Travis's Gift (Riley's Pride #3)- Sandra R Neeley Page 0,6

Sebastian’s second helping of food and sipped her coffee.

Sebastian reached for her cup.

“No, you can’t have coffee. But, here, I have some apple juice for you,” she said, holding a cup so he could try to sip from it. He was already wanting to sip from cups instead of bottles. The only time he wanted a bottle was if he’d hurt himself and wanted soothing.

Sebastian sipped the apple juice and sat back satisfied that he was drinking from a cup like Mama was, before opening his mouth and waiting for her to feed him more breakfast.

Soon as they were done, Maia lifted him from the highchair again. “How about a bath now?” she asked.

She climbed the stairs to the second floor again and sat him in his infant carrier while she ran a bath. Maia turned around to take him out of the carrier and noticed that his head was almost at the upper edge of the carrier. “Boy, you better quit growing so fast! You’ve almost already outgrown that carrier.”

Sebastian babbled at her and waved his arms. He loved taking his bath and knew that was exactly what his Mama had planned.

“Let’s go get cleaned up and see what we’re going to do today. We still have a little bit of shopping to do, but I’m not sure I feel like going out today. Sound good to you?” she asked.

He squealed with delight when she lifted him from the carrier and began to undress him.

“Be a good boy, and we’ll see if we can find something fun to do today,” she told him as she sat him in the baby bathtub and began to pour tepid water over his little shoulders.

Chapter 3

Scotty got up and pulled his clothes on, grabbed his backpack and walked into the living room. The scent of coffee hung in the air, but the coffee pot was turned off and unplugged. He stuck his head in Travis’s room, but his brother obviously wasn’t in there. Realizing that Travis must have had another sleepless night, he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, prepared to have to go locate Travis somewhere on their tree farm.

Instead, Travis sat in the rocker, sipping a last cup of coffee.

“Morning,” Travis said when Scotty came outside.

“Morning,” Scotty said. “You been out here long?” he asked.

“Since about 3:00 A.M. It’s more frustrating to lie in bed awake and struggling to sleep than to just get up. So, I got up. You ready for school?” Travis asked.

“Yep. Whenever you are,” Scotty answered.

“You eat?” Travis asked.

“Naw. I’ll grab a cinnamon roll or something at school,” Scotty said.

“Alright, let’s go then. I have a long day of fertilizing and pruning ahead of me,” Travis answered.

“The trees are looking nice this year. Maybe we could try to set up a little Christmas thing here like Mom and Dad used to,” Scotty suggested as they got in the truck.

“Not sure many people would want to come cut down a tree anymore. It’s so easy to go to a lot and buy one,” Travis answered. “Easier for us to distribute through the lots, too.”

“Yeah, but, the families around here may want to come. We could offer hot chocolate and Christmas cookies, and we could set up a couple of tables with craft supplies for people to make their own fresh wreaths, or they could buy some we already made and have available. We could buy a few simple supplies, Styrofoam balls, glitter, ribbon, glue, and the kids could make ornaments. We could make a big wooden picture frame and the families could stand behind it and we could take their picture for them with their phones, or our phone and email it to them. We’d charge for everything except the hot chocolate. I bet word travels fast and we end up very, very busy.”

“Sounds like a lot to take on,” Travis said, thoughtfully.

“Only on the weekends. During the week we keep up our standard routine and open it to the public on the weekends. Then the last week or so before Christmas, we’d be open every day.”

“And if it snows and nobody wants to get out and get that cold and we have all this effort put in for nothing?” Travis asked.

“If it snows, we offer snowman building contests, and we buy some cans of sweetened condensed milk and let them make their own snow ice cream. We host snowball fights,” Scotty said.

Travis stopped to make sure it was safe to pull off the