Beneath the Mistletoe: Make-Believe Mistletoe / Christmas Bonus, Strings Attached. GINA WILKINS
“So what’s the problem?”
“No problem. I was just wondering if I should ask Joan’s permission before giving her kids gifts.”
“She’ll probably be delighted.”
“Still, it might be best for me to clear it with her first.”
Lucy had wandered back over to the rocking chairs. Banner had noticed that she wasn’t the type to stay in one spot for very long.
“These are beautiful. You’re so talented. Have you always been a professional woodworker?”
“I’ve had other jobs but nothing I liked this much. When my great-uncle left me this place, I was able to take over the business he had started. He’s the one who taught me everything I know about working with wood.”
“It sounds as though you were very close to him.”
“I was,” he answered with the familiar lump that always came into his throat when he thought of his uncle Joe. He still missed the old coot.
Lucy sat in the one finished rocker and began to rock, sliding her gloved hands appreciatively over the armrests.
“Are your parents still living?”
“Yes.”
“Where do they live?”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Just curious.”
He doubted that her curiosity would be satisfied with a simple answer, so he gave her the expanded version. “My father and his wife live in Nashville, Tennessee. They have a daughter who is finishing medical school at Vanderbilt and a son who’s in his first year of law school. My mother and her husband live in Lexington, Kentucky, close to their two grown daughters. Both the girls are married, and they each have one child.”
She had followed his family details attentively, and he had no doubt that she could quote it all back to him. Lucy was definitely a “people person”—someone who was actively interested in other people’s lives and opinions. Again, unlike himself.
“Your siblings aren’t much younger than you,” she commented. “Your parents must have divorced when you were very young.”
He reached out to idly roll the truck back and forth with one finger. “My parents were never married. They split up before I was a year old.”
If that shocked her, she didn’t let it show. “Did you live with your mother?”
“Part of the time with my mother, part of the time with my paternal grandparents here in northern Arkansas. This is where I preferred to be because my great-uncle was here. He never married and he had no kids, so he and I sort of bonded.”
She was studying his face a bit too closely now, obviously trying to read his emotions. Long accustomed to keeping his feelings hidden, he wasn’t concerned that she would see more than he wanted to reveal.
“Did you see your father very much?” she asked.
“I spent the occasional weekend and holiday with him and his family. We get along fine, just don’t have much in common.”
Lucy rocked a bit faster, which Banner figured was a clue to the questions racing through her mind. “Didn’t you want to spend the holidays with family? Didn’t your parents want to see you?”
He shrugged. “My parents have plenty of family around for the holidays. They both invited me, but I wasn’t in the mood this year. I have a furniture order to finish, and I had a hunch the weather was going to be bad. Besides, they tend to get their noses out of joint when I choose one over the other.”
“They fight over you?”
“They compete for me,” he replied. “Not quite the same thing. Truth is, neither one particularly cares whether I join them as long as I don’t choose the other one, instead.”
Okay, that was more than he had intended to say. He blamed the slip on his preoccupation with how fetching Lucy looked sitting in his rocking chair with her sexy mouth, rosy cheeks and silly green hat.
Her pretty mouth immediately formed into a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tend to ask too many questions sometimes. I didn’t mean to pry—”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. I can understand why you’d be curious about why a guy with so much family would choose to spend Christmas alone with his dog. Especially when you were willing to risk life and limb in an ice storm to get to your family.”
“I don’t get to see my father very often. He travels a lot in his job with the army, even though he’s officially stationed in Texas. Christmas is the one time he makes a determined effort to get home. My aunt and uncle are like my second parents, and my cousins are as close as I have to siblings. I’m crazy about all of them.”
Banner would be willing to bet they all felt the same way about her.
She hopped suddenly out of the chair and headed toward the door. “I’d better go see how everything is going inside. Last I looked your whole living room was being decorated.”
Banner was almost surprised to realize that it didn’t particularly bother him to hear that.
The children were pleasantly tired by late afternoon. Tricia fell asleep on the floor beneath the lavishly decorated Christmas tree. Tyler was on his stomach on the rug in front of the fire beside Banner’s dog. An open comic book lay in front of them, and it looked for all the world as if both boy and dog were enjoying the pictures.
Joan was reading a paperback in a chair beside the window. Having napped for a short while after lunch, Miss Annie had returned to her rocker and her knitting, her long needles clicking industriously. Pop and Bobby Ray sat on the couch engaged in a low-voiced conversation that seemed to consist mostly of tall tales about hunting and fishing.
Lucy was curled up in Banner’s big recliner, her sock-clad feet beneath her and a book lying open and unread in her lap. It was a lazy, cozy scene, and she could appreciate the peacefulness of it, but it bothered her that their host was outside alone while his guests enjoyed each other’s company.
She thought about the things he had told her of his childhood—okay, the things she had pried out of him, she amended sheepishly. She had left him rather abruptly because so many more questions had been bubbling inside her that she had been afraid she would offend him with her nosiness if she didn’t hush.
Still, she couldn’t help considering everything she had learned about him and reflecting on how his childhood experiences had molded him. He didn’t remember his parents as a couple, but both parents had married and started new families while Banner was quite young. He had spent his time being shuttled between his mother and his paternal grandparents, bonding most closely with a great-uncle who had never married.
Had Banner felt like the odd man out in his parents’ homes? Their youthful mistake, perhaps? Was that why he always seemed to be off to one side of a room, watching others interact?
She wondered how he got along with his stepparents. Had they accepted him, made him feel welcome in their homes, or had they seen him as an intrusion? Perhaps his stepmother had felt that way, which might explain why he seemed to have spent so little time in his father’s home. The occasional weekend and holiday was the way Banner had described his time there.
Not that any of this was Lucy’s business, of course. She doubted that he would appreciate knowing she was sitting here engaged in armchair analysis of him. She just couldn’t seem to help it. The man simply fascinated her.
As if he had heard her thinking of him, Banner appeared in the doorway of the living room. He entered silently, his gaze skimming the room and settling on Lucy.
He had left his wet boots behind, and his feet in their thick wool socks made no sound on the hardwood floor as he approached the recliner. “Quiet in here,” he said, pausing at