A Christmas to Remember

by Jenny Hale

  There was a creak of the door hinges, and both of them nearly jumped away from each other. David was standing in the doorway, a groggy look on his face. Carrie rushed forward and ushered him into the hallway, Adam following behind, closing the door to Olivia’s room.

  “I heard Olivia,” he said. “I tried to go back to sleep but then I heard Daddy.” They entered his room and David crawled back into bed. “Will you read to me too, Daddy?” David was already closing his eyes, snuggling down into his pillow. Adam pulled a book off his shelf and sat down next to him. David was asleep before the third page, but Adam continued to read until the entire book was finished.

  Carrie took in slow, steady breaths to try and calm the emotions that had been stirred up in Olivia’s room. Had he been ready to kiss her? Perhaps she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe he was just going to thank her for the way she’d handled Olivia.

  If they’d had a moment at all, it had clearly passed when he stood up this time, but Carrie didn’t want their time to end. She mentally scrambled for a way to keep him from going downstairs. She didn’t want to have to mingle with his family when she was in this state of mind. She wouldn’t be able to think of anything other than the few precious moments she’d just spent with Adam. Then she remembered! When they got to the hallway, she whispered, “We still have to wrap the Christmas presents. While we’re upstairs, and we know the kids are asleep, should we wrap some of them?”

  It was almost as if he sensed her motives because he responded with a slow nod, his eyes moving around her face. Then, he put his hand on the small of her back and led her down the hallway. “The presents are in the closet in my bedroom,” he whispered as they walked. She had to work to focus on his words because all she could process was the warmth of his hand on her back. The whole way she analyzed the placement of his hand. She wasn’t about to fall, she knew how to get around the house—there was no other reason for him to touch her except to be affectionate. She tried to rationalize the moments they’d had tonight, thinking that there must be some explanation for them, something other than what she was feeling, because that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would he make advances toward her—the nanny—when he could be with anyone? Someone like Andy.

  When they came to a stop, she realized that she was about to enter his bedroom. She’d never been in it before. Rose, the cleaning lady, always took care of everything in there, so Carrie had no reason to go in at all. There was something so personal about the place where Adam slept, where he closed his eyes and became vulnerable to everything around him.

  The bed was king-sized, sleek, stained in a mahogany color, the crisp white duvet and shams standing out like snow against the blue-gray walls surrounding. Carrie pictured what it would be like to be under that fluffy cover, her head sinking into the down pillow, Adam beside her, his hand on her waist. She could feel the splotches rising up her neck at the mental image. She turned away from the bed to rid her mind of the thoughts and found herself directly in front of Adam. He looked down at her, a very slight smile on his lips.

  “I set the bags over there,” he said, pointing to a leather armchair in the corner. The chair’s surface was nearly hidden from the colossal pile of bags. She’d been with Adam as he’d purchased everything in them down to the red wrapping paper and silver ribbons.

  “Do we have tape and scissors?” she asked, using all her inner strength to keep her focus on the presents. She wanted to look back at Adam to see what else he had to say in their new silent language. She wanted to feel his eyes on her, to see that smile, but she kept her eyes on the bags, rummaging around inside them and pretending to be interested in them.

  “I’ll go and get some,” Adam said.

  After he left, she allowed herself to look around the room once more. She thought how the house was so huge, so perfectly decorated that it almost seemed to be in juxtaposition to Adam. He was refined and slightly formal, but underneath that, when she thought about where he’d come from—that small town in North Carolina—the fact that he was a beer maker, how he’d played sports as a kid—it all seemed too laid-back for a place like this.

  Carrie pondered the type of house she’d like to have. There’d be a long front porch—the kind she’d had as a kid, a place where she could count the imperfections in the wooden steps from all the years of little feet, bikes, and toys hitting them. Her house would have an oak tree with a swing and a patch underneath where the grass wouldn’t grow because the children had scraped away the last of the seed, swinging on the warm days until sunset. She’d have a giant wood-burning fireplace inside for roasting marshmallows and warming sock feet, and she’d have an old sofa with her basket of quilts that her grandmother had made nearby for wrapping up on cold days. She wondered if Adam had ever thought about that kind of house before.

  “Will these do?” he said, upon return, standing in the doorway. He held out a roll of tape and a pair of small scissors. “They were in my office. I have more in the kitchen if you need it.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  He walked in and sat on the floor next to her as she unrolled a long, wide piece of red wrapping paper. “What were you thinking about just now? You looked very serious.”

  She sat silently for a moment, unsure of what to say. She didn’t want to tell him because, for one, she’d have to admit that she was thinking about him, and two, she didn’t want to be rude about his home. She tried to find a polite way to put her thoughts into words. “I was just wondering what your favorite part of this house is.” It wasn’t entirely on the mark, but she had been thinking about her own favorite parts of the home she’d like to have one day.

  Carrie slid the scissors along the inside of the paper, cutting a perfect line, the paper falling loose from the roll in her hands.

  The skin between his eyes wrinkled in thought. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Surely there was something that made you buy it,” she pressed.

  “Gwen and I picked it out together.”

