The "What If" Guy (13 page)

“You’re older than me.” I brushed needles off the legs of my jeans.

He gently maneuvered the tree onto the sled. “And that’s how it’s done.”

“Show-off.”

Nearby, Holly and Cody walked down the street, their bundled-up kids trailing behind them like ducklings. I waved.

“Hey,” Elliott whooped, his voice cracking. “Mom, can I go walk with them?”

“That okay?” I called to Holly.

She nodded and moved baby Ty from one of her hips to the other. “Of course.”

“Come on, Elliott,” Tabitha called. “We’re gonna get hot chocolate from Fisk’s. They make it with real chocolate bars.”

“Can I go? Please?” Elliott shifted from foot to foot.

“Sure, go ahead,” I said. “Want us to join you and carry a couple of the boys?”

Holly shared a look with Cody and the two of them shook their heads in unison. “Not on your life.” Holly grinned. “We’ll meet you down at the park. You two can find us, can’t you?”

“We’ll find you.” Henry secured the last piece of twine as the Judds trekked on with Elliott in tow.

“So, uh…” Suddenly shy, I looked around.

Henry tilted his head. “You’re not going to clam up on me now, are you?”

“No.”

“Come on, I’ll buy you some cocoa.”

“What about the tree?”

“You’re not in Seattle anymore. Hey, Dirk,” he called to the vendor. “Can you watch Autumn’s tree for me?”

Dirk waved. “Sure.”

We were in Fairfield, Washington, where the honor system was still considered contractually binding.

Henry and I sauntered down the sidewalk, pausing occasionally to look at the booths offering ornaments of every size, shape, and color. I stole a few glances at Henry as we walked. His eyes crinkled at the sides when he smiled and greeted people with his husky voice. Several women blushed when he stopped and spoke to them. I waited while he bought a tiny, pipe cleaner nativity scene from a little girl I recognized from Elliott’s bus stop.

“A nice addition to your collection?” I asked.

Henry shook his head. “Actually, I don’t have any Christmas decorations. This is my first.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Laurel got them all,” he said.

“Oh.” We took a few more steps. “Henry?”

“Hmm?” He stopped to examine a plate of sugar cookies with great intensity.

“What did you mean when you said that we’re friends?” I fidgeted with the buttons on my coat.

Henry gave me a sideways glance, and briefly flashed his white teeth. “Don’t you want to be friends?”

My gut rumbled, but the sound was not associated with hunger. “Of course I do, I just—”

“I put you in the dreaded
’friend zone,’
didn’t I?” He made quotation marks with his gloved fingers.

“No,” I said quickly. “I mean, yes. I don’t know. It is just weird.”

“Want to know what’s weird?” He grasped my elbow as we sidestepped an older couple. “Try going through a divorce and moving to the tiniest, most obsolete town in the world. Then you find out that you’ve moved to the hometown of the woman who ripped your heart out a dozen years ago.”

I pressed my lips together. “You got me there.”

“I didn’t mean to be so rude to you in October.” He released my elbow. “I was just surprised. And, I was—”

“Pissed off?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yeah, I was sort of pissed off, too. I mean, I wasn’t mad at you
,
I was just mad at my life—the way things turned out. Does that make any sense?”

“I think so,” I said. “I was pretty angry when I moved back here, too. Not at anyone in particular, but because I had to move at all.”

“How do you feel about it now?”

I looked around. Christmas songs filled the air. People strolled around, singing and laughing. Ray Fisk wore elf ears—his cheek stuffed full of chewing tobacco—and passed out raffle tickets for the ham giveaway. The place could have been a Norman Rockwell painting. My gaze settled on Henry. “I feel pretty good about it.”

Snowflakes danced in the wind, and I gazed into the sky. “It’s snowing.” My voice swelled with excitement. “Elliott will be thrilled. I haven’t seen a snowy December in years.”

Henry raised his chin and looked upward. “Wow.”

“Will this be your first white Christmas?”

He nodded and grinned. “Does it show?” With the exception of the years he’d spent going to school in rainy Seattle, Henry was a California boy.

I reached up and brushed some white flakes off of his long eyelashes. “Yes. You look as happy as a kid.”

His eyes blazed with intensity. “I
feel
like a kid.”

We held each other’s gaze for a few moments, and I gulped. It was happening again. That damned staring thing that Henry did, heavy with words that neither of us had the guts to say—a nine-months-pregnant pause that made me squirm.

