We Need a Little Christmas (8 page)

She felt him lightly stroking her shoulder. “Better?”

She rested her cheek against his jacket, glad he couldn't see her face. “Just don't ask me if I'm okay again.” A weak laugh sputtered out of her; she stopped it before it could turn into another sob.

“It's a deal.” His arms loosened around her slightly, but he didn't seem in a rush to let her go or push her away.

She took another deep breath. “I'm sorry.”

“What have you got to be sorry for?”

Probably he meant the question to be rhetorical.

But it brought another sob welling out, and to her horror, she heard her words spilling out with it. “I should have been here. I haven't seen Nammy in four years, and now I'll never see her again. And my mom's getting old and—”

“She's not old,” Scotty said. “Remember, sixty is the new forty.”

“She's only fifty-seven.”

“See?”

She sobbed out another laugh, then rested against Scotty's vest as the truck filled with quiet. She felt drained, wrung out.

“Everything changed while I wasn't looking.” She barely knew him, but she couldn't seem to keep the words from coming out of her. “I don't belong here.”

Liv's stomach clenched as a half-formed thought rose to the surface: “You belong here more than I do.”

“Hey.” His arms tightened around her, just a little. “If you mean Tall Pine, that's because I never left. If you mean your grandmother's house, with your family—that's nuts.”

She caught her breath with a shudder and waited for him to go on. Because if he had a way to make her believe that, she wanted to hear it.

“You know what I saw when you got to your mom's house?” he said. “I saw you and Rachel running at each other like a couple of speeding trains. I saw you jump in to help take care of your mom. If anyone can keep you three on track going through all that stuff, it's going to be you. And that's got to be one ugly job.” She felt him smoothing her hair. “Just go slow. Don't push too hard, and don't expect too much. Not from your mom and sister, and especially not from yourself.”

Just for a moment, Liv let herself relax against him. A feeling seemed to seep into her, a sense of strength that had nothing to do with how big he was.

Then Scott loosened his hold and cupped her face in his hands, brushing away tears. “You're doing
fine
.”

A shaky breath escaped her. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to cry any more.

“Now,” he said softly, “do you want me to go in and get that tree back?”

She'd almost forgotten what set her off to begin with. But that was
exactly
what she wanted.

She nodded vigorously.

* * *

Scott walked back into the lobby to find Mandy and Jake contemplating their bounty. Facing three-quarters away from the door, they didn't hear him come in.

Mandy fingered the picture of the green tree on the side of the newer box. “I'll bet this tree is going to be perfect.”

“Uh, Mandy, you're ignoring the obvious.” Jake was looking at her with a wry grin. He tapped the blue and white box that contained the silver tree. “Where are we going to put
this
one?”

“Maybe we could give one of the rooms kind of an early sixties look.” There was just a touch of uncertainty in her voice. “Call it the Retro Room or something.”

“Sweetheart, the whole hotel is retro. But
antique
retro. If we change a room around to fit that thing, we'll have to call it the Kitsch Room.”

Mandy wasn't convinced. “I'll bet it looks really nice lit up.”

Scott cleared his throat. “Uh, guys. I think I've got your solution.”

They turned. Mandy wore a guilty look, as if they'd been caught saying someone's baby was ugly.

Scott said, “Liv's seeing it as more of a centerpiece. Right here in the middle of the lobby. Maybe with a big brass plaque dedicating it to her grandmother. You know, about this big.” With his hands, he formed a shape and size roughly equivalent to a tombstone.

For a moment they stood with frozen faces.

Mandy cracked a smile first.

Jake looked relieved. “Yeah, right.”

“Actually, she was having second thoughts,” Scott admitted. “Sentimental value.” He paused. “Her little sister was pretty attached to it.”

Jake stepped aside, gesturing expansively toward the box. Scott picked it up and tucked it under his arm.

“Tell her I'd really like to see it when it's set up,” Mandy said.

When he returned to the truck, Liv was sitting up straight. Only her faintly red-rimmed eyes bore any evidence of the state she'd been in just a few minutes ago. He should have known it wouldn't take long for her to pull herself together.

