“I’m ready to tuck in, Mom.”
She took another step away. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she called toward the stairs. Brushing at the taunting wisp, she looked back with an uncomfortable smile. “He has to be up early in the morning.”
“Then I’ll get out of your way so you can take care of him. I’ll let myself out,” he said, stopping her as she started for the door. “Just say good-night to him for me.”
His jacket lay on the stool behind her. Reaching around her, careful not to touch, he snagged it and backed up. “Thanks for dinner,” he added, and walked out the mudroom door, wondering what in the hell he thought he’d been doing when he’d reached for her in the first place.
He had no one but himself to blame for the tension that had his entire body feeling as tight as a trip wire. He was messing where he had no business going. Even if she wasn’t so obviously not the sort of woman a man could have a brief, casual affair with, she was just now moving on from a loss that had affected her in ways that went far beyond anything she’d shared with him.
He couldn’t even pretend to understand how she felt, or to know what she needed. Whatever it was, he couldn’t give it to her anyway. He didn’t know how. Even if he did, he suspected she wouldn’t let him close enough to try. She didn’t want to rely on anyone she didn’t absolutely have to. He could appreciate that. He’d been there himself. As it was there were only a handful of people he truly trusted—and not one of them was a female he wasn’t related to or who wasn’t in his employ. He suspected, though, that her walls weren’t nearly as thick as those he’d erected around his heart. There was no denying how vulnerable she was right now.
He wasn’t about to take advantage of that, either. He also wasn’t going to do anything else to potentially screw up his relationship with her as her mentor and jeopardize his agreement with Cornelia.
That was why he’d told his lovely protégée that he’d call in a couple of days instead of meeting with her. If he wasn’t near her, he wouldn’t be tempted to touch.
That didn’t stop him from being touched by her, though. Or by the little boy who’d strung Christmas tinsel on his toy boat.
He knew Rory wanted her son to have traditions. Knowing how tight her money was, and how badly she wanted this season to be special for the child, he decided there was no reason he couldn’t give them one of the traditions that had long belonged there anyway.
She never should have said she’d have the inventory finished by Friday. She should have asked for another day at least. As much as she required his expertise, she’d just made it a point to accommodate Erik’s schedule any way she could.
Had she been thinking, she would have realized how impossible that deadline was. But she’d been too rattled by the needs she’d felt in his arms and the kiss he’d dismissed as inconsequential to consider everything else she’d committed to do before Friday—which happened to be Tyler’s last day at his current school.
Given the occasion, guilt over not having kept her word to Erik would have to wait. Her little boy was not taking this latest transition well at all.
The familiar faces and routines at Pine Ridge Day School were the last constants in the life they were leaving behind. As a child, she’d had considerable practice dealing with such separations. Her parents’ nomadic lifestyle had made a new school or two every year her norm, and they’d tried to ease those transitions. But her little boy had never known that sort of instability. Even after his father had died, she’d managed to protect him from the biggest upheavals and keep his routine as consistent as possible. Until they’d had to move, anyway.
As she’d feared he would, he started missing his playmates the minute he’d fastened himself into his car seat in the back of their car and they’d pulled out from the portico.
A quick glance in her rearview mirror caught his pensive expression. He looked the way he had driving away from their old house a couple of weeks ago. Solemn and a little uncertain.
“We can always come back for a visit, Ty,” she assured him, heading for the freeway and the ferry. “Just because you’ll be going to a new school doesn’t mean you won’t ever see your old teachers or classmates again.”
“They’ll still be there?”
“They’ll still be there,” she promised. It wouldn’t be like when he’d lost his dad. There wasn’t that sort of finality to this parting. She needed him to understand that. “We can come back after the holiday to say hi, if you want.”
“Will the tree be there, too?”
The tree. Ten feet of pine studded with a thousand white lights and draped with paper chains and cutouts of students’ handprints. It graced the main building’s foyer.
“The tree won’t be there, honey. Everyone takes Christmas trees down after the holiday. But everything else will be the same.”
“Nuh-uh,” he replied, picking at the knee of his khaki uniform pants. “I won’t be there anymore.”
No, she thought with a sigh. He wouldn’t be, and the silence that followed hinted at how very much that new change disturbed him.
Thinking the Christmas carols playing on the radio might distract him, she turned the volume up over the hum of the heater and encouraged him to sing along.
That didn’t work. Neither did any of her other attempts to console, cajole or otherwise ease away his dispirited expression.
Fighting discouragement herself, she finally conceded that she had no idea just then how to make everything better for her little boy.
That disheartening fact had just registered when her eyes widened on what should have been nothing more than the dusk-gray shapes of the road, the woods and the distant rectangle of Harbor Market & Sporting Goods.
Peering past the headlights, she heard Tyler’s sudden “Oh. Wow!”
Wow, indeed.
The market stood glittery bright in the encroaching dark. Every pillar, post and eave, its roofline, even the chimney had been outlined with twinkling white lights. The bare branches of the apple tree at the near end had been wrapped in peppermint stripes of white lights and red. It was the snowman beyond it, though, that had her attention. Glowing blue-white, his top hat cocked at an angle, the tall, grinning Frosty stood as bold and impressive as the only person she knew who would have put it there.
The light on her answering machine was blinking when she finally coaxed Tyler out of the cold and into the kitchen. Hitting Play, she heard Erik’s recorded voice say he was checking to see if she’d finished the inventory and ask when she’d be available to discuss the business plan. He mentioned nothing about the dazzling Christmas lights that hadn’t been there when she’d left that morning.
She hit Redial. Apparently taking his cue from the number on his caller ID, he answered with an easy, “You’re home.”
“We just got here. Erik,” she said, her tone half laugh, half hesitation, “I can’t believe what you’ve done.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I don’t know.” She honestly had no idea how to weigh her son’s reaction against her next electric bill.
“Does Tyler like it?” he asked while she figured it out.
“Like it?” This is ours, Mom? he’d asked, his eyes huge. “He hasn’t stopped grinning