As You Are at Christmas Page 5

  Angela recalled her disappointment at Aaron’s restlessness. He’d said he felt he didn’t live up to Mollie’s expectations—and he’d been right. She should have paid more attention to her grandmother’s intuition and kicked him to the curb before school started.

  The front door opened. “In the kitchen,” Molly called before Angela could check the hallway.

  The sound of footsteps in the hall set her pulse racing, and she retrieved her cup from the sink. More coffee suddenly seemed like a good idea.

  Matt’s tall frame filled the doorway like a vision of Paul Bunyan in work boots, faded jeans, and a plaid flannel shirt. Biting her tongue, she refrained from asking if Babe the Blue Ox waited outside.

  “I brought something for Roady.” He held up a blue collar and matching leash.

  Like embers beneath a warm breath, the earlier sparks flared to life. “Did you just happen to have those at your old, cold house?”

  He grinned and the dimple winked through a day-old beard. “Not exactly.”

  “It’s perfect, Matthew. How thoughtful.” Mollie patted him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you try it on him? Maybe if you get to the vet early, you won’t have to wait for an appointment.”

  So much for coffee. Angela set her cup in the sink and joined Matt on the back porch. Roady sat patiently as Matt fastened the collar around the scrawny neck. The long tail thumped the floor.

  “He likes it,” she said.

  “Makes him feel like he belongs.” Matt attached the leash and tugged. Roady readily followed him into the kitchen.

  I know the feeling. Angela thought of the day Mollie and Jim led her into her very own room. And the day they showed her the legal document that officially made her a Murphy.

  Her throat tightened as she choked down the emotions. “I’ll get my jacket and meet you at the truck.”

  “Don’t forget those other things I mentioned, dear.” Mollie pulled some folded bills from her apron pocket. “This should cover everything.”

  “Nothing doing.” Angela took the money and gently tucked it in the oversized pocket. “I’ve got this.” She kissed Mollie’s cheek. “I’m also stopping by the dry cleaners. Do you have anything you want me to take?”

  “No, but if I think of anything, I’ll call.”

  The click-click of doggy toenails punctuated Matt’s steps behind her, and she paused in the entryway to grab his jacket.

  “I’ll hold his leash if you’ll warm up the truck.”

  “Already warm and waiting,” he said as he opened the door and extended a gallant hand.

  A trail of exhaust puffed from the back of his pickup, and she nodded. “Good job, Mr. Dawson.”

  “Anything for the school teacher.”

  She led them out the door and across the lawn and scooted to the center of the bench seat. “Here, boy, come up here with us.”

  Still weak, the dog put one paw on the floor board and raised doleful eyes to Matt.

  “All right, fella. Here we go.” With a gentle lift, he boosted the animal into the cab where it lay on the floor and thumped its tail.

  Matt walked around to the driver’s side. Angela laid his parka on the seat beside her and buckled the center belt across her lap.

  “Thank you for keeping the truck warm. I think Roady appreciates it, too.”

  “It’s brisk this morning, but not as cold as it was inside that old farmhouse.” He belted himself in, checked the side mirror, and pulled into the street. “After the vet, the cleaners, and whatever other errands Mollie has for you, we’ll stop by the appliance store and check on my furnace.”

  And if it’s in you’ll go home. The thought dulled her earlier excitement. Without a furnace, Matt was bound to the Berthoud Boarding House. As soon as it arrived and he installed it, he’d go home. Where he belonged.

  “I’m new to the area, so you’ll have to choose the vet. Where do I go from here?”

  “Let’s try the Schaffer Veterinary Clinic. Take a left at the stoplight.”

  ****

  In the last forty-eight hours, Matt had served more domestic duty than he had since leaving home as a teenager. Living alone the past five years, he’d missed out on a lot, and the thought of trading in bachelorhood for a partnership raised appealing possibilities. He glanced toward Angela and the ugly dog at her feet. Considering the obvious contrast in his passengers, he chuckled to himself.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Oh-oh. Should he take the chance? He flipped his signal and turned left at the intersection.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just realized I’ve got a beauty and a beast with me this morning.”

