As segues went, he knew his was positively graceless. All he wanted at the moment, though, was to get past the awkwardness that had her protectively crossing her arms as she pulled composure into place.
“I’ll have it finished.”
A wisp of her shiny bangs had fallen near the corner of one eye. Instincts that still wanted physical contact with her had him starting to nudge it aside. More prudent senses had him dropping his hand an instant before the small voice coming from the top of the stairs would have had him dropping it anyway.
“I’m ready to tuck in, Mom.”
She took another step away. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she called toward the stairs. Brushing at the taunting wisp, she looked back with an uncomfortable smile. “He has to be up early in the morning.”
“Then I’ll get out of your way so you can take care of him. I’ll let myself out,” he said, stopping her as she started for the door. “Just say good-night to him for me.”
His jacket lay on the stool behind her. Reaching around her, careful not to touch, he snagged it and backed up. “Thanks for dinner,” he added, and walked out the mudroom door, wondering what in the hell he thought he’d been doing when he’d reached for her in the first place.
He had no one but himself to blame for the tension that had his entire body feeling as tight as a trip wire. He was messing where he had no business going. Even if she wasn’t so obviously not the sort of woman a man could have a brief, casual affair with, she was just now moving on from a loss that had affected her in ways that went far beyond anything she’d shared with him.
He couldn’t even pretend to understand how she felt, or to know what she needed. Whatever it was, he couldn’t give it to her anyway. He didn’t know how. Even if he did, he suspected she wouldn’t let him close enough to try. She didn’t want to rely on anyone she didn’t absolutely have to. He could appreciate that. He’d been there himself. As it was there were only a handful of people he truly trusted—and not one of them was a female he wasn’t related to or who wasn’t in his employ. He suspected, though, that her walls weren’t nearly as thick as those he’d erected around his heart. There was no denying how vulnerable she was right now.
He wasn’t about to take advantage of that, either. He also wasn’t going to do anything else to potentially screw up his relationship with her as her mentor and jeopardize his agreement with Cornelia.
That was why he’d told his lovely protégée that he’d call in a couple of days instead of meeting with her. If he wasn’t near her, he wouldn’t be tempted to touch.
That didn’t stop him from being touched by her, though. Or by the little boy who’d strung Christmas tinsel on his toy boat.
He knew Rory wanted her son to have traditions. Knowing how tight her money was, and how badly she wanted this season to be special for the child, he decided there was no reason he couldn’t give them one of the traditions that had long belonged there anyway.
Chapter Six
She never should have said she’d have the inventory finished by Friday. She should have asked for another day at least. As much as she required his expertise, she’d just made it a point to accommodate Erik’s schedule any way she could.
Had she been thinking, she would have realized how impossible that deadline was. But she’d been too rattled by the needs she’d felt in his arms and the kiss he’d dismissed as inconsequential to consider everything else she’d committed to do before Friday—which happened to be Tyler’s last day at his current school.
Given the occasion, guilt over not having kept her word to Erik would have to wait. Her little boy was not taking this latest transition well at all.
The familiar faces and routines at Pine Ridge Day School were the last constants in the life they were leaving behind. As a child, she’d had considerable practice dealing with such separations. Her parents’ nomadic lifestyle had made a new school or two every year her norm, and they’d tried to ease those transitions. But her little boy had never known that sort of instability. Even after his father had died, she’d managed to protect him from the biggest upheavals and keep his routine as consistent as possible. Until they’d had to move, anyway.
As she’d feared he would, he started missing his playmates the minute he’d fastened himself into his car seat in the back of their car and they’d pulled out from the portico.
A quick glance in her rearview mirror caught his pensive expression. He looked the way he had driving away from their old house a couple of weeks ago. Solemn and a little uncertain.
“We can always come back for a visit, Ty,” she assured him, heading for the freeway and the ferry. “Just because you’ll be going to a new school doesn’t mean you won’t ever see your old teachers or classmates again.”
“They’ll still be there?”
“They’ll still be there,” she promised. It wouldn’t be like when he’d lost his dad. There wasn’t that sort of finality to this parting. She needed him to understand that. “We can come back after the holiday to say hi, if you want.”
“Will the tree be there, too?”
The tree. Ten feet of pine studded with a thousand white lights and draped with paper chains and cutouts of students’ handprints. It graced the main building’s foyer.
“The tree won’t be there, honey. Everyone takes Christmas trees down after the holiday. But everything else will be the same.”
“Nuh-uh,” he replied, picking at the knee of his khaki uniform pants. “I won’t be there anymore.”
No, she thought with a sigh. He wouldn’t be, and the silence that followed hinted at how very much that new change disturbed him.
Thinking the Christmas carols playing on the radio might distract him, she turned the volume up over the hum of the heater and encouraged him to sing along.
That didn’t work. Neither did any of her other attempts to console, cajole or otherwise ease away his dispirited expression.