“Autumn Cole, look at you.”

I bristled.

That voice had come from the source of most of the torture I’d endured as a teenager. It had mocked me for being different, for being flat-chested and redheaded, and for being the daughter of the ever-intoxicated Billy Cole. That voice belonged to the head cheerleader and homecoming queen, the daughter of the president of the only
bank in town, the girl who had driven the nicest car parked in the school parking lot at Palouse Plains High.

Layla Deberaux.

I turned and faced her, pursing my lips to keep from grimacing. She looked almost the same as she had in high school.

I hated that about her. I really did.

Layla had blonde hair styled to absolute perfection, bright, brown eyes rimmed with naturally dark lashes, a face Botoxed into a permanent state of pleasant surprise, and a long, lean body that scored a ten on the perfection scale. She wore a belted leather coat and skinny jeans tucked into knee-high boots. Rings sparkled on most of her fingers. I tried not to be too obvious as I checked out her left hand. Sure enough, her ring finger remained unadorned.

I’d been briefed on Layla’s story within days of starting my employment at the pharmacy. Layla happened to be one of Doris and Helen’s favorite subjects. She’d married the quarterback of the football team right after high school, only to leave him a couple of years later for one of her father’s banking associates. Courtesy of him, she’d popped out two perfect children, the crowned prince and princess of the Deberaux family. That marriage had ended when banker-guy left her for a graduating senior with bigger and more impressive boobs. Now, Layla lived alone in her palace on the hill, perpetually searching for her next victim.

Layla smiled, but all the makeup and Botox in the world couldn’t hide the fact that she was less than pleased to see me standing two inches away from the hot, new teacher in town, brushing snowflakes off of his eyelashes. Henry was fresh meat to the likes of Layla Deberaux.

“Layla. How are you?” I said, then clenched my teeth.

She tossed her hair. “I’m fabulous. How are you? It’s so good to see you back in town.” Before I could reply, she focused her attention on Henry. “And you’re the Mr. T all the kids are talking about.”

“That’s me.” Henry held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs.—”

“Oh, it’s not missus, it’s
miz
. Ms. Layla Deberaux,” she drawled, putting her dainty hand into his. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

Charmed, I’m sure
? I suppressed a giggle, and Henry shot me a conspiratorial smile.

“I’ve driven by your house a few times,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t it, though?” She smiled
charm
ingly at me. “I designed it myself. Right down to the last tile. You’ll have to come see it sometime, Henry.”

“Oh, I don’t think—” he began.

Layla’s pressed her hand to Henry’s chest, French-tipped nails gleaming. “Don’t be shy. I’ve got a hot tub.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. Was she really hitting on him while I was standing here? Layla hadn’t changed much since high school. Once, I’d been talking to a boy I liked, and she’d sauntered up and handed me a box of tissues. She’d announced that I’d forgotten to stuff my bra, and then asked the boy to the Sadie Hawkins dance right in front of me. He’d been the quarterback, fated to become husband number one.

Obviously her methods hadn’t evolved over time.

“It’s got over thirty-five jets,” she bragged.

Henry’s eyes widened. “Impressive.”

“Yes, it is.” Layla removed her hand from Henry’s chest and checked her nails. “Maybe you can drop in sometime, too, Autumn,” she said, as if she’d just remembered that I was standing there. “Are you looking for extra work? I could use some cleaning once or twice a week.”

My cheeks burned. “You’re asking me to clean your house?”

Henry touched the small of my back. Layla’s gaze had followed his hand and her smile tightened. Henry looked at me and smiled brightly. “Didn’t you promise to go ice skating with me?”

“I did, didn’t I?” Plastering on a phony grin, I shook my head at Layla. “Sorry, Layla, the man wants to take me ice skating.”

We walked away from Layla, Henry quickly steering us around a group of carolers. “Holy crap,” he whispered. “What’s with your friend?”

“Layla? I am not friends with Lay-a-lot Deberaux.”

He looked back. “Well, she sure knew you.”

“Actually, she used to torment me in high school. She was one of the reasons I was so nervous to send Elliott to Palouse Plains. It’s never fun to be picked on.”

“The fact that she just offered you a job cleaning her house probably didn’t help.”

“Oh, you caught that?”

