Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jack studied the text on his phone, then glanced up at his sister, who was icing sugar cookies. It was nearly eight, which was later than he’d usually suggest an outing, but knowing her, she wouldn’t go to bed until midnight or later, and who was he kidding? He really wanted to see Maisie. They’d been texting all week, but he hadn’t seen her since the photo shoot…and the kiss.

And if Iris came with him, he wouldn’t have to worry he’d be on anything but his best behavior.

Which was why he found himself saying, “Hey, Iris. Maisie just texted and invited us to come over to help her decorate for Christmas.”

Her head jerked up, a tube of red icing in hand. “She hasn’t decorated yet? It’s, like, three days before Christmas!”

“Hey,” he said with a shrug. “All I know is what she said.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Why’d she text you and not me?”

He resisted the urge to cringe. “Maybe because it’s so late. She probably wanted to text me to make sure it was okay.”

“Yeah,” she said, shifting her weight to one side. “Maybe.”

“Do you want to go? You didn’t show much interest when Addy and Finn put up the tree a few weeks ago.”

She gave him a guilty look. Adalia and Finn had tried to make decorating the Christmas tree a family activity, complete with warm cider and cookies they’d baked together. Finn’s excitement about the whole thing had almost been comical. According to Adalia, his parents had always used a personal shopper to buy his gifts, which they’d had professionally wrapped. A chef had made their Christmas dinner. None of that sounded especially bad to Jack, but the situation admittedly lacked warmth, something he’d always had from his grandmother. And then with Iris.

But the family-bonding Christmas activity had gone down before Iris’s recent thaw toward Adalia, and his sister had silently put up a couple of ornaments before asking if she could be excused to do homework.

“Well…” she said sheepishly.

He hadn’t meant to make her feel bad, so he jostled her arm and said, “It’s okay, Iris. There was a lot going on and…” He pushed out a sigh. “I get it. That being said, this is up to you. If you’d rather stay here and decorate your cookies, I’m good with that too.” He grinned. “I will gladly keep eating them.”

“I’m cutting you off anyway,” she said with a laugh. “Three’s plenty. We can’t risk you getting flabby for your puppy pictures.”

He groaned. “You really need to ask Finn and River to do their share. They were Maisie’s friends first.”

“That’s the lamest excuse ever, but I plan to ambush them at the engagement party. Wait until they have some spiked eggnog or whatever, then ask.”

Jack gave her a look. “You know me better than to think I’d willingly serve eggnog. Are you bluffing?”

“I’ll ask them. I promise! But for now, I say we go over and help Maisie. I kind of hate thinking about her decorating her house all alone.” She glanced at the counter, covered with multiple tubes of frosting and stacks of undecorated cookies, as well as finished cookies on cooling racks. “I can pop the icing in the fridge and finish decorating in the morning, but I’ll be leaving a mess.” She made a face. “I don’t want Addy to think I’m a slob.”

He grinned, pleased by this further evidence that she cared what Addy thought of her. “She’s staying with Finn tonight, so I doubt she’ll ever see it, but you can shoot her a text to explain. She’ll understand. In fact, she’ll probably be excited to hear Maisie’s decorating.”

“Okay…you’re right.”

“I’ll text Maisie to let her know we’re coming over.” He picked up his phone and saw the bubble indicating Maisie was typing another message, which appeared before he could type his own response.

Sorry. It’s late. Forget I mentioned it.

Smiling to himself, he typed, Too late to rescind now. We’re coming over. He noticed Iris piling cookies onto a paper plate. Hope you haven’t met your sugar quota of the day.

In what sick world does such a thing exist? she responded.

He grinned again. Do you have a fake tree?

Of course I have one. How can we decorate without a tree?

Let me rephrase that, do you have one that’s less than two decades old?

She didn’t answer.

He looked up at Iris. “We need to make a stop before we head to Maisie’s.”

