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“Sorry, just my basic wariness rising to the surface.” He had to remember who he was dealing with. Cris had always struck him as one of the “good ones.”
“I deal with a lot of people whose favorite phrase is ‘the check’s in the mail’ when it isn’t. I tend to forget that there are really honest, decent people like you and your family around.”
That there were gave him hope, the will to continue in a world made suddenly and painfully empty three years ago. He was just now finding his way again, finding how to rebuild himself and be whole once more.
Shane also realized that he liked working at the inn, liked interacting with Cris and her entire family. He was getting a kick out of her son. He’d have to be careful not to allow that to influence him. If he wasn’t alert, his feelings might unconsciously cause him to slow down so he could continue working in this atmosphere, soaking in these people’s company.
The compliment he’d just paid Cris and her family caused Cris to blush. She sensed her cheeks growing warm. Which meant they were already turning pink.
There were moments when she would have killed for a darker complexion, she thought wistfully.
It was really time to retreat—before she started guiding in ships from the sea with her glowing cheeks. “Well, I’d better be getting back to the kitchen and start making dinner.” She paused one last time, cocking her head. “You’ll stop by?” she asked, realizing that the matter really hadn’t been settled.
“I’d be a fool not to.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Cris declared, turning on her heel.
Cris heard Shane humming “What A Wonderful World” as he raised his mask again to cover his mouth and nose then lowered the goggles he’d had on when she’d walked into the work area.
Cris smiled without realizing it as she hurried back to the kitchen.
* * *
CRIS GLANCED AT her watch again. She’d lost count of how many times she had looked at it in the past half hour. Right now, it was a little past six o’clock and neither Stevi nor Andy had ducked into the kitchen to tell her Shane was in the dining area.
Where was he?
If he planned on being at the homeless shelter at seven, that didn’t leave him much time to eat and get there... That was when she realized she had no idea where this homeless shelter was located.
Also, as a volunteer, Shane didn’t punch a time clock, she reminded herself. He could be a few minutes late getting there—if he ever got here first.
You’re spending way too much time thinking about something you have no business thinking about, Cris upbraided herself.
But in a way, she knew why she was fixating on Shane. Seeing him after all these years reminded her of a far simpler time. A time when life, with all its promises, lay before her, fresh and new. A time before the scaly hand of death had twisted her heart from her chest. In short, a time when innocence still surrounded her and anything was possible because ugliness had not yet reared its head in her world.
And, she had to admit, when she saw Shane playing with Ricky, it also reminded her of what her life could have been like if Mike had returned from his tour of duty on his own power rather than lying in a coffin.
“That is the fifth time in the past few minutes I have heard you sigh,” Jorge, her assistant, observed. “Is everything all right?” he wanted to know, concerned.
“I can’t breathe,” she told him, the less-than-truthful reason coming automatically to her lips. “Allergies,” she added for good measure.
Jorge stopped stirring the giant pot of potatoes he’d already mashed, now warming to perfection, and reached beneath the white tunic he always wore while in the kitchen. He extracted a small rectangular package from his pocket and held it out to her.
“Here, have one,” he urged. “I take two a day for my allergies. They say to take one, but that doesn’t work for the whole day,” he told her. When she made no effort to reach for the small, over-the-counter medication from him, Jorge held it closer to her. “C’mon, try it, Miss Cris,” he coaxed.
Embarrassed because she’d lied, Cris shook her head, sinking a little deeper into her untruth. “No, I already took something. Wouldn’t want to mix the two medications, just in case.”
“No, of course not,” Jorge agreed, although his tone really didn’t tell her whether he believed her or was just playing along so she could save face.
Just then, Andy, the youngest of the Roman sisters, burst into the kitchen. “Red alert,” she cried. “Hunky contractor guy has just landed in the dining room.”
Cris caught Jorge looking at her knowingly. “I think that your allergy medication has arrived,” he told her just before he turned back to his work.
Maybe she should have sent a tray to Shane’s work area, Cris thought. Too late now.
“He’s an old friend,” she protested to Jorge, not wanting the man to think that anything was going on between Shane and her. She’d dated once in the five years since Mike’s death and had vowed never again.
Everyone at the inn had watched her one attempt at dating go down in flames when she’d started seeing a man who, it swiftly became evident, wasn’t fit to polish the boots of Mike’s shadow. In addition, he tried to isolate her from her family and felt she wasn’t being strict enough with Ricky. That had been the last straw.
After that little fiasco, she’d promised herself she would never date again—and if by some wild chance she did, she wouldn’t let anyone at the inn know, so when that, too, blew up on her, she wouldn’t be the object of sympathetic looks and peppy comments that were meant to raise her morale but only succeeded in lowering it.