  Carrie reached into one of the bags and pulled out Olivia’s crown. She set it in the center of the large rectangle of wrapping paper. “So, if you could build your own house, what would it look like?”

  “I don’t know, really.”

  Carrie gestured for him to put his finger on the present to keep the paper from slipping as she taped it down.

  He put his finger on the top, holding it in place. “As long as it has a desk…”

  “…that turns into a card table,” she said, finishing his sentence.

  He huffed out a laugh, his eyes on her. When his laughter had gone, his smile remained. He watched her as she wrapped all the presents. It made her happy, content. When she was finally done, she looked at the pile of red, shiny presents, and she wished that she had something to give him, but she had no idea what she could possibly give him that he didn’t already have.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Life events can’t always be planned. Take each event as it comes and keep focus on your inner happiness.

  Adam, who wasn’t supposed to be working, had spent the whole of yesterday in the home office while Carrie and the family stayed with the kids. It was a very odd change of events after their present wrapping moment. She enjoyed spending an entire day with Adam’s family, and she didn’t feel out of place at all. She just wished he could be with them, and she would have been annoyed that he wasn’t, but there was something different about him as he worked yesterday. When he passed them in the hallways, he smiled, his face pleasant which was different from other days he’d worked like that. At lunch, he’d taken a long time to sit with them, but then he was off again after. Was he planning something? She had no idea.

  Today, he had some sort of emergency call regarding one of the properties in his expansion—he said he had to tie up some loose ends very quickly—and Carrie thought it might be a good idea to take the kids outside to keep them quiet until he was finished. She had a small, sled in the trunk of h
er car that she’d bought for snowy days when they’d run out of things to do. This would be a perfect activity to keep the kids and their noise out of the house while Adam took his call this morning. Carrie worked quickly to bundle the children for two reasons: one, so they wouldn’t disturb Adam and the rest of his sleeping family, and two, so they wouldn’t get too warm and decide to stay inside. With one last mitten, she’d dressed the twins, and she opened the door.

  It was eerily quiet outside—no birds, no cars—just the sound of the wind in her ears. Carrie could feel the sting of it on her cheeks as she trudged through the thick, freshly fallen snow with the children in tow. They could barely walk in it, it was so deep, so Carrie asked them to try and walk inside her footsteps to keep them from falling. She reached her car, slipped the key in the lock on the trunk and popped it open. She grabbed the red and gold sled with two rope handles and a long rope for pulling and dropped it into the snow. She shut the trunk, slipped the keys into her pocket and turned around. They kids were already climbing on.

  Both of them could barely fit on it together, their limbs intertwining as they attempted to get comfortable in all their clothes. Carrie surveyed the area. There wasn’t a hill in sight, but the road was packed down more than the yard, and, with no cars anywhere. She could probably pull them along the street, maybe run in circles, swinging them gently around. With her striped, mittened hands, Carrie grabbed the rope and began to pull. It took all her might to get the kids to the road, and by the time she got there, she was tired. The kids were giggling and scooting, trying to get it to move more, as Carrie struggled to pull it. Even on the street, the snow was so fresh that it was difficult to pull. If only a plow would come by and move some of it. Her hair was itching her icy face from under her stocking cap as she tried unsuccessfully to alleviate the itch with her mittens.

  “I think you two are too heavy for all this snow,” she said. “I can hardly pull you.”

  “Come on, Carrie!” Olivia said. “We’re not that heavy.”

  Carrie pulled with all her might and they moved a few paces before the sled piled up too much snow in front of it and got stuck. “We need someone stronger,” she said. “Perhaps when Eric wakes up, he can pull you,” she said, feeling defeated. She didn’t want to take them inside, and she didn’t want to have to stop sledding. Disappointment was clear on both their faces, so she tugged again with barely any headway. She thought how if anyone were watching her, she probably looked ridiculous trying to pull these two kids in the snow. What had she been thinking? She stood for a minute to catch her breath, new flakes beginning to fall around her.

  Then, the sound of the front door as it shut made its way through the silence to the street, and she turned around. Adam was on the landing, wearing a dark ski coat, jeans, and boots. He had on a stocking cap and gloves. “Do you need help with that sled?” he asked as he made his way to the street. Carrie watched him, worried that she’d interrupted his work with her ridiculous sled idea, but he was smiling, which was a good sign.

  She felt the familiar nervous feeling overtake her anyway. After all, she was supposed to be watching the children, not him. She knew that. And she thought from what she’d seen of his mother, Joyce, that his southern manners wouldn’t allow him to watch a lady struggling with something and not help her, no matter what else he had to do. Was she imposing? Certainly, she was. He’d said himself that he had work to do.

  “May I pull you two? It looks like too much fun not to join in.” Then, he smiled, and Carrie could feel the flush on her face.

  “Yay, Daddy!” Olivia was bouncing on her bottom on the sled, David showing his slight irritation at being jostled. “Pull us, Daddy!” Olivia squealed.

