Owen looked beyond the threshold and toward the ladder. “Good idea. I’ll get the lights from the garage.”
He turned and left Jason standing in the doorway. Once Owen disappeared from view, Rachel stepped around the corner. She wore a beige sweater and blue jeans that hugged her hips, it was hard not to stare.
“So your phone is dead, huh?”
He blinked a few times and met her eyes. “Yeah. I thought it was the battery, but then . . .” He opened his palm and made a noise indicating the thing had blown up.
“Uh-huh . . . right.”
She didn’t believe him.
She was smart like that.
“So, single strand or . . . ?” He turned back to the outside, closing the cell phone conversation.
“Are you always this stubborn?” She’d crossed to the doorway and stepped out on her welcome mat.
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my brothers.” Jason smiled at her, noticed her holding back.
She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “The only reason I’m agreeing to this is because Owen is excited about the stupid tree.”
Jason wasn’t opposed to using Owen to have his foot in Rachel’s door.
“Trees are important.”
She narrowed her eyes and shivered.
“I got ’em,” Owen said as he walked back into the room. He set the boxes down by the door and reached for his coat. “I can help.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get this done.” Jason glanced at Rachel, flashed what he hoped was a charming grin, and turned back outside.
Owen was a great assistant. He stood at the foot of the ladder and handed Jason what he needed as they inched along the eaves, tacking in the hooks.
“This is the first time I’ve hung lights outside,” Owen told him.
“How is that?”
“My mom and I always lived in a condo.”
Jason took note of the fact that the kid didn’t mention a dad. He tacked in a hook. “Rachel said it was cancer.”
“Yeah.”
Jason looked down at Owen. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “I try not to think about it.”
“How is that working out?”
Owen gave a partial smile. “Not very well.”
Jason turned back to the eaves, pounded another nail. “I lost my mom, too.”
“Really?”
“Plane crash. Both her and my dad on the same day.”
“That bites. Were you young like me?”
Jason stepped down from the ladder, moved over a few feet as they spoke. “No. I was an adult. Still, they were young.”
“Yeah, it’s never good. I mean, unless they’re really old and stuff. Even then I bet it sucks.” Owen handed him another hook and nail.
“It’s good you have Rachel.”
The mention of her name had Owen clamming up.
“Did she really hit her head with a door?”
Owen laughed.
Jason took that as a yes.
“It’s probably a good thing I’m up here on the ladder, then.”
“She’d probably break a leg,” Owen said.
Jason opened his mouth to comment, and closed it when the front door opened and the woman in question emerged.
He and Owen both kept silent.
“How’s it going?”
“Almost done with these.”
Owen shined a flashlight up on the last four feet.
“You know, you really didn’t have to do this,” Rachel told him. “I could have managed.”
Jason looked at the fading bruise she tried to hide with makeup. “How’s your eye?”
“That was an accident.”
He turned to place the last hook in before descending off the ladder. “Time for the lights, Owen.”
The strands were plugged in at the power source on the side of the garage. It appeared that the previous owners had purposely placed the plug up at the eaves for the sole purpose of holiday lighting. Jason imagined how many years of struggling they’d managed to skip when it came to stringing extension cords and making lights look right in places you didn’t want them. He wondered if his house had the same thing. A crew of half a dozen men put the lights up at the estate, so he didn’t know.
The brand-new, multicolored lights were perfectly balanced from the west side of the house to the east. The second story had dormers over the windows that Owen said they hadn’t accounted for when buying lights. Still, once they were up and the timer was set to go on and off, Jason stepped away from the ladder one last time to see his work.
Rachel and Owen were standing at the edge of the lawn, taking it all in with soft smiles.
“I like,” Rachel said.
“Looks good.”
“Not bad,” Jason said. “I bet we could squeeze a couple more strands up by those windows.”
Rachel shook her head. “No, that’s okay—”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Owen interrupted.
“I’ll be back on Friday, then.” Jason ignored the glare from Rachel as he smiled at Owen.
“I wouldn’t want to take you away from your busy schedule,” Rachel told him. “If you leave the ladder, I can take care of it.”
Jason lifted an eyebrow. “She who dances with doors should probably stay away from heights.”
Owen laughed out loud.
“Says the man who drove himself into a ditch,” Rachel said with a tiny grin.
“I would feel responsible if you got hurt.”
“I would feel guilty for monopolizing all your valuable time.”
Jason glanced at Owen. “Don’t you have a new job?” he asked Rachel, assuming she hadn’t told Owen about Jason owning the company.
“I do.” Her eyes shifted to Owen, then back.
“If you got hurt and had to miss work, wouldn’t that impact your new position?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Probably.”
Jason smiled, rolled his shoulders back. “Then you’re in luck. Because I’ve had my job for some time, and if I get hurt, I still get a paycheck. So I’ll be back Friday, or better yet, Saturday morning, while it’s still light out.”
They stared at each other, neither backing down.
