“I’m going to get some of the ornaments out of the attic,” she told Rita in case the woman suddenly needed to talk to her.
Rita nodded, as if she’d expected her to do that all along.
“Unless you need me for something,” Amy qualified, thinking that the housekeeper might appreciate the help.
Rita gave her one of her unfathomable looks. “Why would I need you for something?” she asked.
“Just in case,” Amy said.
Rita waved her off. “Go. Your son’s sleeping. Do whatever you want to do.”
Amy didn’t have to be told twice.
She shouldn’t have left Forever so quickly, Amy lamented ruefully as she made her way up into the attic.
Or at all, she amended. But her dad had died and her mother had remarried. Her mother’s new husband had wanted to move to California, the sooner the better. With no family in Forever, she felt there wasn’t really anything there for her anymore.
It was while she was finding her way around in this pit of loneliness that Clay swept into her life like a twister, snatching away her breath and apparently all of her common sense, she thought now as she selected a number of boxes to bring downstairs.
Making her way down the ladder carefully, Amy continued reviewing her past. She wished she had thought things out more carefully. Wished she had seen Connor as more than just a friend back then.
Because he was so much more. She felt her pulse begin to rush the way it did every time she started to think about him.
You’re leaning on him too much. Depending on him too much, she warned herself fiercely. If she wasn’t careful, she’d wind up scaring him away or making him regret taking her in. Then where would she be?
She was seeing him in a romantic light and he was probably seeing her just as a friend, the way he always had. Connor had always been a very good friend to her, and if she wasn’t careful, she was going to wind up losing that.
Stop it. You’ve got things to do, not moon around about Connor. You can’t pay him back for his kindness by acting like some lovesick, desperate female.
Get busy, she ordered herself.
Amy divided the rest of her morning between looking in on Jamie—tending to him whenever he needed something—and bringing down the rest of the Christmas decorations.
Initially, she’d meant to bring down only a box or two. Or maybe three.
She wound up bringing them all down. And then, after lunch, having nothing to occupy herself with after she helped clear the table—Rita insisted she didn’t need any help with preparing dinner—Amy slowly took all the ornaments out of their boxes, lining them up on the floor near the tree like colorful little soldiers waiting to be pressed into service.
Unable to resist, once she had all the decorations unpacked and ready, she hung a few of the ornaments up, placing a few here and there. She did it to give the tree a little life and make it look more like a Christmas tree than a tree that had been brought into the house to be sheltered from whatever storms might eventually be out there.
Unable to find a ladder, Amy dragged a chair over to the tree so she could hang some of the ornaments up higher. Climbing onto the chair, she started to hum Christmas carols.
That was how Connor found her. Humming Christmas carols to herself, standing on a chair and hanging an ornament up on one of the upper branches.
Watching, he felt something warm tug at his heart at the same time that something in his gut tightened. Hard.
If he could have, he would have stood there like that all evening, just watching Amy hang up ornaments. But he knew she was bound to turn around and see him. He didn’t want her to feel self-conscious or uncomfortable. Most people didn’t like being caught off guard, and humming while decorating a Christmas tree easily fell under that category.
“I see that you took down all the ornaments out of the attic,” he said, coming forward.
She turned around and he saw her cheeks redden. It was a definite improvement over the tearstains he’d seen on them yesterday.
A flash of guilt crossed her face, as well.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Taking her hand, he helped her down from the chair. “No need to apologize,” he told her. “I just didn’t want you to do all that work by yourself.”
“Well, it wasn’t like I had to clear my schedule,” she said with a laugh. “Jamie was pretty well behaved today after his session with you, and Rita absolutely didn’t need my help with anything. She made a point of telling me that more than once. So I thought, since you brought this beautiful tree into the house, the least I could do was get down all the Christmas decorations from the attic for you. Once I had them down, I would have left them there, but I still had nothing to do, so I started slowly taking them out of the boxes.”
“You didn’t have any trouble carrying all those boxes down from the attic?” Connor asked skeptically.
“I juggled them,” Amy deadpanned. Then, unable to carry it off, she laughed. “No, I just kept going up and down until I brought down all the boxes.” She looked at the tree. “I was going to wait until you got home before I hung up anything, but I thought you wouldn’t mind if I did one or two.”
“No, I don’t mind,” he told her. “I’m just glad you left the rest of the ornaments for us to hang up together.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You like decorating the Christmas tree?”
“Actually, it’s one of my very favorite things,” Connor admitted. “It reminds me of when my mother was alive. She and Dad used to each take a side of the tree and pretend to compete to see who ‘did the better job’ decorating. Dad always said he let Mom win because it made her so happy.” His smile widened as he recalled the memory. “Mom always said she won because she was so good at it.”
Amy felt wistful. She found herself wishing she had memories like that to look back on. “Sounds like they both won.”