It was a miracle they arrived at Maisie’s house only a half hour later, especially after their special errand, but it was a few days before Christmas and there hadn’t been much of a selection left.

Maisie’s front door opened and she appeared, wrapping an oversized cardigan around herself to ward off the chill. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, but somehow she looked as sexy now as she had that night in the green dress. She was the kind of woman you wanted to come home to and kiss senseless…which was exactly what he wanted to do. But his little sister was his chaperone, and he couldn’t.

He and Iris got out of the car as Maisie descended the steps, her two dogs following at her heels.

“What is on top of your car?” she asked, her tone a little accusatory.

Now he worried he’d overstepped.

“Surprise!” Iris said, holding out her plate of cookies. “We brought gifts.”

Maisie took the plate and glanced down at the plastic-wrapped cookies. “This will go perfectly with the hot chocolate I have on the stove.” Her gaze shot back to Jack. “But what’s that on top of the car?”

As if she didn’t know. It was every bit a challenge.

“It’s a Christmas tree,” he said. He’d been staring at her, so he shook himself out of his daze and started to untie the ropes. Chaco rushed forward in a burst of speed and started pawing at his pants, eager for a greeting. He stooped over and ruffled her ears. Einstein peed on the tire of his car, then came over and sniffed his hand.

Maisie’s eyes were on the little dog, as if she expected he’d try to nip, but he surprised both of them by licking Jack’s hand and wagging his tail. And when Chaco turned to shower her love on Iris, Einstein stayed put.

“I guess he’s okay with me now that he’s established where I fall on the food chain,” Jack said, patting the dog’s head.

He’d hoped to sneak a smile out of Maisie. Instead, she had a strange look on her face, bewildered almost, but she shook it off. “Don’t try to change the subject. If you felt the need to get a tree, even though I have a perfectly good one, why’d you get that one? That tree’s bigger than your car. It looks like the tree in Christmas Vacation .”

“What’s that?” Iris asked.

Maisie gasped. “Well, I know what we’re watching over your school break.”

Iris gave Jack a questioning look.

“It’s a classic Christmas movie,” he told her with a laugh. “You’ll like it.” Turning to Maisie, he said, “Iris and I always wanted a real tree, but our mother hated them. If we’re going to help decorate on such late notice, we get to pick the tree.”

She laughed. “Okay, but you have to come over and pick up all the dropped pine needles.”

He stopped what he was doing and met her gaze. “Deal.”

Although it wasn’t much of a promise, it felt like it meant something. He wanted it to mean something.

“Do you need help?” Maisie asked. “I may not have arms like tree trunks, but it’s not easy to pick up a hundred-pound dog.”

“No one would ever accuse you of being weak,” Jack said with a grin. “But I can do it. I’d like to do it.” She looked at him for a moment, thinking, then nodded.

He got the ropes untied and pulled the tree off the roof, Maisie, Iris, and the dogs all watching him. After he wrestled it into the house, he carried it over to an empty spot in the corner by the front window.

The others trailed him inside, Chaco lying beside the tree and Einstein sniffing it suspiciously. He lifted one leg slightly, glanced at Maisie, and set it back down.

“I saw that,” Maisie said. “Don’t even think about it.” Turning to Jack, eyes dancing, she said, “Um, slight problem. My fake tree stand, which is indeed from the 1990s, doesn’t have a pan for water.”

“Obviously, you don’t know Jack very well,” Iris said. “He’s Mr. Prepared. The tree stand is in the car.” Then she bounded out the door.

As soon as the door shut, Jack closed the distance between him and Maisie. Before he let himself think it through, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

She didn’t respond at first, probably caught off guard, but it only took a second for her to wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back. With her body pressed against him, his fingers woven in her hair, he felt more alive than he had in…well, since the last time they’d done this. She nipped his bottom lip, and he pulled her closer, needing more. Needing everything.