“Great, now can we go get the tree?” Owen asked. “I’m freezing out here.”
Rachel looked away first. “Fine. Let me get my purse.”
Dances with doors! Who said things like that? In search of hot chocolate, Owen broke away from them once they hit the tree lot. “What about we shouldn’t date did you misunderstand?”
Jason kept his eyes forward. “If we were dating, I’d be holding your hand.”
Rachel glanced at her hand swinging beside his. When was the last time she’d held a man’s hand?
“I’m sure you have better things to do on a Saturday morning than hanging more Christmas lights.”
“You’re right.”
“Ha!” Maybe he was seeing his way to her point of view.
“I could be taking the beautiful new woman in my life out for brunch, or maybe dinner. But since she’s playing hard to get, I have to settle for hanging her Christmas lights instead.”
Maybe not.
“Jason!”
He stopped at a twelve-foot noble fir. “This one’s nice.”
“I have ten-foot ceilings.”
“That might prove tight.” He moved across the aisle to the shorter trees.
“I’m not going to date you.”
His eyes told her he wasn’t convinced. “Fine.”
“I need this job.”
“You’ve told me that.”
“I mean it, for better or for worse, Owen and I need to stay here until he turns eighteen.”
“Why is that, exactly? Was it something his mother wanted?”
“No, Em wouldn’t want us anywhere near here.”
Jason stopped looking at trees. “I don’t understand.”
Rachel looked over her shoulder, then back.
“It’s complicated. If Owen walks up, I’m dropping the subject.”
Jason glanced around, didn’t see Owen. “Fair enough.”
“Owen’s paternal grandparents live close by. They haven’t had a relationship with Owen at all.” She glanced up, then moved closer and lowered her voice. “When Emily died, she had made it clear I was to be Owen’s guardian. But the Colemans thought differently.”
“Owen’s grandparents.”
“Right. They immediately hired lawyers. I knew ultimately they could win, especially when they said they were going to get Owen’s father involved.”
“Does Owen know his dad?”
“Barely.” She looked up, stiffened. “There is more to the story that has to wait. Bottom line, we’re here to avoid a battle I would lose. And I can’t afford to live here without my job.”
“There you two are.” Owen’s words stopped the conversation in half a second.
Rachel painted on a smile. “I see you found cocoa and candy.”
Owen stirred his hot beverage with a candy cane.
Two kids ran past them and darted into the thick of the trees.
“Never enough sugar.” Owen licked the candy and turned around.
Rachel found Jason watching her, his smile a little less cocky, his eyes a little more serious. “What kind of tree do you like, Owen?” he asked.
“One that smells like pine.”
Rachel giggled. “I think we’re good, then.”
Thirty minutes of pulling trees aside and making sure they didn’t have massive empty spots where the wind had taken out the branches during their growth, and they finally had their tree.
Jason attempted to pull out his wallet, something Rachel bet was a common thing for him, but she refused. “My home, my tree, my bill.”
He scowled.
“You’ve helped enough already.”
He stood back and let her pay.
Chapter Eight
The tree overtook the living room. Owen’s smile outshined it all.
It was past nine when Jason secured the tree in the stand and made adjustments to Rachel’s satisfaction. Owen opened a box of unused lights and went to work.
“We really can take it from here,” Rachel told him.
Jason said nothing and stared.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Coffee?”
“That’s more like it. I’d love a cup of coffee.”
She disappeared into the kitchen; the sound of cupboards opening and closing emerged.
“She doesn’t like asking for help,” Owen whispered.
“I can tell,” Jason whispered back.
“I’ve been trying to paint her room for over a month, but she’s never gone longer than a few hours when I’m not at school.”
“Her room needs to be painted?” Jason glanced at the stairs, had a sudden desire to see the inside of her personal space.
“Everything in this house needed repairs and paint. I helped a little before school started, but she’s done most of it herself. You should take her out to dinner so I can surprise her.”
The kid was smooth, Jason gave him props. “I’ll see what I can do.” He lifted his hand, palm up. “I’ll give you my cell phone, and we can coordinate.”
Owen grinned, looked beyond Jason’s shoulder, and handed him his phone.
Rachel walked back into the room, coffee cups in hand, before Jason finished typing it in. “So that’s how you do that?” he said to Owen, handing over the phone.
Owen laughed. “Yeah. It came with the new update.”
“I’ll have to try it out.” Jason kept the ruse going.
“With your broken phone?” Rachel asked, handing him his cup.
Faking innocence, Jason said, “Right.”
She shook her head. “Did you want cream or sugar?”
He took a drink. “Black is fine.”
“Ha. That’s what she said,” Owen chimed.
“Very funny.” Rachel sat on the sofa, facing the tree.
Jason didn’t catch the joke. It must have shown on his face.
Owen pointed a finger at his face. “Black.”
Jason’s laugh started slow and built. “That was funny.”
“How are those lights coming?” Rachel pushed. “You do have school in the morning.”