“Well, I don’t know about them, but I know that I sure did. So did Cole and Cody. Those were some of the happiest days of our lives.”
“Are you two going to stand there and talk all evening, or are you going to come into the dining room and have dinner?” Rita asked. She was standing in the doorway, looking at them reprovingly.
“We’ll come and have dinner, of course,” Connor told the combative housekeeper. Taking Amy by the arm, he said, “Let’s go, Amy. The tree can wait.”
Yes, she thought. It certainly can.
It gave her something to look forward to.
Chapter Twelve
Practice makes perfect, Amy thought with a smile as she tiptoed out of the baby’s bedroom where she’d put him to bed for the night.
She had gotten very good at getting Jamie fed, changed and ready for bed. However, it did take her a bit longer this evening before she managed to get him to go to sleep. The minute his bright blue eyes closed and his breathing had taken on the easy, steady cadence, Amy headed straight downstairs for the living room and the Christmas tree.
Connor was waiting for her.
He’d opted not to do any more decorating until Amy could come down to join him. To his way of thinking, this decorating for Christmas was more for her benefit than for his.
Watching her now, he couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve never seen anyone pick up an ornament so fast before.”
She flushed a little, embarrassed that perhaps she seemed just a little too eager. But the truth of it was that she was eager. All her suppressed feelings about the season finally had an avenue of escape.
“I thought you’d get started without me,” she told Connor.
“What’s the fun in that? The whole idea behind decorating a Christmas tree is having someone to do it with,” he told her simply. He saw that his words had generated a sad smi
le on her lips in response. That hadn’t been his intent. “What?”
Amy shrugged self-consciously. She shouldn’t be dwelling on sad memories. This was a happy time. “All the Christmases I spent with Clay, he never once offered to help me decorate the tree. The first year, when I asked him to come with me to pick one out, he said he thought the whole thing was a waste of time and money. He told me that if I really wanted to have a Christmas tree, I had to get one of those small artificial trees so I wouldn’t be constantly throwing out money, buying a new one every year.” Reaching up, she hung a small silver bell on one of the higher branches. “It never quite felt like Christmas to me, decorating a little fake tree, but then, I suppose it was better than nothing,” she said philosophically.
“Well, careful what you wish for,” he said with an amused smile. “You’re going to be decorating a ten-footer this time around.”
“Not by myself,” she said, looking at Connor, her meaning clear.
“No,” he readily agreed. “Not by yourself.” Stepping back, he took a long, thoughtful look at the tree. He knew he’d forgotten something. “As a matter of fact, maybe before you put another single decoration up, I should get the lights up first.”
Taking a second look at the tree, Amy realized he was right. She’d been so eager to decorate the tree, she’d gotten ahead of herself. The lights definitely needed to go on first.
“Tell me what you want,” she told Connor. “I’m ready and willing to help.”
What he wanted, Connor thought, was to take that delicate face of hers between his hands, lower his mouth to it and kiss her. That had nothing to do with decorating a tree and everything to do with bringing the spirit of Christmas to life.
At least for him.
It would also, he thought ruefully, scare Amy right out of the ranch house and possibly out of the state, as well. So, focusing on the issue at hand, Connor answered, “You can try to keep the tail end of the string from tangling while I hang up these lights.”
“That’s all?” she asked, disappointed and feeling a little useless.
He pulled over the box that contained the strings of lights and opened it. He frowned as he looked down into the box and contemplated its contents: lots and lots of tangled-up Christmas lights.
“Believe me,” Connor said, loosening the first string he found, “that’s a lot. Tangled-up strings of Christmas lights definitely take the merry out of Christmas, at least for me.”
“Then I’ll do my very best to untangle them for you and keep them that way,” Amy promised.
They got started.
She felt a little silly following him around in what amounted to circles as Connor attached the lights to the uppermost branches and worked his way slowly down and around the tree.
It took well over an hour and involved five separate strings with a total of countless multicolored lights on each string, but in the end, he’d managed to cover the entire ten-foot tree with Christmas lights.
He plugged the end of the connected strings into a wall socket, and the tree came to brilliant life.
“It’s beautiful,” Amy murmured with a note of awe in her voice. She stepped back to get a better, more inclusive view of the tree. “You did it,” she whispered, moved.
“We did it,” Connor corrected. “You cut my work in half. Without you, I’d still be tugging the lights out of the box, trying to untangle them and doing my very best not to turn the air blue.”
“You don’t curse,” she reminded him, denying his flippant assessment.
“Ha!” he laughed. “You haven’t been around me after I spent three hours trying to put up strings of lights that just keep getting more tangled, not less.”
