Evergreen Springs

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Go,” she said when he hesitated. “We’re just fine. I’m happy to stay and help. I want to, actually. We put all the work into cutting down the tree and I don’t want to leave until I see it all decorated. Right now, I can’t imagine anything I would rather do or anyone I would rather be doing it with.”

  This time, both kids giggled and Ty even leaned into her arm a little bit. They had responded to Devin in a way they hadn’t to anyone else—certainly not the two housekeepers they’d gone through. Even with Tricia, they had been a little bit standoffish, maybe because she had been preoccupied with her failing marriage and her pregnancy.

  If Devin Shaw wanted to help him out with the children so he didn’t have to worry about them for a change—if she wanted to keep them entertained here at the house, where they were warm and comfortable and relatively content—he didn’t see how he could refuse.

  “Fine. I appreciate it. I don’t know why you’re helping us, but I’m...grateful.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she answered with a soft smile, and it took every ounce of self-control he had fought to develop over these past few years not to step forward and kiss that sweet mouth.

  Instead, he shoved on his hat and grabbed his ranch coat, then headed out, hoping the December air would cool his overactive imagination.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “OH, WOW. LOOK at this.”

  Devin gazed into the box she had just opened, where a delicate crystal angel had been carefully nestled in tissue paper after some prior Christmas.

  The angel had flowing gold robes and a kind-looking face. Both Ty and Jazmyn paused their rummaging through boxes for ornaments to admire her.

  “Oooh! She’s pretty,” Ty exclaimed.

  “That should definitely go on top of the tree,” Jazmyn declared.

  The girl reached into the box to take it out and Devin bit back her words of caution. Jazmyn was actually being very careful with everything they found in the boxes.

  “I wonder if that was our great-grandma Barrett’s.”

  “That’s a pretty good guess,” Devin said. She had a feeling Cole wasn’t big on buying crystal angel tree toppers—or any ornaments, for that matter.

  The Christmas decorations they had found seemed to span many different eras and styles—though apparently the children’s great-grandma Barrett was quite fond of crocheting and knitting. They found homemade crocheted Christmas tree skirts, ornaments, stockings. There were even a knitted Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus and a reindeer, which Jaz fell in love with and wanted in her own room.

  Devin guessed that Cole’s grandmother had created them all. She must have had plenty of time for handiwork during the area’s notoriously harsh winters. Devin painted a cheerful mental picture of the woman sitting by the fire, keeping her hands busy while her husband watched television.

  “Look,” she said, pulling out another smaller container from the same larger box where she had found the angel. “Here’s a sister to the other angel. That might work on top of your tree.”

  Much to Jazmyn’s delight, they had found a trio of small, skinny pine trees in varying sizes among the decorations. She claimed the largest, naturally, about four feet tall, for her own room.

  “Is there one for my tree?” Ty asked.

  Devin shook her head. “I haven’t seen one yet, kiddo. But look. Here’s a star tree topper. Do you want that one?”

  “Okay.”

  He was such an easygoing, agreeable young man. Devin supposed that was a good thing, considering his sister was just about his exact opposite in personality.

  “Do you think the big tree is dry enough for the lights yet?”

  “Probably a little while longer.”

  For nearly two hours, they had been busy making ornaments and going through the boxes to see what they had to work with.

  Devin didn’t consider herself much of a decorator but already the few things they had set out around the house seemed to have made an improvement.

  The ranch house at Evergreen Springs was beautiful, with classic lines and a comfortable, homey feel. It was a little old-fashioned and cluttered with dusty knickknacks she couldn’t imagine Cole ever buying.

  Likely he hadn’t done much to the place since he inherited it from his grandmother. He really needed someone to come in and refresh the whole place. New curtains, a fresh coat of paint, a bit of new furniture.

  Devin’s friend Eliza Caine sprang to mind. The Christmas before, Eliza had swept into Snow Angel Cove, the huge rambling lodge owned by billionaire tech genius Aidan Caine, and turned it into a warm, beautiful home.

  While built on a much smaller scale, Evergreen Springs reminded her of Snow Angel Cove. The lovely home could use the same attention as Snow Angel Cove, skills Devin certainly didn’t have.

  “Since we’re still waiting on the big tree, can I take these ornaments to my room and decorate my tree?”

  “Sure. Let’s do it.”

  “Then mine,” Ty insisted.

  “Absolutely.”

  Devin carried up both slender trees while the children hauled the boxes of ornaments. She set Ty’s down in the hallway for now and followed Jazmyn into her room.

  “Oh. What a great bedroom!” she said.

  Jazmyn looked around with considerable pride at the comfortable space that held a double bed covered in a gauzy canopy and a purple quilt. “Aunt Tricia helped me find a new bedspread and curtains. This used to be her room and her bed. When she got here at Thanksgiving, she said it looked too old and dingy for me. We ordered new stuff and everything came in the mail this week.”

  “I love it! Where do you want to put the tree?”

  Jazmyn pointed to the small space near her bed. “That way I can see it before I go to sleep,” she said.

