“Mom? I’m a-scared.”
“It’s okay, honey. I’m right here. The power went out,” she explained, her voice soft, “but it’ll be back on in a minute.” Leaving her robe on, she found her way to him, hugged his warm little body to hers. “You don’t need to be afraid.” Forcing a smile into her voice, she murmured, “You know what?”
His response was the negative shake of his head against her neck.
“I have a big surprise for you.”
“Is the tree all done?”
“It is. But that’s not the surprise.”
She felt him pull back. “Is he here?”
He. Erik.
The man’s presence was not at all the news she’d hoped would get his morning off to a better start.
“He’s downstairs,” she told him, and felt certain he’d have scooted off the bed that very moment had he been able to see where he was going.
She’d thought to tell him her surprise was the big adventure the day might be, since making an adventure of uncertainties, for the most part, had taken his mind off his fears and insecurities before. Since Erik had unknowingly just accomplished that for her, she told him they’d just wait right where they were while his idol turned the lights back on.
Instead of electric lights, however, it was the beam of the flashlight that illuminated the hall outside the open door.
The beam swung inward, causing Tyler to bury his head in her chest at the momentary brightness and her to block the sudden flash with her hand.
“Sorry,” Erik muttered. He aimed the beam at the rumpled bedding on the trundle. “It’s not the switch. I’ll have to wait until it’s light out to see what the problem is.”
The circle of light bouncing off the cerulean sheets filled the room with shades of pale blue. Along the far wall, he watched Rory cuddling her son on the higher bed, her hair tousled, her hand slowly soothing the child’s flannel-covered back as Tyler turned to smile at him.
It hit him then, as they sat huddled in the semi-dark, that all they really had was each other. He’d realized that on some level last night when he’d prodded her about where they’d spend Christmas. But seeing them now, realizing how much she’d lost and how vulnerable she could easily feel being that alone here, drove that reality home.
The troubling protectiveness he felt for her slid back into place. That same protectiveness had been there last night, protecting her from him.
He’d had no business touching her last night. All he’d wanted when he’d met them at the tree lot yesterday was to make sure she could give her little boy the Christmas she wanted for him.
All he’d wanted last night was her.
There hadn’t been a trace of defense in her pretty face when he’d touched her. Nothing that even remotely suggested she would have stopped him if he’d pulled her to him. He’d known when he’d left there a few days ago that distance was his best defense against complications with her. Especially since the not-so-subtle needs she aroused in him simply by her presence had a definite tendency to sabotage objectivity where she was concerned.
Having sabotaged the distance angle himself simply by showing up, it seemed like some perverted form of justice that distance was going to be deprived him for a while.
“Do you have another flashlight up here?” Objectivity now appeared to be his only defense. And objectively, she truly needed far more help from him than a little tutoring with the store. “Something stronger than this?”
“The only other I have is just like that one. It’s in the kitchen in the phone desk drawer.”
“You need something brighter. I’ll get one of the camp lamps from the store and bring it back for you to use up here.”
She didn’t know she had camp lamps. But then, she hadn’t finished her inventory, either.
“We’ll wait,” she told him, then watched him leave them, literally, in the dark.
There was something he wasn’t telling her. She would have bet her silk long underwear on that, had she not needed to wear it under her favorite gray fleece sweats to keep warm.
She couldn’t believe how quickly the house had cooled. She turned the thermostat down every night, but without the furnace running at all, the temperature inside had dropped ten degrees within the hour.
She’d compensated by bundling Tyler in long johns, fleece pants, heavy socks, slippers, an undershirt, thermal shirt and sweatshirt and parking him under a blanket in front of the blaze Erik had built in the fireplace.
The only layer Erik had added was his jacket when he’d gone out a few minutes ago. He’d already left it in the mudroom when the thud of his heavy-treaded work boots announced his return.
“This is the last of the wood you brought in yesterday. I’ll get more from the shed in a while.”
The drapes were still closed, but the edges of the room were no longer dark. The fire had grown to throw flickering light into the room. The camp light that now occupied the dining table illuminated from that direction much like a table lamp.
Tyler smiled up at him.
“Can we turn on the tree?” he wanted to know.
He hadn’t been talking to her. “We don’t have electricity yet,” she reminded him anyway. “Why don’t you read Frosty?” With the suggestion, she handed him his new favorite picture book. “And I’ll get you something to eat.”
Concern suddenly swept his little face. Dropping the book, he shoved off the blanket and headed for the wall of drape-covered windows.
“Is there a problem with the furnace, too?” she asked Erik, wondering what her little boy was up to. Wondering, too, if a problem with the furnace was what the larger male wasn’t sharing. “It’s oil. Not electric. Shouldn’t it be working?”
Tyler pulled back the living room drapes. Dawn lightened the window, but the coating of frost and ice on the glass made it impossible to make out anything beyond it.
The logs landed with quiet thuds at the far end of the hearth. “The furnace is oil, but the fan and pump are electric. You need power to pump the oil and push out the hot air.”
Great, she thought. “Oh,” she said.
Tyler let go of the drape. The heavy fabric still swung slightly as he ran to the dining room window next to it and pulled back the drape there.
“How come I can’t see it?” he asked.
“See what, honey?”
“The snowman. He has lights.”
“Hey, Tyler. I heard your mom say she’d get your breakfast. How about we get that out of the way before we tackle anything else?”
At the obvious change of subject, Rory’s glance darted to Erik. It was met with the quick shake of his head and the pinch of his brow.
He moved to her side, his voice low. “I don’t think you’ll want him to see it yet. Give me time to fix it first. I haven’t been all the way around the building, but some of those gusts last night were pretty strong. You might want to take a look from the store porch.
“So,” he continued, brushing off his hands as he walked over to the child smiling up at him. “Why don’t you show me what kind of cereal we’re having?”
Totally