by Toni Blake
Until she lowered them, blinked, and took a step back. “Well, Operation Grampy Tree tomorrow?”
He took a step back, too. Instinct of some sort kicking in. Someone backs away from you—you back away from them as well. “Yeah,” he said. And then he felt . . . his newfound poverty once again. “I’d, uh, offer to pick you up, but . . .”
She smiled gently. And he realized he hadn’t seen her smile as much as he’d like. It made her prettier than she already was. “I’ll pick you up. How’s one o’clock?”
“Good.” He gave a succinct nod. And considered telling her he’d be at the church working, but maybe Miss Candy Cane wouldn’t want the whole town to think she was hanging out with a guy like him. Since she seemed to think he was so scary and all. “I’ll meet you at the Mercantile. Or . . . better yet, how about I walk up to the corner of town square—so Grampy won’t see and wonder what’s up.”
Though keeping the old man from getting suspicious was only part of his reasoning. He also didn’t need Grampy’s interrogation about what was happening between him and Candy anymore, either. Especially since . . . he suddenly wasn’t a hundred percent sure himself.
Shane stood waiting for her on the corner, hands stuffed in his pockets, when she pulled up in a late-model sedan.
From there, they drove to Becker’s Landscaping, which he’d already learned became a Christmas tree lot this time of year, and they walked along snowy aisles of trees perusing the choices. Shane and his dad had put up a tree a few times when he was younger, but never a live one, so it was a new experience for him. Whereas Candy seemed like a Christmas tree expert, pointing out pros and cons about pine needles and branches and size.
After she selected one and he’d agreed to it since it seemed like a nice-enough-looking tree, he dragged it to her car, where Adam Becker helped him tie it to the roof. When Candy explained to Adam who the tree was for, he said, “Really? Then it’s on me. And in fact . . .” He held up one finger. “Wait right here.” Then he returned a minute later with a tree stand built for watering, which he tossed in for free as well.
“That’s really nice, man,” Shane said, a little astonished. Where he came from, nobody gave you anything for free. Everything came with a price—of one kind or another. “Thanks.” And he meant that wholeheartedly, because when he’d come up with this grand plan, he’d kind of forgotten that the tree would cost money. So Adam’s generosity meant more than he knew.
“Anything for Grampy,” Adam said. Then added with a wink, “We look out for one another around here.”
When Shane and Candy got back in the car, she smiled over at him and announced, “Next stop—Edna’s.”
Which made him tilt a confused look in her direction. “Why?”
“She’s Grampy’s best friend, so I called her to ask for advice on how to decorate his tree.”
Shane just blinked, still a little confused. “How?”
“What style of decoration,” she explained. “I mean, there are a million different ways to decorate a tree, and we want him to like it. I suspected his taste would run toward the old-fashioned and traditional, and I was right. But better yet, Edna said she has more ornaments and lights than she can fit on her own tree, so she offered to put together a box of them that should suit his taste.”
The fact that there were a million different ways to decorate a tree was news to Shane, and he was honest with her, saying, “Good thing I asked for your help. This is more involved than I thought.”
After they crossed the pretty stone bridge that led into Edna’s orchard, she greeted them at the front door with cups of hot chocolate. Damn, people drank a lot of hot chocolate around here. But the tree lot had left them pretty cold, so he was more than happy to accept.
“Nice what you’re doin’ for Willie, son,” she said to him as they moved fully into the small farmhouse.
But Shane just shrugged it off. “He’s been good to me.”
“I didn’t know the dang fool man hadn’t been puttin’ a tree up. If he’d told anybody, I’m sure the whole town would be over there lendin’ a hand. But seein’s as he didn’t, real good o’ you to step in and do it.”