  Devin mostly supervised as the children hung the few ornaments Jazmyn had picked out along with some of the snowflakes she’d cut out. Finally, Jazmyn placed the miniature angel on top.

  “Let’s see how it looks. Ty, turn off the lights.”

  Her brother obediently went to the doorway to flip the switch. Though afternoon sunlight still filtered through the curtains, the colored lights on the tree lit up the room and the angel glowed gold.

  “Oh,” Jazmyn breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I especially like the angel,” Devin said with a smile.

  They stood for a moment, admiring their handiwork, then Jazmyn finally spoke, her voice subdued.

  “Do you think our mom is an angel?”

  Devin caught her breath at the unexpected question. How was she supposed to answer that? She had her own religious and philosophical views—reinforced by her time as a physician where she balanced science with the unexplainable—but she didn’t know what position Cole took on the matter and she didn’t want to overstep. “It helps to think she is, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess.” Jazmyn’s eyes glimmered in the lights from the tree. “I miss her a lot.”

  “Oh, honey.” Devin caught her small frame in a hug, then felt two other little arms trying to span both of them when Ty came over to join in the embrace.

  Her throat felt thick and tears burned in her own eyes. These poor children. She was a grown woman when her father had died and she still missed him every single day, though he had been gone for several years. Losing a loved one left an empty space in the heart reserved just for that person. She couldn’t imagine losing a parent when she was only a child, before she was old enough to store up wonderful memories to last a lifetime.

  “I’m so sorry, my dears. I’m sure you do miss her. It hurts when we lose someone we love, doesn’t it? I’m afraid there’s really nothing anyone can say to make that hurt go away. It does help to remember how very lucky you are to have a dad who loves you, who’s trying his best to help you through this t
ough time.”

  Ty nodded but she noticed Jazmyn didn’t say anything. Obviously, the relationship between Cole and his daughter was a tense one. It made her sad for both of them.

  “Can we do my tree now?” the boy asked after a moment, with the resilience of the young that she fiercely envied.

  “Yes. Let’s do it. After that, the big tree will probably be dry enough for us to decorate. By then, we’re going to be experts at tree decorating.”

  Ty raced across the hall. His room also had fresh curtains and what looked to be a new quilt, this one in red, white and blue.

  “I never had my very own Christmas tree in my room before,” Ty said.

  “Last year, we didn’t even have a Christmas tree,” his sister added. “We didn’t even have a house. We had to stay in a dumb hotel because we didn’t have anywhere else to live.”

  “We got to go swimming there, anytime we wanted. It was fun. And Santa found us anyway, even in a hotel,” Ty said.

  She brushed a hand over his hair, admiring him for being able to find the good in a tough situation.

  “He did,” Jazmyn conceded. “He had to put our presents on the floor around a lamp, I guess because we didn’t have a real tree that year. The year before that, we had a white one with pink lights, though, the kind my mom liked. That’s when we lived with Carlos. Or was it Len? I can’t remember.”

  “I don’t know. I was only four,” Ty pointed out. “I wasn’t even in school.”

  The picture they painted of life with their mother wasn’t a very pleasant one, but then Tricia had intimated their mother had been a mess.

  Devin had to hope things would be better for them now, since they had been reunited with their father. Despite his abrupt nature and the secrets she sensed about him, Cole seemed a decent man who seemed genuinely concerned about his sister and about his children.

  They all deserved a wonderful Christmas together, this chance to create new traditions and begin building their lives together.

  “Well, you have two beautiful trees in your rooms now. Let’s go check the big tree your father cut down. Keep your fingers crossed that it’s finally ready for the lights.”

  * * *

  SHE COULD THINK of worse ways to spend a snowy Saturday, Devin thought an hour later as she wound the last of the lights around a branch of the tree. The heavenly tart aroma of fresh-cut pine soaked through the whole room, so delicious it almost made her want a real tree of her own.

  On the other hand, she would also be smelling like a Christmas tree for days, with pine sap all over her hands, and her fingers had been poked about a dozen times by needles. She hadn’t realized what a pain stringing lights on a tree was, especially since most of the artificial kind these days came prelit.

  She wasn’t sure the smell compensated for all the hassles. She could always just buy a pine-scented air freshener.

  Cole had been right on the money about the tree’s size. It fit perfectly in front of the big window, not too tall and not too bushy.

  “How does this one look?” Ty asked from the newspaper-covered coffee table. He held up the ornament he was making with Jazmyn’s help in some empty clear balls she had found in the boxes.

  “I put some glue in it like you said and some glitter.”

  “Wonderful,” she assured him. It appeared as if a glitter gun had exploded all over the newspaper but she wasn’t going to mention that.

  “What about mine?” Jazmyn asked, not to be outdone.

  “You’re both very skilled. Now we need to start hanging them on the tree. Are you ready to decorate?”

  “Yay!” Ty exclaimed.

  “Great. We should put on music. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

  She had noticed Cole had a docking stereo station for a phone similar to hers—what did he listen to? She had to wonder—and a moment later she found a children’s Christmas music station on a radio app she had on her phone. Soon the children were singing along to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Jingle Bells.”

