“Mostly they’re on a circuit where they play small venues for a few weeks at a time.”
“That had to make for an interesting childhood,” he muttered, and handed her the stack of boxes from the sofa.
“I suppose it was.” After adding what he’d given her to the last bin, she snapped on its lid. “I just never knew where we’d be next, or how long we would be there.” Fluid, her mom liked to call their lives.
“But a little gold box showed up everywhere you went.” The container now filled, Erik picked it up to stack with the others. “Just trying to get the rest of the story,” he explained, and waited for her to move so he could carry it to the door.
She stepped aside, pretty sure he would have moved her himself if she hadn’t.
With him carrying away the last bin, she scooped up a few of the crystal icicles and snowflakes still on the coffee table, started hanging them on the tree. “They showed up every year until I stopped traveling with my parents,” she told him. “Mom and Dad had been playing in Seattle and I didn’t want to move around anymore. I’d just turned eighteen, so I stayed here when they left for their next engagement. That was the first Christmas a package didn’t show up. We finally figured out it was their booking agent’s wife who’d been sending them. Apparently, he represented a few other artists who traveled with their kids and she did it for all of them.”
“Nice lady.” Erik came up beside her, pulled one of the icicles from her hand. “So where will your parents be this Christmas?”
“Colorado. They’re booked through New Year’s.”
He glanced at her profile as she lifted another bit of crystal above her head to hang on a high branch. She wouldn’t have family around, he realized. Not liking that thought, not questioning why, he took the icicle from her and hung it below the white angel on top. As he did, he caught the clean scent of something herbal mingling with pine. Her shampoo.
The fragrance was subtle. Its effect on him was not.
Intent on ignoring both, he took one of the snowflakes. “So what will you and Tyler do? Go to a friend’s house? Have friends over?”
He was just making conversation. Rory felt certain of that. And the question seemed casual enough. It was his nearness, and the answer, that gave her pause.
“We’ll just stay here. My girlfriends from Tyler’s school will both be out of town.”
“What about other friends?”
“Except for work and Tyler’s school, I wasn’t involved in much the past year. Most of the other people I socialized with were in Curt’s circle. Members of the firm and their spouses,” she explained. “I don’t belong in that group anymore.”
For a moment Erik said nothing. Beyond them, the low voice of the weatherman droned on, the fire snapped and crackled. He could let it go, move on to something less personal. His mention before of the man she’d married—his relatives, anyway—had dented the calm facade she’d worn for her son the past few hours. But her guard with him had finally slipped, and his curiosity tugged hard.
“You said Curt had a different area of practice,” he reminded her, “but was he in the same firm as his father and brother?”
With a faint frown, she handed him the last two ornaments she held and turned to pick up more for herself.
“Different firms. Both firms belong to the same country club, though. It’s where the guys play racquetball and squash and wine and dine their clients. For the most part,” she qualified, moving back to the tree. “Curt liked us to entertain at home.” He’d seemed proud of her skills as a hostess, too, she thought, only to banish the memory before others could take hold. The moment she’d seen his stocking a while ago, the old doubts had rushed back, adding a different sort of disquiet to an already challenging day.
“You lived in the same circles as his parents?”
“It’s not like we saw them all the time,” she replied, hearing the frown in his voice. “But the wives of some of the partners in Curt’s firm were on the same committees as Audrey and her friends. The ones who don’t work outside their homes, anyway. Symphony. Heart Ball. That sort of thing.”
“And you?”
“I was on them, too. For a while.” She’d done her best to help Curt’s career any way she could. They’d been a team that way, a more intimate extension of the partnership they’d developed when he’d been her boss and she his secretary. Or so she’d thought. “Our personal friends were more into getting together for dinners, or taking the kids out for lunch after T-ball.”
“What about them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you ask them over? I bet Tyler’d be up for it.”
She was sure he would. It just wasn’t that simple. And what Erik was asking was really quite sweet. Surprising. Unexpected. But sweet—if such a word could be applied to the six feet plus of disturbing male quietly messing with her peace of mind.
It seemed he didn’t want her and her son spending Christmas Day alone.
“That’s the group I don’t belong to anymore.” The other one, the country club set, she’d never really had. “I was part of a couple with Curt,” she explained, wondering how long it had taken the man beside her to think of himself as an I rather than a we after his wife had gone. “After he died, the guys didn’t have their colleague and I was a reminder to the wives of how their lives would change without their husbands. Or how their lives might not even be what they’d thought they were,” she concluded, only to find herself in the one place she hadn’t wanted to go.
The place where so many questions begged for answers that would never come because the only person who could provide them was no longer there.
She wasn’t at all sure how their conversation had taken such a swerve.
“What part wasn’t what you thought it was?”
Her eyes met his, old pain quickly masked as she glanced away.
“All of it.” She gave a brave little laugh, tried to smile. “So any advice you have about how to move beyond something I can’t do a thing about would be greatly appreciated. Something more immediate than a five-year plan would be nice.”
Perspective. That was what she needed. Since she couldn’t imagine how she’d ever have it where her marriage had been concerned, the least she could do was maintain some about the too-attractive man who’d kissed her senseless four days ago and now acted as if nothing had happened at all—which she would be eternally grateful for, if she could somehow forget it herself. He was her mentor. Granted, he was her business mentor, but maybe the more she reminded herself of his place in her life, the less she’d be affected by things like the swift concern lowering his brow. Since his place in her life was to provide advice, she might as well take advantage of his counsel.
“Do you want to be a little more specific?” he asked.
Pretty certain the tensions of the day had just caught up with her, she dropped her glance to the slender ornament between her fingers. What she wanted had nothing to do with the store. But Erik did