Fighting discouragement herself, she finally conceded that she had no idea just then how to make everything better for her little boy.
That disheartening fact had just registered when her eyes widened on what should have been nothing more than the dusk-gray shapes of the road, the woods and the distant rectangle of Harbor Market & Sporting Goods.
Peering past the headlights, she heard Tyler’s sudden “Oh. Wow!”
Wow, indeed.
The market stood glittery bright in the encroaching dark. Every pillar, post and eave, its roofline, even the chimney had been outlined with twinkling white lights. The bare branches of the apple tree at the near end had been wrapped in peppermint stripes of white lights and red. It was the snowman beyond it, though, that had her attention. Glowing blue-white, his top hat cocked at an angle, the tall, grinning Frosty stood as bold and impressive as the only person she knew who would have put it there.
* * *
The light on her answering machine was blinking when she finally coaxed Tyler out of the cold and into the kitchen. Hitting Play, she heard Erik’s recorded voice say he was checking to see if she’d finished the inventory and ask when she’d be available to discuss the business plan. He mentioned nothing about the dazzling Christmas lights that hadn’t been there when she’d left that morning.
She hit Redial. Apparently taking his cue from the number on his caller ID, he answered with an easy, “You’re home.”
“We just got here. Erik,” she said, her tone half laugh, half hesitation, “I can’t believe what you’ve done.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know.” She honestly had no idea how to weigh her son’s reaction against her next electric bill.
“Does Tyler like it?” he asked while she figured it out.
“Like it?” This is ours, Mom? he’d asked, his eyes huge. “He hasn’t stopped grinning since we got here. He’s practica
lly stuck to the window right now watching the icicle lights.”
The sequential lights strung along the overhangs looked like dripping ice. Even the back of the house had been decorated. They’d noticed the lights wrapped around the side of the building the moment they’d driven up the rise. “He loves the snowman.”
“You said he would have liked the one my grandparents had,” he reminded her over the drone of what sounded like an electric saw. “My grandfather always put theirs facing the sound, but I had it put farther back on the lot, thinking Tyler could see it from the window.”
Truly torn by what he’d done, she dropped her scarf on the phone desk and unbuttoned her coat. When they’d talked about his grandparents’ traditions with the store, he’d seemed to see maintaining them mostly as a good approach to business. Yet her mentor’s gift clearly had less to do with marketing than with the little boy pressing his nose to the glass.
She didn’t want his thoughtfulness to mean so much. She just wasn’t able to help it. Not with her little boy so totally captivated.
“How did you get it done so fast?”
The drone beyond him grew quieter. Nearer, voices rose, then faded.
“This close to Christmas, lighting companies are usually finished putting up decorations and are just waiting to take them down. I called a company a client uses, told them what I wanted, gave them the building measurements and they did their thing.”
Just like that. With one phone call, he’d managed to do what she hadn’t been able to do no matter how hard she’d tried and totally distracted her son from his dejection.
“It’s just lights, Rory.”
The man had a serious gift for understatement. He’d used the same think-no-more-of-it tone right after he’d proved that the shell of control she fought to maintain around her life was about as thin as paper.
It was just a kiss, he’d said.
He was only being kind when he’d reached for her. Just as he was only being kind when he’d overlooked how she’d practically crawled inside his shirt when she’d kissed him back—shortly before he’d pointedly minimized the moment of comfort, security and whatever else she’d felt in his arms.
He, on the other hand, apparently hadn’t felt much of anything at all, other than anxious to get out of there.
But this wasn’t about them. Not that there was a them, she insisted to herself. This was about what he’d done for her child.
“It’s more than lights, Erik. To us, anyway.” He had to know that. “And Tyler loves them.” That was all that she would let matter at the moment. For her son’s sake, she wasn’t even going to panic over the electric bill. Yet. “So thank you. From both of us.”
“You’re welcome. Listen,” he continued over the thud of heavy boots on metal stairs, “I have to get back to the payroll right now, but we need to discuss your business plan and address inventory. I have to be in Tacoma before noon tomorrow, so let’s do it over the phone. Are you okay for an eight-thirty call? That’ll give us a couple of hours.
“You there?” he asked when she hesitated.
“Can we make it Sunday?”
“Sunday’s not good for me.”
“Actually,” she began, wondering if Sunday involved the woman he’d taken out last week, “I’m not quite finished with the inventory.” She hated telling him that. “I’d have finished last night, but we had to bake cookies.”
With the bang of a door, the noise and conversations beyond him died.
“Had to?”
“I told Tyler’s teacher I’d bring treats for his class today. And I’d promised him he could help. So, yes,” she insisted. “I had to.”
She’d also brought cookies for the staff—which meant she’d spent the past two afternoons and evenings baking and filling tins and decorating twenty-two gingerbread girls and boys. With Tyler’s help, the project had taken twice as long as it might have, but she’d wanted something for him that she’d never had as a child, holiday memories of flour on noses, sugar sprinkles, the air scented with vanilla and spice. Her mom’s idea of baking had been heating a muffin in the microwave.