Except then he heard the car door slam shut outside, and he reluctantly pulled away. Both of them were panting a little. “I’ve been wanting to do that all week.”

Maisie started to say something, her eyes full of lust, but Iris opened the front door.

“The guy at the lot promised this stand would work.”

Maisie shifted her attention to Iris. “You went to a tree lot? Those places are rip-offs.”

“And the trees in front of grocery stores are dry tinder waiting to shoot up in flames,” Jack said. “The only way to get a fresh tree is to chop one down yourself, and since we didn’t have time to go to a tree farm and our neighbor would hate us even more if we chopped her tree down, there were few options.” He leaned his head to the side. “Although I suspect we might have gotten away with it if we’d told her Jezebel was in the branches and refused to come down.”

Maisie laughed and the sound sank deep into his heart.

“Besides,” Iris said, “the lot was raising money for a veterans’ charity.”

“Fine,” Maisie said, rolling her eyes, but her grin let him know she was pleased. “Who am I to mock your gift? Especially when the profits go to a good cause.”

Jack attached the stand and unwrapped the tree, but before he stood it up, he said, “Now just remember, it’s only a few days before Christmas, so there wasn’t much of a selection.”

He lifted the tree, and the branches fell into place, revealing huge bare spots.

“You got me a Charlie Brown Christmas tree,” Maisie said as she broke into laughter.

“We tried our best,” Jack said, fighting his own laughter.

“Everything deserves to be loved,” Iris said. “Even scrawny Christmas trees.”

Jack heard the wistfulness in her voice, and his heart sank. Now he knew why she’d been so adamant it was the one .

Maisie pulled his sister into a sideways hug, keeping a hand on her shoulder. “Spoken like a fundraising chairperson.”

“You hate it?” Iris asked.

“No, just the opposite,” Maisie said with bright, shiny eyes. “I love it. It’s perfect.”

She’d already pulled multiple boxes of Christmas ornaments out of storage and stacked them on the sofa and coffee table. Iris pulled up some Christmas music on her phone, and the three of them began to string lights on the tree and fill it with ornaments. Some of them were handmade, and it was obvious a few had been made by the O’Shea girls when they were young. He felt another pang for Iris, who’d never done such a craft at home, but also for Maisie. For what she’d lost. Another ornament, which he hung, was a framed photo of the O’Shea family. Maisie stood in front with her sisters, their parents behind them. She looked a lot like her mother, but something about her father—the glimmer in his green eyes maybe, or the set of his jaw—reminded him of her too. He wished he could have known the people responsible, in part, for making Maisie the woman she was. He would have liked their approval.

When they finished, they stood back and studied their work.

“It’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen,” Maisie said with tears in her eyes. Chaco yipped as if to say she agreed.

“I like it,” Iris said with a soft smile and tears of her own.

Jack pulled Iris into a hug and kissed her forehead, then turned to Maisie, mouthing thank you .

She nodded, her chin quivering, and everything in him ached to hold her and reassure her that it was okay to move forward and leave the past behind. That she wasn’t losing anything important, because the things that mattered couldn’t be stored in boxes. He dropped his hold on Iris and was about to follow through on his instinct, but Maisie headed into the kitchen. “I think we’ve earned those cookies.”

When he and Iris joined her in the kitchen, she was ladling hot chocolate into mugs and dumping mini marshmallows on top. She handed mugs to both of them, and they all sat at the table, choosing cookies from the plate.

Maisie bit into one and made a hum of pleasure in the back of her throat that had him squirming uncomfortably in his chair. “These are really good,” she said. “I’m gonna need the recipe. The edges of mine always turn brown before the center is cooked.”

“Your butter probably got too soft,” Iris said. “You need to refrigerate the dough before you cut the shapes.”

Maisie’s eyes widened. “How is it you know more about baking than I do?”

Iris snorted. “I watch YouTube videos.”

“Kids these days,” Maisie said, but she grinned from ear to ear.

