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       Chapter Seven

      Rory left the door to Tyler’s room halfway open and paused at the top of the stairs. Her little boy had fallen asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow. No surprise considering how exciting the day had been for him and how hard he’d fought to stay awake after supper to finish the tree.

      From downstairs, the television’s barely audible volume told her Erik had switched from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to the news.

      She hated the ambivalence creeping back as the low tones mingled with the beat of the sleet on the roof, the muffled sound of it pinging against the upstairs windows. The thought of riding out the ice storm in a still unfamiliar house would have had her anxious on a number of levels, had it not been for Erik.

      She felt safe with him there. Physically, anyway. And there wasn’t a single part of her being that didn’t want exactly what he had just helped her provide for Tyler: an afternoon and evening of moments he might always remember as special.

      That, in a nutshell, was her problem. His presence provided as much comfort as it did disquiet. Tyler had turned to her every time he’d had a question about where an ornament should go, but it had been Erik’s assistance or advice he’d sought if he couldn’t get it on a branch, and his approval he’d wanted with nearly every accomplishment.

      She didn’t want him being so drawn to the man.

      She didn’t want to be so drawn to him herself.

      Wishing she still had her chatty little boy as a buffer, she headed down the steps, stopping when she reached the foyer.

      Erik stood with his back to her, his heavy charcoal pullover stretched across his broad shoulders, his hands casually tucked into the front pockets of his jeans as he faced the talking head on the television. The size of the blaze in the fireplace indicated that he’d added another log. Strewn around him were empty bins and ornament boxes. In front of the sofa, the large, square coffee table held a red candle in a beribboned glass hurricane and the last of the crystal icicles waiting to be hung on the brightly lit tree.

      As if sensing her presence, Erik turned toward her. She immediately turned her attention to cleaning up the mess.

      “Is he asleep?” he asked.

      “We barely got through brushing his teeth.”

      “I’m surprised he made it that far.” Seeing what she was doing, and how deliberately she avoided his eyes, he picked up a bin that had held the faux evergreen boughs now draped over the stone fireplace mantel, set it in the entry and put another on the coffee table for her to fill with what she collected.

      “Thanks,” she said quietly.

      “Sure,” he replied, and finally found himself faced with what he’d managed to avoid the past few hours.

      It had felt strange decorating her tree. Partly because he’d never helped decorate one with a small child buzzing around his knees, partly because the feel of the room with her understated touches in it was completely different from what it had been years ago. What he’d felt most, though, was the need to get past her guardedness with him. That caution still tempered her smiles, and made him more conscious of little things like how her animation had died when she’d opened a bin to see a Christmas stocking embroidered with Dad. Her wariness with him wasn’t anything overt. It wasn’t even anything someone else might notice. Probably something even he wouldn’t notice, if he hadn’t known he was responsible for it.

      He never should have kissed her. The thought had crossed his mind a thousand times in the past few days, usually right behind the memory of how she’d practically melted in his arms. He’d yet to forget the sweet taste of her, the perfect way she’d fit his body. It was as if the feel of her had burned itself into his brain, leaving nerves taut, distracting him even now.

      He shouldn’t have gotten so annoyed with her on the phone last night, either, though he was pretty sure that same sort of frustration had been at least partially to blame. But the storm wasn’t letting up anytime soon, the thickening ice made escape next to impossible and he didn’t want this evening to be any more difficult than it needed to be. Short of apologizing to her, which he had the feeling would only make matters worse, especially for the kiss part, he’d do his best to put her at ease with him some other way.

      She’d just reached up to hang a fallen ornament high on the tree. As it had every other time she’d reached that high, the motion exposed a thin strip of pale skin between the hem of her short white turtleneck, shorter green vest and the dark denims hugging her sweetly rounded backside.

      “So,” he said, forcing his focus to something he wanted to know, anyway. “What’s with the ‘magic’ ornaments?” He nodded toward the empty shoe box on the end table. “You told Tyler all those you took out of that box appeared out of nowhere.”

      The tiny crystal ice skates, the little Eiffel Tower stamped Paris, Texas, the miniature pink-and-white cupcake—all the ornaments in her “magic” collection looked much like the other decorations sparkling on the tree. Yet she’d even handled them differently, more carefully, he supposed.

      “That’s because they did,” she replied, lowering her arms to pack up more empty boxes. “It didn’t matter where my parents and I were, every Christmas morning I’d open the door and there would be a package with a gold box tied with a red bow. Inside would be an ornament that had something to do with where we were staying. Or something I was into at the time.”

      “Did your parents leave them there?”

      “They had no idea who sent them. There was never a return address.”

      “So that’s why you call them magic,” he concluded.

      “It was more than that.” Conscious of him watching her, she packed the boxes into the bin he’d set on the coffee table. “It was what I felt when one of those little packages appeared. That’s what made them magic. At that moment, no matter what town we were in, with Mom and Dad mine for the day and that gift in my hands, I had the feeling that everything was right in my little world.” That was the feeling she wanted Tyler to know. He deserved that. Every child did. “I wound up with fourteen of them.”

      “It sounds like you moved around a lot.”

      “We did. Mom and Dad still do.” Their mailing address was their agent’s. “They’re musicians.”

      His brow furrowed. “So what’s wrong with that?”

      The question brought a quick frown of her own. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with it.”

      “I didn’t mean you. You said the other day that Curt’s parents had a problem with you being his secretary instead of a lawyer. That things got worse when they found out your ‘people,’” he repeated, making air quotes, “weren’t the right pedigree. What’s wrong with being a musician?”

      Her instinctive defense eased with his mystified tone. Marginally.