From there, Edna opened up a cardboard box on her dining room table and showed them a few of the ornaments she was sending along. One was a wooden rocking horse, another a snowman made from a pinecone painted white. “From my grandkids when they was little,” she explained. “Pains me not to be able to use ’em all, but over a lifetime, meaningful ornaments build up. So I swap ’em out as best I can. This,” she said, unwrapping an old-looking one made of glass that reminded Shane—unexpectedly—of his own grandparents’ Christmas tree, a very long time ago, “was on my family tree when I was a girl down in Kentucky. It’s a special one, so you tell Willie to be careful with it.”
All of this was yet another revelation to Shane—he had no idea people were collecting Christmas ornaments over a lifetime or placing such value on them. “I better be careful with it, too. In fact—” he lifted his gaze to hers “—you sure you want to send this one with us? Maybe you should just hold on to it.”
It surprised him when Edna laughed and even patted his shoulder. “Nah, I trust ya. And as I say, I’ll be happy for someone to enjoy it—Willie in particular.”
Shane lifted his gaze back to the older woman’s then, trying to read her eyes. Wondering why Willie in particular. Wondering if it was possible she harbored any romantic feelings for him she’d never expressed.
Not that he knew why he was so hot to fix up two old folks who seemed to have their lives in better order than he did.
Maybe because it just made sense to him. Like it was easy to make that mental leap, so why hadn’t they? Nothing in his own life had been particularly easy, so maybe when he saw something this obvious, it just felt like something he could maybe . . . fix, make right, without . . . say, having to go all the way to Miami to do it.
“Now, do ya got everything else ya need?” Edna asked them, wrapping the ornaments back up in tissue paper. “What are ya gonna do for garland?”
Shane just looked to Candy, since he, of course, had no idea. Unfortunately, this was the first time she’d looked stumped, too. “I didn’t think about that,” she admitted. “But I guess we can just pick some up at the store.”
Yet Edna appeared displeased.
“What’s wrong?” Shane asked.
The older woman scrunched up her nose and made a face. “Don’t know as I like the idea of my vintage ornaments goin’ on a tree with plain ol’ store-bought garland.”
And then Candy was scrunching her nose, too. “I’m not sure we have any other choice.”
“Sure ya do,” Edna said with a succinct nod. “How about we string us up some cranberries and popcorn?”
As Candy’s eyes brightened, Shane suffered a twinge in his groin at the inexplicable excitement in her gaze, and a little more astonishment that people actually did these things. He’d heard of people stringing popcorn in olden times, after all, but he had no idea anyone still actually did that.
He stayed quiet, though, and hoped none of his reactions were showing.
“Tell ya what,” Edna said. “I’ve got me some microwavable popcorn and some cranberries left over from Thanksgiving. I don’t have Farris today, so if y’all don’t mind me goin’ over to Willie’s with ya, we can work on all this together at his place. Get the tree up, get the lights on, get this garland goin’, and it’ll be done in no time.”
“Of course,” Candy answered. “We could use the help.”
And in one way, it made perfect sense to Shane—especially when it came to his little quest to fix up Edna and Grampy. But in another, he couldn’t help feeling kind of disappointed. Maybe he’d been looking forward to spending the afternoon with little Miss Candy Cane, just the two of them. He hadn’t quite known that until now, but damn—there it was, plain as the cute little nose on her cute little face.
So as he carried a box of ornaments to Candy’s car, it wa
s with slightly less enthusiasm than he’d felt half an hour earlier.
Yet as they made their way out onto the highway, Edna following behind them in a small pickup, he snapped out of it. After all, what was he thinking? He was only here temporarily. And Candy wasn’t the sort of girl who’d be into a no-strings fling. She’d never told him that, but she didn’t have to—it was written all over her. Hell, he should probably just count himself lucky that she’d consented to be cordial to him.
And turned out it actually helped having Edna in on the project. Despite Grampy not inviting her over, she seemed comfortable getting into drawers and cabinets as needed, finding extension cords for lights and bowls for the popcorn and cranberries. She even put a stack of old Christmas albums on an old console stereo, another visceral and unexpected reminder for Shane of times at his grandparents’—his mother’s parents, he was pretty sure—very early in life.