  Adam grabbed the end of the rope with his gloved hand, and, taking long, wide strides, he began to pull. The sled was difficult at first, but once he got it going, it was sailing along the street. Adam ran all the way down to the end and back, the kids’ laughter and the shushing of the sled the only sounds in all that snow. Carrie, who’d started to get cold, didn’t notice it anymore. She was warm with the sight of what was in front of her. Surely he was getting tired, but he kept going, as if he were powered by the laughter of his children. As she watched him, Carrie could feel the emotions bubbling up inside, and she blinked to keep the tears from spilling over. He was making a memory for these kids. As adults, one day, they’d tell their own children about the giant snow storm in Richmond when their Daddy pulled them on the sled all the way down the street and back. She just knew it.

  Adam pulled the kids to a stop in front of her. “Pull Carrie, Daddy!” Olivia said. Adam looked over as if waiting for an answer, his cheeks bright red from running and the icy air.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Carrie said with a shy smile, “but thank you for offering, Olivia.”

  “Why not?” Adam asked.

  Carrie could hardly conceal her shock. Didn’t he have a phone call to make? He didn’t really want to pull her on the sled. Wasn’t he tired? He was being polite, she figured, so she declined just as politely. “You’re busy, I’m sure. Thank you for pulling the children.”

  “Get on,” he nodded toward the sled, and the flirty look on his face made her hands start to shake. It was like he was baiting her. Surely he didn’t really want her to get on. The kids hopped off and stood next to her.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Get on!” Olivia pressed.

  “It’s for the children,” Adam said.

  Is he serious? she thought.

  “Go on,” David said.

  Still not sure she was making the right choice, she climbed onto the sled, crossed her legs, and held onto the rope handles. As she sat there, waiting for Adam to pull her, she looked up at him. He laughed, and she couldn’t help it, she laughed too. It was silly being on that sled, but she was so happy to be there at the same time.

  Adam wrapped the rope around his gloved hand, getting leverage. Then, with a hard tug, he got her going, and she was flying down the street, the wind fighting against her cap, blowing her hair back over her shoulders, and pushing its way under her scarf. A squeal rose up as she started to turn, the runner of the sled coming off the ground. Adam hadn’t pulled the children this fast. The wind was like knives on her cheeks, the snow getting into her eyes, but she hardly noticed. She was too preoccupied with the thought of Adam pulling her on this sled. Then, faster than she could process it—as if it were in slow motion—she saw his foot go down into a snow-covered ditch, and she watched in panic as he started to fall. The sled was going so fast, she couldn’t stop it, her legs stretching out in a vain attempt to do something. Before she knew it, she’d slid right into him, toppling over and landing on his stomach. She was face to face with Adam Fletcher.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, winded.

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “That’s what I get for trying to show off.”

  Carrie laughed too, but she was glad that her cheeks were already red because she could feel the splotches coming. Adam was showing off. For her? That couldn’t be. Then, she realized that he must have meant that he was showing off for the kids. It was the only rational explanation. She wriggled around until she could get enough footing in the snow to stand. When she felt secure enough, she held out her hand to help him up. He had snow all down his back, on his jeans, in his hair. She wanted to brush it off, but she didn’t trust that she should touch him.

  “Should we all go in and warm up by the fire?” he asked. The kids, clearly worried about their father, nodded.

  “Are you okay, Daddy?” David asked.

  “I’m fine!” he said with a smile. “That was fun.”

  Carrie slipped on the dark green, silk floor-length gown she’d bought at a boutique in town while Joyce watched the kids today. The snow from that morning had hardly let up, making her trip to the shop treacherous, but she was going to the Marleys’ party tonight, and she had to have a dress. Nothing was getting in the way of her evening with Adam. He’d insisted on payi
ng for the dress since Allie had invited her to the Ashford Estate, and she really hadn’t had much choice in the matter. What she hadn’t told him was that she wasn’t doing anyone a favor by going; she was thrilled to go. She looked at herself in the mirror. The lace overlay at the top was more revealing than anything she’d ever worn before, the fabric coming down in a low V on her chest. She worried about her splotches because in this dress there would be no hiding them. She’d done her makeup tonight, but she’d kept it simple so as not to overwhelm the dress. With a tiny wobble, she slipped on the green heels she’d found to match.

  She kept thinking about Adam and sledding the whole time she was getting ready. He had changed so much in such a short time. Even though he’d worked yesterday when he was supposed to be off, and he’d had a call to make this morning, he’d made sure to get the kids settled in front of the fire, and he’d even gone and gotten them a blanket before he left. He’d spent a little time chatting with his family, and to her joy, Joyce had asked if she could take the children to see Santa, and he’d said that he’d like to go too. She finally felt comfortable talking to him about the children, but tonight, she’d test the limits of her level of security with herself because she was about to spend the evening with just him—no kids. The idea of it made her more nervous than she could mentally manage, so she focused on the task at hand: getting ready.

  She had curled her hair and twisted it up to highlight her ruby earrings. They were the perfect Christmas complement to her green dress. She’d never worn anything that fancy before, and she wanted to show off Adam’s generosity. She’d learned to do her hair when she’d nannied for Claire, who had to have her hair up for dance recitals. She was pleasantly surprised at the way the style had turned out on herself. Standing in front of the full length mirror, the toes of her dark green heels peeking out from under the satin and lace dress that fit her like a glove, she barely recognized herself.