LITMIR.BIZ

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it apparent that Rory hadn’t mentioned his insistence about helping with their Christmas tree. “So, how do you think she’ll do? Or is it too soon to tell?”

      He wanted to say she’d do just fine. She certainly didn’t lack for aptitude or the determination to succeed. She even had the incentive of keeping a roof over her son’s head pushing her. It would be a challenge doing it on her own, but she’d make a living there. With the connections she was establishing, she’d probably even make a life.

      He brushed past the thought that she’d be making that life without him. He had a life of his own right where he was. He had work he loved, a great business, good friends. He had money and the freedom to come and go pretty much as he pleased. His obligation to the woman messing with his carefully constructed status quo ended once they had the business established. Once it was, he could walk away and never go back there again.

      “Is there a problem, Erik?”

      “No. No,” he repeated, waiting for the quick shutdown of feeling that normally reinforced his last thought. “I’ll make it work.”

      I will. Not we.

      Phil apparently heard the distinction.

      “Isn’t she cooperating?”

      Not when she was giving him grief about helping her, he thought.

      “She just needs a break right now,” he decided to say. “With her little boy and the holidays, it just seemed like a good thing to do.”

      “Was that your idea?”

      Initially, it had been. For the business part, anyway.

      “The decision was mutual.”

      “So when do you meet again?”

      “Whenever we’re scheduled to be here.”

      “That will be the fifth.”

      “That soon?”

      “At two,” she added, and cocked her head. “Do we need to meet before then? We certainly can, if there’s ever a problem,” she hurried on, having caught his lack of enthusiasm for the meeting. “Part of what we do for our ladies and their mentors is help them work through challenges. Differences of opinion can arise over anything from creative priorities to scheduling—”

      “It’s nothing like that.”

      “May I ask what it is?”

      It was clearly too late to deny a problem even existed. But all he would admit was, “It’s complicated.”

      “I see.” Adjusting the frame of her glasses, she peered at him with interest. “Do you have a solution to the problem?”

      He wasn’t sure there was one. Not for the two of them. “Not yet.”

      “Can you work together?”

      “Yeah. Sure. There’s always email and the telephone.” He’d given his word. He’d hold up his end of the deal. For his grandparents. For her. “She wants the business to work. That’s what I want, too.”

      She considered him for a moment, her head tipped thoughtfully, the fine fibers of her white hat fluttering. “You know, Erik, when I gave Rory the address of your grandparents’ property, I suggested she look for the possibilities. We knew what she would see when she got there, and that it would be nothing she could have imagined she would want.

      “What she’d been looking for was a small home for herself and her son,” she confided, “but her needs changed when she lost her job. To see the potential in that property, she had to let go of a mind-set that focused on what she had been looking for and what she now needed. To find the solution to your problem, maybe you should look at the possibilities, too.”

      She smiled then, gave a little wave of her white-gloved hand. Crystals shimmered on its cuff. “I’ve kept you long enough,” she said. “You have a plane to catch. And I need to get inside before I freeze. Have a safe trip. And merry Christmas.”

      He thanked her. Added a quick “You, too” and started to turn away.

      As he did, his glance caught on the gold plaque engraved with three letters above their doorbell. He’d been curious about it ever since it had gone up last week.

      “Hey, Phil,” he called, catching her unlocking the door. “What does FGI stand for?”

      “It’s who we are,” she called back. “Fairy Godmothers, Incorporated.”

      His forehead furrowed. As near as he’d been able to figure out, he’d thought they were in some sort of mortgage business. “Fairy Godmothers? Don’t they have something to do with pumpkins?”

      “And helping dreams come true.” With a charming smile, she disappeared inside.

      Mentally shaking his head, he strode toward his truck at the curb in front of his office. He had no idea how anyone over the age of ten could possibly believe in fairy tales, happily ever afters or that other impossibility that Rory had once imagined, Christmas magic. As for dreams, they died by the thousands every day. Reality simply wore them down, if it didn’t kill them outright. He knew. He’d spent years in the emotional limbo that remained after his vision of his future had turned to ash. But he’d glimpsed those dreams again, and what Phil had said about possibilities now gave him pause.

      She’d said Rory had to let go of a mind-set that focused on what she had been looking for and what she needed now. She’d had to be open-minded enough to see what would be possible living in a place she’d have never considered, rather than writing it off as not what she’d had in mind.

      He certainly hadn’t considered any sort of personal relationship with her when they’d first met. But one had evolved in spite of him. To see the possibilities in it, he’d need to get past the defenses he’d spent years honing before he could be open to what those possibilities were.

      Part of the problem there was that he had no desire to give her a chance to push him any farther away.

      The other part would be getting Rory to see past whatever it was holding her back from him to see their potential, too.

      Rory had hoped for snow. For Tyler’s sake, because that was what he’d said he wanted for Christmas. But Christmas morning had dawned with a gray sky that promised little beyond more rain.

      Until a week ago, every other time she’d asked him what he wanted Santa to bring, all he’d wanted was a big tree. The day after Erik had left, he’d told her he’d changed his mind. Since he already had the tree, what he wanted Santa to bring was Erik.

      She’d explained that Erik would be with his parents for Christmas, so Santa wouldn’t be able to bring him. Though decidedly let down by that bit of news, he’d decided later that he wanted snow.

      All he seemed to want as far as a gift was concerned were things beyond her power to give him.

      Without any sort of hint for something that Santa could bring down the chimney, she, being Santa’s helper, had left him a mini kick scooter that he could ride between the counters in the store while she worked to get it ready. He’d been excited when he’d come downstairs a couple of hours ago to see it by the tree. He’d been tickled to see that Santa had eaten all but a few crumbs of the cookies they’d left out for him, and awed and delighted by the small tuft of faux-fur trim that appeared to have snagged on one of the fireplace stones when the jolly old guy had departed.

      What had truly thrilled him, though, had been discovering the present from Erik among the others from her and her parents beneath the lit and glittering branches. It had been delivered yesterday with a note asking her to please put it under the tree for him to find Christmas morning. Except for the “Thanks” he’d scrawled at the bottom, that was all the note had said.

      Tyler had declared

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