Jason stared at her as if she’d grown a horn on her head.
“It’s a control thing.” Owen kept talking.
“It is not,” she denied.
“I told her she needed to get over it before I get my driver’s permit.”
She glared. “Don’t you have homework?”
“I know someone who used to be afraid of flying,” Jason said. “Maybe you should talk to her.”
“I’m not afraid of flying.” She glared at Owen. “I just like to drive myself,” she said with a straight face.
Lights flashed through the window as someone pulled into the driveway.
Jason stood. “That would be my ride.”
Rachel walked him the short distance to the door.
He took a moment to put on his long coat. “Nice meeting you, Owen.”
She opened the door and walked him onto her porch, slid the door almost closed behind her. “Thanks for understanding him.”
“He’s being protective. Gotta give the kid points for that.”
“The man of the house collides with a teenage attitude daily.”
Jason smiled.
Rachel shivered.
He reached out his hand. “Thank you for braving a stranger in the storm.”
His hands were warm, despite the cold. “You’re welcome. Good luck with your car.”
Jason hesitated, then turned and walked away.
Chapter Three
Rachel allowed herself an extra hour to get to work, and she was still late.
She skirted past the smaller cubbies and around the corner to her less tiny workspace. Julie popped her head up, looked around as if to see if anyone else noticed Rachel’s lateness, and then started laughing.
“What?” Rachel tucked her purse inside her desk and pulled her coat from her shoulders.
“The look on your face is priceless.”
“You mean the I’m late and don’t want my supervisor to notice look?”
“Yep, that one.”
“Too late.” The male voice behind her made her cringe.
Rachel squared her shoulders and turned to face her boss. “I’m sorry, Gerald. I thought I gave myself enough time—”
Gerald looked past her and toward Julie. “You owe me ten bucks.”
Julie pulled out her purse as she laughed.
Both of them were smiling.
Julie reached past Rachel and handed Gerald a ten.
“What’s that about?”
Gerald waved the bill in the air. “Julie didn’t think you’d make it here until nine, I had faith you’d make it before eight thirty.”
“You were betting on me?”
“I’m kinda shocked you made it in at all,” Julie confessed.
The tension in Rachel’s shoulders started to ease. “The streets by my house were a mess.” Luckily, the snow in the city streets had been pushed to the side.
Gerald waved a hand toward the high-rise window. “Most of this will melt before tomorrow.”
“That’s good.”
“Do we have the Google proposal ready for Monday’s meeting?”
Rachel and Julie both said yes at the same time. “Just fine-tuning the PowerPoint.”
Gerald turned and started walking into his office. “Rachel, I need a minute.”
Just when she thought she was off the hook for showing up late.
She glanced at Julie, who offered a shrug of her shoulders.
In his midsixties, Gerald was one of the longest lasting company employees and a close personal friend of the owners.
“I’m really sorry I’m late,” Rachel started.
“I know you are. Please sit.”
She clenched her hands together and sat on the edge of the chair opposite his desk.
“Winters in New York can be brutal.”
“I’ve been told.”
“And driving into the city is a colossal waste of time.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
Gerald lifted his eyes to hers. “When we offered this position, we knew you were coming in from California and sweetened the deal with six months of city parking. More than enough time for you to come to the conclusion that driving in is something you may want to reconsider.”
She felt an intervention coming on. “If I need to leave home at four in the morning to get here, I will.”
“And what happens if Owen needs you at home and it takes you three hours to get there?”
She blinked a few times.
“I like you, Rachel. You bring a freshness to marketing we haven’t seen in a while. You have the ability to pinpoint issues before they become problems. You’re a leader, and quite honestly, I think you’ll fit right in with the management team before your first year with us is up.”
That had been the goal since she moved. “I’d like that.”
“If you opt out of the city parking, we will give the allowance in a cash sum that will pay for a monthly train pass and parking at the train station you’ll need to drive to for over a year.”
Rachel opened her mouth to respond, only to have Gerald cut her off.
“Not to mention toll fees and gas.”
The denial of need sat on her lips.
She swallowed it.
“I’ll consider the offer.”
“Good. Your first nor’easter is just around the corner, and that snow takes weeks to melt, trash piles up . . . it’s not pretty. You haven’t lived until it takes you two hours to drive four miles in this city.”
She didn’t think that was possible.
One look at Gerald and she knew he wasn’t bluffing.
“Now go fine-tune your PowerPoint.”
“Owen?” Rachel walked into the house, tossing her car keys in a bowl by the front door and shedding her coat to keep the drops of water that fell off of it from trailing all over the house.
“We’re up here,” he yelled from upstairs.
The familiar sound of cars skidding on pavement and the occasional outburst from a teenage boy told her he had a friend over who was racing him on a virtual track in a video game. Owen’s laughter met her ears halfway up the stairs. Rachel paused and smiled. Hearing the sounds of normal lifted her spirits.