He’d thought he didn’t remember much about those early years, but he supposed every now and then he found himself transported there when he least expected it—by a song on the radio, a smell of some sort, or . . . a glass Christmas ornament or console stereo.
He built a fire in Grampy’s hearth, then he and Candy got the tree erected in the stand and worked on the lights while Edna started stringing the garland with sewing equipment brought from her place.
Crisscrossing strands of lights had them laughing more than once, had Candy teasing him with a grin as she said, “I’m starting to believe you about not knowing how to do this.” He heard Nat King Cole telling him to have a merry little Christmas as snow began to fall outside the big picture window where they’d put the tree, and once the lights were in place, he reached for the mug of hot chocolate that Edna had of course immediately whipped up for them as soon as they’d walked in the door. And as he peered out into the snow drifting gently downward and the red sleigh now adorning the front yard of the old farmhouse, something inside him felt . . . warm.
It was almost a hard feeling to recognize, put his finger on—warmth. It was the kind that was more than physical, more than a pair of gloves could ever provide. It was . . . well, maybe it was just nice to know that places and people like this existed. At least outside old movies or storybooks. And maybe—to his utter surprise—it was nice to have somehow actually become a part of that.
This—standing in an old house putting up a Christmas tree with two women he barely knew in order to please an old man whom he knew only a little bit better—was nothing Shane could have envisioned for himself in any stretch of the imagination. But the even more surprising thing was that . . . it felt like such a good, easy place to be.
Easy. Not a lot of that in his life. But this . . . this was pretty easy. Crisscrossed light strands and all.
“We’re makin’ good progress,” Edna said, drawing his gaze to where she sat on the couch methodically sliding cranberries onto a needle. “But stringin’ garland does take some time, so I expect the best way to proceed is for y’all to work on the popcorn. I’ve done threaded ya up a couple needles and there’s bowls o’ popcorn on the kitchen counter.”
And so Shane soon found himself doing the absolute last thing he could have expected when he’d suggested this tree idea—holding a sewing needle between his fingers. And having no freaking idea what to do with it.
Damn, he’d much rather do something . . . manly, something he knew how to do. Go chop some firewood, or work on a car or something. But instead he found himself watching Candy, who sat next to him on a love seat, as she delicately pushed the needle held in one hand through a fluffy kernel of popcorn in the other.
When Edna announced she was going to go make some more hot chocolate and left the room, Shane tried to copy Candy’s move—and broke the piece of popcorn.
Dropping the bits of it back into the bowl, he picked up another—and got the same result. “Shit,” he whispered.
And Candy looked over. “What’s wrong?”
He felt . . . clumsy, awkward. “I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed.
It shocked the hell out of him when she reached over and plucked two small pieces of broken popcorn off his jeans, his thigh. She didn’t touch him exactly, but just having her hand there, that close to touching, sent another hot twinge upward. “No worries—you can just eat your mistakes,” she said with an easy smile.
Easy. Again. And who would have expected easy to ever come from the once cold Miss Candy Cane?
“But so far they’re all mistakes,” he told her in a low voice, slanting a small half grin back at her.
“It takes a gentle touch when you insert the needle into the popcorn,” she explained, briefly meeting his gaze. Then she reached across his lap into the bowl on the other side of him, grabbing onto a piece. “And you want to put the needle into a soft area.” Her voice went low for that part as she closed her hand delicately over his on the needle, her fingers bracketing his own, and sending a ribbon of sensation up his arm. Then she pushed the needle into a tender white part of the kernel she held. And he felt what she meant—the gentle way the needle entered the popcorn, not breaking it.
And when he switched his gaze from their hands to her eyes, her face was closer to his than he’d realized. And she had him thinking about soft spots. Pressing into them. And heat that was about more than warmth from the fire or his surroundings. He dropped his eyes to her lips then—a soft, rich color not unlike cranberries. And he suffered that hot, familiar pull—that urge to connect, to kiss.
