Leaning against the doorjamb, Wendy shrugged. “I told you. Her ex really hurt her. I don’t blame her for being cautious.” She glanced at the floor then caught his gaze. “I just… Well, she’d be crazy not to like you and I can see from the way you look at her that you’re interested and…” She sucked in a breath. “Just don’t give up, all right?”
Giving up was the last thing he wanted to do. Especially since he now knew she was cautious. Not standoffish. Not disinterested. But cautious. For heaven’s sake. All this time that he’d been jumping to conclusions, he’d missed the obvious one. A bad divorce had made her cautious. He nearly snorted with derision. He of all people should have recognized the signs.
Finley suddenly appeared in the doorway. She pushed past Wendy and ran over to him. He scooped her off the floor. “Hey.”
“Hey! They have a candy store. And a toy store.”
Rory met Shannon’s gaze over Finley’s head. “You took her to see the competition?”
She laughed. “They’re fun, interesting shops.”
“I’ll bet.”
Unbuttoning her long white coat, Shannon said, “They really are. And because they’re unique and interesting they bring shoppers to town. Those same shoppers buy their one unique, interesting Christmas gift for the year at one of the specialty shops, then they come to us for the normal things like Christmas pajamas, tea sets and trucks.”
He slid Finley to the floor. “Makes sense.” His entire body tingled with something he couldn’t define or describe.
It wasn’t fear, though there was a bit of fear laced in there. He should be as cautious as Shannon. His heart had been stomped on, too.
It wasn’t excitement, though he couldn’t deny that every time he saw her his stomach flipped or his heart squeezed or his chest tightened.
It wasn’t anticipation, though how could he not feel a bit eager at the fact that Shannon didn’t dislike him? She was simply being cautious. Wendy had more or less given him a green light and now that he had it he didn’t know what to do with it.
How did a man woo a woman who’d been hurt?
Finley tugged on his hand. “Shannon said that if it was okay with you we could go shopping with her tonight.”
“Shopping?” He laughed lightly, so uncertain about what to do or say. He knew exactly what Shannon was feeling. The hurt of rejection. The sting of not being wanted, not being good enough anymore for the person who took a vow to love you. He knew how shaky she felt. He’d felt it, too. But attraction to her had quickly gotten him beyond it. Unfortunately, that hadn’t left him a road map for how to help her. “Why would a person who owns a department store need to go shopping?”
“For a Christmas tree,” Finley answered.
The words came out through a giggle and something that felt very much like a fist punched into his heart. Finley, the child he firmly believed would never experience the joy of Christmas had her joy back. Shannon was responsible for that. Her generosity of spirit was part of the reason he’d fallen for her so hard and so fast.
So maybe he should show her he could be generous, too? “Wendy, would you mind taking Finley into your office for a minute?”
Wendy reached down and took Finley’s hand. “Sure. No problem.” Very astutely, Wendy closed the door as they walked out.
Cautious himself now, Rory caught Shannon’s gaze. “I’d love to go tree shopping, too…if you really want us.”
She caught his gaze, smiled sheepishly, hopefully. “There’s a huge difference between going tree shopping as a single adult and going tree shopping with a little girl who is seeing the holiday for the first time.”
Boy, didn’t he know that? Technically, this would be his first time of seeing the joy on Finley’s face when she walked through a forest of evergreens and chose the perfect one to sit in their big front window, so the whole town could see the lights.
He felt his own Christmas spirit stir, remembered the first time he walked into the woods with his dad to get the family’s tree, remembered decorating it, remembered seeing it shining with lights on Christmas morning. His heart tugged a bit.
He swallowed. She wasn’t just changing Finley. She was changing him. “All right, then. We’re happy to go with you.”
Shannon insisted they take her big SUV to the Christmas tree farm on the top of the hill outside of town. Without streetlights, the world was incredibly dark. A new storm had moved in. Though it was nothing like the storm that had stranded Rory and Finley at her home the weekend before, it blew shiny white flakes in front of the SUV’s headlights.
She pointed at the big illuminated sign that said Wendell’s Christmas Trees. “Take the next right.”
Rory smoothly maneuvered the SUV onto the slim country road. After a minute, the lights of the farm came into view. A minute after that she directed him to turn down the lane. Snow coated the firs that formed a tunnel to a bright red barn that was surrounded by four white plank outbuildings. Floodlights lit the area. Cars were parked wherever appeared convenient. Some in front of buildings. Some at the side of the lane. Tree shoppers walked the thin lines between the rows of tall, majestic firs.
They stopped in front of the first outbuilding. Rory helped Finley out of the car seat they’d installed in the back of Shannon’s SUV for her. She glanced around in awe. “Wow.”
Rory stooped down in front of her. “I’m going to let you walk until you get tired. But as soon as you get tired, you need to tell us. It’s too cold to be out here too long.”
Even as he said that a gust of wind blew away the tiny white flakes of snow that glittered in his hair and fell to the shoulders of his black leather jacket. Shannon watched, mesmerized. He was so gorgeous, yet so normal.
He rose and took Finley’s hand. “So how do we do this?”
Shannon took Finley’s other hand. “We get a tag from the cashier over there.” She pointed at a young girl who stood in front of a table holding a cash register. “Then we walk down the rows until we see a tree that we like and we tag it. One of us goes out to get one of the helpers to cut down our tree while the other two stay with the tree.” She looked around at the large crowd of tree shoppers. It might not have been such a wise idea to wait until this close to Christmas to choose her tree. Of course, with last weekend’s storm she hadn’t had much choice. “Since they’re busy, this might take a while.”
Finley grinned. “I don’t care.”
Rory laughed. “Yeah, you wouldn’t. If you get cold or tired, somebody’s going to carry you.” She giggled.
Shannon laughed, too. Not just because of Finley but because Rory was such a good dad. So easygoing with Finley and so accepting of her limitations.
After getting a tag from the cashier, they headed into the first row and Shannon drew in a deep breath of the pine-scented air.
Rory reverently said, “This is amazing.”
Shannon glanced around, trying to remember what the tree farm had felt like to her the first time she’d seen it. Tall pines towered around them. Snow pirouetted in the floodlights illuminating the area. The scent of pine and snow enveloped them.
She smiled. “Yeah. It is amazing.”
He glanced over. The smile he gave her was careful, tentative. A wave of guilt washed through her. She’d been so standoffish with him the past two days that he probably thought she hated him.
“Did you come here often as a child?”
“Every year with my dad.” She laughed, remembering some of the more memorable years. “He always