Chapter 22
KENT
The storage shed was surprisingly well organized for something that had clearly been accumulating Christmas decorations for decades. Dry, compact, and methodically arranged, it was pretty clear someone took their holiday traditions seriously.
Sylvie and I spent the better part of an hour hauling boxes out onto the porch.
I found myself increasingly impressed by how hard she worked.
There was no princess attitude, no expectation that I’d do all the heavy lifting while she supervised from a comfortable distance.
She grabbed boxes that were clearly too heavy for her and wrestled them into submission through sheer determination.
She’d been going since this morning, too. She was already busy in the hall when I made my way downstairs. How long had she been up? The woman was a machine. Dedicated.
And damn, she looked incredible doing it.
The jeans she was wearing should have been illegal.
I got a good look at them earlier, but they just kept looking better by the minute.
They made her ass look absolutely unreal.
Her zip-up sweater was fitted enough to show off her figure without being obvious about it.
She had a nice set of tits. Not huge but not small.
Perfect. Every time she bent over to pick up another box, I had to remind myself to breathe.
The crazy thing was I didn’t think she knew how sexy she was.
I didn’t spend a lot of time with women in jeans.
The jeans the women I spent time with were usually designer and worn with sexy heels.
Sylvie’s jeans were broken in and perfectly tailored for her body after wearing them so often.
She didn’t put the jeans on to impress me or anyone else.
They were her work clothes. It wasn’t about fashion or impressing anyone. It was what worked for her.
Her work boots were practical as well. Not fashionable, just sturdy and worn.
She had this habit of stomping them off every time we got back onto the porch, a small gesture that was somehow both endearing and sexy as hell.
Her thighs looked strong and capable. There was this grit and fierceness in her eyes when she was focused on a task that made me want to pin her against the nearest wall and find out what that intensity would look like directed at me.
Something told me the woman gave as good as she got.
And I really, really liked to give.
Anytime I was with a woman, I had to remind myself to be gentle. Be careful.
Sylvie would demand more. I just knew it.
“Alright,” she said on a sigh. “Hard part is done. Now comes the real work.”
“More work?”
“Decorating,” she said with a smile.
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for that,” I told her. “I’m probably better off hauling boxes and trees.”
“They don’t have to be perfect,” she said. “Slap some lights on, a little garland, and a few ornaments and they’re good to go.”
That sounded way easier than what I knew it would be.
We started decorating the first tree and I couldn’t help but notice that all Sylvie’s fierce determination transformed into something playful and light.
She teased me mercilessly for my apparent inability to understand the concept of “balancing” a tree.
I didn’t know what the hell that meant. But she kept moving my ornaments after I placed them.
“No, no, no,” she said, relocating a silver ball I’d hung on what seemed like a perfectly reasonable branch. “You can’t just hang everything at eye level. You need to create depth, visual interest. Think about the overall composition.”
“It’s a Christmas tree, not a museum installation,” I pointed out. “I told you I wasn’t good at this.”
“A Christmas tree should feel organic, natural, like it grew that way on purpose.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please show me a picture of a pine tree in the wild with ornaments hanging off it.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. I’ll finish this one. You put the lights on the next one. That’s pretty basic.”
I had a feeling she was going to have a certain way those were supposed to be done as well.
When she caught me wrapping lights around the tree like garland, she looked genuinely horrified.
“What are you doing?” she asked, rushing over to intervene.
“Putting lights on the tree. That’s what you told me to do.”
“Not like that! You have to weave them properly.” She demonstrated, carefully threading the string of lights up and down each branch, creating an even distribution that somehow made the tree look fuller and more luminous.
“See? In and out, around each branch. It takes longer, but the effect is worth it.”
I wanted to scream. The level of detail and precision she expected was mind-numbing.
I did warn her I sucked at decorating. Clearly she thought I was joking.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had strung lights on a tree.
I was probably five, if that. But I found myself going along with it anyway, partly because she was so enthusiastic about the process and partly because it gave me an excuse to watch her work.
She was too hot for her own good. I was starting to wonder if she had any idea what kind of effect she was having on me.
Every time she reached up to hang something on the higher branches, her sweater would ride up slightly, giving me glimpses of smooth skin and the curve of her waist. When she stretched to reach a particularly tall spot, I could see her belly button.
And dammit, I wanted my tongue in that cute little hole.
I wanted my tongue on all of her if I was being honest.
When was the last time she’d walked around naked? When was the last time she’d been with a man? The thought of some other guy’s hands on her body made my blood run hot with something that felt dangerously close to possessive anger, which was completely irrational and more than a little alarming.
I dismissed the thought and tried to focus on having fun with the decorating process.
Despite my initial resistance to the whole enterprise, there was something oddly satisfying about transforming bare trees into something magical.