  Angela sniffed a half-laugh. “I guess it depends on who’s who.”

  He shot her a questioning look.

  “So?” She lifted her chin. “Who’s who?”

  It was make or break now. “Roady’s the beast, of course. That makes you the beauty.”

  He checked to see her reaction and noted a soft flush on her cheeks.

  She leaned over and rubbed Roady behind the ears. “You poor thing. He thinks you’re a beast.”

  Matt exhaled a nervous breath. “Well, unless you’d rather—”

  “Don’t even think it.”

  He laughed out loud, relieved that she’d played along with him.

  “So Roady.” She lifted his muzzle and looked in the dog’s eyes. “If I say I love you, will you become a handsome prince?”

  Now it was Matt’s turn to feel the heat rush to his face. He’d trade places with that mutt in a heartbeat.

  ****

  The vet gave Matt a bottle of medicated shampoo and recommended a specific brand of dog food until Roady fully recovered. He treated broken blisters on the dog’s foot pads, vaccinated for rabies, checked his teeth, and sent them on their way. Roady was one tough mongrel.

  Back in the pickup, Matt thought Roady looked happier.

  “So what’s on your list there, beauty?”

  Angela frowned as she reached into her jacket pocket. “I hope that’s not going to become a habit.” She unfolded a small paper. “Unless you want me to start calling you a beast.”

  He chuckled and considered a couple of clever responses she probably wouldn’t think were so clever. “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  Another remark popped into his head at her clipped reply, and he clamped his teeth together.

  “Dog food. Dog bed. Cleaners.” She refolded the note and tucked it in her pocket. “Furnace.”

  The last word carried a different tone. Disappointment?

  He stayed in the truck with Roady while Angela picked out what they needed from a super mart. He stayed in the truck at the cleaners, too. And just for the heck of it, he stayed in the outside lane as they passed the appliance store on the way home.

  When he pulled up to the boarding house, a worried Mollie opened the front door.

  Puzzled, he went around to help Roady out of the truck, gave Angela the leash, and grabbed the dog food and over-sized, green plaid dog bed.

  “Mollie,” Angela asked as they stepped inside. “What’s wrong?”

  Matt left the two women alone and headed for the back porch. The lines creasing Mollie’s usually smooth forehead told him something was up.

  7

  Angela hadn’t seen her grandmother this concerned since last summer’s hail storm destroyed her flower garden. “Are you OK?”

  Mollie twisted a corner of her apron and gave a nervous look toward the back porch where Matt prepared Roady’s bed. “I have two more guests coming in this weekend.”

  Angela sighed in relief but tried not to discredit her grandmother’s obvious discomfort. “Isn’t that all right? This is a boarding house.”

  “Tiffany Collins and her friend.” She searched Angela’s face as if waiting for a reply.

  “OK.” Angela mentally filed through the faces of her co-workers, people she knew from church in Greeley, and parents she’d met at conferences. “
Should I know the name?”

  “Her friend is Aaron Reynolds.”

  The name hit her like a blow to the chest.

  “I’m so sorry, Angie. It didn’t register with me until after Tiffany hung up.” Mollie rubbed her temple and pushed back a loose white strand. “I guess I’m getting old.”

  Angela dropped Roady’s leash and reached for her grandmother’s hands. “You’re not getting old, Mollie. You run a boarding house. You’re not required to remember the names of everyone I know.”

  The woman’s shoulders drooped, and she shook her head. “I can call and tell her I made a mistake—that I don’t have any rooms available.”

  The temptation tasted like revenge, but Angela couldn’t let her grandmother do that. It went against everything they believed in. And Mollie needed the income. She squeezed the capable hands. “We’ll get through this. They won’t be here forever.” She hoped. “When do they arrive?”

