HOLLY
Chris had outdone himself.
As someone who claimed to be allergic to the holidays, the man had gone above and beyond. Moving the tree in the middle of the night just to put a smile on a little girl’s face had pushed me over the edge. Chris was a good man. I could see it. Where he’d scrounged up a box of chocolates and a jasmine scented candle had me mystified. Chris didn’t seem like a candle type of a guy. As much as he told me he wasn’t into the holidays, I could see how much Christmas meant to him, if only he’d admit it.
“Look, Mom!” Noelle squealed, tossing away the wrapping paper and holding up the doll she’d been begging for since her birthday four months ago.
“Wow! You’re very lucky,” I reminded her.
“Santa must’ve gotten my letter.”
“I’m sure he did,” I assured her, remembering the letter in question that was still tucked away in the back of my drawer at home.
“Chris, do you want to see?” Noelle offered, holding up the box.
I fell silent. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. So far, he’d not missed a beat when it came to making this special for Noelle, but Chris didn’t seem like the kind of guy who played with dolls and got excited that they came with two different outfits and ten different accessories.
“Absolutely,” he faked excitement, setting down the blanket he was folding and dropping it onto the couch.
I watched silently as Noelle scooted over and plopped herself down beside him, before regaling him about everything you could do with her doll and everything she came with.
“How ‘bout I grab some scissors and we open her up?” Chris offered.
Noelle squealed and handed him the box, practically vibrating.
Half an hour later, and I was craving coffee, but my heart was full. The room was buried under multicolored wrapping paper but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that Noelle didn’t get the Christmas I’d planned. It didn’t matter that she didn’t get all the gifts that were wrapped with her name on them that I knew would be piled up at the lodge. All that mattered right now was the smile on her face as she sat with Chris, playing with her doll, telling him all the reasons that she was the coolest doll in the world. And Chris, bless his heart, was lapping up every second.
“Mom,” Noelle turned to me.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“I’m hungry. Can we have breakfast now?”
Before I could answer, Chris intercepted the question. “I’ve got an idea,” he piped up and grabbed my attention. “Why don’t we let Mom go upstairs and have a hot shower, and I’ll grab the box of Lucky Charms and bring them back down here? That way we can have breakfast where it’s warm.”
Chris was already on his feet stoking the fire and looking at me for an answer.
“A hot shower really does sound good,” I replied, rubbing my arms, already imagining the hot water.
“Lucky Charms it is!” Chris declared, shooting me a wink.
Noelle stood up and came over to where I was sitting before crawling into my lap. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked as she snuggled against me.
“I’m not allowed to have Lucky Charms you said,” Noelle whispered.
She was right. At home, we didn’t have sugary cereals. I mean, I wasn’t some kind of weird mom who only fed her daughter healthy shit. She was a six-year-old and I wanted her to be a six-year-old even if that meant eating sugar, but we didn’t have it for every meal.
I adjusted her in my lap, her bony bum digging into me. “Well, since it’s Christmas and we’re stuck in a storm and can’t have pancakes, I think Lucky Charms is fine.”
“Really?” Noelle squealed.
“Really,” I assured her, touching my finger to the tip of her nose before she scrambled off and ran over to Chris who was watching tentatively from beside the fire.
“Mom said I can have them!” she told him.
I pushed to my feet, ignoring the shiver that went through my body. Last night I’d been cold, but when Chris crept into the bed beside me, I immediately felt warmer. And I don’t think it was just from his furnace body heat either. I’d have to be dead to not see how sexy the guy was. Between the tattoos across his chest, the muscles in his arms, muscles built from doing manual labor, I imagined, not by spending hours in the gym staring at himself in the mirror. But it was more than physical that had my hormones fluttering. Hormones that hadn’t fluttered in a long, long time. It was how he waswith Noelle. Watching him embrace something that obviously made him uncomfortable and not once complain. It was the little things that made him hard to resist. And that was before I felt his hardness pressed against my ass this morning.
Pushing aside my lusty feelings and thinking about the cold shower I needed, I suggested that Noelle come with me upstairs and get changed when Chris asked why.