  Devin wrapped the ribbon garland around the tree, then left the children to hang the ornaments as she headed into the kitchen to heat up some of the pasta e fagioli soup Barbara Serrano had sent along.

  “This is the prettiest Christmas tree ever,” Jazmyn said when she returned from the kitchen to help them hang the rest of the ornaments.

  “It really is,” Devin said. She stepped back to take a look and had to smile. Against the snowy backdrop through the window, the tree glowed with colorful lights and ornaments. Just about every branch had two or three things hanging from it. It looked jumbled and off balance and completely charming.

  The entire house looked festive and bright, a far cry from what it had been a few hours earlier. They had found some artificial greenery for the big mantel in the great room and stockings now hung beneath it—one for Cole, Tricia, Jazmyn and Ty and two tiny baby stockings for Tricia’s twins.

  They had found more greenery and fairy lights to twist down the banister of the staircase and Devin had been thrilled when she found two brand-new spools of tartan ribbon in the boxes. She tied bows everywhere and gathered candles from every corner of the house for a centerpiece on the table.

  Paper snowflakes fluttered everywhere and the paper chain garland Ty had worked so hard to make was strung around the front door entrance.

  The place was still cluttered and a little old-fashioned but it looked much better than it had before, if she did say so herself.

  “Are we ready to put the big angel on top?” she asked.

  “Can I do it?” Ty asked.

  “You’re too little,” Jazmyn said. “You can’t reach.”

  “It’s pretty fragile,” Devin told him. “Plus I’m not sure you can reach the top from the ladder. Why don’t I put it up and then you can turn off the lights in here so we can see how it looks.”

  “Okay,” he said, ever cheerful. She climbed the ladder while Ty hurried to the light switch.

  “Wait until I’m done,” she cautioned, envisioning herself falling right onto the tree in the darkness.

  She carefully set the angel on the top branch, fastening the clips that kept her in place, then eased away. “How’s that? Is she straight?”

  Jazmyn tilted her head one way, then the next. “I think so. What do you think, Ty?”

  “Yep. Can I turn off the lights yet?”

  “Let me get down from the ladder first.”

  Devin stepped down and folded away the ladder she had rounded up in the garage for their decorating efforts.

  “Okay. Hit the lights.”

  Ty complied and the room was suffused in a warm, multicolored glow from the tree.

  “Oh,” Jazmyn exclaimed. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “I agree,” Devin murmured. “Good work, you guys.”

  “I wish my mom could see it,” the girl said sadly.

  Devin couldn’t help it. She put an arm around the girl and pulled her close. Ty, not to be left out, came on her other side and they stood that way for a long moment, looking at the tree and listening to “Away in a Manger” on the radio.

  They were still standing there when the front door opened and Cole walked inside. He took in the scene—the tree, the decorations, the Christmas music and the three of them standing together. She thought she saw something raw and hungry flash in his gaze but it was gone in a moment. Cole looked around the house with mock amazement.

  “Wow. Did I wander into the wrong house by mistake?”

  Ty giggled. “Nope. This is our house. It looks like Christmas, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, indeed.” He gave a full-fledged smile to his son, the first one she had seen from him. It made him look younger, somehow. Softer. Ty beamed back and even Jazmyn looked happy for the moment.
/>   Something stirred in Devin’s chest, a wistful yearning to belong to this little group.

  “Wow. You three have been so busy,” he said.

  “I made all the snowflakes,” Jazmyn informed him. “Ty wanted to make some but he can’t cut good enough.”

  Ty huffed out an annoyed breath and Devin fought the urge to reprimand the girl. Somebody needed to have a long talk with Jazmyn about being more aware of other people’s feelings. If her negative attitude went unchecked, she was going to grow into a bad-tempered teenager and a miserable adult.

  She wasn’t the girl’s parent, though. It wasn’t her place to reprimand her about anything when her father was there.

  “He’s working on it, though, aren’t you, kiddo? Ty filled all the balls with glitter. He did an awesome job with that. You’ve got two very creative kids here.”

  He hung his hat and coat on the hook by the door and slipped out of his boots, looking rumpled and gorgeous and very, very tired.

  “I’m sorry I was gone so long.”

  “We only just finished, so really, your timing was perfect. Is everything okay?”

  He sighed. “Not really. One of the horses I’m training has turned up lame and the vet is stumped as to what the problem is or how to fix it. No obvious sign of trauma or heat. We’ve ruled out abscess but don’t know what else might be going on. I have to contact the owner and see what she wants me to do from here.”

  “How frustrating. I feel for the vet. So much of medicine, for people, at least, is trial and error. It must be even worse when the patient can’t explain where it hurts.”

  “Right. That definitely adds to the frustration. Anyway, thanks for sticking around so long. That would have been a long time for the kids to hang out down in the barn.”

  “No problem. I was glad to help. I should probably take off, though. There’s soup warming up on the stove and those fresh bread sticks from Serrano’s on the counter for your dinner.”

  “That sounds great. I’m starving.”