Sugar Pine Trail--A Small-Town Holiday Romance by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2017-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JAMIE WAS DIRTY, hungry and tired. He needed a shower, a sandwich and his bed, in exactly that order.

He had spent most of the day handing tools to his brilliant mechanic. Most of the time he happily left any necessary jet engine repairs to his mechanic, who was fully certified and amazing at his job, but once in a while Jamie helped out where he could. He figured every person who dared challenge the law of gravity by climbing into a cockpit ought to have at least a working knowledge of what was keeping him in the air.

He pulled into the driveway at Winston House, anticipating that bowl of soup he hadn’t had time to eat at lunch and enjoying the colored lights from her tree in the front window.

Looked like the boys had finally put all the ornaments on it, at least judging from the gleam of red and gold that hadn’t been there earlier.

At some point that day, Julia and the boys had hung wreaths in each of the downstairs windows that faced the street, with a single candle glowing a welcome. That festive little touch gave him an odd sense of coming home.

Winston House was truly grand, stately and graceful. It could be fussy and formal, as he’d thought earlier, yet somehow Julia was making it into a home for the boys.

He glanced at the dark windows upstairs. For the first time in his adult life, he was almost tempted to put up a Christmas tree of his own.

Where did that come from? Christmas was usually just another day for him. Oh, he enjoyed being with his family. He bought gifts for the whole lot of them in his travels and a few times had arranged leave to be home with them, but his heart was never in it.

His mother had loved Christmas. After she died—and then with everything that happened with Lisa, shortly afterward—the holiday had lost its magic for him.

It usually felt like a big jumble of emotions, guilt and old sadness and the sobering awareness that Christmas was meant for families, something that would never be for him.

This year, maybe he would put up a tree, he thought as he parked his SUV. He could even ask the boys if they wanted to help him decorate it, assuming they weren’t tired of decorating after doing so much downstairs.

He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. After nine. The boys would probably be in bed.

Should he stop by anyway? He needed to know what she had decided. Was she going to take a risk and come with him to Hope’s Crossing for the weekend? He wasn’t sure how he wanted her to answer, torn between his desire to help her tick off multiple items on her wish list and his completely reasonable discomfort with his unwilling desire for her.

He would shower first, eat some dinner, then see if her lights were still on, he decided. If they were, he would visit downstairs.

The best laid plans.

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