“She wasn’t exactly subtle.”

“Are you going to go see her thirty-five-jet hot tub?”

Henry looked at the ground, now covered in a dusting of white. “I don’t know if hot tubs are my thing.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Aren’t hot tubs every guy’s thing?”

“Sounds like you’ve been hanging around with the wrong guys,” he said. “Now, you owe me a trip around the pond.”

“I do?”

“I just saved your butt from Ms. Deberaux,” he reminded me as we entered tiny Fairfield Park. “Now you have to ice skate with me.”

“I’m indebted to you now?” I glanced around the park and realized that lots of the people milling around, sipping steaming-hot cups of cocoa and wassail, watched us curiously. Holly and Cody stood with their kids and Elliott at the opposite end of the park, warming their hands by the bonfire. Nearby, the school band played “O Holy Night.”

I caught Holly’s eye, and she waved excitedly, her gaze flicking between Henry’s face and mine. She was waiting for us to fall into a snowdrift and start making out.
Thanks. No pressure.

“I don’t know about this.” I eyeballed the miniscule pond in the middle of the park.

Ice skating on Theil’s so-called pond was a tradition in Fairfield, even though the pond was just a wide, round section of the puny creek that meandered through town. It was only about twenty-feet wide and twelve-feet long, but before the festival each year, the Parks and Recreation Department—consisting of four guys and a weed whacker—trimmed the grass around it, lined it with logs for sitting, and encircled it with decorative paper lanterns.

One year, when I was about ten or eleven years old, Harriet Baumgartner, the local funeral home director, fell through the ice and had to be pulled out with ropes. Granted, Harriet Baumgartner had weighed about three-hundred-and-fifty pounds, and the water was only two-and-a-half-feet deep underneath the ice, but I’d still been too terrified to try skating again.

Henry laughed. “Are you scared?”

“No.” I backtracked. “Okay, maybe a little. I don’t really know how.”

He took my hand and pulled me toward the pond. “Come on. I’ll teach you.”

Four other people skated to the music of the school band. The snow fluttered down more thickly now, sticking to my braid and on Henry’s hat. He offered me a reassuring grin as he gave a dollar to the young man renting out dozens of mismatched old ice skates. We sat on a log to put them on. Henry had his laced and tied in a matter of seconds, while I sat tugging and fumbling to secure the antiques to my feet.

“Here.” Henry gently lifted my foot and properly laced the skate while I watched in reverent silence. “You’re going to break your ankle unless you lace them up tight.” He released my foot, then lifted the other. Reaching beneath the tongue of the skate, he grabbed my sock and tenderly tugged it farther up my leg.

“How do you know all this, California boy?”

Henry gave me a taunting smile. “I’ve got plenty of skills you don’t know about.”

I was pretty sure I levitated off of the log for a moment. I didn’t doubt Henry’s skills
in the slightest.

With Henry’s assistance, I managed to make it onto the ice. We skated in slow circles around the pond. I faced forward, gripping his hands while he skated backwards, encouraging me. The band played “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” jolly and irresistible. After a few turns I began to relax and enjoy myself. Holly grinned at me from the shore, the kids played in the snow, and almost everyone else seemed to have stopped what they’d been doing to watch us skate together. Apparently Henry and I were the town “project.”

“That’s it. You’re doing great,” Henry prompted, releasing my hands as we turned.

“Hey, don’t—” I reached for him.

“Relax. You’re a natural.” He smiled, pulling a candy cane from his pocket and unwrapping it. “And you’re the prettiest woman on the pond.” An older woman skated past and harrumphed at him. “Well, second only to you, Mrs. Patterson.”

I covered my mouth and giggled.

“She’s my landlord,” he said.

Nodding, I picked up my pace, bringing myself closer to Henry. He sucked on the end of a candy cane and waved cheerfully at our audience.

“Are you ready to try going backwards?” He sounded excited. His eyes matched his tone, the crinkles on the sides of his eyes deepening.

“I don’t know.” I looked down, focusing on the fallen tree branches beneath the ice. I thought of Harriet Baumgartner. My knees turned to jelly. “Henry, give me your hand.”

“No, you’re doing fine.” He put his hands on my waist to steady me.

His hands felt so good, even through three layers of clothing. My heart sped up, my ears rang. “Henry.” His name came out like a croak. My stomach did a somersault, and I pitched forward.