  “Friday night. Tiffany said they’d be leaving Sunday morning to go skiing at Copper Mountain.”

  Angela pulled the troubled woman into her arms. “I can’t believe he did this. He knows this is your boarding house.” Aaron was supposed to come with her, not someone else. She blinked away the bitterness threatening to surface. She refused to make this worse for Mollie.

  “He doesn’t know, dear.”

  Angela held her grandmother at arm’s length and looked into her sweet face. “What do you mean?”

  “Tiffany told me she planned to surprise him.”

  Some surprise. “Well, I think it’s going to be a doozie.” She rubbed Mollie’s upper arms with both hands. “A weekend is cake. We’ll be fine. They’ll be gone by Christmas Eve, and it will be just the three of us again.”

  Where did that come from?

  “And we still have a few days to bake and paint before they arrive.” Suddenly the thought of Aaron and Miss Dumbbell sleeping in paint-fumy rooms cheered her. She’d have to repent.

  Roady whimpered at her feet and looked down the hall.

  “OK, beast. Come on. Let’s get you something to eat and introduce you to your new fancy bed.”

  “Beast?” Mollie fussed with the sash of her apron and turned toward the kitchen. “I thought you named him Roady.”

  “We did. Long story.” One that Angela hoped had many more chapters. She wrapped an arm around her grandmother’s shoulders. If Aaron didn’t spoil things.

  ****

  Angela tried to make up for Mollie’s quieter mood at dinner in the kitchen that evening and reminded her of their plans to decorate the tree.

  “And I’ll get those boxes upstairs so we can eat in the dining room again,” Matt added.

  Angela watched the muscles in his face as he spoke, the way the dimple appeared and disappeared, the way the light played in his dark eyes. He seemed like part of the family—someone always available to lend a hand. To be there. To laugh with. She’d never thought of Aaron like that, and the thought of Aaron sharing the same table and roof made her nauseous.

  What if Matt left?

  She listened as he did his best to engage Mollie in an argument about Roady’s ancestry. His eyes twinkled and that parenthesis deepened when he tried to keep from smiling. He caught Angela watching him, and she looked away, her face flooding in hot misery. His deep throaty chuckle sent shivers up her arms.

  Tonight, after the tree, she’d tell him about Aaron. O, Lord, please don’t let it make him leave.

  ****

  Christmas music floated out from Mollie’s office computer and mingled with the mulled cider warming on the stove. Angela knelt among the boxes and cartons of ornaments, unwrapping delicate glass bulbs and whimsical shapes.

  “Some of these hung on Mollie’s family’s tree when she was a child.” She held out an angel with spun glass hair. “But this one she gave to me the first Christmas I spent here.” The concern on Matt’s face amused her. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to break it.”

  “Is it that obvious?” His hand dwarfed the heavenly messenger.

  Angela chuckled. “You’re doing fine. I appreciate you helping me at all, especially on the higher branches. I always had to stand on a chair.”

  He suspended the angel near the top of the tree.

  “When we get the top third finished I’ll let you off the hook. No pun intended.”

  He groaned and rubbed his hands down his face. “Surely someone with your educational background can do better than that.”

  She grinned at him and placed a large crystal snowflake in his open palm. “You don’t have to help with the whole tree. You can go chop wood or do some other manly chore.”

  Matt hung the snowflake, studied it for a moment, and moved it to a different branch. Then he knelt beside her. “I’m enjoying this,” he said with surprising softness.

  Angela took a deep breath hoping to ward off the rising crimson tide and dug into another carton of ornaments. “I’m glad.” She pawed through the tissue. “Did you help your mother do this when you were a kid?”

  A shadow crossed his features.

  Oops. None of my business.

  Whatever it was vanished when he met her eyes.

  “No. We didn’t do this. Christmas wasn’t exactly a family event. But I helped decorate the tree at the church a couple of years. That youth leader I mentioned did his best to keep me involved.”