Half an hour later, the lights were perfectly set, and the boxes of brand-new ornaments were empty. Jason didn’t remember the last time he trimmed a tree, and this year he’d done it twice. There had to be a message in there somewhere.
“My work here is done!” Owen dropped a plastic bag as if he were exiting the stage and dropping a microphone.
“Not bad for our first attempt.” Rachel rested with her back against the sofa, her legs crossed at her ankles and propped on the coffee table.
Owen stretched, looked at his feet. “Much as I’d love to help clean this up, I have school in the morning.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave it for you to take care of when you get home.”
Owen shook his head and walked toward the stairs. “Thanks for your help, Jason.”
“Anytime.”
Owen looked between the two of them. “She has to work in the morning,” he said.
Jason noted the suggestion. “My boss hates it when I’m late, too.”
“Okay, then. Good night.”
“Good night,” they echoed back.
“He’s a great kid,” Jason said once they were alone.
Rachel didn’t take credit. “Emily did a fantastic job.”
“You’re picking up the pieces like you know what you’re doing.”
She shrugged. “Trial by fire, I’m here to tell you.”
“You make it look easy.”
She finally looked in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“So, Owen’s grandparents . . .” The questions had burned in his brain all evening as he’d waited for a little time alone with her to understand the details of her situation.
Her smile fell. “They agreed not to file a custody suit if we moved here. I had to buy, not rent, as proof that we weren’t going to just leave.”
“So you found a job in Manhattan and made the move.”
“This year has been hard enough on Owen. I didn’t want the threat of him being forced to move away hanging around us for six months to a year, then see him here without living with me once the Colemans won.”
“You’re sure they would have?” Not that he wanted her to fight and move away. She was a valuable employee, and there was that whole hand-holding thing he wanted to eventually get to.
“They have money. They have a blood relation. And if TJ demanded custody, it would have happened sooner than later.”
“TJ is the dad?”
“Yep, Tereck Junior. He and Em had a thing for about a year. He went off on some photojournalist job when she found out she was expecting Owen. She never kept it from TJ, but according to her, he would have sucked at the dad thing, and they both agreed that Owen should stay with her.”
Jason had a hard time with any man who didn’t take on the weight of his own child. “Did he help her out, at least?”
“Sometimes. She didn’t demand it. I asked her about it a few times, especially when money was tight . . . she told me she’d always wanted to be a mother but didn’t see herself being a wife. That if Owen hadn’t have happened when he did, she might have taken matters into her own hands and never let the dad know.”
“That’s harsh.”
“It probably happens more than we think. In vitro is great and all, but expensive when you consider the alternative.”
“Does Owen know TJ is his dad?”
“Yep.”
“He seems well-adjusted, considering the man isn’t around.”
“Emily always said that having no dad, or not one you expected to be around, was better than thinking you were important to someone only to be disappointed.” Rachel sighed, looked at him briefly, then back to the tree. “She didn’t have a great rela
tionship with her father.”
“Obviously.”
“But she didn’t stop TJ from having the chance with Owen. She simply never sugarcoated the man to Owen, never said he should be or shouldn’t be anything. It helped that TJ wasn’t around in the early years, and by the time Owen met him, he was old enough to take the man with a shrug.”
Jason couldn’t wrap his brain around the whole thing. “But the Colemans want custody?”
“Yeah. Early on they wanted nothing to do with Em. Thought she was after their money or some stupid thing. My guess is, since TJ never settled down and hasn’t given them legitimate grandchildren, they want a shot now that Em isn’t in the way.”
“Forcing it isn’t the way to go,” he said.
“That’s what I told them. I can’t argue with a grandparent wanting to know their grandson. Even TJ made it to Emily’s funeral. After everything settled, I realized that if something happened to me, Owen wouldn’t have anyone. I mean, my parents would step up, but they’d be just as hard for Owen to live with as the Colemans. So as long as everyone plays nice, Owen and I will stay here and make a new life.”
Jason paused. “And if everyone doesn’t play nice?”
She made eye contact and smiled. “I hear Panama is nice this time of year.”
It sounded like a joke, but he wouldn’t put it past her. “It is, actually.”
“You’ve been?”
“I own a company that flies private jets. I’ve been everywhere.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if she’d forgotten who he was. “What are you doing in my living room?”
He lifted his coffee cup. “Drinking cold coffee and giving you a chance to know me.”
“Hardly. I’ve done all the talking.”
Jason pushed forward on the chair. “That means we’ll have to do it again so you can dig into my secrets.”
She unfolded her legs from the coffee table. “About that.”
He held up his hand. Looked at it. “We’re not hand-holding. I have dinner with lots of my employees.”
“You put up my Christmas lights.”
He pointed two fingers in her direction. “You have me there. Still . . . nothing here is job-ending-worthy.”
She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Well, showing up late is, so . . .”
“I get the hint.” He stood along with her, and she walked him to the door.
Not Quite Crazy (Not Quite Series Book 6) Page 9