“Nina!”
“Hi. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
His eyebrows arched higher, as if to ask, “A bad time for what?”
She nodded over her shoulder at her car. “I was going to get you a fruit basket or something to say thanks, but after Friday I thought a Christmas tree, some decorations and a few other holiday things were a better idea. And if you’re up for it, I’d like to help you trim the tree and get some cheer going for your boys.”
The arched eyebrows dipped into an almost-frown. “I can’t let you do all that,” he said.
“You can’t let me say thank you?”
“You’ve said thank you. A couple of times.”
He seemed kind of down tonight and that only made Nina more determined to do this.
“Still, what you did was huge to me, and I want to do this for you to show you how much I appreciated it. For you and the boys...” She added the boys at the end because for some reason there seemed to be an undertone of intimacy in her voice that she wanted to dispel.
“Are you even supposed to be out? Let alone carting Christmas trees around and decorating them for people?” Dallas asked then.
“I was back at work yesterday and today without any limitations, and I feel great. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be this way this close to the end, but I have a ton of energy—some to spare—and I’d really like to do this.”
“Decorate a tree for me?”
“For you and the boys,” she said, qualifying this time because there was a hint of intimacy in his voice now, and regardless of how excited she was to be looking up into his oh-so-handsome face she was also warning herself to keep things in perspective.
After a brief moment of seeming to consider what she was offering, Dallas shrugged in a way that made her think he was shrugging off some of his low spirits. Then he laughed a little and said, “Well, okay, I guess. If you’re up for it.”
“I am. If you’ll get the tree off the car, I’ll get the stuff out of the back—I brought a tree stand so you can just plunk it into that and we can get going.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a wider smile at the take-charge attitude she was showing, the take-charge attitude that wasn’t too different than what he’d shown on Wednesday in the blizzard.
Then he called over his shoulders for his sons to come and put on their coats while he removed the dish towel from his shoulder, slung it over the banister on the staircase behind him and thrust his arms into the largest of the four coats hanging on hooks beside the door.
“Lead the way...” he suggested to Nina as the boys came to the door like a tiny herd of elephants, their curiosity piqued, as well.
“Coats!” Dallas ordered a second time, explaining what was happening as the boys put them on and they all joined Nina on the porch.
“You brought us a Christmas tree?” Robbie exclaimed as they went out to the SUV.
“I did,” Nina confirmed. “And a few other things that you can help me carry in while your dad and your brothers get the tree down.”
“I been wantin’ a tree!” Robbie said as if it were a revelation.
“Now you’ll have one,” Nina said with a laugh.
Even the oldest boy—Ryder, who had been so solemn on Friday when they’d met—seemed to perk up at the prospect of decorating for Christmas. And the more childish side of middle-son, Jake—who Nina had already realized liked to play it tough—was revealed as the two older boys aided their father in getting the tree unlashed from the roof of the SUV.
“Go on in and get out of the cold,” Dallas commanded Nina when she and Robbie had taken the sacks from her rear cargo compartment. “The family room is to the left—that’s where we put the tree.”
Thinking more of the little boy than of herself, Nina did as she’d been told.
Inside the house, Nina took off her coat and so did Robbie—dropping his on the floor in his excitement to take the sacks into the other room and see what was in them.
Still in the entry, Nina picked up the child’s coat and replaced it on the hook it had come from. Then she draped her own jacket over the newel post at the foot of the wide staircase that led to the second level of the house rather than taking someone else’s hook.
She was wearing a turtleneck fisherman’s-knit cable sweater that reached to midthigh of the skinny jeans she had on with her fur-lined, calf-high boots. After making sure the sweater wasn’t bunched up over her rear end, she took the dish towel from where Dallas had set it over the banister and went in the direction Robbie had gone—to the left of the staircase.
The family room was a wide-open space paneled in a rustic wood, with man-sized leather furniture arranged around the entertainment center and the stone fireplace beside it.
Nina took the dish towel into the kitchen that was in the rear portion of the same area, separated from it only by a big round table surrounded by eight ladder-backed chairs.
On the counter beside the sink were four TV dinners with most of their contents left uneaten, and Nina wondered how often Dallas served frozen meals like that, hoping it wasn’t too often. And hoping, too, that the whole household hadn’t been feeling so sad tonight that none of them had felt like eating.
She left the dish towel folded neatly on the other side of the double sink and went to Robbie to help unload the bags she’d brought, explaining as she took things out what they were intended for.
“Dad! We have lights and tinsel and ornaments and these sparkly balls and candy canes, and Nina’s gonna make us apple cider to drink while we put the tree up!” Robbie announced when his father and brothers carried the evergreen into the family room.
“I can see that,” Dallas answered as he leaned the tree against a wall.
When the other boys were following Dallas’s instructions to take his coat and theirs to hang up, and Robbie was still engrossed in emptying the bags, Nina said in an aside to Dallas, “I brought a bunch of new ornaments in case you didn’t want memories raised with ones you used before....”
“Good idea. We can decide later what we might want to add and what we might not.”
The older boys returned then. At Nina’s suggestion Christmas music was turned on as she heated the cider and put it into mugs, and everyone got busy putting up the tree and decorating Dallas’s house.
Nina half expected Dallas to merely sit on the sofa and watch her and the boys do the decorating, because in the four years she’d been with Leo, that was what he’d done. Christmas spirit seemed to have been something he’d outgrown, and while he’d assured her that he enjoyed the sight of a well-lit tree, he’d refused to exert the energy to actually decorate it.
But Dallas pitched in and did every bit as much as she did until the room was decorated—not quite as elaborately as Nina’s apartment, but enough so that it looked very festive.
When
