Stevi shrugged. She still didn’t see what the fuss was about. “A knife is a knife,” she stated dismissively.
“Which is why you’re the artist and I’m the inn’s chef,” Cris pointed out.
“You want me to go in and get another one?” Wyatt offered.
“No.” She smiled her thanks. At least someone understood, she thought. “That one’s all right to use,” Cris told him.
It was all he needed to hear. Looking at Shane, Wyatt said, “Why don’t you stand next to the top of the tree while I climb up and cut the base free from the roof?”
Shane nodded. “You got it.” Anchoring the top of the tree by putting his weight on it, he said, “Okay, ready.”
The ropes that Shane and the lot manager had used to secure the tree were thick enough to offer more than a little resistance. Cutting through them proved a more difficult challenge than either he or Wyatt were prepared for.
But by exercising patience, Wyatt managed to finally get through the braided ropes.
The second the ropes were cut away, the large blue spruce began to slide off the roof, gaining momentum as it did so. He, Shane, Cris and Richard all lunged for the runaway tree, grabbing any part of it they could.
Between them, they were able to keep the tree from falling completely off the truck and hitting the ground, but it came dangerously close to that before they regained control over it.
Muscles strained as they laid the runaway tree on the ground.
Wyatt started to cut the tree free of its remaining ropes, the ones holding the branches as flat as possible against the trunk.
“Leave the ropes in place,” Shane instructed, stopping Wyatt. “They’ll make it easier to carry the tree into the inn.”
Wyatt stopped immediately and held the knife up to show that he’d heard Shane.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “This is my first experience handling a real Christmas tree. Ours back home were always artificial.”
He’d been overridden every year in his plea for a real tree. After a while, he’d stopped asking. Living on his own out in Hollywood, he hadn’t bothered with Christmas decorations, thinking them wasted on just one person.
But this was different—and he was really looking forward to seeing the tree up and decorated. “My mother was afraid a real one might catch fire,” he explained.
Ricky looked up at him with pity in his eyes, while Alex laughed. “Knew you were marrying me for a reason. You just wanted to be around a family with a real Christmas tree.”
Wyatt lifted his hands in surrender. “You found me out. Guess the wedding’s off, huh?”
“Over my dead body,” Stevi informed the couple. “After everything I’ve gone through to pull this wedding together, you two are getting married even if you never speak another word to each other after the reception.”
“That’s our Stevi. Always the romantic,” Cris said drolly.
Stevi glared at her. Because she was juggling Alex and Wyatt’s wedding reception plans with her regular duties at the inn, as well as taking a few graduate art courses at the university, she was very irritable of late and it took little to set off her temper.
“Put a lid on it, Cris,” she snapped.
“Put a lid on what?” Ricky asked, looking from Stevi to his mother. “I don’t see a pot.” He cocked his head as he regarded his aunt.
Alex patted his shoulder, diverting his attention and simultaneously defusing the situation as she shot Stevi a warning look.
“It’s just an expression, honey,” she told the boy. “Aunt Stevi’s a bit tense these days, but she’s okay now. Right, Stevi?” she asked pointedly.
“Right. Sorry.”
“Hey, a little help here,” Wyatt urged. “Unless there’s been a change in plans and we’re going to decorate the Christmas tree out here, while it’s on its side....”
“Might be worth considering,” Alex said, feigning seriousness.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Wyatt told her. Turning to Shane, he asked, “You ready?”
Rather than nod, because he was ready, Shane said, “Why not let me take that end? I’m taller.”
Stepping back, Wyatt raised his hands as if surrendering. This wasn’t about one-upmanship—it was about teamwork, and after being an only child, he, for one, was all for it.
“It’s all yours,” he told Shane.
“What can I do?” Cris asked. She hated just standing off to the side, watching Wyatt and Shane do all the work. Getting a free ride had never been her way. Cris liked pulling her own weight when it came to everything.
“Staying out of the way so we don’t step on you jumps to mind,” Wyatt told her.
He squatted and put his hands under the tree, all the while watching Shane, waiting for the other man’s go-ahead.
“On the count of three,” Shane said, bracing himself at the opposite end of the tree. When Wyatt nodded, Shane began to count, “One—two—”
“Three!” Alex declared, tackling the middle of the tree.
“Who told you to do that?” Wyatt demanded, on his feet, struggling to stabilize his end of the spruce.
“Haven’t you heard?” Alex asked, doing her best not to pant. “I’m an emancipated woman. I don’t have to wait for permission to do something. Now can we postpone this suffragette retro-debate and lug this tree inside before all three of us get hernias and have to put off the wedding—at which point Stevi will most likely kill us where we sleep.”
“Convinces me,” Wyatt declared, getting a slightly better grip on his end just before they all slowly made their way up the front steps.
“I’ll grab the door!” Stevi volunteered, racing ahead to hold it open for them. She took a step back to be out of the way.
Cris was the only one facing forward at the time; the others were focused on the tree, which had turned out to be a lot heavier than they had expected. Because of her viewing advantage, Cris was the first to see a stunned Ms. Carlyle observing the impromptu parade as it moved into the inn with the bound-up tree.
