Chapter 22 #2
“Getting a Christmas tree,” he said.
Chrissy blinked. “Oh, duh, of course.” She slapped her hand down on the notebook. “Anything less than ten feet is fifty dollars,” she said. “Sorry, I’ve only been in town for a couple of days, and I’m still trying to figure all this out.”
“Where were you before?” Lark asked, because she wanted to be part of this conversation between this woman and Cash, who so clearly knew one another. Maybe she was a little jealous of the way Cash grinned at the woman, and she wondered if they’d ever dated.
Chrissy looked at her and smiled. “I just finished up my master’s in business,” she said. “My father’s been the PR director at Springside Energy for a long time, and I’m going to be working there in the New Year. I’m running the Christmas tree cutting for the next few weeks, though.”
She smiled prettily, but Lark wasn’t sure she was entirely happy about it. She handed Cash a blue ticket. “There are height markers in the meadow,” she said. “And we’ve got a couple of attendants out there to help if you need it.”
“It sounds great,” Cash said.
“Do you have a saw?” Chrissy asked. “We don’t allow chainsaws.”
Cash pocketed the ticket with one hand. He reached around and patted a backpack with the other. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m good.”
He certainly was, because Lark didn’t even know he’d brought a backpack. She gave Chrissy a warm smile and moved away with Cash.
Thankfully, they only had to walk about another twenty yards before the meadow opened up. The first sunlight that had been out in the past couple of days streamed through the trees.
“All right,” Cash said. “I want something that has some character.”
“Character?” Lark repeated as she gazed around at the pine trees populating the mountain. They were everywhere, and she had no idea how to tell if one had character or not. In fact, they all looked the same to her.
“Let’s go over here,” Cash said, and his boots made crunching sounds against the hard snow.
Lark followed him because she didn’t want to be in the woods by herself.
Moreover, she wanted to be at his side. She could hardly believe the depth of her own feelings in such a short time, but she and Cash had literally spent every waking minute together in the past several days.
The highlight of the week for Lark wasn’t the Country Quad concert or even the searing hot kiss that had happened during it, but the calm, peaceful nap she’d taken with him yesterday in the master suite.
The fact that she was that comfortable with him told her a lot.
He moved from tree to tree with surprising purpose, muttering things like, “I like the branches on that one….” or “This one’s too tall,” and “I don’t like the top of that one.”
After several minutes of following him through the snow like a lost puppy, Lark came to his side and looked up at the tree.
“This one’s nice,” he said, glancing over to her. “What do you think?”
Lark thought they were all nice, but she didn’t want to throw any sass his way. “Yeah, this one’s great.” She walked over to it and lifted her arm above her head. She could almost reach the top of it. “It can’t be more than ten feet.”
“I think this is the one,” he said, and as she turned back to him, she found him absolutely beaming.
“What are you going to decorate it with?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s Future Cash’s problem.” He laughed as he actually got down on the ground and started to clear away the snow so he could get as close to the ground to cut the tree trunk.
Lark certainly wasn’t going to help with that, and she waited until he’d sawed the tree enough to push it over. A crackling of limbs moved through the forest, and then Cash rose triumphantly.
“You know, there’s a great Christmas shop in town,” Lark said. “After we have our hot chocolate fix, we could stop there and get lights and ornaments.”
“Yeah, all right,” Cash said. “Does your family have a tradition for decorating the tree?”
He walked away from her before she could answer. He only went a few feet, and then he raised his hand. “They’ll bring us a sled now,” he said, and he returned to the felled tree and Lark.
“My mother had four or five different varieties,” Lark said. “Whatever she felt like that year is what we would decorate with. What about you guys?”
“My childhood tree depended on where I was,” he said. “In Utah, my momma had a tall, skinny tree, artificial, with white lights. She hated red ornaments, so she always decorated our tree with blue and silver instead of the traditional red, green, and gold.” Cash shrugged. “I didn’t hate it.”
“What about at your daddy’s house?” Lark asked, though she felt a bit like she was treading out onto thin ice.
“I think the first year, we put up a tree and went to the store and bought whatever we liked. After Daddy married Faith, we had a doughnut tree one year because she used to own Hole in One. And then she and Daddy started having kids, and they decorate with all sorts of colorful ornaments now.”
He smiled, and that made Lark so happy. “Then they started a new tradition, where every year we make an ornament for them as our Christmas gift to them. That way, neither parent has to take the kids shopping for the other, and they can go over their best memory of the year as a family.”
“Oh, I like that,” Lark said, smiling. “What are you going to make this year?”
“I haven’t decided,” Cash said, his voice turning a bit more guarded. “There’s been a lot of ups and downs this year, and it’s hard to settle on one thing.”
She laced her arm through his just as someone came through the snow with a sled.
Cash shook hands with the man, and together the two of them tied the tree limbs so it was skinnier and easier to load into the back of the truck.
Then they lifted it onto the sled. Lark simply got to walk through the snowy, pine-scented woods with her boyfriend, with plenty of good times still to come that day.
Tomorrow was Future Lark’s problem, as was Sunday, when she would have to make her bed, pack up her car, and drive away from Cash.