“What else do you usually do for decorations?” Iris asked. “I saw some stockings in the box.”

Maisie’s smile fell. “Let’s not hang those. I think it’s time to make some new traditions.”

A mischievous look filled Iris’s eyes. “You could put out reindeer food.”

“Do I want to know what that is?” Maisie asked, sounding apprehensive.

“Don’t fall for it,” Jack said. “It’s made of oats and glitter. Iris brought some home from preschool and dumped it all over my car. She was so upset because she thought Santa wouldn’t bring her presents if she didn’t have any. I had to look up the recipe.”

“How old were you?” Maisie asked in wonder. “You must have been in high school.”

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “A senior.”

“He’s always been there for me,” Iris said, blessing him with a look full of love. Then she turned to Maisie. “He was more of a parent than our mom.”

Jack was shocked to hear his sister admit to his role in her life, not that he was surprised she felt that way. Iris was usually very tight-lipped about their mother with people she hadn’t known for very long. The fact she was opening up to Maisie was a miracle, but it only drove home that Iris considered Maisie to be her friend and thus off-limits to Jack.

What was he going to do about that?

They took their mugs into the living room, and Iris helped Maisie sort through the remaining decorations, deciding what to keep and what to pack back up. Jack could see it was hard for Maisie, but she soldiered on as though she was a woman on a mission to face her future. They ended up hanging garland on the fireplace, and to his surprise, Maisie pulled the five stockings from the box and set them aside, announcing everything else in the box could be thrown out.

Iris, who was fluffing a tattered wreath, looked up, her eyes rounding when she saw the size of the box of discards. But she kept right on working, and when she finished, she hung some leftover ornaments on the wreath and then had Jack hang it on the front door.

“Your house is officially festive,” Iris said.

Maisie released a contented sigh. “Maybe next year I’ll plan far enough ahead so I can put Christmas lights outside.”

Jack glanced up at her. “I’ll be right back.”

He hopped in the car while Iris and Maisie shouted after him. Ignoring them, he headed to the local twenty-four-hour Walmart. A half hour later he pulled into the driveway again, and both Maisie and Iris walked out to greet him. Chaco and Einstein trailed after them, and both dogs rushed him, Einstein going so far as to lick his hand again. Apparently, he’d finally broken through with the dog.

“Where did you go?” Maisie demanded, her hands propped on her hips.

Grinning, he held up the two Walmart bags. “Again, the pickings were slim, so this will have to do.”

Maisie herded the dogs back into the house, and he unpacked the boxes of netted lights and tossed them over the bushes in front of her house. He was relieved he’d remembered correctly that she had seven plants. Once the netted lights were in place, he linked them all together and connected them to the extension cord he’d bought. Iris and Maisie stood in the front yard while he crouched next to the outlet.

“This deserves a countdown,” Maisie said. “Five, four.”

Iris joined in.

“Three, two, one.”

Jack plugged in the cord and…nothing.

Maisie laughed. “Are you sure the lights work?”

He shot her a dark look, then laughed. After he checked the plugs, he realized one of them hadn’t been pushed in all the way. They had another countdown, shouting the last numbers, and when they got to one, Jack plugged in the last cord and the bushes burst into light.

He hurried toward Maisie and Iris, then turned to look at the bushes. While they were lit up in white lights, it looked like a half-assed effort compared to the bare two-story house.

“Well, it’s not the house from Christmas Vacation ,” Maisie said in a teasing tone.

“I’ll do better next year,” he said, frowning as he studied the house. He knew she was stretching out of her comfort zone, and he really wanted to make it special.

“Jack,” Maisie said, her voice tight.

He glanced down at her.

“It’s better than I could have imagined.”

He smiled even though his heart ached to pull her into his arms. He was about to say Iris be damned, but then he saw his sister watching him with narrowed eyes, as though she was trying to look deep into his soul.

So instead he grasped Maisie’s hand and held on tight. It would have to do for now.