Horrified at what she saw coming, Cris dashed madly into the inn, circumventing the others and just narrowly avoiding a collision with them.
“What are you doing?” Alex demanded. The next moment, she saw what her sister had anticipated happening. Cris had gotten to the former elementary schoolteacher in time to gently but firmly move the older woman aside so that she avoided a collision with the procession.
“Careful, Ms. Carlyle,” Cris warned, once she had the elderly woman safely positioned. “You don’t want to be run over by a Christmas tree.”
Ms. Carlyle sniffed. Very little in life managed to faze her these days. She took everything in stride, viewing it all with a grain of salt.
“For that to happen, my dear, the tree would have to come to life and be moving on its own power,” the former teacher told her with a dismissive air. And then she inclined her head just the slightest bit. “But I thank you for your thoughtfulness, however misplaced,” the woman acknowledged.
Cris flashed the woman a smile. She had a soft spot in her heart for the elderly woman, perhaps because Ms. Carlyle had no one, perhaps because she herself had never known her grandmother. “My pleasure.”
“Where...?” Wyatt panted, looking around the immediate area.
Filling in the missing words, Alex knew Wyatt was asking her where she intended to have the tree standing.
“Here?” It wasn’t a statement but more of a question directed toward her sister. She looked to Cris for validation of her choice.
“Make up your mind,” Wyatt complained. “This thing is heavy.”
“Here is good,” Cris quickly agreed.
The moment that she did, Wyatt and Shane jointly placed the ever-heavier tree on the floor.
“I�
�m no expert when it comes to Christmas trees,” Wyatt said as he looked at the tree he’d just put down, “but I’d say that we’re going to need something to put the tree into.”
“Dad?” Cris turned to her father. “Do you know where the—?”
“Christmas tree stand is?” he said, completing the question he’d anticipated his daughter asking. “Way ahead of you for once, Cris. I went looking for it the minute you left this morning to go tree hunting. It was in the rafters and I took it down.” He faced his grandson. “Ricky, want to come with me to get the tree stand?”
Ponce de Leon’s aide undoubtedly reacted the same way when asked to accompany the explorer in De Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth, Cris decided. “You bet!” the boy cried.
* * *
HALF AN HOUR later, the tree was upright, secured in the tree stand and actually standing straight—after half-a-dozen attempts to get it that way. All the ropes used to bind it had been cut off and now lay in pieces on the floor.
No one noticed that. What they all noticed was the tree and how majestic it appeared, even without any ornaments.
Alex summed it up for all of them when she said “Wow” in unabashed appreciation as she stepped back and took in the entire sight.
“See? Told ya it was a beau-ti-ful tree,” Ricky exclaimed with no less enthusiasm than he’d demonstrated earlier. “Can we start decorating it now?” he asked, looking from his grandfather to his mother, hoping for a yes from one of them.
“What about the guests?” Wyatt asked, thinking some of them might want to join in the activity, as well.
Cris’s mouth fell open. “Omigod, the guests! I forgot all about them,” she lamented. A sense of urgency barreled through her veins. “I’ve got to get to the kitchen.”
“Relax,” Alex told her, grabbing her by the arm before she could take off. “I managed to catch Jorge before he left and Andy is in there now, helping him.”
“Andy? Our Andy?” Cris cried. “Do we have the local ambulance on speed dial?”
“For your information,” Alex said, “Andy has turned out to be quite the little cook, secretly taking a few cooking lessons on the side, she confessed. She pitched right in and, so far, none of the guests has keeled over or even complained of any stomach pains.”
“Hey, the day’s still young,” Stevi cracked.
“Andy is doing just fine,” Richard informed his second oldest. “Which means that you can go on doing what you were doing—unless you want to accompany me to get the decorations.”
“Me, me,” Ricky called, jumping up and down and waving his hand to get the man’s attention. “I wanna get the decorations with you, Grandpa.”
“I was already counting on that,” Richard told him with a fond wink.
He put out his hand. Ricky slipped his into it and the two went off to the storage area. If anyone wanted to follow, the choice was theirs.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“ONE MORE, MAMA, just one more,” Ricky begged between yawns. “Please?”
The “just one more” referred to his being allowed to hang up one more ornament since even he knew there was no way that the tree—his tree was how he thought of it—would be completely decorated in a single day, especially since the Christmas tree decorating had officially begun with more than half the day gone.
Ever since they’d gotten back with the trophy tree and had put it up, the joint effort to get all the lights on it had taken up a good deal of what was left of the day. A certain division of labor prevailed. Stevi was in charge of untangling the strings of lights that had somehow gotten mysteriously tangled in the eleven months since they had been put—supposedly neatly—away. Alex supervised which string of lights went where on the tree, while Wyatt, Shane and Richard—with the latter dealing strictly with the lower third of the tree since that did not require climbing a ladder—took over stringing the multicolored tiny lights on the ten-foot-plus blue spruce.