That was when Edna re-entered the room, fresh mugs in both hands. He and Candy both sat up straighter and Candy refocused on the popcorn and said, “Now you try it.” Attempting to sound normal. But she didn’t quite. And that made what lay between his legs a little firmer, because he knew she had been right there with him, ready, wanting, feeling the same thing.
Shane could barely concentrate on stringing popcorn at the moment, but he tried. Took it slow, thought of soft spots, some more appealing than others. Gently pressed the needle to the white part of the kernel and managed to get it all the way smoothly through.
And listened as Candy said in little more than a whisper, “There, you did it.” Though she didn’t quite smile. Because she was still caught up in their near-kiss, something that had been so close he could almost taste it on his lips—but not well enough, of course.
“Funny about this tree,” Edna said, oblivious to the sexual tension across the room. “All of us know Willie so well, but it took somebody new to think of a way to make his Christmas special.”
Shane still just blew it off, though, shaking his head. “It’s not that big of a thing.”
“Might be bigger than you think,” she said smartly, lowering two steaming mugs to the coffee table in front of them. “I do believe our Grampy has taken a shine to you. You sure you don’t want to stick around here a little longer?”
And Shane leaped to his usual reply. “Aw, no, I can’t. I’m just passing through. On my way to Miami.”
“That’s a shame,” Edna said.
And Shane didn’t know how to answer that because, other than his father, and maybe a few women along the way, he couldn’t recall many people who’d seemed to care much about having him around. So he said nothing and looked back to his popcorn.
The music played on and the garlands were strung. Shane’s was a lot shorter than the rest, but it didn’t much matter when it came time to drape them all around the tree and add the ornaments.
They’d just finished, the three of them standing back to admire their handiwork, and Edna saying, “Well, we done us a good job here, kids,” when Shane heard the door and realized Grampy was home from his day at the General Mercantile.
He walked in, clearly relieved to see familiar faces. “Dang, I saw the cars and the lights on and almost wondered if I had the right place—”
And that was when he stopped, caught sight of the tree. It twinkled with white lights and was topped by a shiny golden star. The rest of it was simple—the h
omemade garland and old-fashioned ornaments—but Shane couldn’t deny that it had turned out nice.
“What on earth . . . ?” Grampy looked stymied.
“It was Shane’s idea,” Candy informed him. Even though he didn’t know why everybody kept making such a big thing out of that.
Grampy looked over at him. “Why, son, what a mighty nice gesture. I’m beside myself here.” Then he turned back to the tree. “And what a perty one. What a nice job y’all did.” He shook his head, looking as if he was still trying to fathom it. “I can’t thank y’all enough. This is sure gonna make my Christmas season brighter, I’ll tell ya that much. Gotta count m’self lucky to have such kind folks in my life.”
“All the ornaments are Edna’s,” Shane volunteered. “As soon as she found out about this, she jumped in to help.” Hoping Grampy would take his point. About him and Edna.
Grampy shifted his gaze to Edna and said, “Why, thank ya, my dear friend.”
And Shane wanted to roll his eyes. Not friend. Quit calling her your friend.
Soon enough, they were eating some of Edna’s delicious gingerbread around the tree, which Shane complimented, followed by Grampy. “Mmm mmm, Edna, I can’t ever get me enough o’ your gingerbread.”
Edna just laughed. “That’s what you say about my apple pie in the summer and fall.”
“You got somethin’ good in every season, woman.”
And in case Grampy was missing the point—and Shane was pretty sure he was—as he passed by him a few minutes later, he said, under his breath, “I still think you should be gettin’ you some of that.”
Grampy’s face just turned red, and Shane shook his head, deciding maybe there was no hope for the old guy. You could lead a horse to water, after all . . .
And hell, maybe Shane was being arrogant to think he’d come up with this great idea—maybe if it was meant to be, it would’ve been already.
But on the other hand, it took me to think of putting up a tree for the old man, didn’t it?
“Grampy,” Candy said as Shane re-entered the room after taking some empty plates in to the kitchen sink, “Shane came up with another great idea, too.”
