted one from a cooled batch and took a bite. “Wow,” he managed, his mouth crammed with delicious crumbs.

  “We didn’t know what to store them in,” Eliza went on.

  “We need a cookie jar,” Amy said.

  “Actually, something with an air-tight lid would keep them fresher. Do you have any containers with tight-fitting lids?”

  That sounded like the sort of thing Sheila would have bought. She used to bake cookies, after all. Feeling like an ignoramus for not knowing what his kitchen cabinets held, he rummaged through a few of the higher ones, figuring that if the lower cabinets held the kind of container Eliza had in mind, Amy would have known about it.

  He located a few plastic containers with colorful lids that he vaguely recalled Sheila buying at a neighborhood party a few years ago, and handed them to Eliza. “You know, I think I could have another cookie without spoiling my appetite,” he said, shooting her and Amy a conspiratorial grin as he snagged a tree-shaped cookie for himself and a snowflake one for his daughter. “They’re fantastic. You’ve had some, haven’t you?” he asked Eliza.

  “She only had one,” Amy announced between bites. “Can we get our tree after lunch?”

  Conor glanced at Eliza, but she had her back to him as she transferred the cooled cookies to the containers. If she had any ideas about how he should navigate the tricky terrain of the Christmas tree, she wasn’t sharing them.

  Tricky terrain or no, he was determined to have a Christmas tree for his daughter this year. “Okay.”

  “Eliza can come with us,” Amy said.

  He shot Eliza another glance. She went still for the briefest moment, then resumed arranging the cookies in the containers. She had already spent the morning hard at work with Amy—he suspected that baking cookies with the assistance of an exuberant nine-year-old was more difficult than baking them by oneself. She must have had enough of the Malones for one day.

  “I’m sure Dr. Powell has other things to do today,” he said, reverting to her last name to remind himself that, no matter how well she fit into his kitchen, this was not her home and Amy was not her buddy. “We’ve taken up enough of her time.”

  Eliza turned to look at him then. He couldn’t read her expression. Relief? Disappointment?

  “Of course, we’d love to have you join us if you want,” he added, uncomfortably aware that that “we” referred to him every bit as much as Amy.

  “Actually,” Eliza said quietly, her smile soft and oddly wistful, “I’m free this afternoon.”

  Chapter Five

  SHE SHOULD HAVE gone home. Conor had provided her with a graceful exit; she could have said she had plans for the afternoon, errands to run, emails to read, a hot tub to install on her rear deck—anything to get her away from the Malones. But the idea of shopping for a Christmas tree was so tempting. And the prospect of spending more time with Amy and her father…

  Much too tempting.

  They’d gone to Amy and Conor’s favorite eatery for lunch, an old-fashioned diner across the street from the YMCA, the sort of place where coffee was served in heavy white porcelain mugs and the sandwiches were so overstuffed their fillings leaked onto the plate with every bite. After lunch, they’d driven to a nursery on the western edge of town, where they debated at length about the relative merits of Fraser firs and blue spruce and Amy raced from one nine-foot tree to another, shouting, “This one, Daddy! This one!” Conor ultimately talked her into a densely needled seven-footer, which two sturdy young employees wrapped in mesh and lashed to the roof of Conor’s car. During the drive home, Amy sang “Jingle Bells” very loudly, sparing Eliza the obligation to speak.

  What would she say? She had no plans for the holiday week. She and her brother used to travel to Florida to celebrate Christmas with their mother, but Eliza’s mother was gone now, and Eliza didn’t want to fly all the way to California to spend the holiday with her brother. At one time, she had thought she and Matt would be using the last week in December to finalize their wedding arrangements, but that wasn’t going to happen, either.

  Tree-shopping with Amy and Conor Malone was probably as close as she was going to get to the Christmas spirit this year.

  She assured herself she hadn’t crossed any ethical lines with this outing. Conor had told her that Amy would be returning to Rosalyn Hoffman for counseling. The little girl wasn’t Eliza’s patient. She was a student in the school where Eliza worked, that was all.

  “Can we decorate the tree today?” Amy asked as Eliza helped Conor slide the tree off the car’s roof and onto the driveway.

  “No,” he told Amy. “We have to let it sit for a day so the branches can open up.”

  “They’re open now.”

  Amy’s statement was so patently ridiculous—the tree was still wrapped in plastic meshing, its branches compressed into a tight cylinder—that both Conor and Eliza burst into laughter. “Here’s the plan, kiddo,” Conor told her. “We’ll get the tree into the stand, feed and water it, and let it sit overnight. Then we’ll trim it tomorrow. That’ll give you some time to figure out how you want to decorate it.”

  “Lots of tinsel,” Amy declared. “I want the tree to be all silvery.”

  Getting the tree balanced in its stand took time—and two adults. Eliza couldn’t imagine how Conor would have managed it if she hadn’t been there, holding the trunk steady while he adjusted the stand, tilting it this way and that until it stood perfectly straight. Not that she minded helping out. The day had been a delight for her. She’d been grateful for the opportunity to bake the holiday cookies she and her mother used to make. She wouldn’t have made them just for herself, but Amy had been thrilled when Eliza had suggested that activity, and they’d had a wonderful time together, kneading the dough, rolling it out, cutting it with the cookie cutters they’d found in a drawer and adding the colorful sprinkles Eliza had purchased on her way to the Malone house.

