Susan Meier - A Diamond For Christmas

It wasn’t anticipation, though how could he not feel a bit eager at the fact that Shannon didn’t dislike him? She was simply being cautious. Wendy had more or less given him a green light and now that he had it he didn’t know what to do with it.

How did a man woo a woman who’d been hurt?

Finley tugged on his hand. “Shannon said that if it was okay with you we could go shopping with her tonight.”

“Shopping?” He laughed lightly, so uncertain about what to do or say. He knew exactly what Shannon was feeling. The hurt of rejection. The sting of not being wanted, not being good enough anymore for the person who took a vow to love you. He knew how shaky she felt. He’d felt it, too. But attraction to her had quickly gotten him beyond it. Unfortunately, that hadn’t left him a road map for how to help her. “Why would a person who owns a department store need to go shopping?”

“For a Christmas tree,” Finley answered.

The words came out through a giggle and something that felt very much like a fist punched into his heart. Finley, the child he firmly believed would never experience the joy of Christmas had her joy back. Shannon was responsible for that. Her generosity of spirit was part of the reason he’d fallen for her so hard and so fast.

So maybe he should show her he could be generous, too? “Wendy, would you mind taking Finley into your office for a minute?”

Wendy reached down and took Finley’s hand. “Sure. No problem.” Very astutely, Wendy closed the door as they walked out.

Cautious himself now, Rory caught Shannon’s gaze. “I’d love to go tree shopping, too…if you really want us.”

She caught his gaze, smiled sheepishly, hopefully. “There’s a huge difference between going tree shopping as a single adult and going tree shopping with a little girl who is seeing the holiday for the first time.”

Boy, didn’t he know that? Technically, this would be his first time of seeing the joy on Finley’s face when she walked through a forest of evergreens and chose the perfect one to sit in their big front window, so the whole town could see the lights.

He felt his own Christmas spirit stir, remembered the first time he walked into the woods with his dad to get the family’s tree, remembered decorating it, remembered seeing it shining with lights on Christmas morning. His heart tugged a bit.

He swallowed. She wasn’t just changing Finley. She was changing him. “All right, then. We’re happy to go with you.”

Shannon insisted they take her big SUV to the Christmas tree farm on the top of the hill outside of town. Without streetlights, the world was incredibly dark. A new storm had moved in. Though it was nothing like the storm that had stranded Rory and Finley at her home the weekend before, it blew shiny white flakes in front of the SUV’s headlights.

She pointed at the big illuminated sign that said Wendell’s Christmas Trees. “Take the next right.”

Rory smoothly maneuvered the SUV onto the slim country road. After a minute, the lights of the farm came into view. A minute after that she directed him to turn down the lane. Snow coated the firs that formed a tunnel to a bright red barn that was surrounded by four white plank outbuildings. Floodlights lit the area. Cars were parked wherever appeared convenient. Some in front of buildings. Some at the side of the lane. Tree shoppers walked the thin lines between the rows of tall, majestic firs.

They stopped in front of the first outbuilding. Rory helped Finley out of the car seat they’d installed in the back of Shannon’s SUV for her. She glanced around in awe. “Wow.”

Rory stooped down in front of her. “I’m going to let you walk until you get tired. But as soon as you get tired, you need to tell us. It’s too cold to be out here too long.”

Even as he said that a gust of wind blew away the tiny white flakes of snow that glittered in his hair and fell to the shoulders of his black leather jacket. Shannon watched, mesmerized. He was so gorgeous, yet so normal.

He rose and took Finley’s hand. “So how do we do this?”

Shannon took Finley’s other hand. “We get a tag from the cashier over there.” She pointed at a young girl who stood in front of a table holding a cash register. “Then we walk down the rows until we see a tree that we like and we tag it. One of us goes out to get one of the helpers to cut down our tree while the other two stay with the tree.” She looked around at the large crowd of tree shoppers. It might not have been such a wise idea to wait until this close to Christmas to choose her tree. Of course, with last weekend’s storm she hadn’t had much choice. “Since they’re busy, this might take a while.”

Finley grinned. “I don’t care.”

Rory laughed. “Yeah, you wouldn’t. If you get cold or tired, somebody’s going to carry you.” She giggled.

Shannon laughed, too. Not just because of Finley but because Rory was such a good dad. So easygoing with Finley and so accepting of her limitations.

After getting a tag from the cashier, they headed into the first row and Shannon drew in a deep breath of the pine-scented air.

Rory reverently said, “This is amazing.”

Shannon glanced around, trying to remember what the tree farm had felt like to her the first time she’d seen it. Tall pines towered around them. Snow pirouetted in the floodlights illuminating the area. The scent of pine and snow enveloped them.

She smiled. “Yeah. It is amazing.”

He glanced over. The smile he gave her was careful, tentative. A wave of guilt washed through her. She’d been so standoffish with him the past two days that he probably thought she hated him.

“Did you come here often as a child?”

“Every year with my dad.” She laughed, remembering some of the more memorable years. “He always had a vision of the tree he wanted. Some holidays it was a short, fat tree. Others it was a tree so tall it barely fit into our living room.”

He smiled. “Sounds fun.”

“It was.” She swallowed. After her behavior the past two days, he would be within his rights to be grouchy with her. Actually, he could have refused to take this trip with her. Instead, here he was, with his daughter, ready to help pick out a tree and carry it into her house for her.

With a quick breath for courage, she said, “What about you? Did you have any Christmas traditions as a kid?”

“Not really traditions as much as things we’d pull out of a hat every year to make it special or fun.”

“Like what?”

He peeked over at her. “Well, for one, we’d make as big of a deal out of Christmas Eve as we did Christmas. My mom would bake a ham and make a potato salad and set out cookies, cakes, pies and then invite everyone from the neighborhood.” He chuckled. “Those were some fun nights. We never knew what to expect. Sometimes the neighbors would have family visiting and they’d bring them along. Some nights, we’d end up around the piano singing carols. One night, we all put on our coats and went caroling to the people on the street who couldn’t make it to our house for some reason.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It was fun.”

He said the words as if he were resurrecting long-forgotten memories and it hit her that he’d been left that Christmas two years ago as much as Finley had been. She wondered how much of his own Christmas joy had been buried in the pain of the past two years.

“Tell me more.”

“After the big shindig on Christmas Eve, you’d think Christmas day would be small potatoes, but my mom always found a way to make it special.” He laughed. “I remember the year she tried to make apple-and-cinnamon pancakes.”

“Sounds yummy.”

“Only if you like charcoal. She got it into her head for some reason or another that they’d taste better if she didn’t use the grill but fried them in a frying pan the way her mom used to when she was little.”