She poked her head through the crack in the door to find Owen and Ford perched on the edge of his bed, controllers in hand, eyes glued to the flat-screen on Owen’s wall.
“Hey, Ford.”
“Hi,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen.
She looked around the room; an empty bag of corn chips lay on the floor, a half empty bottle of water sat beside Owen. “Did you eat?”
“I’m starving,” Owen announced.
“Dude, knock it off.” Ford turned his controller with his whole body, as if that would make the online car move in the direction of his arms.
Owen obviously didn’t knock the whatever off that Ford was talking about. Not that it mattered, both boys continued to ram their virtual cars into each other while they laughed.
“I’ll get something started for dinner.”
Rachel was sure neither kid heard her.
“Are you staying for dinner, Ford?”
“That would be great.”
As she turned to leave the boys to their task of crashing and racing, Owen announced, “There was a package at the door when I came home from school. I left it on the table.”
“Okay.”
She stopped by her unfinished bedroom, pulled off her boots, and replaced them with a thick pair of socks. The hardwood floors kept the old house the temperature of its basement, something she had yet to get used to. California homes didn’t have subterranean space for storage, laundry, and spiders. Luckily there were a few high windows down there that helped brighten up the place. But she’d vowed to drywall as much of the open room as she could and paint the whole thing in a shade of white before summer. Basements like hers belonged in scary movies with screaming women. Neither of which she wanted anything to do with.
Back d
ownstairs, she clicked on her speaker and linked her Internet radio station in. A new pop song had her humming as she walked into the kitchen. Before Owen moved in with her, dinner on a Friday night at home would be half a bottle of wine and a salad. Now that Sister Responsibility was her middle name, the wine was replaced with iced tea, and something had to go along with the salad. With two teenagers eating, tonight would be something filled with carbs. She scanned her pantry, hoping the meal would jump out at her.
Pasta.
Easy, quick . . . and she could heat up sauce and boil noodles without a recipe.
She added half an onion and a handful of mushrooms to the sauce, nothing fancy, but something to make her feel like she was actually cooking. A morphed cucumber and a moldy tomato ended up in the trash, reducing their salad to lettuce and carrots.
A Saturday trip to the grocery store was in order.
While the water boiled and the sauce simmered, Rachel found the stack of mail on the dining room table. She fingered through a few bills and tossed the junk to the side to add to the recycle bin. The box Owen had spoken of didn’t have a mailing label. In fact, all that was written on the plain brown box was her name, her first name.
She peeled away the tape, not knowing what to expect. Once she folded the lid back, she saw a handwritten envelope on top of a white canvas bag. It took a little effort to lift the noisy bag from the box—the sound of metal hitting metal struck her as odd. She set the envelope aside, unread, and opened the bag.
Chains.
Chains for the tires on her car.
“Who . . . ?”
She thought maybe Julie, perhaps Gerald . . . then she opened the note and a second paper fell out.
Rachel
Thank you for braving this stranger in a storm and keeping me from frostbite. I thought maybe Owen would like to replace the kitchen knife with skills. I know the owner, first month is on me if he is interested.
Welcome to Connecticut.
Jason
Below his name was a phone number.
Rachel glanced at the paper that had fallen out. A flyer for a tae kwon do studio and a name, address, and number were attached to a simple note that said, “Tell Bruce I sent you.”
Something inside her stomach flipped, the buzz a teenage girl feels when she notices a popular boy watching her from the other side of the classroom. Or maybe she was reading into it. Maybe this was just a thank-you, a friendly gesture from a grateful, stranded traveler.
Before she could consider her options further, the sound of water boiling over on the stove directed her attention to dinner. Back through the door in the kitchen, she relit the flame on the stovetop and turned down the temperature of the sauce.
Ten minutes later, Owen and Ford were sitting at her small table, passing the salt. The boys were animated in their conversation about the video game they’d been playing and about the football team at their school. Neither one of them was on it, but each of them had an opinion on whether or not the team would make the finals.
Rachel listened and would occasionally try and say something worthy of hearing. The boys entertained her comments but redirected the conversation back to what only the two of them knew anything about.
“We should probably get there early,” Ford said during the quarterback debate.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be packed.”
Rachel pushed her plate aside, catching on to their discussion. “Are you guys going to the game tonight?”
“We talked about this earlier,” Owen told her.
“We did?” She remembered something about a game last weekend but hadn’t remembered to put anything on her calendar.
“It’s your turn to drive,” Owen said, his voice more than a little annoyed that she’d forgotten. “Unless you let me use the car.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Nice try.”
Owen scowled.
“You boys clean the dishes, I’ll change.”
Owen stared. “You don’t have to stay at the game.”
She shrugged her shoulders and pushed back from the table. “I don’t have anything else I’d like to do tonight more than go to a high school football game.”
Owen looked between her and Ford. “Fine, but we’re not sitting with you.”
