That was almost a year ago, and except for the Christmas and birthday cards, both with sizable checks made out to the boy, she hadn’t heard a word.
Once again, even as she was enjoying the peace and quiet, she should have known it was too good to last.
Well, she’d find out what was going on soon enough, she told herself. She saw no reason to ruin Ricky’s joy in the approaching holidays just because of her own anxieties.
In a patient voice, Cris pointed out, “Christmas is more than thirty days away.”
Ricky climbed onto one of the stools that was pushed up right beside a worktable, so that his face was closer to hers. “But we gotta find the tree, bring it home and decorate it. That takes a whole bunch of time,” the little boy insisted. “All the big good ones will be gone if we don’t hurry up and buy one.”
“Then we’ll get a medium-sized good one,” she told him, slicing potatoes for her own recipe of potatoes au gratin. She might as well have suggested drowning Santa Claus in the ocean from the look of horror that descended over Ricky’s small face.
“No!” Ricky cried, appalled. He jumped off the stool as Cris left the worktable to get more potatoes. “It’s gotta be a big one. Grandpa said it does.”
“Grandpa only said that because he knows that’s what you want,” Cris tactfully pointed out. “If you wanted a big blue monster standing in the middle of the main room instead of a Christmas tree, Grandpa would go along with that, too.”
Ricky grinned broadly. “I like Grandpa.”
“I bet you do.” Cris couldn’t help but laugh. “Because you’ve got him tied around your little finger.”
Ricky looked down at his hands, examining them in mystification. “No, I don’t, Mama. Grandpa’s too big for my fingers.”
Cris laughed again. She’d forgotten how literally words were taken at that age. “Sorry, little man, what was I thinking?”
“I dunno,” Ricky answered honestly, as if his mother had asked a legitimate question. “So can we go? Puh-leezze?”
“Honey, I have to finish making lunches first,” she said.
Jorge had watched this scene in silence, amused by the boy’s unwavering persistence, but now he had to speak up.
“I can take over, Miss Cris,” he volunteered. Back from his visit with his family, he was relaxed and more than ready to return to work. “You go tree hunting with the boy here,” he told her, fondly ruffling the boy’s hair.
Ricky’s eyes almost sparkled. Cris looked at her assistant uneasily. She didn’t want him getting in over his head just so she could indulge her son.
“Are you sure, Jorge?” she asked, studying his face. I don’t like just running off and leaving you like that.”
Jorge shrugged dismissively. “You’re only going for a couple of hours, right? There aren’t that many Christmas tree lots in the area, are there?”
It was a rhetorical question. Each year, there seemed to be fewer and fewer lots with a significant number of trees. She thought about it for a moment.
“No, I guess not,” she agreed.
“See?” Ricky cried. The point he’d been trying to hammer home had been made for him. He flashed a smile of thanks to Jorge. “If we don’t go now, there won’t be any big trees left. Grandpa and Shane said we needed a big tree in the main room,” he insisted.
“Somehow, I don’t remember Grandpa and Shane wording it that way,” she told the boy.
But she could remain immune to his big blue, supplicating eyes for only so long before she finally caved. Plus, Cris wasn’t sure if her nerves could withstand another day’s verbal assault. Not in her present state of barely controlled agitation. She decided she needed something to distract her.
“Okay, we’ll go pick out a tree,” she said to Ricky, surrendering.
Rather than remain at her side, Ricky immediately dashed for the swinging kitchen door.
“Hold it, little man,” she called after her son. “Wait for me. You’re still not old enough to drive by yourself.”
“I know that, Mama,” he told her, irritated she’d made that sort of mistake. “I’m going to get Shane. He said to tell him when you were ready. He’s coming, too,” he added, in case his mother had forgotten.
She’d thought that Shane’s initial offer to accompany them on their Christmas tree quest had just been one of those throwaway offers uttered on the spur of the moment—in this case to placate Ricky—and then immediately forgotten.
“Honey, Shane’s busy,” she gently reminded her son.
“Not too busy for me,” Ricky replied. “He said so, Mama. Just now.”
About to give Shane an alibi, Cris stopped cold and stared at her son. “Just now?” she echoed.
“Uh-huh,” Ricky testified solemnly, his head bobbing emphatically. “He’s waiting for me to tell him what you said. I’ll tell him you said yes!” With that, Ricky pushed open the swinging door with both hands and raced out.
Watching, amused, Jorge deadpanned, “Kids, they grow up so fast these days.”
“A little too fast if you ask me,” Cris murmured. If she didn’t know any better—and she wasn’t entirely sure that she didn’t—she would have said her son was manipulating her. That, as well as bringing in reinforcements.
“You’re certain you can handle this?” she asked, giving Jorge one last chance to change his mind.
“Go, before I become insulted,” he told her.
“Gone,” she declared.
* * *
BY THE TIME Cris had taken off her apron, dragged a hand through her hair to make it a bit more presentable and gotten her purse from the tiny back office off the kitchen, Ricky was waiting for her in the main room—and he had brought his “reinforcements” with him.
