12 Days At Silver Bells House by Jennie Jones

Author:Jennie Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin

Chapter 8

‘You’re up. Thought you might’ve slept in again.’ Jamie was stamping the dust off his work boots onto the doormat in the portico as Kate opened the front door to let him in.

‘I’m all slept out,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been?’ She’d woken late again, at eight, and Jamie and his monster truck had gone.

He nodded behind him. ‘Chopped down the Christmas tree for the town.’

‘Oh.’ Uncomfortable prickles settled inside her as saw the huge tree strapped onto the back of his ute, the top branch hanging over the windscreen of the cab and the glossy tip bent, just waiting for the angel. Kate wasn’t an angel-loving person because of her middle name: Angelica. It wasn’t the name so much, but the way she’d been given it. ‘Are you getting one for the house?’

‘Well of course we are. It’s Christmas.’

‘Mmm.’ She stepped back to let him into the hall. ‘Not fond of Christmas this year.’

‘I can’t chop one down for the house yet anyway. That whopper is taking up the whole tray-back on the ute.’ He moved by her, not looking at her, and walked towards the kitchen. ‘I can hear my paintwork screaming as the pine scratches it.’

Kate pulled a face as she closed the front door. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one in a don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself mood. ‘Where did you get it from?’ she asked, following him into the kitchen and heading for the coffee pot.

‘Ray Smyth’s place. He farms the other side of the hill that shelters the town. Keeps a small patch of forest, just for Swallow’s Fall Christmas trees.’

‘Oh.’ How accommodating of him, growing a forest for the town. And since Jamie had got the tree, maybe the feud was over. Wonder who got the Santa suit.

‘Coffee?’ she asked, pouring into his big workman-size white mug.

‘Thanks.’ He took the offered mug, still not looking at her.

‘What are we doing today? Can I give you a hand with the wall down the road? Or the surgery, or something? I’ll need to borrow gloves but I’ve got my own wellies.’ She grinned, but he didn’t see it.

‘I’m taking a day off. Got to wait on the sparkies laying cable before I can continue the build at the surgery. What were you intending to do?’ He glanced at the chalkboard, reminding her she was supposed to making The Decision but she hadn’t listed anything else on the board.

After talking to Jamie last night, this morning she’d awakened to a genuinely sad fact. She had nowhere she wanted to go, even if she made The Decision.

‘It’s day six, Jamie. And all I’ve done is sleep.’

‘Perhaps you need it.’

‘There’s something weird going on.’ She picked up her own coffee mug and sipped. ‘I never sleep past six in the morning and now I’m lying in until eight or nine o’clock and then I need an afternoon nap. God. What’s with me?’

Her mobile chirruped with birdcall. She pulled it out of the pocket of her flare-legged, navy polka-dot shorts. ‘Kate Singleton, Singleton’s Sassy Sensation.

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