He loaded the tree back into the truck and joined her in the front seat.

“Thanks,” Liv said. No more sniffling, no more apologies. So they were back to normal.

Scott felt a vague, selfish disappointment. Of course he didn't want her falling apart and miserable, but it was perversely reassuring to see a chink in the armor. He'd seen Liv master her emotions time after time these past few days, but no one should be in control
all
the time. It couldn't be healthy. Could it?

And in that moment when she'd been sobbing in his arms, he'd had a feeling that was undeniably compelling. Protective? Concerned? Okay, those were part of it.

He'd felt needed.

Chapter 8

Liv braced herself as Scotty stopped the truck in front of her grandmother's house. The little one-story home, with icicles slowly dripping from the roof, didn't look formidable. The memories inside it were good. The task of sorting through them—
that
was formidable.

She'd kept Mom and Rachel waiting too long, and it was time to buckle down and do what she'd come here to do. Still, she didn't move. Not yet.

As she stared at the windows, Scott began, “Are you—”

She darted a look at him. Not
that
question again.

He broke off, then finished, “—ready to go inside?”

His arm rested on the back of the seat behind her, not touching her, but looking ready to catch her if she had another meltdown. She wouldn't. She'd checked the visor mirror a few minutes ago, and her eyes had just begun to lose their red-rimmed look.

On top of it all, Liv didn't know how she was going to explain the fact that, after all the discussion and careful reasoning, she'd come back with the silver tree.

“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm sorry I—”

“Let's make a deal,” Scotty said. “I stop asking if you're okay. You stop saying you're sorry. Or I get to clunk you with a great big stick.”

Now,
that
was trademark Scotty Leroux.

Belatedly, she remembered that two days ago she'd promised to start calling him Scott.

“Deal,” she said. She looked at the lace curtains of the house again, unable to see inside. But she thought she saw the lace move, as if someone had been peering out the window a moment ago.

“Just one thing,” Liv added. “Can you put the tree in the trunk before we go inside?”

* * *

Inside, the temperature in the house was actually comfortable. Almost too warm, in fact, after the bracing air outside. Rachel was rinsing lunch dishes when Liv came in, so maybe she hadn't been watching at the window after all.

“Hey.” Her sister turned away from the kitchen sink to greet them. “Come look what we found.”

Mom fumbled for her crutches as she started to rise from her place at the kitchen table. Liv rested a hand on her shoulder, and her mother sank back down into her chair.

Liv and Scott followed Rachel down the hallway to a small wooden cabinet Liv didn't recognize. She certainly didn't remember the contents. Cans of new paint. A set of blue-and-white-patterned tiles. Another set of tiles, these in a mock-brick pattern. Several rolls of wallpaper. Liv pulled out a roll and unwound it slightly to get a good look at the pattern.

“Apples,” Liv said. “These are cute.” She called down the hall to the dining area. “Do you remember any of this stuff, Mom?”

“No. I don't know when she would have gotten any of those things.”

“I do,” Scott said.

All heads turned toward him. Hands in his jeans pockets, he leaned awkwardly against the wall of the hallway.

“It's a little hard to explain.” He passed a hand through sandy hair. “You know I did some work for her around the house. But about half the time, she'd ask me to take her on a run to Coffman's Hardware or the home store next door.” He nodded toward the cabinet. “She'd pick up some little thing like tile or paint. Never much at once. She talked about remodeling the kitchen, or the bathroom, or whatever. But she never got around to scheduling me to do the job. It was always ‘one of these days.' I felt half bad letting her spend her money, but it was
her
money . . .” He shrugged. “There didn't seem to be much point, but I didn't have the heart to try to talk her out of it. I think maybe it was good for her to plan something.”

Liv looked down at the wallpaper in her hands. Dear Lord, the apples were starting to look blurry.

Added together, the things in the cabinet probably hadn't come to more than a few hundred dollars, a little at a time. But what had Nammy been thinking?

Liv blinked carefully, and the apples sharpened again. Only then did she raise her head to look at Scott. “Do you think maybe she was . . . slipping?”

