We Need a Little Christmas (16 page)

But here she was, an hour and a half later, sharing both the fruits and the exasperation of their efforts.

“I'm
wearing
it again.” Carefully, she peeled the delicate paper away when it fell back onto her, trying to entangle itself in her hair. She didn't have her functional ponytail today; of course, she hadn't come here expecting to work with glue.

He should be shot for taking advantage of her offer. Her willingness to pitch in. But most of all, for the way her presence lightened his heart as much as his workload.

She'd made it very clear, with everything she
hadn't
said, that she didn't want those kisses in the attic to follow them downstairs. Scott was doing his best to honor that unspoken agreement. At times it was easy, because they worked together smoothly. But even that felt so natural, so right, that at times it felt only natural to . . .

Well, it was a good thing he was stationed on top of the ladder, sending the wallpaper down for Liv to secure before it got away.

Scott started down the rungs in case she needed his help, but Liv managed to peel herself free and set the paper where it was meant to go, carefully smoothing it into place with the wallpaper brush. It was a good job for a detail-oriented person, and Liv was definitely that.

One more roll, and they'd be done with the wall that separated the dining area and the living room. That left the adjoining wall that ran from the corner to the place where the kitchen cabinets began.

Liv pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, checking either for messages or for the time. She eyed the wall, then looked up at Scott, who maintained his distance from his perch at the top of the ladder.

“It's four o'clock. Want to finish this wall?” she asked, and something in his chest loosened.

“We should have just enough daylight to get it done,” he said. “Once we lose the natural light from outside, things aren't as clear. Too much guesswork.”

Liv nodded and set her cell phone down on the table he'd shoved into the middle of the room. “Let's do it.”

The light in her hazel eyes made his heart jump. Like him, she got gratification from a job that reaped visible results. Or maybe, if he flattered himself, she was actually having a good time.

“
Rats!
” she said a few minutes later, when the paper threatened to tear in her hands under the weight of the glue.

No point in reading too much into her enthusiasm, he reminded himself.

* * *

Liv slid into the Pine 'n' Dine booth across from her mother. It was late afternoon on Saturday, when Nammy would have been stopping by for pie and coffee. She was sure that thought had occurred to Mom, too, when she suggested they come in here.

“Here you go, ladies.” Sherry slid menus in front of them and grinned at Mom. “Down to one crutch, I see?”

“I'm giving it a shot.” Mom smiled. “The other one's in the backseat, just in case.”

Sherry scooted away, leaving them a few minutes to decide. She'd given them a corner booth by the window. Liv didn't ask, but she strongly suspected this was Nammy's usual spot. It was a prime location for people watching, with a view of Evergreen Lane's sidewalks in the graying afternoon. The little white Christmas lights that wound around the street's lampposts stood out against the muted background.

“I think we might get more snow tonight,” Liv said.

Mom nodded. “We could use it.”

However, even without the snow to entice tourists, the diner was three-quarters full, and most of them looked like out-of-towners. Of course, Liv wouldn't know a lot of the locals by now.

Until this afternoon, she hadn't been alone with her mother for any length of time. Today she was getting her turn escorting Mom on her Christmas shopping, this time for Rachel. They'd spent most of the afternoon chattering like magpies as they shopped, punctuated by companionable silences. Sitting across the table from her mom now, it was the first time Liv felt awkward, as if there was a sudden need to hunt for small talk.

“So,” Mom said, “you two finished the wallpapering this morning?”

Maybe because she knew
that
question was coming. Up to now, Mom had been more restrained than Rachel when it came to questions about Scotty.

“Uh-huh.” Wishing she already had a cup of coffee to fiddle with, Liv picked up her menu again and pretended to give it a closer look. “I didn't get the estimate sheet back from him yet, though. He wants to deduct for the time I spent helping. But how he ever would have gotten wallpaper hung alone is beyond me. It's hard enough with two people.”

She tilted her head to adjust the crick in her neck, and this time she wasn't faking. It did provide an excuse to avoid Mom's gaze, though.

“Asking him to put it in writing was probably a little bit much,” Mom said. “The ballpark figure he gave me was fine.”

“I was just trying to get things laid out ahead of time.” She repeated what she'd said to Scott yesterday: “Money between friends is always awkward.”