She felt bad. Shane probably thought that because Ricky was the boss’s grandson, he had to indulge the little boy.
“Look, I know you have a lot to do, Shane,” she began, giving him the option of bowing out, “so don’t let my son guilt you into coming with us.”
“No guilt involved,” Shane assured her pleasantly. “Unless it’s the kind that comes from playing a little hooky.”
Ever curious, Ricky queried the word he didn’t understand. “What’s hooky?”
Cris patted his shoulder. “Nothing you should know about.”
Shane realized he probably shouldn’t have said that. “Sorry,” he apologized.
Cris waved off the apology. “Don’t worry about it. Having kids around is a constant learning experience for everyone,” she told him. “Nobody expects you to know everything. But really, I meant what I said. If you’re busy, you don’t have to come.”
“To be honest, I was looking forward to it,” he said, echoing his earlier words. “It’s been a while since the holidays actually meant anything to me besides having a cold beer and watching It’s a Wonderful Life in the original black and white.”
The admission caught her by surprise. And pleased her. It cast him in an even better light. “You like It’s a Wonderful Life?”
He was aware that liking the movie wasn’t exactly macho. “Not something I should admit, huh?”
Cris immediately shook her head. “No, no, I think it’s wonderful—”
“No pun intended?” he asked with a grin.
“Absolutely none,” she said, and laughed. “That just happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies. Alex always rolls her eyes and sighs every time she catches me watching it,” she confessed. “But I can’t help it—and Dad enjoys it. I thought he was the only male who did,” she admitted.
“I like it, too!” Ricky declared, eager to join the exclusive club.
“Only male over the age of six who did,” Cris corrected. “Speaking of my father, let me see if he can come with us.”
“Um.” Shane
held up his hand, stopping her in her tracks. “I already checked with him. He said we should go without him.”
“You checked with him?” she asked, puzzled. Why would he do that?
“Well, I didn’t want to take off without making sure it was all right with him. I didn’t want your father thinking I’d gone AWOL. That’s ‘away without leave,’” he explained to Ricky.
“Oh,” the little boy said wisely, nodding as if Shane’s explanation had just said cleared up everything for him.
Cris couldn’t help smiling. Not at the look on her son’s face because he pretended to understand what AWOL meant, but because Shane had been thoughtful enough to explain the word, speaking to him like an equal rather than an adult talking down to a child.
That Shane treated Ricky with thoughtfulness and respect meant the world to her.
She forced herself back to the topic at hand. “Is my father sure?” she asked Shane.
“That’s what he said,” he answered, then offered, “but we can postpone going if you’d rather he come with us.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think Ricky can hold out another five minutes,” she said, putting her arm around the boy’s slender shoulders affectionately, “much less another day, and heaven knows that I can’t take another day of Ricky following me around, pleading to go Christmas tree shopping.” She looked down at her son. “No offense,” she said.
The small face puckered in consternation, as if a new puzzle challenged him. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s something people say when they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings with something they just said,” she explained.
“You could never hurt my feelings, Mama,” he told her.
“I could,” she contradicted. “But just by accident,” she added quickly in case her admission could undermine the boy’s confidence and feeling of well-being.
“Well, then, unless there’s someone else you’d like to bring along,” Shane told her, “I think we’re ready to go.”
“Yeah!” Ricky all but cheered.
Trying vainly not to laugh, Cris linked her fingers with her son’s. “I’d say all systems are go, Captain, wouldn’t you?”
Shane smiled and his smile felt like sunshine to her. Once again a part of her felt disloyal to Mike for reacting to Shane this way. But once again she knew Mike would want her to be happy, to move on. Except, she just couldn’t do it. Not with a clear conscience, no matter how much the rest of her might yearn for contact with the opposite sex.
With Shane.
“Absolutely,” Shane was saying to her.
Absolutely, she echoed in her mind.
* * *
THE FIRST LOT Shane drove them to in his navy blue oversize truck had a number of nice specimens, but although they were all bushy in appearance, most of the trees were eight feet or less.
“Nope, too short,” Ricky pronounced over and over again each time his mother or Shane presented him with a candidate.
Finally, after they had spent close to an hour wandering among the rows of trees, a crestfallen Ricky looked up at the man he had all but adopted and said, “Our Christmas tree isn’t here. Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Shane answered, then looked at Cris to see if she was on board with this plan or whether he had to talk her into it.
“You heard the man,” she said, then added to underscore her son’s cavalier instruction, “we need to find a second Christmas tree lot.”
* * *
THE SECOND LOT stood where a pumpkin patch once had. This lot had fewer trees to offer than the first lot, and although some of the new candidates were upward of eight feet, they were on the sparse side.
“We could always glue in extra branches,” Cris suggested. When her son looked stunned at the prospect, she quickly assured him, “I’m just kidding, honey. If it’s okay with Shane, we can try to find a third lot.”