“No,” Scott said without hesitation.

“No,” Mom called, just as quickly, from the kitchen.

Maybe it was good for her to plan something.
Scotty might have something there. She knew Nammy had stayed active with the church, with her garden, and she and Mom had spent a lot of time together. But with her children and grandchildren grown up and Liv's grandfather gone so many years, the hours alone in the house had probably seemed long.

Blinking once more and clearing her throat, Liv rerolled the wallpaper and returned it to the cabinet shelf where she'd found it. “It's all brand-new,” she said. “Maybe sell it online?”

Silence greeted her words. She dropped the subject for now.

The mysterious cabinet was relatively small, it was self-contained . . . it was one more decision that could wait until later.

* * *

After Scott left, Liv and Rachel resumed the job of boxing up the dishes. Liv wasn't about to bring up the fact that while she'd been touring hotels and ostensibly dropping off Christmas trees, she hadn't eaten lunch. She'd have some of the pasta salad after she got some work done.

“You were gone quite a while,” Mom said. “We were getting worried about you two.”

“Worried?”

At Liv's puzzled look, Rachel smiled mischievously. “Didn't you know? Scotty gets around.”

Liv felt her face go red.
“What?”

“I wouldn't put it like that,” Mom said. But she was smiling, too. “He's just been . . . friendly with quite a few girls.”

“Friendly.” Rachel nodded. Her eyes gleamed. “That's a good way of putting it. He's just
sociable
.”

“Scotty? You're kidding.”

Not that he wasn't easy on the eyes. But it didn't sound like him, somehow.

Liv frowned. “And you sent me off with him?”

“We're just messing with you,” Rachel said. “He's a nice guy. He's just dated quite a few girls the past few years.”

Liv tried to remember if he'd dated a lot when they were in high school. Not that she could recall. Then she remembered the way his arm rested behind her on the back of the seat. Maybe his sympathy wasn't as unselfish as it seemed.

Not that it mattered. She'd be going home right after Christmas. Besides, it had barely been a month since she broke up with Kevin. After
that
fiasco, she wasn't in a hurry to deal with anything male.

She'd barely thought about Kevin these past few days, but with Nammy's death, the trip out here and the memorial, she supposed that wasn't surprising.

Liv let it go and concentrated on boxing dishes. Maybe they were past their first hurdle, and they could start making some headway on the house.

* * *

“Can you fix it?”

Scott looked up from his crouched position in front of Mel Kruger's dishwasher. “You cut me to the quick. Have a little confidence.”

“I'm just not sure how much damage I did trying to fix it myself. If you could get it going again before Gloria gets home, I'd really appreciate it.”

Scott grinned. Retirement made work for idle hands. “If it weren't for all the repairs I did to fix a job somebody else started, it'd cut my business in half.”

He picked up his wrench and spun it between his fingers. “Now, if I get out of here before Gloria knows what happened, there's an extra twenty-dollar confidentiality fee.”

Mel's eyes lit. He played along with the joke. “That's blackmail.”

“Tomato, to-
mah
-to.”

Less than half an hour later, the job was done. “Thanks,” Mel said. “You saved my hide.”

Scott closed his toolbox and stood to leave. “Another appliance repaired, another marriage saved.”

If only everything in life could be that easy. A new motto for his business cards:
I dream of a world where everything could be fixed with a wrench.

Maybe he'd stumbled onto something at that. Of course he liked fixing things; that was why he'd gotten into this line of work. To take it to another level, he liked the way it felt to make things better. Maybe that explained his history with women, too. He did have a way of gravitating toward girls who were nursing a broken heart. And when they were feeling better, they did have a way of moving on.

How Liv fit into that picture, he wasn't sure. He just knew he was thinking about her way more than he should. Wondering how she was faring with her mom and sister, and how they were progressing on that house.

Liv didn't seem broken to him. Her troubles were the kind that time would heal. She didn't really need him, and that was fine. He was trying to break the habit of rescuing damsels in distress, anyway.

He loaded his toolbox into the truck and slammed the tailgate, wondering if that heater at Nammy's would be giving them any more trouble.