For sanity’s sake, Ricky had been allowed to sort the decorations with his mother. With astonishing care, the boy took them out of their boxes, put a hook through each of them and laid the ornaments out on the large folding table Alex had brought out just for this purpose. The ornaments were separated and arranged by theme.
Despite the large number of existing ornaments, new ones found their way to the tree every year. Almost all of those were now coming from a popular greeting card manufacturer and they had some sort of special significance attached to them for at least one member of the family if not all of them.
Ricky was fondest of the “Baby’s first Christmas” ornaments, with both the year of his birth and his name written on them.
There was also one framing his very first photograph, taken at the hospital where he was born, incorporated into the ornament. Cris always saw to it that that particular one was the first ornament to be hung on the tree once the tree was ready for decoration. The beginning of the Christmas season didn’t officially arrive until that ornament was hung in plain sight.
At this point, thanks to the enormous push from Wyatt and Shane, along with her father, the tree had on all its lights, but very few decorations beyond Ricky’s tiny framed baby picture and two other ornaments that he favored, one from a science fiction movie he loved and one from a beloved cartoon bear, which was still his all-time favorite.
Cris looked down at the pleading face and felt herself giving in again, despite knowing she shouldn’t. It was way past the boy’s bedtime.
“You already begged for ‘just one more’ and I let you put up Silly-Billy, remember?”
“But if I don’t put up any more tonight, they’ll be all gone when I get up,” Ricky pouted, gazing sorrowfully at the overloaded table of Christmas ornaments.
“No, they won’t. I promise there’ll be decorations for you to put up in the morning,” Cris told the little boy.
Ricky’s little eyelids were drooping and he was obviously losing his mighty battle to keep them open. But he didn’t want to give in and trot off to bed yet because he really was afraid that somehow, the entire tree would wind up being completely decorated by the time he woke up in the morning.
Still, he was extremely tired and sinking fast.
“You promise?” he asked uncertainly, staring at his mother as much as he was capable of focusing at the moment.
“We both do,” Shane said, adding his voice to the pledge. “As a matter of fact, if you want me to, I’ll stand by the tree all night and make sure nobody hangs any of your special ornaments,” he told the boy solemnly.
Ricky looked somewhat skeptical at Shane’s offer, but there clearly wasn’t a better one for him to consider, and it was getting harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. All the energy he’d used up during the day had left him depleted.
“Is it a deal?” Shane asked, putting his hand out as if sealing a bargain with one of his adult customers.
There was absolutely nothing Ricky liked better than to be treated as an adult. So he put his small hand into Shane’s and shook it just as heartily as he was able.
“Deal,” he cried, following up the single word with yet another yawn.
That settled, Shane pretended to examine the little boy. “I’d say it was time to get you hustled off to bed. What do you say?”
“I’m not tired,” Ricky protested with very little enthusiasm.
He rubbed one of his eyes as if to rub the sleep out of it. Instead, the action only seemed to reinforce his sleepiness.
“Of course you’re not,” Shane agreed wholeheartedly. “I’m just gonna pick you up and carry you off to bed in case we run into a stampede of dragons.”
“Dragons?” Ricky mumbled, unable to muster even a little awe at the image of mythical dragons stampeding through the inn.
Dragons? Cris mouthed, gazing at Shane quizzically
.
He shrugged good-naturedly. “First thing I could think of,” he whispered back to her.
Grinning, Shane scooped the boy into his arms and shifted his weight over to one side. Ricky didn’t utter a word of protest. Instead, he just laid his head against Shane’s shoulder. In less than thirty seconds, the boy’s even breathing told Shane that Ricky had fallen asleep.
“Attaboy,” Shane murmured, patting the small back reassuringly. Turning toward Cris, he said, “You want to lead the way to his room?”
In her opinion, Shane had done far more than enough for her and Ricky today. He’d gone above and beyond the call of duty more than twice over. He shouldn’t have to put Ricky to bed, as well.
“Give him to me. I’ll carry him to his room,” she said, holding out her arms to Shane, waiting for the transfer.
But rather than transfer the boy to her, Shane kept his hand protectively on the boy’s back.
“That’s okay,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “If I transfer him now, he might wake up. The less movement the better. Just show me which room is his.”
As she walked from the main room, she saw Alex looking her way. The expression on her older sister’s face all but shouted, This one’s a keeper, Cris. Grab him before he’s gone.
Or maybe that was just the refrain running perversely through her own brain, Cris thought.
She had to remind herself there was no reason for her to believe she would ever be in a position to “keep” anything, least of all a man like Shane. It was just her own loneliness making her think this way, a loneliness that cropped up in the middle of the night, when she sometimes lay awake by herself in her bed, remembering the way things had been when she and Mike had gotten married. The world had been fresh and new then, and so full of the promise of good things and happiness to come that she had felt immortal—and infinitely blessed.
She didn’t know then how quickly things could change.
She did now, she once again acknowledged.
What she was doing, Cris thought as she went down the hall to the wing where her room and Ricky’s room were located, was responding to kindness and allowing her mind to run wild. Shane was nothing if he was not very, very kind.
[Ladera by the Sea 01] - A Wedding for Christmas Page 14
