“Now don’t panic.”
“Linda, that’s not helping me not to panic. Are they okay?”
“They were just playing in the snow and Holly jumped off the porch and landed on one of those big rocks in the flower beds—she didn’t see it because of the snow—and hurt her ankle. Ben says it’s not broken and it’s not bad enough to need a doctor, but it still hurts. She just—”
“We’ll be right there.” He said goodbye and looked at Rachel. “I’m so sorry to end things early. That is not what I would have chosen.”
She smiled at him, loving that he would be willing to end things early to look out for his daughter. Out of every moment tonight, that might have made her fall for him the most.
And it was also the most quintessentially parental thing that possibly could’ve happened tonight. So much so, that she should have known without a doubt that it would happen. But boy did she wish that the kiss that had seemed so inevitable moments ago had happened. She could almost feel how sweet his lips would be against hers.
ten
NICK
“Daddy, my ankle hurts,”Holly said as they sat on a blanket on the floor of what would very soon be their dining area, having dinner with Rachel and Aiden.
“Maybe this will help,” Rachel said as she took off her cardigan, rolled it up, and then placed it under Holly’s ankle.
Holly looked up at Rachel like… well, like she’d found something that was lost. He understood the feeling so well.
Holly’s ankle hadn’t been injured too badly, but he did keep her home from school on Wednesday. Luckily, it hadn’t been a day where he’d had to go into the office. His office in his in-laws’ home was in the guest bedroom with him, so he had set up a bunch of pillows in his bed like a throne. Holly had felt like a princess as she colored, read, and watched shows on his tablet, Rosy by her side as he worked.
She seemed to have loved the extra attention and privileges… to a point. By that evening, she was tired of being in bed and wanted to play with Rosy. Linda had fixed her up with a simple ankle wrap, and despite a small limp, she seemed to play without any pain.
He’d taken her with him to the house every evening, and when she wasn’t thinking about it, her ankle seemed to be pretty fine. He suspected that it was the attention that Rachel was giving her that was making it “hurt” tonight.
Even with Holly’s ankle, he’d managed to finish the rest of the flooring and baseboard and trim Wednesday night and painted them just yesterday. He and Rachel had tentatively planned to finish the fireplace set piece on Saturday, but since the house was now ready to be moved into, he’d asked her if she could come tonight, instead.
Tomorrow, he and Holly were going to be able to move in. A full week before Christmas. He couldn’t believe he’d managed to pull it all off.
As soon as they were done with the meal and got everything packed back up in the basket Rachel had brought, they let the dogs back through the gate. One of the only items in the house that wasn’t a home improvement tool was a Bluetooth speaker he’d brought so he could listen to music while he worked on the house. He started it playing Christmas music and turned on the fireplace—it seemed appropriate, given what they’d be working on.
Then he and Rachel started working on the set piece. They hadn’t even gotten through talking about their next steps before Aiden said, “Can me and Holly go set up the blankets for our beds?”
It would take hours to get the set piece finished and they knew they would be working past the kids’ bedtimes, so they brought a huge pile of blankets and a couple of soft mats that his in-laws had so they could sleep when it was time. “Sure thing. Holly can show you which room.”
The kids carried armloads of blankets away, trying not to trip on the trailing end, the dogs running around them and nipping at the corners of the blankets. He guessed there was going tobe a lot of chaos and laughing and probably the wearing of blankets like capes before any beds got made. He was going to drink in every second of laughter that he heard coming from his daughter.
He and Rachel looked at the fireplace—the fake one, not the real one— which was standing but was still wood-colored. “So,” Rachel said, her hand on her hips as she studied the piece, “paint from the mantle up first, so it can dry, then work on cutting and installing the brick facade? Then, hopefully, the top will be dry enough that we can paint the details and then figure out how to attach the Christmas decorations.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.” He still had the floors covered with a drop cloth from when he’d painted this room yesterday, so they were able to get to work quickly. As Rachel painted the edges with the paintbrush and he painted the big areas with the roller, every time they got close to one another, he was reminded of their date on Tuesday and how they’d been moments away from kissing before it had abruptly ended. All the nerve endings firing, all the warmth spreading from his chest, all the longing that he’d been feeling that night he was feeling at full force again now.
And every time that their faces were close and Rachel’s eyes would meet his, a breath of anticipation hanging in the air between them, a kid would come running into the room, usually chased by a dog, sometimes chasing a dog, and he’d be reminded how much a kiss wasn’t about to happen. Holly was warming up to Rachel quite a bit, but if his daughter caught him and Rachel kissing, he worried it would be pushing her too far, much too fast.
Besides, every time he thought again about the kiss they’d almost shared, he would also start thinking again about the cancer. He knew cancer well enough to know that relapses couldhappen and that Rachel wouldn’t fully be in the clear until she’d had scans come back clean for a full five years.
When she’d first told him, it had felt like a bowling ball hit him in the gut. He was really falling for Rachel. After losing Clara, though, could he face the possibility of losing Rachel, too? He wasn’t sure.
They had gotten all the fake brick pieces cut that they would need and were in the middle of attaching them to the fireplace with the construction adhesive when Holly and Aiden came running into the room. “Can we each have one of those cookies you bought?” Holly asked.
“Yep,” he said. “Just make sure the dogs don’t eat any.”
Somewhere in the middle of his sentence, he heard Rachel say “Oh,” as an exhale.
“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have answered for both of us.”
“No, it’s totally fine. Go ahead, kids.”