The word
friends
hung in the air, and Liv heard her mom's unspoken question loud and clear.

But they
were
friends, and nothing more. Scott hadn't made a move since that evening in the attic, and Liv had been the one to start that. He'd picked up her signals, and he respected them. Participating in the work on the house not only helped Scott, it also helped increase the chance that the job could be done before Liv had to leave after Christmas. She didn't want to leave Mom any more loose ends to deal with than necessary.

And if the time she spent around Scott was increasingly pleasant, leaving her increasingly reluctant to leave—well, she just had to deal with that on her own.

Liv added, with what she knew was forced casualness, “I told him I'd go by tomorrow afternoon after church to see how far he's gotten with the painting.”

Mom studied her with gray-blue eyes that had been able to see through Liv all her life. “You know, there's nothing wrong with—”

Sherry appeared as if summoned by Liv's silent prayer. “Are you two ready to order?”

Liv looked at her mother. “What kind of pie?”

“Boysenberry. Always.” Mom had come along with Nammy on a fair share of her weekly expeditions, especially after Liv's father died.

Liv took a deep breath and turned to Sherry. “Two slices of boysenberry pie. And two coffees.”

Chapter 17

“Dusty rose.” Liv watched her paint roller leave behind three feet of sky blue, covering the muted pink that had been there a moment before. “My grandfather must have been a patient man. I can't think of many men who'd sleep in a pink room.”

Scott's voice came from her left. “Maybe she changed it after your grandfather died?”

“No, it's been that color since I was a kid.”

After the adventure of hanging wallpaper, painting the master bedroom was a breeze by comparison. Liv just had to try to forget that this was the one room in Nammy's home she'd rarely been inside. Located at the back of the house, it was Nammy's inner sanctum, and she and Rachel hadn't had any reason to come in here, except when they sneaked in to smell Nammy's collection of vintage perfume bottles. Now it held only a four-poster bed, a dresser, and two night tables, all pushed to the middle of the room and protected with a tarp for good measure.

Oh, and standing in here, a few feet away from Scott, she also had to forget that it was a
bedroom.

Liv swept her paint roller over the wall again, leaving a fresh trail of blue. “Maybe that was their compromise for the ducks in the living room. The dusty rose for the birds.”

“For the birds,” he echoed, and she turned to see him quirking a grin at her. Her heart lurched, then skipped.

That happened every now and then, catching her off guard, when he said or did something that was somehow quintessentially Scott. And every time it did, it got harder for Liv to kid herself about why she'd gotten so involved with this renovation project.

Back at the house, Mom and Rachel were putting together a small package for their uncle Bob in Minnesota. Along with the Christmas gifts they'd picked up, they were sending him some of the framed photos from Nammy's belongings. Liv supposed she could have helped with that, but unlike sorting through Nammy's house, it hadn't really seemed like a three-person job.

So here she was, painting a bedroom with Scott.

What had they just been talking about?

Oh, right. The birds. Ducks. The wallpaper.

“Do you think it makes sense to leave the duck border?” she asked. She kept her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her. “I mean, whoever moves in here will probably want to change it, anyway.”

Scott sighed. “I think it'll look good, actually. But it won't make that much difference to whoever buys the house.”

Liv silently continued rolling paint onto the wall. With her grandfather's old paint roller. Everything she did on this visit was steeped in nostalgia, one way or another.

The only reason to leave the ducks was for her family, and they wouldn't be the ones to see it. This was supposed to be about getting the house ready to show. Complying with Nammy's wishes was an added bonus, and it made sense to use the materials she'd made available. Whatever upgrades they made to the house now, the time was coming when they'd have to let it go. Soon.

Her grandfather had been gone a dozen years longer than her grandmother, and one strip of wallpaper was a silly thing to be concerned about.

When she didn't answer, he said, “You're quiet, Tomblyn.”

His tone was light, but the warm resonance of his voice held the beginnings of concern. As if he was ready to catch her and steady her. Again.

“Still here,” she said. She was
not
going to start pouring out her heart. Even if all her old memories seemed to be coming loose, at random moments. This morning she'd caught herself singing a sappy old song Nammy had taught her, one Liv hadn't thought about in years. “Want me to start another chorus of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth'?”

