A Weaver Holiday Homecoming. Allison Leigh
Читать онлайн книгу.
Weaver so small that a single man with no children would know that? Her mind veered off much too easily. Maybe he’d even dated the attractive teacher. “Yes.”
“She’s my cousin.”
She was appalled at the relief that flooded through her. Her interest in the man was supposed to be only because of Chloe. Not…not—
“What are your plans tomorrow?”
Her runaway thoughts screeched to a halt. “Um, nothing much. More unpacking. And Chloe is becoming anxious that we won’t ever get around to getting a Christmas tree, so I imagine I’ll have to find a tree lot somewhere.”
“Folks around here cut their own trees,” he said.
Her lips parted, dismayed. “Like with a saw?”
His blue eyes suddenly lit with amusement, and years seemed to fall away from his face. “That’s the usual method,” he said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Safely hidden behind her back, Mallory’s hands curled. She smiled weakly.
The corner of his lips lifted a little more. The flash of white teeth was brief, but it was still there, when he actually smiled. “Never cut a Christmas tree yourself?”
“Right up there with fixing plumbing leaks, I’m afraid.”
He pushed off the bed and walked toward her. Her spine pressed hard against the doorjamb as she looked up at him when he stopped next to her.
There was plenty of space between them, but her heart rate nevertheless took off like an award-winning marathoner. The only time she’d felt anything remotely similar was the first time she’d delivered a baby. Not even with Brent, her one foray into romance while she’d been a resident, had she been so affected.
His gaze roved over her face and she swallowed hard, afraid he’d hear the pulse roaring in her ears.
“I’ll pick you and Chloe up at noon,” he said, and the amusement was gone from his face as if it had never been there. “That oughta give us plenty of time.”
“Time,” she repeated faintly.
“To find you a tree,” he said flatly, and walked out into the hall. He didn’t look back.
For so long, Mallory had been certain that finding Chloe’s father was the right thing to do.
But just then, watching Ryan head down the stairs as if the devil were at his heels, she realized she wasn’t certain of anything.
Chapter Four
He was twenty minutes late.
So far.
Twenty minutes during which Chloe paced between the windows at the front of the house, pressing her nose against the glass, as she watched and waited. “Are you sure he’s coming?”
Mallory’s gaze snagged in Kathleen’s, who was sitting opposite her, before she looked back down at the medical journal lying open in her lap. Reading it was just a pretense, because Mallory could have easily emulated Chloe’s anxious pacing, waiting for Ryan’s arrival.
“If he doesn’t,” she assured smoothly, “we’ll just get a Christmas tree ourselves.” Maybe there was a tree lot in Braden. The neighboring town was about thirty miles away. Certainly there’d be one in Gillette—though she really didn’t relish the idea of driving quite that far.
The solution, of course, would be an artificial tree, purchased from the discount store on the outskirts of town.
Only Mallory knew that both Chloe and Kathleen would be disappointed. They’d been talking about having a real tree ever since they’d arrived in Weaver. Even when they’d left New York in October, the Christmas decorations had begun appearing in stores. There was barely a fraction of the stores in Weaver, but they, too, had already been getting ready for the holidays.
“Can we get a puppy, too?” Chloe asked, without looking away from the window.
Mallory met Kathleen’s eyes. “No,” she answered. “We’re not getting a puppy.”
Chloe heaved a sigh. “Do you think we’ll find a really, really big tree?”
If he gets here, Mallory thought.
“He’ll be here,” Kathleen said comfortably over the soft clack of her knitting needles. “And I’m sure you’ll find a very fine tree.”
Mallory had the sense that her grandmother was assuring her just as much as Chloe.
She realized she was chewing the inside of her lip and made herself stop. Folding the journal with a snap, she tossed it aside and pushed off the couch, taking her half-empty coffee mug with her. Another ten minutes, and she’d bundle Chloe in the car and they’d drive to Braden. Kathleen had already expressed her intention to enjoy the tree once it was in the living room. Hunting one down whether in the snow or from a tree lot was not something she particularly wanted to do.
“He’s here!” Chloe suddenly darted past Mallory, her boots skidding on the floor as she raced out of the living room to the front door.
Mallory ignored both the jolt that leaped inside her belly and the sideways glance that Kathleen gave her—as if her grandmother knew exactly what Mallory was feeling—and followed her daughter much more sedately to the door.
When she got there, Chloe had already thrown it wide and Ryan stood there on the porch, looking almost unrecognizable with his clean-shaven square jaw. Even his hair looked different. Not cut, necessarily, but brushed away from his face, showing that there was a liberal amount of silver strands among the dark brown.
The severe style made his eyes seem an even deeper, more penetrating blue, and when their focus shifted upward from Chloe to Mallory, every single coherent thought she possessed disappeared in a puff of smoke.
She felt as though he had the ability to look straight down inside her. And was using the ability very well.
It felt…invasive.
Intimate.
She realized belatedly that Chloe was tugging at the hem of her sweater, and she finally yanked her captured gaze away from him. She looked at Chloe, but her brain cells were sluggish. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Chloe’s eyebrows were crinkled. “You’re spilling,” she whispered.
Mallory jerked a little, flushing hard. Along with coherent thought, her hands had gone as lax as her knees had felt, the coffee mug sliding sideways in her fingers. “Silly me,” she murmured, excessively bright.
She grabbed the closest cloth—her red knitted scarf that was hanging over the coat tree—and dashed it over the small spill on the floor. “I’ll be right back.” She couldn’t prevent herself from flicking a glance toward Ryan, then wished she hadn’t, because he was still watching her.
The day before, he’d been a handsome—albeit very scruffy-looking—man.
With his strong features no longer hidden behind too-long, unkempt hair, and a bristled jaw that had been somewhere between a beard and a thirteen-o’clock shadow, he seemed positively devastating.
She felt so rattled that instead of putting the mug in the kitchen where it belonged—and where she’d intended to take it in the first place—she carried it and the red scarf with her upstairs and closed herself in her bedroom.
The mug bobbled sideways when she dumped it on her dresser and she steadied it with a very unsteady hand. The wide mirror hanging on the wall above the dresser reflected most of the bedroom behind her. But she didn’t see the stack of packing cartons in the corner next to the sleigh bed that she’d found years ago in a junk store and refinished with Kathleen’s help.
What she did see were her own eyes staring back at her. Pupils wide, irises a thin brown. So very different from those