  Over lunch, Conor had told her a little about the company he’d founded, which developed security systems for computers to prevent hacking. He’d told her he and two colleagues in graduate school had started the company, bankrolled by venture capitalists, and it had grown into such a successful enterprise that he and his partners had chosen to turn down several behemoth computer companies that wanted to buy it and instead bought out the venture capitalists so they could retain full ownership of the company. Some of those behemoth suitors were now their steady customers, licensing new software products as quickly as Conor’s team could create them.

  He must be rich, she’d thought, although his house wasn’t a mansion and his car had quite a few years, miles and mud spatters on it. There was nothing showy about him, nothing pretentious. He dressed in jeans and his hair needed a trim. The excitement that infused his voice when he talked about GateKeepers arose from pride and passion for his work, not from the financial rewards of his company’s success.

  She’d had too much fun with Conor and his daughter. She’d enjoyed the day too much. She really ought to put some distance between them and herself…just as soon as Conor finished tightening the screws that braced t
he tree in its stand in a corner of his living room.

  “Can I invite Erin over to see the tree?” Amy asked once Conor had cut the netting off the branches. They swelled slightly, releasing a sharp evergreen perfume which blended with the lingering aroma of the cookies. It was the smell of Christmas, Eliza acknowledged. Her mother’s house used to fill with the same glorious combination of fragrances every December: home-baked cookies, fresh-cut tree, family, love.

  “If you want,” Conor said. “But it might make more sense to invite her over when the tree is all decorated.”

  “Tomorrow, right? We’re definitely going to decorate tomorrow?”

  “I think the branches will be open enough by then.”

  “Can you come?” Amy aimed her radiant blue eyes at Eliza. “Can you help us decorate the tree?”

  Eliza checked herself before blurting out that she’d love to help. She couldn’t let herself be sucked even deeper into the Malone family. For all she knew, Conor might not want her to be a part of tomorrow’s activity. Maybe he was growing sick of her company.

  She glanced his way. His eyes were even bluer than his daughter’s, and more radiant. His gaze lingered on her for only a moment, barely long enough to register, yet she felt its intensity penetrating her like a laser straight to her heart.

  He turned to his daughter. “Let me talk to Dr. Powell for a moment, okay? Privately.”

  Amy planted her hands on her hips, striking an adult pose that looked simultaneously silly and adorable. “Grown-up talk?” she asked, then sighed. “Okay.” She trudged to the stairs and up, apparently annoyed that she was being excluded.

  Conor watched Amy until she vanished down the upstairs hall, then returned his attention to Eliza. Expectation and apprehension performed a duet inside her. When he murmured her name in a gruff, quiet voice, both emotions clamored more loudly. “Don’t feel obligated to stick around,” he said. His words were diffident but his gaze was aggressive, challenging her. A few feet of space separated them, but he seemed too close. Much too close.

  “I don’t feel obligated,” she said.

  He rubbed his hands against the faded blue denim of his jeans. “We’ve taken up your entire day…”

  “My choice,” she assured him.

  “I usually pay my babysitters.” A faint smile crossed his lips.

  Eliza hadn’t felt like a babysitter when she’d been keeping an eye on Amy that morning. She certainly didn’t feel like one now. And she did feel paid. The opportunity to shop for a Christmas tree—something she would not otherwise have done—and to be in the company of Amy and Conor was all the compensation she needed.

  “This is the first time in years that I don’t have a tree,” she confessed. “Shopping for a tree with you and Amy was so much fun.”

  “It was fun for me, too,” he murmured, that same tentative, subtly dangerous smile whispering across his face as he leaned toward her, stepped toward her, touched his mouth to hers.

  Was this what she’d been expecting? What she’d been apprehensive about? She no longer knew and no longer cared. The pressure of Conor’s lips against hers sent a tremor of yearning through her, warm and then hot, pleased and then greedy. God, this felt so good. So right. As good and right as eating lunch with the Malones had been, and picking out a tree with them, and setting it up.

  A new scent teased her senses, along with the tree and the baking: the scent of Conor, clean and rugged and utterly male. As his lips met and brushed and nipped hers, he slid his hands to her cheeks. Large, warm hands, slightly callused, cupping her face, holding her head steady for the invasion of his tongue.

  She welcomed that invasion, opening, softening, melting in pleasure. She reached for his shoulders, cupped them, savored the solidity of muscle and bone beneath the slightly scratchy wool of his sweater. His upper lip and chin were slightly scratchy, too, a day’s worth of whisker stubbling his skin.

  A tiny voice inside her niggled that she should end this kiss before she was utterly lost. She didn’t really know Conor. His daughter attended the school where she worked. There were clearly issues in their tiny family: unresolved grief, unfulfilled needs. And issues in her own life, too: wounds that were still healing, distrust that was not easily shed.