“An old friend,” Jorge echoed, then nodded. “The best kind to have.”
Cris frowned, reading between the lines. “Don’t patronize me, Jorge.”
He frowned at the unfamiliar word. “I do not know what that means, but I am fairly sure I am not doing what you asked me not to do,” he told her. And then he became very, very serious. “Do not let one mishap make you close yourself off,” he warned. “Breathe with your whole body and soul,” he counseled, obviously building on the allergy excuse she’d given him to explain why she was sighing.
Cris’s hands were flying as she chopped celery stalks into tiny pieces. The staccato noise went to double time as she told her assistant, “Tell you what. You take care of your body and soul, Jorge, and I’ll take care of mine. Deal?”
“But of course,” Jorge agreed. “I would never try to argue with you.”
He wasn’t agreeing at all, she thought. His ironic tone told her as much. But she knew that if she said something to him about it, Jorge would simply feign innocence and somehow turn the whole thing into an object lesson with her being its unwilling recipient.
She would just have to get used to people looking out for her and worrying about her, she told herself. Everyone at the inn was like family, whether they shared DNA or not.
“Why do you not take the cause of your allergies his dinner?” Jorge suggested, nodding at the tray she had prepared. “I will stay here and watch over the rest of the cooking for you.”
His offer was sweet, but if she accepted, she would be attesting that this man was special, someone apart from the others she helped. She was in no way ready for that and in no way was she even remotely searching for it.
“I don’t need you to watch over anything for me,” she informed Jorge. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
“That much is true,” he concurred far too readily. “Unless, of course, you wake up and see that spending your life without someone there beside you really is like not going anywhere,” he told her pointedly. “It is not even really living.”
“I’m beginning to think that working in the inn’s kitchen is the wrong place for you, Jorge. You should be working in a Chinese restaurant, baking fortune cookies and stuffing them with your words of wisdom,” she told him with a laugh.
She gazed at the man who had been her assistant off and on for the past year and a half. She knew he meant well. But at the same time, he was making things difficult for her.
“Look, I know you believe you’re helping, but I’ve got to find my own way through things—without help. Okay?”
“I am just making sure you are able to see the road ahead of you,” he said. “A lot of people lose their way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she promised.
The next moment, she left the kitchen and took a peek into the dining room.
Shane was sitting at the table.
And Ricky was sitting on a booster seat right beside him.
CHAPTER FIVE
CARRYING A TRAY WITH the dinner she’d prepared for Shane, Cris made her way over to the table. She kept her eyes fixed on her son as she approached.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with Grandpa right now?” she asked Ricky. Shifting her eyes, she looked apologetically at Shane as she set his dinner in front of him. “I’m really sorry about this. He usually knows better than to bother people.”
“I’m sure he does,” Shane responded with amusement. “Which is why he’s not bothering me.” He glanced in Ricky’s direction. “We were just having a man-to-man talk about the holidays.”
“Holidays?” Cris repeated, a little confused at the reference. Just what was Ricky bending Shane’s ear about? “Thanksgiving?” she guessed since it was the next holiday to come up.
“No, Christmas!” Ricky corrected her with all the enthusiasm of a child looking forward to what he considered the absolutely best time of the year.
“Inside voice, Ricky. You know you’re supposed to use your inside voice when you’re inside,” Cris reminded her son, glancing around to see if anyone in the dining area appeared annoyed at the high pitch her son’s voice had reached.
At this hour, only half the tables were filled. The rest of the inn’s guests would be by later, unless they were eating out. She was relieved to see that none of the guests there seemed to have taken note of the exuberant boy.
“Sorry, Mama,” Ricky said, lowering his voice by two octaves.
That minor issue out of the way, Cris addressed the one that Ricky had brought up. “Okay, what about Christmas?”
Ricky instantly dove into his explanation. “He said—”
She needed to nip this in the bud. “It’s Mr. McCallister, not ‘he,’ Ricky. You know better than that,” Cris said, then tactfully suggested, “and why don’t you let Mr. McCallister speak for himself?”
Rather than become crestfallen because he had to be quiet, the boy grinned and said, “Sure,” then turned to look at his hero. “Tell Mama what you said.”
“Yes, please, by all means,” Cris added, “‘Tell Mama.’”
Shane grinned at the reference and something inside her stomach fluttered.
“Well, I hope I didn’t tread on any toes,” Shane prefaced before he went on to fill Ricky’s mother in on what he and her son had talked about. “But I told Ricky that I liked the smell and appearance of a real Christmas tree.”
Unable to contain himself any longer, Ricky all but crowed, “See, Mama? Him, too.”
