Chapter 13
Knox
We ooh and ahh and watch the ginormous tree shift color schemes and flash patterns for several minutes. Gradually, the crowd disperses, and we meander, hand in hand.
Vendor booths line the streets around the square with homemade goods. Jellies, handcrafted wall art, quilts. In one station, children line up to have Santas and snowmen painted on their cheeks. Another is a place for kids and parents to build gingerbread houses.
Everly and I join foot traffic on the sidewalk and enter a quaint art gallery.
The Twelve Days of Christmas plays from speakers in the corners of the room.
Evergreen candles soften the air. The paintings are nice, but a nook in the rear of the store where a local artist crafts glass ornaments draws us.
Fingers laced, we watch a shimmery ornament come to life in the heat of a golden flame.
“Beautiful, huh?”
Everly ahs. “So cool. I don’t have a crafty, artsy bone in my body.” She smiles. “You?”
I wriggle the fingers of my free hand. “These clumsy things would make shards out of one of those babies in no time flat.”
In the next shop, handcrafted jewelry under bright lights dazzles. The diamond rings inside the glass cases are particularly blinding. Everly barely glances, viewing colored stones in a neighboring case instead.
I get it. Awkward for a first date.
In a weird twist she can’t know, I happen to be the owner of a very large, very flashy engagement ring, a ring Becca hasn’t seen fit to give back. By rights, she should return it, since she’s the one who shattered the promise, but I don’t know that I have the fight left in me at this point.
Doesn’t mean I don’t stew over the unfairness from time to time. The woman has a lot of nerve.
A bell heralds our entrance to the next shop.
Scents of Christmas—pine, cinnamon, and gingerbread—welcome us.
The shop is filled with Western art. Horses, cowboys on the range, and old timey oil derricks on canvas.
All of it flashes with a uniquely Texas flair.
An elderly man in the rear of the showroom advertises himself as a maker of custom saddles.
After perusing, we wander back to the sidewalk, Christmas bulbs in the window color Everly’s cheeks.
“Want to grab some hot chocolate and sit for a while?”
She nods, smiling.
We cross to the adjacent quadrant of the square. Like all the buildings on the perimeter, the one with the coffee house must have been built before the start of the last century. The ceiling is high, and a mezzanine creates a partial second floor. Old hardwood creaks with our steps.
Its holiday color theme is nontraditional, with turquoise, pale green, and silver balls hung in creative spots and arrangements. I’m a boring traditionalist most of the time, but the decorations hit a perfect note, blending the modern with the old-fashioned.
The place is cozy and surprisingly un-packed considering the crowd outside. I order regular old hot chocolate, Everly, white mocha. We find a table near the roaring fireplace strung with stockings, and settle our coats onto the backs of our chairs.
We take quiet first sips of our drinks. A picture pixelates in my mind of Everly with a dab of whipped cream on her cheek and me kissing it away.
Yep, the image goes a long way toward incriminating both Mom and Becca in subjecting me to way too many lame Christmas romance movies.
I can’t think about kissing Everly right now. I’ll turn into a bumbling idiot if I do, and tonight is about getting to know this enchanting woman better.
I lean onto my elbows. “So. Did I notice a third Wilkes sister in the family photo above the fireplace?”
Everly nods. “That’s Hadley. She’s the middle sister.”
“Is she local?”
Everly shakes her head. “Not this year. She’s been wanting to ‘stretch her wings’, as she put it. This spring, she and a friend from college have been traveling the country and posting videos of their adventures.”
“Wow. That is adventurous.”
She shrugs. “I guess. Their channel is up to two-hundred-thousand subscribers, so she’s thrilled.”
“I’ll bet.” I tilt my head, taking in Everly’s winter-kissed cheeks. Her soft hair is styled into sleek streams, spilling along her shoulders. Somehow, I ended up on a date with the prettiest woman in the entire town. “Are you the sister who sticks close to home?”
She makes a sound of resignation. “That’s me. Oakley and Hadley are the fun ones. I’m the boring sister holding down the fort. Not always in Chandor, of course, but in a metaphoric sense, yeah, I don’t go far.”
I smile into her eyes, a place I could linger. “I’m a homebody, too.”
“Oh, please. You travel for a living.”
“I don’t exactly think of the places I work as traveling.”
She shrugs. “I guess.”
I cradle the mug on the table. “You know, I’ve been wondering. You told me this waitress gig is only temporary, and it occurred to me—somewhere between Tulsa and OKC last night—that I have no idea what you do when you’re not running Charlie’s place.”
