“Only the year Mr.Trimble was hurt.”
“Oh, that was a terrible injury.He was laid up for weeks, and at the worst time of year.”Mrs.Booth checked her watch.“I’d best get ready for the florist.They’re doing something to the dining room table.I’m also certain Mrs.Johnson has a tin of shortbread for you to take back to the cottage.I don’t know how you did it, but you two girls seem to have wrapped her around your little fingers.”
Both Jillian and Olivia smiled, and Rhys walked them through to the kitchen, where Mrs.Johnson was icing a tray of gingerbread men.
“It’s still a bit warm,” the cook said, placing one in Jillian’s hand and then Olivia’s.“The icing’s misbehaving, but if you eat it quickly it won’t matter, will it?”She then handed a gingerbread man to Rhys and Catriona.“We can’t let the children have all the fun.”
Olivia impulsively hugged Mrs.Johnson and then Rhys and the girls were outside, with Cat carrying the tin of shortbread.
“I’ll be home in an hour or two,” Rhys said.
“Take your time,” Cat answered.“We’re just going to watch a movie on my laptop and have a quiet afternoon.”
“That sounds fun.I wish I could be there,” Rhys said, kissing each of his daughters on the forehead.
“Then come home now,” Olivia pleaded.
“I have to work a bit more, but soon,” he promised.
*
By the timethey reached the cottage, the gray sky looked almost like silver.If it weren’t for the gravel on the highest part of the road, they’d be walking through slush and mud.The girls didn’t complain but the moment they rushed through the front door, Jillian wanted a hot bath, and Olivia wanted some hot cider if they had any.They didn’t, Cat told her but said they could to Bakewell tomorrow and buy some.
“Are we really going to watch a movie?”Olivia asked, hanging up her coat.
“I think it’d be a fun thing to do while we wait for your dad,” Cat answered, peeling off her own coat and scarf.“Do you have a favorite Christmas movie you and Jilly like to watch?”
“Let me go ask her.”Olivia tore up the stairs.
Smiling, Cat stepped into the kitchen, set the tin of shortbread on the counter before warming herself briefly in front of the lovely old Aga.
The girls returned in less than ten minutes.“No long bath today?”Cat said to Jilly.
“I couldn’t get the water very hot.But that’s okay.Livy said we could pick a movie, and we chosePaddingtonif you have it.”
“I should be able to find it.I’ll grab my computer and you two pick an apple or banana from the fruit basket.I think after all those coo—biscuits—we could use something healthy.”
Thank goodness for streaming options, Cat thought, findingPaddingtonon a UK network.The girls sat side by side on the sofa, and Cat was trying to decide where she should sit when Olivia patted the space next to her.“Here, Cat,” she said, with another little pat on the cushion.
Touched, Cat hid the sudden rush of emotion by grabbing blankets off the back of the couch and spreading one over the girls, and the smaller one over her legs.
Settling next to Olivia, Cat pushed play and they spent the next hour and a half cozy and warm, watching the adventures of an adorable bear.
The credits had just begun to roll when the door opened and Rhys entered, carrying several white takeout bags.“Curry,” he said, “all your favorites.”
The girls cheered and begged to eat where they were, on the couch, since they were so comfortable.Rhys exchanged glances with Cat, and she just smiled because it had been a lovely afternoon, the first where she felt as if she belonged—not as a member of the family, but as a friend of the family, and for her, today, that was good enough.
Rhys had picked up cartons of chicken Korma, and butter chicken, as well as rice and naan, and crispy onion bhajis.Rhys teased the girls for watching a movie they had already watched a dozen times, and then the girls teased him for watching ‘that awful American western’ a thousand times.
Cat arched a brow.“Which awful western is that?”she asked.
“High Noon,” Jillian said with a dramatic eye roll.
“It’s so boring,” Olivia added.“And there’s no color.”
Rhys shrugged, not embarrassed, just not comfortable with the attention.“It’s a story about honor,” he said.
And Cat understood, and perhaps finally understood a little more about Rhys, because at the end of the film, Gary Cooper’s character, Kane, walks into the town square at high noon, knowing help isn’t coming, but he goes anyway because it was the right thing for him to do.