Cris sighed. “Mr. McCallister agrees with me, too,” she said, rephrasing her son’s words.
“He does?” Ricky asked, beaming like a starburst. “Then it’s okay? We can get a real tree again?” He took her answer for granted, assuming that it would be positive.
Rather than argue with Ricky about whether they would get a real tree to celebrate Christmas, she slanted a glance toward Shane. She supposed that he deserved some sort of an explanation.
“Putting up an artificial tree instead of a real one is more practical,” Cris told him.
All the other years, they’d had a tall, real tree standing in the main room. But escalating costs was a practical consideration that had Alex and her father leaning toward the purchase of a tree that could be used over and over each year.
As Cris stated what she assumed was most likely Alex’s position, she saw a dubious expression on Shane’s face. Curiosity had her asking, “What?”
Shane debated saying nothing, but one glance at the hopeful look on the boy’s face had him making up his mind. After all, she had asked. “It’s just that my own feeling is that Christmas isn’t supposed to be about being practical. It’s about the magic of the season.”
Cris pressed her lips together, really torn. A few years back, she would have readily sided with him. However, she’d done a lot of growing up in the intervening years and was forced to look at things from a more practical point of view, which meant it was far more practical to buy a tree that could be used over and over than to throw away money on one that could only be used once.
“I understand what you’re saying,” she began.
That was all Ricky needed. “So we can go looking for a real tree, Mama? ’Cause Sha—I mean Mr. McCallister said he’d help—and he said he’d even bring his truck so we could bring the Christmas tree home with us when we find one.”
“Mr. McCallister has better things to do than play deliveryman with our Christmas tree,” Cris patiently pointed out.
But before her son could digest the information and offer a rebuttal, Shane said, “No, actually, I don’t. I’d kind of like coming along to pick out and bring back the Christmas tree.” When Cris looked at him quizzically, he explained, “It’s been a few years since I went Christmas tree shopping.” He shrugged haplessly. “What with Nancy living up north and my brother stationed back east, there’s really not much of a reason to put up a tree.”
“How about your parents?” Cris asked automatically, then immediately regretted it when she saw Shane shake his head. She knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“They’re both gone.”
What he had left unspoken—and that she understood—was that since his wife wasn’t around to share in the season, even to acknowledge the day, much less get caught up in the season for its own sake, seemed pointless.
Part of the magic of the season was having someone to share it with.
“We hafta get a real tree for Sha—I mean Mr. McCallister,” Ricky insisted, stumbling over Shane’s surname again.
Shane made an appeal on Ricky’s behalf. “Can he call me Shane?” he asked, looking at her. “It would be a lot easier on him,” he added with a grin, ruffling the boy’s hair.
She supposed that if Shane didn’t mind, she could bend the rule in this instance.
“I guess we can make an exception,” Cris allowed. “As long as you remember that it is an exception,” she told her son.
In response, Ricky enthusiastically nodded like one of those bobblehead figures some people attached to dashboards.
“An ’ception,” Ricky echoed—or did his best to.
Shane eyed her. “And the tree?” he asked, knowing she had to be the one to rule on that in this case. “Real or not?”
Cris caught herself giving in with ease. “I suppose we can get a real one again.” Most likely, she had a feeling, her father was just waiting to be persuaded. Alex was the one they would need to win over. “To be honest, I think everyone prefers a real one. It’s just that Alex has been trying to be extra conscientious about the bottom line—”
He knew all about bottom lines, but these days, he was living exceptionally frugally because he saw no reason or need to spend money beyond getting the essentials.
“Well, since I’ll be one of the ones to enjoy seeing a real Christmas tree, I’ll be happy to contribute to its final cost.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Cris quickly told him, vetoing the idea of his paying a single red cent toward the tree. As it was, he was charging them far less for handling the renovations and additional construction than the other contractors had quoted.
Slanting a glance toward her son, who looked ready to levitate from his seat at any second, she interjected, “But if you don’t mind coming along and allowing us the use of your truck as well as giving us the benefit of your opinion, that would be greatly appreciated.”
The grin had his eyes crinkling appealingly. “Consider it done,” he readily agreed. “Just tell me the day and time you want this expedition to get under way and I’ll be there with bells on.”
Hearing that caused Ricky to cover his mouth with his hands to contain the fit of giggles that descended over him.
“What’s so funny?” Shane asked the boy, certain he’d said nothing to earn this level of levity.
“You’re gonna be wearing bells?” Ricky asked, still giggling at the image that description conjured in his young head.
“It’s just an expression, honey,” Cris told the little boy. “Shane won’t really be wearing bells.”