“Don't even say it. I finally got it out of my head half an hour ago.”

She thought she'd successfully changed the subject until he added, “Maybe whoever moves in here will be a big duck lover, and that border will seal the deal.”

Liv smiled in spite of herself, but she kept her reaction between herself and the wall. Scott was like medicine for her. Dangerous medicine, best taken in moderation. It occurred to her, again, that it wasn't hard to see why a woman with a broken heart would fall for him. What wasn't so clear was what he got in the bargain.

“Okay,” Liv said. “We'll leave the ducks. Kind of like initials in a tree trunk.”

“Spoken like a true romantic.”

Liv watched more blue appear under her roller, admiring the instant result. It was so easy to make a difference with this type of work. No wonder Scott liked it.

She turned to sneak a glance in his direction. He was working his way across the top half of the wall adjoining hers, standing on just the bottom rung of the ladder to reach. He wasn't looking at her. Good.

The heater had come on this morning without a hitch. The same way it had yesterday, and the day before. By tacit agreement, neither Scott nor Liv commented on its mysterious recovery, any more than they mentioned the heater's strange behavior the night they were trapped in the attic. Or Liv's own out-of-character behavior that night. And Scott showed every sign of being sincere about trying to get away from his penchant for lovelorn women.

That was good, too.

* * *

Scott stepped back from his touch-up job around the edges of the doorjamb and sized up the freshly painted bedroom. Liv had left over an hour ago, and he'd broken his own credo, working past sunset to get the room finished. But he wanted to be ready to move on to the next phase of the project tomorrow. They were halfway home.

Wallpapering the kitchen had been the biggest task. With the master bedroom done, that left painting the living room and putting fresh tile in the kitchen and the bathroom. He liked leaving floors for last. Scott remembered his dad's advice, one of the first things he'd ever learned about do-it-yourself projects:
Do everything from the top down. Always. Period. Don't argue.

The wallpaper-paste spill the other day certainly made a good case for his father's method.

Scott took the last couple of brushes to the kitchen sink to rinse. Liv had rinsed the rest of the brushes and rollers when she left an hour ago. One nice thing about working with Liv: she liked leaving everything clean and ready to go for the next day.

Okay, there were a lot of nice things about working with Liv. What wasn't clear was why she was working with him. Probably she wanted to help hurry the project along; she'd implied it would be nice if it could be done before Christmas. Because two days after Christmas, she'd be gone.

No point in wondering about Liv's motives, any more than she saw any point in talking about What Happened In The Attic. A job was a job, and if this one was more pleasant than most, that just meant it would be a little tougher when it ended. No big deal.

If he could just convince himself of that.

Scott finished rinsing the brush and set it alongside the other brushes Liv had lain—neatly, of course—on the counter to dry. New tile for the counter might have been a nice idea, too, but it hadn't made it onto Olivia's shopping list.

As Scott picked up the dish towel hanging by the sink to dry his hands, something clattered to the kitchen floor. He recognized the shiny red case of Liv's cell phone.

He bent and scooped it up, grateful that the phone hadn't come apart when it hit the floor. Thumbing a key at random, he saw the screen light up to display the time. No reception bars, of course. Liv still muttered about that sometimes, but she'd started to learn that up here, her phone was more often a glorified, less convenient, more expensive wristwatch.

She probably wouldn't like being without it overnight, though.

He eyed the time on the screen: 6:40. He'd drop it off at Liv's mom's house on his way home. Maybe he'd see if she'd eaten dinner yet.

* * *

The house looked dim when Scott pulled up, but Rachel's car sat in the driveway. Some sort of light was playing against the curtains at the front of the house. Maybe they were all inside with the lights out, watching a movie.

Well, it wasn't like he'd be interrupting brain surgery, he thought, annoyed with himself for being so tentative.

Then Liv answered the door, and any trace of irritation melted.

She still wore the sweatshirt she'd been painting in, its white now accented with fresh splotches of blue. Her hair was gathered in the same loose ponytail she'd worn at the house, numerous strands escaping by now. And she was in her stocking feet, although the raised threshold gave back some of the height she would have lost.

