“That was pretty great of you,” she told him quietly, “sticking around and becoming your brothers’ and sister’s guardian.”
He shrugged off her compliment. “I didn’t do anything any one of them wouldn’t have done if the tables were turned,” he said, sincerely believing that. “You can bring that down if you want to look through it some more, but right now, we’d better get downstairs with the tree stand unless you want to see one annoyed little woman climbing up into the attic to give us a long lecture for taking too long up here.”
“Rita’s liable to hurt herself, climbing up here,” Amy said, concerned as she pictured the housekeeper doing that.
He laughed, getting to his feet and then extending his hand to Amy. “I wouldn’t doubt that she’s probably more agile than we are.”
“Now that you mention it, I’d rather not put that to the test,” Amy admitted.
Taking the stand, she slowly made her way down out of the attic. Connor followed, pausing to raise the stairs back up into the ceiling before he went all the way back down to the living room.
The baby was back in his cradle and Rita was finishing up in the kitchen. She gave Connor an unfathomable look as he passed her.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she replied in a disinterested voice. “It was just that you were up in the attic for so long, I thought you forgot all about the tree that you dragged into the house and about dinner,” she added with emphasis, “and decided to live in the attic.”
“And miss out on all your good cooking?” Connor asked, his hand on his chest as if to keep his heart from leaping out. “Never happen. Amy just found an old album and we were looking at our old school pictures.”
“Uh-huh,” the housekeeper answered.
He was not about to ask her what she meant by that. Some things he was just better off not knowing.
Walking into the living room, he put down the tree stand next to the tree he’d brought in.
“How do you want to do this?” Amy asked, looking at the tree. She was ready and eager to get started.
But there was a lot of work involved with putting up their own tree and decorating it. Having Amy there had made him temporarily forget all that and only think about sharing the celebration with her.
“Tomorrow,” he answered.
She looked at him, confused. “I don’t understand. Why go through all this trouble if you’re just going to leave the tree leaning against the wall like this?” she asked.
“Seeing the tree in the town square made me want to hurry up and get one for our Christmas—the ranch’s Christmas,” he corrected, not wanting her to think he was pressuring her to think of this in any sort of personal terms. “But now that I’ve got this here, I figure it’ll be a lot easier if I get Cole to help me lower the tree into the stand. If Cole and I both hold on to it, we can keep it straight and you can tighten the screws in the stand until the tree is secured.”
She nodded. “Sounds good.”
And what sounded really good to her was that Connor was including her in this. It felt wonderful to be part of getting the house ready for the holidays. It gave her a warm feeling.
She’d done her best the last five years to infuse the spirit of Christmas into the house that she and Clay rented, but very early on, it had gotten to the point where Clay was far more interested in going out with his friends, drinking and gambling, than he was in being home with her, celebrating Christmas or anything else.
“It’s almost dinnertime,” Connor told Amy. “I’d better go get cleaned up before Rita starts giving me dirty looks.”
He began to walk by Amy when he saw a tear sliding down her cheek. Connor stopped.
“Amy?”
She turned her head away, trying to hide her face, afraid he’d spotted her tears. She pressed her lips together, doing her best to sound as if there was nothing wrong.
“What?”
Taking hold of her shoulder to keep her from trying to walk away, Connor used his other hand to turn her head toward him. His gut tightened when he saw the tears. Was this about Clay? Was she thinking about him and missing him?
“Amy, are you crying?” he asked her gently.
“I’ve got allergies.” She sniffed.
“Oh.” Because he didn’t want to embarrass her, he pretended to believe her, hoping that eventually she would open up to him. “Do you take anything for that?”
“No. Most of the time they go away on their own.” She cleared her throat so that she wouldn’t sound as if she was choking up—or worse, start crying uncontrollably.
Connor took out his handkerchief and handed it to her.
“They can be a real bear, allergies,” he said sympathetically. “Well, like I said, I’m going to go and get cleaned up. Maybe by the time I get back, your allergies will stop bothering you.”
Amy took in a long breath and then let it out again. “Maybe.”
* * *
AMY’S EYES WERE still a little red when she sat down at the table several minutes later, but there was no more evidence of tears.
After bringing the large tureen filled with stew to the table, Rita set it down, resting the ladle beside it. Automatically wiping her hands against her apron, she looked at the two occupants at the table and zeroed in on Amy.
Amy braced herself for an interrogation, or at the very least, a shower of endless questions. The housekeeper didn’t seem to make a secret of the fact that she felt it was her right to know everything that was going on with the people who lived in the house.
Instead, Rita merely nodded her head as if in response to some internal comment she’d made to herself. And then out loud she said, “The attic can be a very dusty place. Sometimes too dusty.” She looked from Amy to Connor, her expression completely unreadable. “Memories create dust.” And then the woman abruptly changed the subject.
“The stew is very hot. Be careful not to burn your mouths eating it. If you do, that will not go away in a day or two. It will make everything else—like brushing your teeth—very difficult for you.” She said it in all seriousness, as if she was imparting one of the lessons of life.
