Doing Christmas together.Well, it was what she wanted. She had picture in her head of what the holiday should be. And if she were being totally honest, there had been a few Christmases when she’d been a child that had been okay. But the truth was more often than not it hadn’t been. It had given her a lot of time to dream of what the holiday should be.
And that was a big ask to put on herself and on Sean. But the next morning, when he suggested they drive to a Christmas-tree lot outside the city and pick a tree out together...well, he was already checking off boxes.
He’d gone back to his hotel to get changed and she’d put on her red and green plaid cigarette pants and a bold sweater. She’d been nauseous this morning, but luckily, she’d been able to hide it by dashing to the bathroom while he’d been preparing bagels for them. And she’d been glad when he’d left, because she could lie down for a few minutes.
It was well past time to tell him about the baby. At this point, she couldn’t even say what she was waiting for.
After last night, she had no excuse.
They were closer now than they’d ever been, after making love several times throughout the night. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having his arms around her until he was back in her bed. She hoped that this was real, but if growing up with her con-man father had taught her anything it was that everyone could be fooled.
She’d let herself be fooled by Sean once, and honestly, she still wasn’t entirely sure why he was hanging around. Unless he was falling for her too...right?
That could be the only real reason.
But she was so used to being let down it was hard to believe that. It had hurt really bad when she’d learned the truth that Jack was really Sean, but part of her hadn’t been surprised. He’d been too good to be true.
And now, was it just more of the same?
Or could she take him at his word. Trust that what he’d said was the truth. They’d agreed to do Christmas together. She wanted that more than she would admit to him, but she had always felt like sort of an outsider at the holidays. Olive was close to her family, and while Delaney had a love-hate relationship with her father and wealthy relatives, she always went to their many parties and get-togethers.
Whereas Paisley got together with her brother and sister if they had time and sometimes her mom. They just weren’t that close. She touched her stomach as she waited for Sean to return. She wanted what Olive had with her family for this unborn child. She realized she wanted it for herself too.
She thought Sean might need it as well. He’d always been alone; he’d admitted it to her. Maybe this baby was fate’s gift to them.
The doorbell rang and she shook her head as she grabbed her coat and went to answer it.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Sean said.
“Hiya, handsome.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, long and slow and deep. As if he had all the time in the world. She wrapped herself around him and kissed him back.
Then she stepped out of the house, determined to leave her negative thoughts behind and enjoy this morning out with Sean. “You got ready quickly.”
“I didn’t want to waste time away from you,” he said. “I rented an SUV. Ready?”
“I am,” she confirmed. Before she knew it, they were in his rental and on their way out of the city. He had a Christmas playlist providing music for their drive and she noticed most of the songs were traditional.
“It’s funny that for a guy who’s got a sort of unconventional Christmas movie out, you really like classics,” she said.
He glanced over at her and then quickly back to the road. “It just felt like a traditional playlist was needed for this outing.”
“I like it. So you made this for me?”
He shrugged. “Forus. I mean I’ve never gotten a Christmas tree before. I’ve had them and all that, but someone else always put them up and they were just sort of there. I never really did anything like this.”
She reached over to touch his thigh, squeezing the hard muscle. There was so much about Sean’s seemingly charmed life that was less than spectacular. “I’ve decorated a lot of things. Sometimes trees, sometimes a rubber plant—whatever we could find.”
“I’d have thought Christmas with a con man—”
“That could be your next movie,” she interrupted.
“Ha.” He glanced over at her again. “Don’t want to talk about that?”
She looked out at the passing landscape on the edge of the interstate. All the pretty little neighborhoods. “It’s not that. I mean, some years we had the best and brightest Christmas, all the presents and a huge tree, but sometimes we’d have to leave it all behind the next day to get out of town or stuff like that. Other years we’d be in a motel in Florida decorating the potted plant in the corner. Christmas has always been...more of a letdown than anything else.”
He reached over and took her hand in his, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. “That’s why we need this classic Christmas mix. This year we are going to do it right with each other.”