creating an obligation, or you owing me if I help you. It’s about Tyler. All I want to do is help with the tree. For him. Okay?”
Silence.
About the time he thought she might simply hang up, she said, “Okay. For Tyler.”
“Good. I’ll be at the lot tomorrow with my truck.” With a glance at his watch, he winced. “Right now I’ve got to get to this payroll. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”
He should probably apologize.
The thought crossed Erik’s mind every time he noticed the wary way Rory watched him the next afternoon. He just wasn’t sure exactly what he should apologize for. He hadn’t said a word to her that wasn’t absolutely true. And she’d definitely needed the help.
The rain came in fits and starts. The weather was cold, the temperature dropping, the wind blowing, and the tree Tyler had selected after carefully checking out the small forest under the huge canvas tent was not only the eight-foot maximum she’d given him, but rather wide. Even tied up to make it more manageable and tarped to keep it dry, with the heavy wind gusts, getting it to her place on the rounded roof of her car would have presented a definite challenge. So would the task of her and Tyler unloading the thing and carrying it into the store to get it into its heavy iron stand, a task that involved sawing off a couple of lower limbs and trimming the thick trunk to make it fit before tightening the screws into place.
Mother and son wrestling it into the house on their own would have presented its own set of frustrations. Especially since carrying it into the house through the store—which had been easier than putting it in the stand in the garage and carrying it through the mudroom—involved hoisting the stand end of the eighty-plus pounds of bushy branches, trunk and iron to his shoulder while she brought up the rear with the top end and Tyler ran ahead of them to open the door.
He said nothing about any of that, though. It wasn’t necessary. The process proceeded far easier with his truck and his help, and that was all he’d wanted: to make something a little easier for her and her son—and to offset his guilt over having pushed her about the store to the point where she’d given up sleep.
“Where do you want it?” he asked.
“In the corner by the fireplace. On the towel so the stand doesn’t stain the carpet.”
“Can I help?” called Tyler.
“Just stay back for a minute, sport. I’ve got it.” He told Rory, “You can let go.”
Behind him, Rory stepped back as the weight lifted from her shoulder. With a quiet whoosh of branches and the thud of heavy metal on towel-covered broadloom, the stand hit the floor and the tree popped upright.
The whole room suddenly smelled like a pine forest.
Beside her, her little boy grinned. “It’s really big, huh?”
Not just big. For the space, it was huge, definitely larger than what they would have wound up with had Erik not been with them. Fuller, anyway.
She’d realized within minutes of arriving at the tree lot that what she’d promised her son would have been a nightmare to manage on her own. On their own, they also would have wound up with something more in the five-foot range.
“Thank you,” she said to Erik’s back.
He turned, pushing his windblown hair back from his forehead.
“No problem. This is the fourth tree I’ve hauled this month.” He wanted her to know that what he’d done wasn’t a big deal. Not to him, anyway. Certainly nothing she needed to feel obligated to him for. “The one at work, a neighbor’s and one of Pax’s cousins’.”
“Do you have a tree?” Tyler wanted to know.
“I don’t usually put one up.”
“How come?”
“Because I’m not home in the evenings much this time of year and I go to my folks’ for Christmas.”
Her little boy’s brow pinched. Before he could voice whatever had him looking so concerned, Erik motioned to the single green bin sitting near the fireplace.
“You want the rest of those?” he asked her, referring to the others still stacked in the store.
She started to tell him she could bring them in herself. Thinking it wiser to accept his help than risk resurrecting the tension that had ended their phone call last night, she said, “Please,” and hurried after him to help.
Tyler wanted to help, too, so she had him carry in their new two-foot-high, red-velvet-clad Santa with its price tag still attached while they brought in the bins filled with the lights and ornaments she’d need for the tree.
The only other thing she needed, other than for the heavy caution between them to ease, was to start a fire in the fireplace to take the deepening chill off the room. While Erik went back for the last bin, she crumpled newspaper under some of the kindling she and Tyler had found by a cord of split logs in the lean-to behind the garage.
Erik had barely walked back in when he shot a narrowed glance at the parka she still wore. Tyler hadn’t taken his off yet, either.
“Did you turn off the heat?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t gone that far in her efforts to conserve.
“I turn it down when we leave, but it’s always colder when the wind blows. It just hasn’t been this windy. Or this cold. It’s freezing out there.”
The house had always been drafty. As his grandmother had done on especially cold days, Rory had closed her heavy drapes over the big expanses of glass to insulate from the chill. With the wind that blew the rain against the windows stirring the fabric, he figured he should probably check the weather stripping.
Just not now. For now, all he’d do was make sure she had enough firewood and get out of there.
“There’s plenty,” she assured him when he said he’d bring some in. “Tyler and I carried a load into the mudroom this morning.”
“Can we decorate now?” Tyler asked. “If you don’t have a tree,” he said to the man checking his watch, “you can help decorate ours. Mom said she’d show me her magic ornaments. You want to see ’em?”
“Magic ornaments?”
“Uh-huh. They’re in here.” With his arms still wrapped around the Santa, he bumped his little boot against a bin she’d brought in that morning. “She showed me a heart and a bell. I get to see the rest when we put them on the tree.”
He looked eager and hopeful and was still running on a sugar high from the hot cider and big candy cane he’d been given at the tree lot.
“We’ve kept Erik long enough, honey.” She hated to burst his little bubble, but with Erik frowning at the time, it seemed apparent he was anxious to go. She felt anxious for him to go now, too. Every time she met his glance she had the uncomfortable feeling he was wondering how she would ever manage there on her own. Or thinking about how much longer the
