Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,58
been content with taking a cardboard box to a park somewhere, but Winnie obviously had other ideas.”
“You did me a favor. I’ve been meaning to check out the new tubing hill but never seemed to find the time. It was much more fun giving it a test run with you and Christopher along than it would have been on my own.”
He parked in front of the house, but Abby made no move to open her door and climb out. Perhaps, like him, she didn’t want the night to end.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about last night,” she said after a moment.
“Last night?” he asked warily.
“When we...kissed. Thank you for not making me feel like a total idiot. Every time I think about the things I said to you, I want to curl up and pull a pillow over my head.”
Ah. That kiss.
Apparently she couldn’t forget it, either.
“You have no reason to be embarrassed. I’m the one who kissed you without warning. Which, by the way, is something I never do. I am not sure what came over me.”
He studied her in the moonlight. This time the color on her cheeks was definitely a blush. “I found your honesty refreshing.”
She gave a small laugh. “Honesty is one thing. Blatant oversharing is something else entirely.”
He smiled. In that moment, he wanted to tug her across the space between them and kiss her fiercely. Even with her son in the back seat and with Winnie inside, possibly peering out the window at them, he wanted to kiss her.
He even leaned forward a little, driven by a soft tenderness mingled with a need he couldn’t control. She looked up at him, eyes wide, and he almost thought she leaned forward, too.
He caught his breath but just before their mouths connected, Christopher woke up.
“Are we home now?” he asked sleepily.
Abby sat back in her seat, shock and dismay on her features. “Um. We’ve just arrived.”
“I fell asleep.” A gust of wind suddenly blew down from the mountains and rattled the car. “What’s that?” Christopher asked, his tone fearful.
Abby seemed to gather her composure. When she turned to face her son, he saw none of the confusion from seconds earlier, only a serene, calm parent.
“Just the wind. Nothing to worry about, sweetheart.”
“It won’t blow me away, will it?”
For all his bravado on the tubing hill, Christopher sounded genuinely nervous. Just another reminder, Ethan thought, that everyone was a complex mix of courage and fear, pluck and panic.
“No. That might have happened to little tiny Piglet in the Winnie-the-Pooh book, but you’re five years old and too big for a wind to blow away.”
“Except a tornado,” he pointed out.
“Fortunately we don’t have too many of those around here, especially in December,” Ethan said. “Why don’t we get you two inside?”
He opened the rear door and helped Christopher out of his booster seat, then lifted the seat out.
“That wind is pretty fierce all of a sudden. I heard we were supposed to have windy conditions over the next few days.”
“I hope they’re gone by Friday for our first night,” she said anxiously.
They all rushed into the house as another gust of cold wind blew through, icy and somehow forbidding.
The house offered shelter and safety against the weather, as it had offered it to him as a child.
He half expected his grandmother to be waiting for them, but she was nowhere in evidence.
He set down the booster seat on a bench in the entryway.
“Thank you again for a wonderful time. Christopher, what do you say to Ethan?”
Christopher beamed up at him, and Ethan was aware of a curious knot in his chest again.
“Thanks for taking me tubing. Can we go again sometime?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.
The boy flashed him a smile, which slid away quickly. He danced in place in his boots, giving his mother a worried look. “Mom, I gotta go to the bathroom. Really bad.”
“Oh, dear,” Abby exclaimed. “We’d better hurry.”
She helped him out of his many winter layers. As soon as he was down to long underwear, Christopher bolted down the hall toward their room.
“Whew. Hope he made it in time.” Ethan had to smile.
Abby shook her head, folding up her son’s snow pants. “Lesson learned. The intricate logistics of getting in and out of winter gear is rough on a kid when nature calls.”
He smiled back at her, struck by the amusement in her green eyes and the wisps of red hair slipping from her beanie.