LITMIR.BIZ

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towing the toboggan behind him. The perfect Christmas tree—eight feet of spruce, perfectly tapered, just the right size for the vaulted ceiling in the family room—was sprawled over it. A good shaking to get the snow off, a couple of taps with the hatchet on the trunk and it would be ready for the tree stand.

      He expected Hope would balk at the idea of putting up a tree, but he wanted it up for the Christmas party, and his parents would be arriving Christmas Eve. He gave the rope a hard tug and pulled the toboggan over a small snowbank. If she didn’t want to help decorate, that was fine. He’d done it by himself lots of times. Usually with a hockey game on in the background.

      He’d seen the look of longing in Hope’s eyes this morning, though. Felt the squeeze of her fingers in his. She wasn’t as immune as she wanted him to believe. And everyone deserved to have a good dose of Christmas spirit. It didn’t have to go any further than that. Shouldn’t. No matter how attractive he’d found her.

      No matter how much she’d surprised him by saying what she had this morning.

      Her reaction to his face had been the worst, but now she was acting as though it didn’t matter anymore.

      Well, fool me once, as the saying went. They were just words, after all.

      But it didn’t change the fact that he sensed she was sad and wanted to cheer her up. He knew what it was like to be in that abyss. So he’d dig out the decorations and make the best of it.

      He stood the tree on the porch and went inside, clomping his boots to get the snow off before disappearing into the basement to the storage area for the stand. When he came back up, Hope was looking down the staircase curiously.

      “What are you up to?”

      He held up the stand. “Christmas tree. Wanna help?”

      Just as he’d expected, she took a step back. “You were out getting a tree?”

      “Of course. After the sleigh ride we’ll have cookies and hot chocolate in here. The kids will expect a tree.”

      He didn’t mention the second part of the plan—the part where he’d be dressing up like Santa Claus and needing an elf. He wanted to hit her with it at the right moment, and give her as little chance as possible to try and get out of it.

      “Oh.”

      She stepped aside, but he handed her the stand and bent to unlace his boots. He looked up as he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on a peg.

      She looked awkward and uncertain, and he smiled on the inside. “Come on,” he prodded, nudging her through the door and toward the family room. “Help me move some furniture to make room.”

      Together they rearranged the furniture that sat next to the fireplace by moving the sofa down a bit and shifting a heavy side table to the other corner, pushing it against a matching table so that it made one wide rectangular surface. Blake eyeballed the vacant space and put down the tree stand in the precise spot he wanted it.

      “You loosen the screws and I’ll bring in the tree,” he suggested, and without waiting for her response went out on the porch in his stockinged feet and picked up the spruce.

      Together they fit the tree into the stand, and he held it level while Hope knelt on the floor and tightened the wing nuts. When it was secure she stood up, and he stepped back, admiring. It was the perfect fit. The perfect amount of fullness except for one spot that was a little sparse. He turned that side toward the wall—problem solved.

      “Oh, my gosh, that smells so good!” Hope exclaimed, brushing off her hands.

      “Wait until we get lights on it,” he said, finally feeling some Christmas spirit. There was nothing like the scent of a real tree to put you in the holiday mood.

      “I haven’t had a real tree since...”

      “Since?” She’d hesitated, leaving the sentence incomplete. Good memories or bad ones? he wondered.

      “Since our family Christmases with my grandmother.”

      He looked over at her and caught her smiling wistfully.

      “We always had a real tree, too. And Gram did her holiday baking and the kitchen always smelled good.”

      “You don’t have a real tree now?”

      She shook her head. “I live in an apartment and I travel a lot. A small artificial one is enough.”

      “Not this year, eh?” he asked, thinking that the idea of spending the holidays alone in an apartment with a plastic tree sounded very lonely indeed. “I’ll go bring up the boxes of decorations.” He nodded at the television. “There’s a Christmas Classics channel in the music section. Why don’t you turn it on?”

      “Really?”

      She sounded skeptical, and that just wouldn’t do.

      “You can’t decorate without Christmas carols,” he decreed.

      By the time he found the boxes and got them upstairs Christmas songs were playing and Hope had disappeared.

      “Hope?”

      “In the kitchen.”

      Her voice came from around the corner, and he put the first box in the living room before going to find her.

      She was standing in front of the stove, stirring something in a pot that smelled fantastically spicy.

      “Mulled cider,” she announced. “I found the seasonings when I was looking in the cupboard the other day. This is as good a time as any, right?”

      “It’s perfect. I’ll start on the lights while you finish up. The lights take the longest.”

      He was halfway through putting multi-colored twinkle lights on the tree when she came into the room carrying two mugs, steam curling off the top. He took a break and stood up, stretching out his back as she held out the mug.

      “It looks good,” she offered.

      “I like lots of lights,” he replied, thinking back to when he and Brad had been boys and their job had been to stand back and squint. The lights had all blurred together, and any blank spots in their vision had meant there were holes that needed to be filled. One year the tree had been so big that their dad had used over fifteen hundred lights on it. “It’s kind of a family tradition.”

      He took a sip of his cider and raised his eyebrows. “Mmmm,” he remarked, angling a sideways glance at Hope.

      Her lips were twitching just a little.

      “I found some spiced rum in the cupboard, too. Thought it might warm you up after your cold hike.”

      He swallowed the warm cider, felt the kick of the rum in his belly. It wasn’t just the rum. It was her, wasn’t it? She could have a fun side if she let it out to play more. She put a wall around herself most of the time, but behind that wall he had a suspicion there was hidden a warm, giving woman. A woman he could like. A lot.

      Right now she looked barely past twenty, with her straight hair in a perky ponytail and hardly any makeup. He could think of more pleasant ways than mulled cider to warm up, and all of them included her, in his arms.

      Which would be a very, very bad idea. They were hardly even friends. It was a big leap from their newfound civility to being lovers. And there was no point in starting something he didn’t intend to finish.

      “It’s good,” was all he said, and he took another drink for fortification. It didn’t help that she looked so cute in her snug jeans, when her long fingers curled around the mug as she blew on the hot surface of the cider with full pink lips.

      He got to work putting on the rest of the lights while she dug through the boxes for ornaments and the tacky red and green tinsel garland he put on the tree each year. By the time he’d finished she’d pulled out a box and was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by nearly a dozen porcelain shops and buildings—his mother’s

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