* * *

At one time or another, this man had seen all three of them naked.

Granted, for Liv, the last time would have been when she was about ten, and it was probably a similar story for Rachel. Still, it was one of the drawbacks to living in a small town.

Dr. Melendez stood in the examining room, regarding the X-rays from urgent care with a frown. “You say this happened Saturday?”

“Right,” Mom said. “But it's only Tuesday.”

Dr. Melendez wasn't much older than Mom, which must make things twice as awkward for her. To spare her the indignity and inconvenience of undressing and paper gowns, Liv and Rachel had found a loose pair of sweatpants for her to pull on over a pair of shorts. Not that there was much dignity in Mom having to sit on the papered examining table in those shorts, her legs out in front of her as if she'd mistaken December for summer, and the table for some kind of elevated beach towel.

Dr. Melendez looked from the X-rays to Mom's knee with vague disapproval. “I could X-ray it again,” he said. “But I'd really like Dr. Driscoll in Fontana to take a look at it, and I'm sure he'll want to run his own set of X-rays there.”

“Who's Dr. Driscoll?” Liv asked, half a beat ahead of Rachel.

“He specializes in sports medicine, believe it or not.” Dr. Melendez lifted his graying eyebrows at Faye. “I know you didn't exactly do this by skateboarding. But he sees a lot more of this type of injury than I do, and we want to be sure it's healing properly. I don't like that swelling.”

Liv had hoped they'd have a few minutes with Dr. Melendez away from Mom, but she wasn't sure they'd get that opportunity before he ducked into the next examining room. So she spoke up in front of Mom.

“But
why
did she fall?” Liv turned toward her mother, half apologetically. But something about this still didn't seem right, and if she didn't speak up now, she might not get an answer. “Was the knee giving you trouble before? Or did you lose your balance?”

Mom looked a little like the way Liv used to feel when she'd been caught at something. “I—got a little dizzy.” Her face turned pink.

Dr. Melendez frowned at her. “Have you been having trouble with your vertigo again?”

“Her
what
?” Liv exclaimed.

Mom went from pink to red. “It's nothing. I mean, it's something I had a few years ago. I haven't had any trouble with it since. I just got dizzy for a minute the other morning—”

“How did I not know?” Rachel sounded dismayed.

“It was right after you and Brian got married.” Mom gave a small, knowing smile. “You weren't up here too often that first year.”

Liv asked Dr. Melendez, “So, what do we need to do?”

“If it doesn't give her any more trouble, probably nothing.” He turned to Faye. “But
you
need to let someone know if you're still having symptoms.”

“I'm not. I'm not even sure that's what it was.” Mom shifted her gaze away. “And I didn't want to get the girls worried.”

Liv fought back the urge to lecture her own mother in front of the family doctor. Mom was entitled to some dignity, and the shorts didn't help much with that.

Fifty-seven
wasn't
old. Liv knew that in her brain, but her heart was having a hard time listening to reason.

* * *

Back at the house, Liv noticed Rachel was quiet while they had their lunch, another warmed-up casserole from someone at the church. They talked Mom into lying down after they ate. Talking her mother into lying down was another new experience for Liv. Mom had always been the one to take care of
them
.

“You were right,” Rachel said as they loaded the dishwasher.

“About what?” Liv rinsed a glass and handed it to her sister.

“You know what I mean. The vertigo thing. How did you know?”

“I didn't know anything. It just felt wrong to me,” Liv said. “I guess I wanted there to be a
reason
.”

Not that vertigo was great news. But according to Dr. Melendez, it wasn't age-related, and Liv took a shallow comfort in that.

“She said she tripped, and I bought it.” Rachel closed the dishwasher. “You're still the responsible one.”

An air of discontent hung around Rachel, and Liv tried to pinpoint the source. “Hey, this isn't about who's right, or who's responsible,” Liv said. “We just want Mom to be okay.”

“I know. I . . . Sorry.” Rachel went for a kitchen chair and sat, her legs splaying less than gracefully in front of her. Liv wondered if she'd ever get used to seeing her sister waddle like the pregnant woman she was.