“What about tomorrow? Will you have it finished by then?”
Juggling guilt and priorities, she rubbed the ache brewing beneath her forehead. “I told Tyler we’d get our tree tomorrow. I’m going to work in the store tonight after he goes to bed,” she explained, hoping to minimize the delay to Erik’s schedule. “After we get the tree decorated, I’ll finish whatever I haven’t done in the store. I’ve been working out there after he goes to sleep, but I ran out of hours in the past couple of days.
“Since Sunday isn’t good for you,” she hurried on, easily able to imagine a scowl etched in his too-handsome face, “I’ll be ready Monday for sure.” That would also give her time to read the business plan she’d tried without much luck to study on the ferry and after Tyler had gone to bed. Having to look up terms like gross margin, inventory turns and marketing mix had also slowed her down considerably. So did being so tired her eyes blurred.
She hated the plea that entered her quiet “Okay?”
Leaning against the edge of his desk, Erik stared past the schematics on his drafting table to the black-framed photos of Merrick & Sullivan racing sloops lining the pearl-gray wall. To his left, the windows of his office, like those of the other offices lining the catwalk, overlooked the production floor a story below. Those on his right exposed the lights of other industrial buildings lining the night-darkened waterway.
The pleasure he’d felt knowing the snowman had been a hit with Tyler had rapidly faded to something far less definable.
When he’d left her place the other night, his only thoughts had been about doing what he could to make the kid’s Christmas a little better, and his need for physical distance from the boy’s mom. He’d wanted to focus on his work and his world and to get her out of his head for a while. He was good at that. Focusing his thoughts, his energies.
He usually was, anyway. His days were crowded enough to prevent more than a fleeting thought of her undeniably feminine shape, or the way her bottom lip curved when she smiled. But she was messing with his nights, too, driving him from his bed to pace the floor or exhaust himself with his weights before sleep would finally drive her from his mind.
He never should have kissed her. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t know the sweetness of her mouth, the feel of her satin-soft skin, how perfectly her body fit against his.
Now, frustrated on a number of levels, he pushed from his desk, jammed his fingers through his hair.
“Forget Monday,” he muttered. Just because he would have preferred she keep her focus on his schedule didn’t mean she could make it her priority.
In roughly two weeks she’d lost her job, sold her home and was settling into a place that hadn’t even been on her radar until his amazingly generous neighbor had decided to help them both out. In between, she seemed to be doing everything she could to ease the transition for her son while dealing with the former in-laws from hell and getting a business she knew nothing about back up and running.
No way could he justify pushing her just because he wanted his obligations there over and done with.
“The store can wait for now. We’ll pick up after Christmas.”
Pure skepticism shaded her quiet “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he echoed. “You and Tyler have a good time picking out your tree. There’s a great tree lot on Sydney Road. It’s only a few miles from you. Old family operation. Tell them you bought John and Dotty Sullivan’s store. I imagine they’ll give you a good price on a little one.”
“I’ll do that. And thank you. Thank you,” she repeated, sounding relieved beyond belief by the reprieve he’d offered. “But the tree can’t be little. Tyler has his heart set on the tallest one we can fit into the room.”
Er
ik’s voice went flat. “The ceilings in there are nine feet high.”
“Then I guess we’re getting an eight-foot tree. That’ll leave room for the angel.”
“And you’re hauling it how?”
“The only way I can,” she replied, ever so reasonably. “On my car.”
The thought of eight feet of freshly cut conifer atop twelve feet of rounded, lime-green Bug drew his quick frown.
“Have you ever driven with a tree strapped to your roof?”
“Not exactly. No,” she finally admitted, leaving him to assume that her husband had been behind the wheel. He also figured that the guy had transported prior trees on something considerably larger than what she drove now. Or they’d had it delivered, given what she’d said about the sort of family she’d just shed.
“Then you need to know that the weight affects the way a car handles. Especially if it’s windy, and we have a wind advisory for the weekend. Make sure they net it for you. It’ll be easier to manage that way. And take a blanket to protect your roof. Have someone help you secure it, too. You want it tied tight so it doesn’t slip.”
She hadn’t thought about the weather. Rain at least part of the day was a given. It was the Northwest. She didn’t like wind, though. It made inclement weather that much more miserable.
“Did you promise Tyler you’d have it up tomorrow?”
“It was the only thing I could think of to take his mind off having to change schools.”
“Did it work?”
Her little boy hadn’t budged from the window. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket.
“Not as well as your lights did.”
The admission would have made him smile, had he not just caught the hint of defeat in her voice. Or maybe what he heard was simply fatigue.
“Tell you what.” Totally sabotaging his plan to stay away, he did a quick reschedule. “I’ll only be a half an hour away from you tomorrow. What time will you be at the lot?”
“About the same time you said you have to be in Tacoma.”
Her Holiday Prince Charming Page 11