Amy exchanged a glance with Connor. They both knew the housekeeper wasn’t talking about something as mundane as brushing teeth. Amy found herself struggling not to laugh.
“Good advice, Rita. We’ll wait for the stew to cool off. That way we won’t burn our tongues or mouths,” Connor told the woman with such a straight face, for a second, Amy thought he was being serious.
Only the twinkle in his eye gave him away.
Chapter Eleven
“Well, this is new,” Cole commented as he let himself into the house and walked into the living room early the next morning. Connor was already in the room.
Cole moved in closer to inspect the tree that was still propped up in the corner where it had been left the day before. Because it had yet to be placed into the tree stand, the ropes remained securely tied around the tree.
Cole glanced over toward his brother. “You holding the tree for ransom or something?”
“I left the ropes on until I could get some help putting the tree up,” Connor answered. “It’s too unwieldy otherwise.”
“Isn’t this a little early for you?” Cole asked, curious. “You usually don’t get a tree until right before Christmas. Last year you said you were thinking of not even bothering with a tree this time around.”
Connor remembered. He had said that because Cody and Cassidy had moved out into their own homes with their own families, and he’d had a feeling that Cole wasn’t going to be far behind. To his way of thinking, a single man didn’t need to have a huge Christmas tree. Decorated and all lit up, it only served to remind him of all the things that he didn’t have.
“Changed my mind,” Connor told h
is brother. “Besides, if I’m going to go through all this trouble of lugging in and decorating a tree, I might as well do it sooner and have it around longer.”
Cole nodded his head. “So you’re planning on hanging on to it until it turns into kindling and poses a fire hazard. Smart,” he said sarcastically.
Connor gave his brother an annoyed look.
“Not that long,” Connor retorted. “Now, are you going to help me get it into the tree stand, or are you just going to stand around and yap all day?”
“You mean I’ve got a choice?” Cole asked as if that was a serious consideration.
Connor’s eyes narrowed. He just wanted to get the tree up so he could get to work outdoors. Yesterday had turned out to be a lost day, not that he minded in the least how he’d wound up spending it, but the horses couldn’t be neglected for too long.
“Just get your butt over there and help me center this tree over the stand,” he told his brother.
Amy had walked in on the tail end of the exchange. She smiled a greeting at Cole.
“See how he treats me?” Cole pretended to complain to her.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Amy,” Connor countered. “Just get ready to tighten the screws against the tree trunk when I tell you.”
“You’re finally putting the tree up?” she asked, excited over the prospect of decorating the tree.
It was really a rhetorical question. Amy quickly grabbed the stand and pulled it over, ready to help in any way she could.
Getting down on her knees between the two brothers, she quickly positioned the stand so that the moment they picked the tree up, the stand would be directly underneath it.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she said.
As Connor and Cole carefully picked up and then lowered the tree, Amy made sure the stump was inside the stand. When it was, she began to work the screws, tightening first one, then the other, then the third, turning each equally so the tree would wind up going in straight.
“The screws are all as tight as they can go,” Amy announced from beneath the tree.
“Get out from under there,” Connor told her, “and then we’ll let go of the tree and see if it’s actually straight.”
“And stable,” Cole added. He still had a good hold on the tree and didn’t look as if he was inclined to let the tree go. “Don’t forget stable.”
“Don’t be so skittish,” Connor said, recalling one incident with the tree that went less than smoothly. “The tree only fell on you once.”
“Once was enough,” Cole assured him.
“The tree fell on you?” Amy cried, still on the floor on her stomach as she made adjustments to the stand.
“Only because Cassidy jostled it,” Connor said. “We hadn’t finished tightening the stand on the trunk—it was a case of too many cooks spoiling the stew.”
“Stew wasn’t nearly as heavy as that tree was,” Cole recalled.
“Stop sounding like an old lady,” Connor admonished.
Crouching slightly, he gave Amy his hand and helped her to her feet. Once she was up, they all took a step back away from the tree.
“What do you think?” he deliberately asked her, not Cole, as he regarded the tree critically.
Amy slowly circled the still-bound Christmas tree. “Looks straight to me,” she finally pronounced. “Of course, it’ll look a lot better once you cut the ropes and the branches fill out the silhouette a little more.”
Connor glanced at his brother. “Cole?”
“Yeah, looks pretty straight to me,” he agreed.
“Okay,” Connor said, “only one thing left to do.” He went to get something to cut with out of the kitchen.
Amy and Cole heard Rita issue a protest. “Not my carving knife!”
When Connor walked back into the living room, he shook his head. “I swear that woman gets more possessive every day. She’s going to think she owns everything in the house in another couple of years.”
Amy suppressed a grin. “Is that hers?” she asked, nodding at the knife that Connor had in his hand.
“No,” he told her, cutting away the ropes. “It’s a different one.”