He was just saying that to make her feel good, she thought. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, thanks to you and your help, you’ll never know,” Connor told her. Blowing out a breath, he looked around the room. The floor was littered with empty boxes. “So what do you want to do?” he asked her. “Call it a night, or hang up a couple of decorations before turning in to grab a little sleep before your son decides he needs more attention?”
Her eyes met his. “What do you think?”
He saw the sparkle in her eyes, as well as the almost blinding smile on her lips. “I think I want to know what kind of vitamins you’re taking and I want to get my hands on a supply.”
“No vitamins,” she denied. “I’m just really happy right now, that’s all.”
And she was. Really happy and that was all Connor’s doing.
“Well, then, by all means, let’s hang up a few decorations,” he agreed. He loved seeing her like this. Loved the way she seemed to positively shine. He wanted to absorb the sight of that as much as he could.
A “few” decorations turned into a few more. And then a few more after that until all the ornaments she had taken out of their boxes earlier that day had found their place on the Christmas tree and there was absolutely nothing left to hang up.
“I guess the only thing that’s left to do is clear away these boxes and store them up in the attic,” Amy said. She looked around one more time to see if there were any more ornaments that she’d happened to overlook.
There weren’t.
“I think that can wait until tomorrow,” he told her with finality. He didn’t mind decorating the tree, especially since it made her so happy. But cleanup was another story.
“Rita is not going to be okay with this mess when she comes in here in the morning.”
“Rita likes to complain,” Connor said. “It’s her hobby. If she has nothing to complain about, then she really gets bent out of shape. Trust me, leaving all these empty boxes here like this gives the woman something to work with—literally.” He smiled at Amy. “Consider it a public service.”
“I never knew you had a bit of a lawyer in you,” Amy said.
“No lawyer. I’m just someone who had to raise three scrappy kids while trying to keep a ranch going and earning some sort of a profit. You learn how to put out potential fires before they get started,” he told her with a wink.
“You do have a lot of skills,” Amy said with unabashed admiration.
Connor had no idea what possessed him to look down into her incredibly tempting, upturned face and murmur, “You have no idea.”
Nor could he have said what spurred him on to do what he did next.
Because one minute they were just talking, shooting the breeze like two very old friends who knew one another well enough to finish each other’s sentences, and then the next minute, somehow those same lips that were responsible for making those flippant quips had found their way to hers.
And just like that, with no warning, he was kissing her.
Kissing Amy the way he had always wanted to from perhaps the very first moment he had laid eyes on her all those years ago.
And the kiss turned out to be better than he’d thought it would be.
Way better.
It wasn’t a case of just lips meeting lips; it was soul meeting soul.
Before Connor knew it, his arms had slipped around her, all but literally sweeping her off her feet and pulling her against him.
Into him.
The kiss deepened as he felt his pulse accelerating. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, not yet, not when she was still this vulnerable.
But despite his trying to talk himself out of it, it felt as if everything in his whole life had been leading to this very moment and it would somehow be against the natural order of things if he didn’t at least allow himself to enjoy this for a single, shimmering moment in time.
* * *
CONNOR WAS KISSING HER.
Oh my lord, she thought, stunned. He was kissing her. And something inside of her didn’t just respond to him; it sang.
Why hadn’t
he done that years ago? Amy silently demanded. Why hadn’t he kissed her and made her realize that he was the one she was meant to be with, not Clay? And now it was too late, too late because she knew the type of man Connor was.
He was honorable to a fault.
He would think of her as Clay’s wife, even if she was Clay’s ex-wife.
Men like Connor didn’t accept change easily and she had a feeling they didn’t like thinking of themselves as being second choice. Even though the realization came to her, flying into her consciousness on a thunderbolt, that Connor wasn’t second choice. Connor McCullough was the only choice and he always had been. She just hadn’t known it until this very second because her brain had been numb and she hadn’t been thinking.
Her heart was racing and her head was spinning so hard, Amy felt almost dizzy. Maybe that was why she wasn’t thinking very clearly right now, but all she could think of was that she wanted to be with this man, be with him in every possible way.
Be with him now, before she lost her courage and before he came to his senses and did something noble, albeit hurtful, and pushed her away, murmuring something about not taking advantage of her.
Rising up on her toes, she wrapped her arms around Connor’s neck and abandoned herself to the kiss, willing him to understand that it was all right if he took her now, that she wasn’t about to push him away. That she wanted this with her whole heart and soul, possibly even far more than he did.
Amy felt him responding, felt Connor wanting her as his arms continued tightening around her. Felt her moment was at hand and she was more than ready to greet it head-on with open arms.
Felt that—
The small, plaintive cry pierced the still air, shattering the moment and throwing open the door to allow reality in all its less-than-gratifying regalia to push its way into the perfect world that had, for one brief shining moment, existed.
Jamie was crying. She could hear her son all the way down there.
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