The Christmas Secret by Lee McKenzie

Author:Lee McKenzie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

With Will distracted by a small bowl of vanilla ice cream and a gingerbread cookie after dinner, AJ helped Annie clear away the dinner dishes. During the meal his son had talked endlessly about his latest fascination…the woman he insisted on calling “Sam-I-am.” He chattered about her truck, he wanted a pair of work boots like hers, and during dinner he reinvented his cutlery as a hammer, saw and screwdriver.

AJ hadn’t known how to shift the conversation to another topic, and it hadn’t helped that Annie seemed to encourage his son’s interest in Sam’s work. At least Will was blissfully unaware that, at that very moment, Sam was still at work in the foyer. That was something to be thankful for.

Will’s spoon clanked into his bowl. “All done.”

Annie added his dishes to the load in the dishwasher. “Then it must be bath time.”

“Boat time!”

She ruffled Will’s curls. “That, too. Unless your father would rather get you ready for bed.”

“Not bed. Boats!”

“I’d better take Hershey out before bedtime. You go have a bath with your boats and I’ll be up in a while to read you a story.”

“Green Eggs an’ Ham!”

Annie chuckled as she lifted him out of his seat. Will’s feet were running before they hit the floor. “Is that what you want for breakfast?” she asked, following him up the back stairs. “Green eggs and ham?”

He couldn’t quite hear Will’s muffled response but he imagined it had something to do with Sam.

Ten minutes later, after Hershey’s evening romp around the backyard, he came back inside and settled the dog into his crate for the night. The house was silent, which was good because it meant Sam had left for the evening, the house was his again and he could finally relax. He’d managed to steer clear of her since Will’s tumble on the front porch that morning. Avoidance was a good strategy, one he planned to stick to for the next few weeks. Now that she was gone, though, he would take a quick look to see what she and Kristi had accomplished that day. Then he’d head on up the front staircase and get his son settled in for the night.

He knew progress was being made in the foyer, but to his surprise the living room had also been cleared of half a century’s worth of Grandmother Harris’s keep-sakes, and the scent of dust and furniture polish lingered in the air. The furniture had been shoved into the middle of the room and covered with white sheets, and stacks of Kristi’s now-familiar blue plastic bins were piled by the door, filled, he was sure, with doilies and knickknacks. The faded wallpaper, with its numerous dark squares and rectangles where artwork and framed family portraits had for decades adorned the walls, was a stark reminder that the comfortable life he’d become accustomed to would soon be behind him.

Talk about maudlin. And it wasn’t even true, he reminded himself. The cabin in Idaho was a little on the rustic

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.