Ava found a low branch and hung it a little too close to the end. She turned back around, awaiting Isabella’s approval.
Isabella winked. “Good choice.” But as soon as the little girl skipped toward Mrs. W. for another ornament, Isabella pushed it farther back on the branch. Well would you look at that, the ice queen had a heart after all.
When Mrs. Whitley finished sorting through the bins of ornaments, divvying them up to each Whitley child to hang on the tree, she pushed off her knees. She stopped in front of Leo and held an ornament in her palm, smiling at him. “And here is yours.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks.” Leo accepted it and shuffled toward the tree. He smirked at Isabella who eyed him suspiciously while she hung an ornament.
“What? You thought they’d get rid of my ornament?” He asked, incredulous.
“Uh, no…I didn’t. I…I guess I just forgot you had one.”
“I hang it on the tree every year.”
“Why don’t you hang it on your own tree?”
His heart snagged on her words for just a moment. He shrugged, finding a high empty branch. “I usually don’t get a tree.”
Isabella leaned in closer, her shirt riding up and revealing the smooth skin on her bare stomach. Her body illuminated from the glow of the crackling fire. He had an impossible time not staring at her. He swallowed hard.
“Not even when you were married?” she asked.
He dropped his head and sighed. “Fine. You got me there. For those two years, we did have a tree. But it wasn’t as if I was gonna take my ornament from your mom. That would be weird, don’t you think? Not to mention rude. Your parents bought it for me.”
She pressed her lips together, and they disappeared in between her teeth. She was close enough for him to catch a scent of the same perfume that had intoxicated his senses two nights before. He sucked in a breath and waited, but for what he wasn’t sure. He’d already decided he wasn’t going to press the conversation about why she never returned to Pineridge, or the more recently development—why she’d come back and not told anyone.
“Leo, I—”
“Izzy,” Mrs. Whitley interrupted, breaking his trance. “Why don’t you help me with the needles and thread?”
Isabella trained her eyes on him, and he hated the magnetic pull he felt for her. “Okay, Mom.”
Leo backed away until he felt his legs hit the sofa. He dropped onto it, needing to put distance between them before he had the urge to drill her with questions or worse—pull her into his arms.
Chapter Twelve
Isabella
Isabella pinchedone eye shut and stuck her tongue out as she concentrated on threading a needle, keeping it long and tying it at the end. She poked it in the butt of a Santa Claus pincushion before doing the same with another needle and thread, prepping them for the popcorn and cranberries. She forgot how tedious the process was and poked her fingertip more than once, feeling less jolly with each prick.
Ava climbed onto the barstool next to her, her dark, curly hair in two side ponytails resembling pom-poms. Mom gave Ava a pair of flat-nosed safety scissors, who cut open two bags of cranberries and poured them into small stainless-steel bowls, only spilling a few onto the counter.
“Okay, Grandma. Cranberries are ready.” Ava grinned.
“Nicely done, sweets.” Mom picked up the runaway cranberries and tossed them into the bowls. “Now why don’t you take them out to the living room, please? We’ll be right out with the strings.”
Ava hopped off the stool and skipped out of the room, a bowl in each hand while Mom cringed, awaiting a trail of spilled cranberries left on the wood floor behind her.
“Hey, Mom?”
“Mmm?” Mom dumped the extra kernels from the air popper into the trash.
“What made Norah decide to have her wedding on Christmas?” Isabella pricked her finger again and shook out her hand, muttering, “Ouch,” for about the hundredth time.
Tilting her head, Mom gave an incredulous look. “C’mon, Izzy, you know why.”
“Do I? Because if she would’ve asked me, I would’ve told her to have a destination wedding like Finn and Nina. A tropical vacation and a wedding—two birds, one stone. Now that’s what I’m going to do.”
She pushed another threaded needle into the pincushion, remembering the Hawaii trip nearly six years ago fondly. What she wouldn’t give to be laying out on a beach right now instead of freezing her appendages off in this winter wasteland.