She looked rumpled and inviting, and his voice caught in his throat as he held up her phone. “You forgot something,” he said.

“Oh!” Liv patted down her jeans pockets as if she expected, somehow, to find her phone there instead of in his hand. “I can't believe I didn't notice.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He fumbled for something clever to say. “Paint fumes. They go to your head after a while.”

Her face lit in an unguarded grin as she took the phone from him. He saw that the living room behind her wasn't completely dark. A lamp on an end table provided some illumination for the gift wrap and boxes that were spread out on the living room carpet. The rest of the light came from—

Scott peered in to the right and saw the silver tree they'd put up last week, the light from the color wheel now washing over it.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “So that's what it looks like.”

“That's right. You haven't seen it.” Liv stood back to let him in, although he hadn't been hinting for an invitation. Not consciously, anyway. Scott walked in, and she closed the door to shut out the chilly night.

Scott stepped closer for a better look at the tree. It was a simple enough trick, the way the silver metal of the artificial needles mirrored the changing colors. Still, he'd never seen anything quite like it.

“I know it's corny,” Liv said. “I think maybe you have to see it when you're a kid to really . . .”

As he gazed at the tree, watching the colors change, it took him a second to realize Liv had trailed off. “No,” he said, “I wouldn't say that.”

The play of colored lights had a sort of fascination to it, like watching the waves of the ocean. Scott watched the shiny branches go from a frosty, pale blue to a warm, fiery orange . . .

When the tree was new, no doubt it had seemed modern, state-of-the-art. Now it was old-fashioned in a different kind of way, with a charm that was hard to describe. Maybe because the colored lights had passed over it enough times for the tree to witness its own set of memories.

That sounded weird. Scott settled for, “I like it.”

From the television set in the next room, he heard Desi Arnaz's distinctive laugh. Darned if they weren't watching
I Love Lucy
, something that was probably already in reruns the first time the tree was set up. He grinned at the unintentional time warp as he caught Liv's eye. She smiled back.

“Welcome to 1959,” he said.

His hand started for the small of her back in a reflex that felt as natural as breathing, just to put his arm around her, nothing more. He stopped himself, remembering the unwritten set of rules that had sprung up between them. But not touching her didn't keep him from feeling close to her.

He returned his gaze to the tree, now an unlikely shade of red, and for some reason he thought of a red bandanna handkerchief.

“Even my grandfather used to make fun of it,” Liv said. “He said the red made it look like a fire truck.”

The blue returned, and suddenly Scott was thinking of blue denim. Overalls.

He frowned. “He wore overalls a lot, didn't he?”

“That's right.” He felt her eyes on him. “Did Nammy tell you that?”

“She must have mentioned it.” It made sense. He was a house painter, after all.

Orange washed over the tree again, and Scott pictured two red-haired girls, sitting on the floor in front of the tree. Then it was green, like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Red again . . .

Scott pinched his nose, trying to clear his vision. He didn't say anything this time. But he was pretty sure Liv had had a red-checked flannel bathrobe when she was little. That Rachel had one like it, but in blue. And that their grandfather used to carry those old red bandanna handkerchiefs.

He looked at Liv, who was contemplating the tree with a gentle smile of her own. “I'm glad you like it,” she said. “And I'm
really
glad you went back in and got it that day. It's always been special. One of those childhood things.”

She turned to look up at him, shorter now than usual in her stocking feet. Her eyes were soft, probably under the spell of nostalgia, and something inside Scott said,
now.
He wanted to reach for her, to kiss her.

Liv's cell phone chirped. She checked the screen, and Scott saw that softness fade away as her brow furrowed.

“What is it?” he asked.

She lowered herself to the couch, still frowning. “I don't know yet. It's from Terri. She wants to know if I got her voice mail.”

“Terri?”

“My business partner.”

Scott waited and watched as she entered codes into her phone and listened, one finger in the ear that didn't have the phone held up to it.
I Love Lucy
still sounded in the background, but he felt the emotional climate in the living room shift as the furrows across Liv's forehead deepened.

Then she slammed the cell phone, facedown, onto the coffee table in front of her. Scott flinched. Liv rose, her body rigid.

“You do know that's not how you hang up that kind of phone, right?” Scott kept his tone mild.