“Hey, fine with me,” Shane said with a magnanimous shrug.
“Just as long as you remember,” she told Ricky, trying her best to sound at least semi-stern with him, “it’s three strikes and we’re out.”
“No tree?” Ricky asked, horrified at the mere suggestion.
“Yes, tree, but we go back to the first lot and get a really plump shorter one,” she quickly explained to prevent his face from falling to the ground. “What the tree will lack in height, it’ll make up for in width.”
Ricky was having none of it. “We’ll find our tree,” he told her confidently.
“Yeah, ‘Mom,’” Shane chimed in, playing along. “We’ll find our tree.”
She laughed, shaking her head as Ricky once again climbed into the car seat she’d transferred from her vehicle to the back of Shane’s truck.
“Nice to be traveling with such men of confidence,” she said to Shane.
He liked her laugh, he thought for the umpteenth time. Liked the way the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled like that.
Liked, he thought as he got in behind the steering wheel of his truck, sharing space with her and her son. For the first time in a long time, he felt part of a family—even if it was just for an afternoon.
“I saw a lot being set up this morning when I drove down to the inn,” he told them once he turned his key in the ignition. “It looked like they might have a pretty good selection. Want to try there?”
They certainly had nothing to lose. “Lead the way,” Cris told him.
* * *
THE LOT SHANE took them to had three times as many trees as the first lot they had hit. The trees were arranged in no particular order, so finding what Ricky called “the right tree” would take some time.
Ricky vetoed a number of trees that both his mother and his new best friend showed him.
“He’s pretty picky,” Cris apologized after yet another rejection had taken place.
As always, Shane pointed out the silver lining in less-than-favorable circumstances.
“Hey, he knows what he likes and that’s a good thing. He won’t grow up to be one of those vacillating people with no opinions, no backbone.”
“He won’t survive to adulthood if he keeps running ahead of me like that,” she threatened, realizing that Ricky had managed to race ahead once more. This time, he’d disappeared from view.
“Ricky, you know you’re not supposed to run off like that!” she yelled, picking up her pace to try to catch up to the boy. “Ricky!” she cried again when he didn’t reappear or call out an answer. “Where are you?”
The next second, to her surprise, Shane ran past her, then turned the same green corner Ricky just had. The aisle was a treasure of tall, bushy trees.
“Ricky,” he called sternly. “Listen to your mother.”
“Here!” Ricky called back. “Over here! Come quick!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“ISN’T IT BEAUTIFUL?” Ricky asked excitedly, glowing with pride as if he had not only been the one to discover the tree but had also had a hand in its creation.
“It is that,” Cris had to admit.
To show her son she wasn’t just humoring him, she circled the tree slowly and realized, astonishingly, that Ricky had found a tree completely without the usual “bald” side. It was the closest thing to a perfect Christmas tree that she had seen in a long time.
“And tall!” Ricky crowed, looking from his mother to Shane. “Isn’t it tall, Mama?”
“Absolutely,” Cris answered.
The majestic tree appeared to be at least ten feet in height, if not taller. As she examined it, though, she worried that the tree’s very height might present a problem.
Concerned, she looked at Shane. “Isn’t this a little too big to get into your truck?”
Shane did his own reconnoiter of the t
ree.
“Offhand, I’d say you’re right, but where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he told her, thoughtfully regarding Ricky’s tree.
“‘Will’ only goes so far,” Cris pointed out pragmatically.
Shane’s eyes met hers. “Depends on whose will it is,” he replied.
Something told her that mild mannered though Shane seemed, he could undoubtedly be extremely stubborn if the occasion called for it.
“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded.
Ricky glanced from his mother to Shane and back again, clearly having gotten lost in their exchange.
But the way the small boy saw it, only one thing was really important. “We’re getting this tree, right, Mama? Right?” he repeated, his eyes begging her to agree.
“It does look pretty perfect,” Shane told her, adding his vote to Ricky’s.
No way she was going to rain on her son’s parade—especially if she had no backup.
“It does,” she concurred, at which point Ricky, obviously feeling that the battle for the tree had been won, began whooping. However, Cris wasn’t finished. “But we’ll have to either hire a truck to get this tree back to the inn, or have the guy running the lot deliver it for us.”
Shane grinned at her. She could tell by his expression that he didn’t agree with her. The first words out of his mouth told her she was right. “You’re underestimating Yankee ingenuity—and the strength of my truck. We can take this home ourselves.”
“Yay!” Ricky cried, punching the air with a doubled-up fist the way he’d seen athletes do after scoring a wining point.
“Why don’t we hold off on the cheering until after we’ve done it?” Cris cautioned.
“All right, let’s go find the guy who runs the lot,” Shane said gamely—but it was Ricky who started to run off to look for the man.
Shane managed to grab the boy by the hem of his jacket to keep him from taking off.
“Hold on there, guy. Unless you’ve got a credit card your mama didn’t tell me about, I’d say you have to wait for her to come with you before this can be a done deal.”
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