And Sylvie’s enthusiasm was infectious. She narrated the whole process, explaining the history of various ornaments and sharing memories associated with different decorations.
“This one,” she said, holding up a slightly battered angel with faded gold wings. “This was my great-grandmother’s. It’s been on a Northwood Christmas tree for over a century.”
There was something moving about the continuity of it, the way each generation had added their own touches while preserving the traditions that came before.
We were working on the same branch at one point, both reaching for the same spot, when our hands touched. The contact was brief but electric, sending a jolt up my arm that had nothing to do with static electricity and everything to do with the woman beside me.
We both froze for a moment. I caught her looking at me with an expression that mirrored what I was feeling—awareness, attraction, and the kind of tension that made the air between us feel charged.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back, but not before I noticed the slight tremor in her fingers.
“Don’t be,” I said, my voice rough with desire.
By the time we finished decorating all fifteen trees, dinner had come and gone. Sylvie didn’t seem inclined to stop, and I wasn’t going to be the quitter that complained about being hungry.
“Alright, are we ready?” she asked.
“Bring it.”
Sylvie plugged in the lights and illuminated our handiwork. My jaw dropped open.
The front porch of the lodge looked like something out of a fairy tale, with trees of varying sizes twinkling in the darkness. Through the windows, I could see more lights glowing in the main hall where we’d positioned the larger trees.
It was officially a winter wonderland at Northwood Lodge.
Somehow, this simple, quaint, modest display felt more magical to me than any Bancroft party I’d ever attended. Some of those had cost upward of five hundred thousand dollars. There was something authentic about it, something that couldn’t be bought or manufactured.
“What do you think?” Sylvie asked, standing beside me as we surveyed our work.
“It’s incredible,” I said. “You were right about the balancing thing. I have no idea how you do it, but it works.”
She beamed at the compliment, her face glowing in the light from the trees. “It’s all about understanding what each tree wants to be. You can’t force it into some predetermined vision. You have to work with what you’ve got.”
I found myself wondering if she was still talking about trees or if there was a deeper meaning buried in her words. Either way, looking at her in that moment, something shifted inside my chest.
“Come on, I’ll feed you dinner,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Shit, I passed starving hours ago,” I said.
She led me into the quiet kitchen, which felt like stepping into the heart of the lodge.
It was clearly a working kitchen, not the showpiece kind my family was used to but the kind where real meals got made for real people.
Cast iron pans hung from hooks, well-worn wooden cutting boards leaned against the backsplash, and the whole space smelled faintly of cinnamon and something savory that made my stomach growl audibly.
“Sit,” Sylvie commanded, gesturing toward a small table tucked into a corner by the window. “I’ll heat something up.”
I watched as she pulled containers from the refrigerator, moving around the kitchen with the kind of easy familiarity that spoke of countless hours spent in this exact space.
She heated up what looked like some kind of casserole and sliced thick pieces of bread, all while humming softly under her breath.
I had a feeling she was used to eating alone hours after dinner had been served.
There was something deeply satisfying about watching her take care of me like this. Not in the way I was used to being taken care of—not by hired staff or servers who were paid to anticipate my needs—but in the way someone cared for a person they actually gave a damn about.
When she set a steaming plate in front of me, my mouth watered. Whatever it was, it smelled incredible.
“Stacy’s famous chicken and rice casserole,” she said, settling into the chair across from me with her own plate. “She always makes extra, thank God, because I completely forgot about dinner.”
The first bite was amazing, comfort food at its finest. The kind of meal that made you understand why people talked about their grandmother’s cooking with such reverence.
“This is incredible,” I said around another mouthful.
Sylvie smiled, looking pleased by my reaction. “Don’t tell Stacy I said this, but she’s actually a better cook than my mom. Mom’s great at a lot of things, but she tends to get distracted in the kitchen. Last week she burned mac and cheese from a box.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “How do you burn boxed mac and cheese?”
“Very easily, apparently. She got caught up in a phone call with someone from the knitting circle and forgot she had the stove on. The whole kitchen smelled like burnt pasta.”
We ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, both of us too hungry to maintain much conversation. But as the worst of my hunger subsided, curiosity got the better of me.
“Do you work like this every day?” I asked, gesturing vaguely to encompass the long hours of physical labor we’d just put in.
She nodded without hesitation. “Yeah, sometimes more. There’s always something that needs doing around here. Trees to cut, guests to help, maintenance issues to fix, events to plan. It’s not a nine-to-five kind of job.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
She considered the question seriously, twirling her fork through the rice on her plate. “No. I love it. It’s who I am. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it. It’s my life. It would kill me to lose this place. I think I would go crazy with nothing to do.”
I winced and shoved another bite of food in my mouth to keep from having to say anything. I did not want to be the one that took away her purpose.