Mom. We’re s’posed to share.”
They were indeed, which left Rory at a loss for a reasonable rebuttal. She didn’t doubt her child’s disappointment. Yet that disappointment didn’t seem to be only for himself. It was as much for the man she sincerely doubted needed anything from them at all.
“I suppose I could stay a little longer,” he said to Tyler, touched by the child’s concern, ignoring her. “How much do you think we can do in thirty minutes?”
“We have to put the lights on before we can do anything,” she pointed out to them both. Thirty minutes would barely get them going.
“Then I guess that’s where we start.” He looked to where she suddenly stared back at him. “Unless you hadn’t planned on doing this right now.”
He had accomplished his mission: delivering the tree. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d even want to stick around and decorate the thing. Especially with Rory stuck somewhere between grateful for his help, not wanting to have needed it and uncomfortable with his presence. Her little boy’s excitement with the process, though, and his innocent desire to share that experience with him held far more appeal just then than heading home to get ready for yet another evening of schmoozing and champagne. Even if he didn’t leave for another half hour, he’d barely be late. He just wouldn’t stop by the boatworks.
Both males expectantly waited for her reply. That Erik seemed to want to stay caught her totally off guard. Considering how he’d practically bolted out the back door the last time he’d been there and how annoyed he’d sounded with her on the phone yesterday, she’d thought for sure that he’d be on his way as soon as he’d delivered Tyler’s tree.
Not about to deliberately disappoint her son, and determined to not upset the precarious equilibrium between her and her mentor, she lifted both hands in surrender. “If we’re doing lights, we need a chair,” was all she had to say before Tyler started pulling off his coat and Erik started heading toward the dining room table.
On his way, he pulled his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans.
“I need to tell Pax I won’t be in today,” he told her, punching numbers. They didn’t need the parts until Monday, but his partner would be expecting him. “Just give me a minute.”
Taking her animated little boy’s jacket, she slipped off her own and headed into the mudroom to hang them up. As she passed Erik, she heard his easy “Hey, buddy” before he relayed his message, told him where he was and added that he’d see him “later at the party.”
Marveling at the man’s social life, and unsettled to find herself wondering yet again about the woman he’d taken out last week, she walked back into the kitchen moments later to see him still on the phone.
“No, I’m not ‘seriously preoccupied,’” he good-naturedly defended. “I’ve just been getting a tree into a stand. What are you talking about?
“You’re kidding,” he muttered, and headed for the dining room window.
The moment he pulled back the closed drape, she heard a soft ticking against the glass. Little was visible in the gray light beyond. Blowing rain obscured the view.
His brow furrowed. “Turn on the TV, will you?” he asked her.
“What’s going on?”
“Everything’s closing down,” was all he said before she grabbed the TV’s remote.
With Erik joining her on her left, still listening to Pax, and Tyler smashed against her right leg, hugging Santa, the three of them watched the churning weather map on the screen while the authoritative voice of the weatherman warned everyone to stay off the roads. The ticker on the bottom of the screen listed temperatures in various degrees of freezing in Seattle and surrounding areas as the voice went on about predicted accumulations of freezing rain or sleet. Another voice took over as the picture switched to a weather cam with a blurry image of a multicar pileup on I-5.
A viewer video showed the sleet-shrouded image of a ferry rocking at its landing.
“What about the Narrows Bridge?” she heard Erik ask Pax.
The furrows went deeper. “Got it. Sure. You, too, man,” he concluded, and ended his call.
Sensing the adults’ concern, Tyler pressed closer as he looked up. “Is this a bad thing, Mommy?”
It wasn’t good. “It’s okay, honey. The weather is just causing a few problems,” she explained even as more personal complications dawned.
“Nothing you need to worry about, sport.”
Peering around his mom, Tyler looked to the man smiling over at him.
“All you need to worry about is finding a place to put that big guy.” Erik nodded to the Santa that was nearly half Tyler’s size. “Then we can start on the lights.”
His concerns appeased, Tyler plopped his Santa on the floor beside him. Suggesting he put the decoration somewhere a little more out of the way, Erik turned to Rory.
“Pax said they’re closing the airport, bridges, ferries and freeways. The roads are all iced.” His partner had gone over to their client office. The one by Cornelia’s. Now he was stuck there.
Given that the bridge he himself needed to take to get back was closed and that the ferry would be down, he seemed to be stuck where he was, too.
He could usually roll with anything. He just wasn’t quite sure how the woman who’d just drawn a deep breath and turned away felt about having him there for a little longer then she’d expected. She didn’t say a word as she knelt beside one of the bins and popped off the lid to reveal dozens of neatly wrapped strings of lights.
“We’re having soup and sandwiches for dinner,” she finally said.
Lifting out two strings, she stood up, turned to face him. “Since it seems you’re here for the night, you can stay in my room.”
His left eyebrow arched.
Mirroring his expression, determined to prove she could hold her ground with him, Rory added, “I’ll sleep with Tyler.”
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
