The Complete Christmas Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
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.”