Her hands mimic mine, curving around her mug. “Usually, I work in a law office. I’m an attorney.”
The old ladderback chair tasked with holding my weight creaks dramatically as I sit back against the aging wooden slats. “Wow, Everly, that is a far cry from waiting tables at Charlie’s.”
She nods thoughtfully. “They both give me headaches, though.”
Laughter snorts out of me. When it settles, I lean for a good, long look. “Yeah. You in a courtroom arguing with people? I can see it.”
She swats my hand from my cup, her touch tingling my skin. “That was rude.”
“Your fault. I was recalling the way you cross-examined me about skipping out without paying.”
She flips her hair back. “I had valid questions, yes, I did.”
“Hey, I was wrongly accused.”
“Well, we got to the bottom of things, didn’t we?” She bobbles her head smugly.
Everly makes me laugh, a sensation rippling through me that is welcomely strange. I haven’t done much laughing this past year.
Sighing, she draws inward. “I hate to shatter the image, Knox, but the only courtroom experience I have was moot court in law school. I am not a trial attorney and have zero desire to be. My last job was with an oil and gas company in Dallas. I worked in-house drafting contracts and such. Worked a lot with the landmen who were in the field buying up mineral rights from landowners.”
I knew she was smart, but I didn’t see this coming. The image of her running from table to table was so deeply imprinted on my brain. “Did you enjoy your job?”
She pulses a shoulder. “The work itself was okay. Tedious sometimes, but then, I guess most jobs are to some degree, and I have a surprisingly high tolerance for minutia.”
“But?” There’s definitely a but lingering in her tone.
Her gaze drifts to the chocolatey mix in her cup.. “But…the ethics of the firm’s upper management were questionable.”
“That’s why you left?”
Everly nods. “I didn’t feel right about some of the things they asked me to slip into contracts.
The way they treated the little guys who could only see the signing bonuses they were about to receive for selling away their mineral rights.
” She shrugs. “I know that’s how the world works… but I just couldn’t do it.”
I run my thumb over the dips and valleys on the back of her hand.
A small smile slips through her lips. “I don’t mean to sound self-righteous.”
“You don’t. You sound like a principled woman who lives her faith. I like it.” I deliberately wield the dimple. “A lot.”
Her cheeks turn a rich pink. Had I met this version of Everly first, I might have struggled with picturing her holding her ground in dog-eat-dog corporate America.
I dislike that world myself, one of the reasons I leave the wheeling and dealing to Rand.
He’s ethical but hardnosed, and in possession of a generally stronger stomach for the ugly stuff than I am.
“So, what I hear you saying is that Uncle Charlie’s is your new future? ”
She fake gags. “I’ll throw myself off a bridge before that happens.”
Now, there’s the lady I met. I dance my fingertips along the back of her hand. “Aw, don’t put those kinds of images in my head.”
“You look tough enough to handle it. I start a new job at the end of January. The firm specializes in real estate law.”
Thoughts tumble around like socks in the clothes dryer, musings mostly about how lucky I am to have scored such a beautiful and intelligent date. Not to mention principled, and with just the right balance of sweetness and snark.
Her fingers flex on the cup. “I know what you’re thinking. That my new job will be just as bad as the old. Frying pan into the fire and all.”
I blink away the earlier, interrupting imagination of tweaking whipped cream from her cheek. “That’s not at all what I was thinking. It’s always a possibility, I suppose, but I don’t doubt for a minute you’ve thought things through and know exactly what you’re doing.”
Warm gratitude infuses the curve of her mouth. “Thank you for saying so. Boy, my parents grilled me for hours about my decision to leave a good job.” Her long fingers sketch quotes in the air.
“Parents are always gonna be parents.”
“I guess. In this case, I got a good feel off the partners I interviewed with, and I did tons of research and asking around. The firm’s reputation is stellar.”
“See there? You’ve got everything under control.”
She winces. “Let’s just say I prayed a bunch, so I figure God’s got it under control.”
I click my tongue. “Now you’re talking.” The more I learn about Everly, the more my respect for her grows. I take a sip of my hot chocolate.
Under the table, a playful nudge to my foot startles a grin out of me. “Okay. Now I want to hear about Knox.”
“What about me?”
“Have you always liked to play in the dirt?”
“Um…” My thumb presses into the mug’s handle. My fingernail whitens.
She lays her hand atop mine, eyes darting back and forth across my face. “What? Did I say something wrong?”