She almost laughed. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
An hour later, half frozen among several hundred teenagers and excited parents and alumni, Rachel tried to remember any redeeming value of sitting in the stands in arctic temperatures when she could be at home painting a bedroom. Her gaze traveled to Owen, who sat with Ford, Lionel, and two girls she didn’t recognize. “I’m only here because you would have dragged me along with you, Em.”
The lady on Rachel’s right glanced out of the corner of her eye. Speaking to herself probably wasn’t the best way to make friends.
Rachel smiled and pretended to pay attention to what was happening on the field.
The quarterback of East Ranch High looked like he was either on his sixth year at the school or belonged in college. And one of the linebackers had enough facial hair to be the spokesman for the crew of Duck Dynasty. Rachel didn’t remember boys looking like men when she was in high school. And much like most of the adults in the stands, she wasn’t that many years away from that time in her life.
While she watched the spectators, something happened on the field, and half of the people in the stands stood and started to cheer. She stood, just to put some circulation in her legs.
Their team had the ball and had stopped at the five-yard line. The cheerleaders did their job of inciting the crowd, and on the next play, East Ranch scored the first points in the game. Rachel let the fans’ excitement pump her up as she cheered. Her eyes landed on Owen once again. This time he was looking back at her with a smile. She offered a thumbs-up before he turned back to his new friends.
Yeah, that was why she was there. When you stepped into the mom role, you went in with both feet. Out of the blue, she wondered if he would be interested in something like tae kwon do. Her thoughts immediately turned to the chains sitting on her table at home.
She pulled the note Jason had left with his gift out of her pocket and reread it.
Her cheeks warmed.
Assuming he gave her a mobile number, Rachel opted to send a text. Besides, trying to talk to him in this crowd was pointless.
Hello Jason. Owen and I received your gifts. They were incredibly thoughtful. Thank you.
She read her note over, twice, then pressed “Send.”
Off it went, wherever notes went as they traveled faster than Superman in cyberspace. It was a good thing she understood marketing, because technical anything ping-ponged around her head until she was dizzy. If it weren’t for Owen, they would never have managed to hook up the speaker system and DVR at the house.
The phone in her hand buzzed, reminding her she was holding it.
Is this Rachel?
She grinned.
Do you leave gifts on everyone’s doorstep in town?
Dot. Dot. Dot. It is nearly Christmas.
Was he flirting? It had been some time since she’d sent a text to anyone outside of the friend zone, so she couldn’t tell. So you double as Connecticut’s Santa Claus?
Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.
Well, he wasn’t not flirting. I’ll keep my mouth closed on one condition.
Oh? What’s that?
Rachel’s eyes no longer lingered on the field. I want to meet Vixen. She’s always been my favorite.
I thought Vixen was a he.
She giggled. A boy named Vixen. That’s just cruel.
Good point. I’ll see what I can do. The team is on a strict curfew until after the holiday.
Rachel found a rolling eye emoji.
What are you doing on this balmy Friday night?
She glanced at the field, then found the back of Owen’s head in the stands. Freezing my butt off at a high school football game.
Does Owen play?
> No.
She found Owen again, noticed him talking with one of the girls. The girls are here.
Ah, yes. I remember. Smart kid.
She stared at her screen for a full minute, wondering how she could keep their conversation going. Thank you again, for the gifts.
You’re welcome.
She hesitated. Maybe Jason was just being nice and what she thought was flirting was just nice to another level.
The visitor fans cheered from the other side of the field. After glancing at her messages and not seeing a dot, dot, dot, she went ahead and put the phone in her pocket.
He was just being nice.
A minute later it buzzed.
Rachel?
Yes
Dot. Dot. Dot. Would you mind if I text you again sometime? For personal reasons.
She squeezed her fist, grinned like a fool. Owen cheered from below. Did she really have time for this right now? My life is a little complicated.
I like complicated.
She rubbed her ear through the beanie holding the warmth on her head. You’ve been warned.
Is that a yes?
Rachel giggled. Yes.
Enjoy the rest of the game. I hope your team wins.
It felt as if her team already had.
Chapter Four
“When was the last time this place saw Christmas decorations?” Mary wiped dust off a plastic box Jason hadn’t seen in years.
Glen stood beside him. The sadness in his eyes matched the feeling in Jason’s heart. “It’s been a while,” he told his wife.
Truth was, none of them wanted to warm the estate for Christmas after their parents died. It wasn’t that they made a conscious effort not to decorate, but they hadn’t taken the steps to deck the halls either.
Mary pulled out a stream of garland. “Do you have pictures of where this goes?”
“I’m sure we do,” Glen said.
“All the albums are in the library,” Jason told her.
Mary stood, brushed her hands together. Her gaze found her husband’s, then she turned to Jason. “Oh.” She paused. “Are you guys okay with this?” The therapist in her emerged. “We can always buy new decorations if this is too painful.”
Jason shook away the memory of his mother decorating the house and directing them to trim the tree, and the years he’d seen the same garland draped from the stairway banister.
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