  Grateful for his openness, Angela’s heart squeezed at the thought of what his childhood must have been. So unlike hers.

  The tissue-wrapped bundle she’d chosen held a miniature Paul Bunyan with an ax resting against his shoulder. She smiled at the little man and handed it over to the life-size version.

  “Is this one special?” He suspended the legendary lumberjack between his thumb and forefinger and searched her face.

  “Mollie gave this to Jim one year because he always cut our Christmas tree.” She pulled another wad of tissue out of the box.

  “And?”

  He didn’t miss much. Still stooped with one knee on the floor, he waited.

  She relented with a nervous sigh. “He reminds me of you. You looked almost exactly like that this morning when you came in with Roady’s new collar and leash.”

  He held the ornament out at arm’s length and turned it around. “Not exactly.”

  His tone suggested grave consideration, but she caught the dimple.

  “No leash. And the ax is all wrong. I used a hand saw.”

  She chuckled at his playfulness—until he hung Paul Bunyan right next to the flaxen-haired angel.

  Her pulse quickened, and she refocused on the box. Only three days, and already he held her heart like a delicate ornament of handspun glass.

  “Cider, anyone?” Mollie broke the tension as she bustled in with a silver tea tray and service for three. “Oh, it’s coming along nicely. How kind of you, Matthew, to give us a hand. A tall hand, I might say.” She set the china cups and saucers on the table and squeezed into the end chair.

  “My pleasure.” Matt cleared his throat a couple of times and stacked a few of the boxes to make more room around the table.

  Angela stood and massaged her left leg. “It smells so good, Mollie. And your timing is perfect. My legs were going to sleep kneeling among all these boxes.”

  Mollie handed out holly-print tea napkins and passed around a plate of cookies and bread.

  Matt snagged a couple of slices and several cookies. “Angela said you don’t put lights on the tree.”

  “All in keeping with the Victorian theme. But I’m not enough of a purist to clamp candles onto the branches. Too dangerous, if you ask me. The tinsel reflects enough light from the room to make the tree glisten.”

  Angela wrinkled her nose.

  “I know, dear. You’re not fond of tinsel, so I’ll make a concession this year.” She leveled a look at Matt. “When you’ve finished with the tree, the two of you decide whether it needs the traditional tinsel.” She raised a china cup and looked from Matt to Angela, a sm
ug expression seaming her lips.

  “Oh, no.” Matt raised a hand in protest and shook his head. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

  “Too late,” Angela teased. “You’re already in.”

  An hour later, ornaments of every size and shape adorned the tree and Angela stuffed the last few pieces of tissue into a carton. Matt stacked several boxes and headed for the stairs. She followed, balancing her own cardboard tower.

  “So what do you think?” she asked

  “About?”

  “Tinsel. What’s your vote?”

  He walked into the first bedroom at the top of the stairs and straight to the closet. “No tinsel.”

  Angela smiled to herself and flipped the light switch with her elbow. She handed over her pile and inspected the room more closely while Matt stuffed away the boxes.

  “Considering your wisdom on the tinsel, what’s your honest opinion as a renovation expert?” She ran her hand over the smooth wood frame around the window. “Do you really think the trim in this room needs a paint job?”

  She heard the closet door close, and when he made no reply, she turned to see him leaning against it with his arms folded.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “Can I ask you a personal question? Just say no if you’re uncomfortable.”

  Uncomfortable? Duh—as her students said. What could he possibly want to know? She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “Ask away.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to bring someone with you over the Christmas break? A boyfriend?”

  At least he didn’t beat around the bush. She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets and faced him squarely. “I was planning to talk to you about that tonight.”

  Pleased surprise registered on his face.

  “First of all, yes. My so-called boyfriend was supposed to come with me, but he got tied up. With another woman.”

  Surprise amped up to shock, and he swept her with a quick appraisal. “You’re kidding.”