The Selfish Women's Club's Not Quite Legal Christmas by Nancy Hill

Author:Nancy Hill
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Humor, Contemporary Women, Holidays, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Women's Fiction
ISBN: 1492971928
Publisher: Irish Eyes Productions
Published: 2013-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Evelyn hummed the Twelve Days of Christmas while fastening a strand of hair behind her ears. If she didn’t make any mistakes, she should have her pointed elf ears in place by the time she reached the end of the song.

She liked timing her tasks by music. She’d started it when she first married Cliff, a widower, and she had been faced with the daunting task of getting his four young children to cooperate. They were not particularly happy that she had joined their family, even though she had been delighted that becoming Cliff’s wife meant she would have a ready-made family.

Her mother had tried to talk her out of marrying someone with four children. “He won’t want any more little ones, and you’ll never be a real mother.”

Evelyn had been shocked. How could her mother say such a thing? Cliff’s children were in great need of a mother, as a matter of fact. On the day Evelyn and Cliff were married, the four children—all girls, ages eight, nine, ten, and eleven—were as unruly a bunch as Evelyn had ever seen. They had had a nanny who tended to their basic needs, but a mother’s love was clearly needed. As soon as Evelyn and Cliff were back from their honeymoon, Evelyn dismissed the nanny. She gave her generous severance pay for her years of hard work.

As if having four children wasn’t enough to fulfill Evelyn’s dreams of being a mother, Cliff had told her that half a dozen children sounded perfect, so there were still two more to go. Money was no object. Cliff had a successful career trading lumber. They’d met when he’d hired her to help in the front office. His business required little more than a telephone. He hadn’t needed so much as a receptionist since all of his business was transacted over the phone, but when one of his new clients complained about his hand-written invoices, he decided to hire someone to type things up for him.

Evelyn had been so awkward when she arrived for the interview that his heart had melted. Before he even asked her the first question, she confessed she’d never held a real job before. Her huge green eyes widened with nervousness and even when she managed to speak evenly, her hands twisted anxiously around the straps of her purse.

She turned out to be only moderately efficient and was no whiz with the typewriter. But oh, she could decorate. She turned Cliff’s two-room office into a home away from home. She brought in plants, covered the industrial carpet with imported rugs, hung pictures on the bare walls, kept a fresh pot of coffee brewing, and infused the office with scents that triggered happy childhood memories.

As she began the eighth verse of The Twelve Days of Christmas, Evelyn tried to remember exactly when humming had become a family tradition. Probably, she recalled, when Anna, the oldest of the children, had turned twelve. Anna had never warmed up to Evelyn, and when puberty hit, she let Evelyn know at least five times a day just how much she detested her.

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