He made short work of the ropes he’d initially tied around the tree he’d cut down yesterday and they fell to the floor around the tree in an uneven circle. Setting the knife aside, Connor shook out various sections of the tree, coaxing the branches to fill out.
“So I take it we’re spending the rest of the day decorating your tree?” Cole asked once the branches had all responded and the Christmas tree looked full and healthy.
“No,” Connor answered as Amy gathered up the ropes from the floor. “The horses need to be fed, watered and groomed, and there’s some more work to be done on that fence we were working on. We lost a full day yesterday and it has to be made up somehow.”
“What about the tree?” Amy asked him, putting the pieces of rope on the coffee table.
“We can decorate the Christmas tree slowly. The important thing is that we got it up,” he told her. “And don’t forget, Miss Joan expects to see you and the baby, so we need to go into town.”
“Today?” Cole asked, surprised.
“No, not today. I don’t have the time,” Connor pointed out. “But it has to be soon. You know how Miss Joan is. She doesn’t like being left out of anything.”
“And she shouldn’t be,” Cole agreed. “If it wasn’t for her, we would have all gone hungry and done without more than a few times.”
Rather than bristle at the reminder the way Clay might have, Amy thought, Connor wholeheartedly agreed.
“Preaching to the choir, boy. Preaching to the choir,” he told his brother.
Cole cocked his head in the direction of the back bedroom. “Speaking of choir, sounds to me like an angel just woke up. An angry angel,” Cole qualified with amusement as he looked in Amy’s direction.
Amy nodded. She was glad that Jamie had slept for as long as he had. “I’ll go see what he wants,” she said, heading to the guest bedroom. She’d brought the baby down in the wee hours of the morning and put him into the cradle, wanting to keep him close by as she helped with the tree.
But Connor caught her hand, keeping her in place. “I’ll go,” he said. “Might as well see him while I’m still here.”
Bemused, Cole looked at his brother, then at Amy, giving her a look of confusion. Amy smiled.
“I think your brother’s a baby whisperer,” she told him. “No matter how much Jamie’s fussing, all Connor has to do is pick him up and start talking to him and just like that, Jamie’s all smiles.”
Cole laughed as he nodded knowingly. “Well, Connor’s had four other babies to train on. And he does seem to have a knack for this sort of thing,” Cole agreed. “I saw it right from the start, when Cody brought Devon’s baby to the house. Personally, I think that babies think Connor’s another baby, just like them—except that he’s a little large for his age.”
“I heard that,” Connor said, coming back into the room.
“Well, at least your hearing’s still good, so you can’t be getting that old,” Cole teased.
Connor gave him a dismissive look. “I’ll show you old. Try and keep up with me out there today,” he challenged.
“Ha!” Cole laughed. “No problem.”
“Amy, I believe this is yours,” Connor said, transferring the baby into her arms.
The moment he left the shelter of Connor’s arms, Jamie made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a protest.
“See,” Amy said to Cole, “he’s fussing already. I told you, there’s something about Connor that just calms him right down.”
“That’s because Connor’s boring,” Cole said, darting out of the way before Connor could cuff him.
“Don’t pay any atten
tion to him,” Connor said, addressing the baby. Looking up, he met Amy’s eyes. “I’ll keep my cell phone on me. Call if you need me. Otherwise, I’ll see you tonight,” Connor told her just before he left.
“Does she know what a big deal that is?” Cole asked as his brother closed the door behind him.
“What are you talking about?”
“You keeping your cell phone on you,” Cole said as they got into Connor’s truck and headed for the main stable. “You hate that thing.”
“This is the twenty-first century. Concessions have to be made,” Connor answered without looking at his brother.
“Yeah, right. Concessions,” Cole echoed, then laughed as if he knew Connor was just making excuses.
Connor decided it was better not to respond.
* * *
“OKAY, LITTLE MAN,” Amy said to the baby in her arms as she turned away from the door, “time to feed you breakfast—and then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with the rest of your day. Sound good?”
Jamie made some sort of a noise that was half a squeal, half a gurgle.
Amy smiled. She was feeling a great deal more relaxed these days than she had during the first six months of Jamie’s life. Then she was always worried that the baby would cry, causing Clay to yell at her and Jamie. The atmosphere had gotten incredibly tense.
Being here was good for Jamie, she thought. And for her. And that, she knew, was all Connor’s doing, bless him.
After feeding the baby and herself, Amy spent some time playing with the little boy, but it wasn’t all that long before he became drowsy and wound up napping again. She put him back into the cradle.
At loose ends, Amy decided to bring down at least some of the decorations out of the attic. She didn’t think Connor would mind her doing that. Besides, it would be saving him some extra work, she told herself. Most men didn’t like to have to bring boxes down out of the attic, or be stuck taking decorations out of those boxes, for that matter.
Clay never made any attempt to help with the decorations. Not even in the very beginning. What she did remember him doing was complaining that the decorations cost too much money even though, most of the time, she was the only one who was working and she paid for the decorations.
A Baby for Christmas Page 9