  She ignored the voice. Kissing Conor felt too good.

  “Are you done grown-up talking?” Amy’s voice drifted down the stairs.

  His lips vibrating with a muted laugh, Conor eased back from Eliza. “Is that what this is?” she whispered. “Grown-up talking?”

  “I think so.” He touched his mouth to her forehead, then took a safe step back. “Stay for dinner.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway. “Okay.”

  Chapter Six

  “MY DAD’S a terrible cook,” Amy declared. “He makes everything in the microwave.”

  As far as Eliza could see, this was not true. Conor had used the microwave to thaw out some frozen chopped beef, but now he was browning the meat in a pan on the stove. He’d opened a jar of marinara sauce and filled a pot of water to boil for pasta. Not exactly a gourmet feast, but several steps away from zapping a pre-fab meal.

  Eliza stood at the sink, rinsing a head of romaine before she tore some of it into a salad bowl. Amy had been tasked with setting the table. There had been some debate about whether to eat in the kitchen or the dining room—Conor had voted in favor of the kitchen, but Amy had countered that she and her father never ate in the dining room and tonight they had an excuse to do so. Her argument won, and she’d made a huge production of folding the dinner napkins into pockets to hold the silverware, and arraying the table with china plates from the glass-fronted hutch.

  Eliza wondered when Amy and her father had last dined in the stately room. The hutch and hunt board were a glossy mahogany, polished and dusted. The table cloth was crisp linen. One thing Eliza had learned growing up with a rowdy brother, dating guys through college and graduate school and living with Matt was that, in general, women tended to appreciate fine dining more than men did. She didn’t want the Malones to think her presence at dinner was a major occasion, but she was secretly pleased that Amy had won the argument about where to eat. Little girls needed elegance in their lives.

  “I’ll cop to the microwaving,” Conor told Eliza as he gave the sauce a stir. “I have a housekeeper who comes in once a week, cooks up a bunch of dinners and then freezes them. By the time I leave work, pick up Amy and get home, I don’t have the time to fix a good meal from scratch.”

  “Or the energy,” Eliza guessed. She often arrived home from work too exhausted to do more than open a can of soup or a tub of yogurt.

  With the three of them collaborating, dinner preparations didn’t require too much time or energy from anyone. Conor uncorked a bottle of red wine—something Italian; Eliza didn’t know much about wines, but it tasted delicious—and he allowed Amy a tiny taste from his glass before filling a glass with milk for her. “Daddy never drinks wine,” Amy reported. “Not in more than a year.”

  Not since his wife died, Eliza filled in the blanks.

  “My mom always used to let me taste her wine,” Amy went on. “She said she wanted me to have a palate. I’m not sure what that means, but she said she had one, so I want one, too.”

  Conor shot Eliza a look. He appeared anxious, as if he thought discussing his late wife might be in poor taste. She sent him back a reassuring smile. Amy ought to feel free to talk about her mother. That the woman had died didn’t mean she wasn’t an essential part of Amy’s—and Conor’s—history. “By palate, I think your mother meant the ability to taste the nuances in wines,” Eliza explained. “Do you know what nuances are?”

  Amy shook her head.

  “Kind of like subtle differences. Things that make something distinct, but that aren’t obvious. Like in a wine, whether it tastes a little bit like…” She glanced at Conor, seeking help.

  “Fruit,” he said. “Or spices, or…I don’t know, flavors that have to do with how the
wine is aged. My wife was the wine expert,” he informed Eliza. “I was always more of a beer guy, myself.” He seemed relieved that Eliza wasn’t troubled by the subject.

  Why would she be? She was a psychologist. She was used to talking about anything and everything.

  Even so, she was glad when the conversation veered away from the Conor’s wife and back to the tree. Amy wanted lots of colorful lights and as much tinsel and garlands as the boughs could hold. The decorations she described would be so bright, the tree would probably be visible from a satellite orbiting the earth from a hundred miles up.

  Or from the height of a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer. “We have to make sure Santa can see it,” she reminded Eliza and Conor. “We never had a tree last year. So this year our tree has to be twice as good.”

  “Some of the old lights might not work,” Conor warned.

  “Then we’ll buy new ones,” Amy said pragmatically. “If Santa can’t see the tree, he won’t bring me what I want for Christmas.”

  Maybe talking about Conor’s late wife’s taste in wine would be safer than this topic: the impossible Christmas gift Amy yearned for. Eliza eyed Conor, uncertain of how he wished to handle the matter. But he gazed only at his daughter. “I don’t think it works that way,” he said. “You make a tree pretty and bright because that’s how you want the tree to look. And Santa brings the gifts he thinks you should have. It isn’t always exactly what you were hoping for—”

  “That’s not true, Daddy,” Amy said solemnly. “Santa makes your dreams come true—if you’re good. I’m trying very hard to be good.”

  “I know that.”

  “And I won’t hit anyone ever again, I promise. Even if he’s a poophead and he’s being mean to me.”

  “Hitting people rarely solves anything,” Conor said, his attention still fixed on his daughter, although his voice wavered. He seemed to be running out of quiet, reasoned arguments.