Chapter 10
COOPER
Istood there sipping the peppermint mocha Joy had thrust into my hands, watching the absolute circus unfold before me.
The candy cane she’d dropped into it was already half-dissolved, turning the whole thing into liquid diabetes.
Despite that, I had to admit it wasn’t terrible.
And the way her eyes lit up when I took that first sip instead of chucking it into the nearest trash can?
Worth every cavity I was probably developing.
Damn. She was gorgeous. I remembered her being pretty but the memories hadn’t done her justice.
She was wearing knee high boots, skinny jeans that cupped her ass just right, and a sweater.
Average. Typical. I had seen thousands of women in the same get-up, but on her, I wanted to peel off the layers.
When she lifted her arms, I was pretty sure I got a flash of a red thong.
Just barely. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she was wearing a matching red bra. Being all festive and shit.
“Cooper!” she called out, bouncing on her toes in that ridiculous Santa hat. The pom-pom kept flopping into her eyes, and she kept blowing it away with puffed cheeks. “Come help us figure out how to get this monster upright!”
The “monster” in question was indeed a beast. The tree had to be at least thirty feet tall. I’d been coming to these tree lightings since I was a kid, and I’d never seen anything this massive. It was like someone had decided our quaint little town square needed the Rockefeller Center treatment.
“How exactly did you guys manage to find the one tree in the county that could probably be seen from space?” I asked, walking over to where a cluster of volunteers stood around scratching their heads.
Joy beamed at me. “The tree farm had this beauty marked for removal anyway—something about it being too big for most locations. When I saw it, I knew it was perfect!”
“Perfect for what? Blocking out the sun?”
She swatted my arm, but she was grinning. “Don’t be such a grump. It’s going to be magical.”
Bob from the hardware store had apparently appointed himself foreman of this operation.
He was standing with his hands on his hips, staring at the tree like he was trying to decide where to start.
“Well, we’ve got the base ready,” he announced.
“It’s reinforced steel, bolted into the concrete.
Should hold King Kong if we need it to.”
The base was indeed impressive. It was a massive metal contraption that looked like it could anchor a battleship. They had to jackhammer up part of the square to install it, which explained the cordoned-off area I noticed earlier.
At least someone had thought of safety.
“Now comes the fun part,” Mike, who ran a landscaping business, said.
He pointed to what looked like a medieval torture device that had been assembled near the tree.
“We’re going to use this pulley system to winch it upright.
The base has a pivot point, so we’ll secure the tree trunk there, then slowly lift it up. ”
I watched as they maneuvered the enormous tree into position.
It took about eight guys to wrestle it into the base.
I found myself helping despite my better judgment.
The thing was heavier than it looked, and by the time we had it secured, I was already working up a sweat despite the December chill.
And in the back of my mind all I could think about was what happened if the damn thing fell over?
But I shook it off and reminded myself we had a tree in the square every year. It would be fine.
“Everybody stand back!” Bob called out as Mike fired up what appeared to be a motorized winch system. The sound was deafening.
Slowly, impossibly, the tree began to rise. It was actually pretty impressive, watching the giant slowly pivot upright. The whole crowd had gathered around to watch. I found myself standing next to Joy, close enough that I could smell her fruity perfume over the scent of pine and exhaust fumes.
“This is so exciting!” she whispered, grabbing my arm. I had the sudden urge to cover her hand with mine. Instead, I took another sip of the increasingly sweet mocha and tried to focus on the mechanical marvel happening in front of us.
The tree reached about the halfway point when there was a mechanical groan that didn’t sound particularly healthy.
“That’s normal, right?” Joy asked, her grip tightening on my arm.
“Probably,” I lied, just as the winch made a sound like a dying whale. Mike lowered the tree a bit and then reversed the pulley to start raising it once again.
Somehow, miraculously, the tree continued its slow journey skyward. When it finally reached vertical and locked into place with a satisfying clunk, the whole crowd burst into spontaneous applause. Even I had to admit it was pretty spectacular. The thing absolutely dwarfed everything around it.
“Phase one complete!” Joy announced, producing a clipboard from somewhere and checking something off with a flourish. “Now for the decorating!”
Now that was going to be interesting.
What followed was organized chaos. The scissor lift arrived, along with what appeared to be half the Christmas decorations in the tri-state area. Boxes and boxes of lights, garlands thick enough to lasso cattle, and ornaments the size of bowling balls.
Joy appointed herself chief decorator, which meant she was simultaneously trying to direct traffic, untangle light strings, and inspect every ornament to make sure it wasn’t faded or chipped.
I wasn’t sure why it mattered. There was no possible way anyone was going to be able to see every ornament.
Especially the ones up high. She held up each one, squinted at it critically, then either nodded approvingly or tossed it back in the reject pile.
“Cooper, what do you think of this one?” She held up a red ball that looked identical to the previous twelve red balls she had shown me.
“It’s... round?”
She frowned, tilted her head to study it and then nodded. “This one’s definitely going on the tree.”
I was beginning to understand that there was a very specific aesthetic Joy was going for, and it involved scrutinizing every single decoration like she was curating a museum exhibit. Meanwhile, the volunteers were standing around holding armfuls of lights, waiting for instructions.
“Okay, everyone!” she called out, climbing into the scissor lift with an armful of light strings. “We’re going to start from the bottom and work our way up. Nice even spacing, and make sure the lights are facing outward so they’ll show up properly.”
The first few rounds went smoothly. Joy rode the lift up and down, methodically wrapping lights around the lower branches while calling out instructions to the ground crew about garland placement.
She had this little wrinkle between her eyebrows when she concentrated, and she kept tucking a strand of hair behind her ear only to have it immediately fall back into her face.
It was kind of adorable actually. Not that I was paying that much attention.
Things got interesting when we reached the middle section of the tree. Joy was about fifteen feet up, stretching to reach a particularly stubborn branch, when I heard her yelp.
“Um, Houston, we have a problem,” she called down.
I looked up to see her tangled in what appeared to be three different strands of lights. One was wrapped around her ankle, another had somehow gotten caught on her Santa hat, and the third was hanging over her shoulder.
“Don’t move!” I called up. “You’ll make it worse.”
“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” she shot back, but I could hear the laugh in her voice. “Unless you count falling to my death as going somewhere.”
I grabbed the ladder from Bob’s truck and climbed up to the scissor lift platform. Joy was standing there looking like she’d gotten in a fight with a Christmas tree and lost spectacularly. I shook my head and sighed.
“How did you even manage this?” I asked. She’d somehow created what could only be described as a Christmas light pretzel.
“Talent,” she said dryly. “Pure, natural talent.”
I had to get closer to untangle her, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes and count the freckles across her nose. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and the embarrassment, and when she looked up at me, I forgot what I was supposed to be doing for a solid ten seconds.
“The lights?” she prompted gently.
“Right. Lights. Yes.” I started carefully pulling the lights away from her feet, trying very hard not to think about how my hands kept brushing against her legs, or how she smelled good enough to eat.
“Thank you,” she said softly when I finally freed the last strand from her hat. “My hero.”
She said it teasingly, but there was something in her eyes that made my chest feel tight. For a moment, we just stood there on the tiny platform, looking at each other while Christmas carols blasted from the sound system below.
Then Bob’s voice cut through the moment. “You two alright, or can we get back to decorating this tree?”
Joy’s cheeks went from pink to red. “We’re good!”
I cleared my throat loudly. “Yeah, good to go.”
We managed to finish the lights without any more tangling incidents, though I noticed Joy was being extra careful about her movements.
The garlands went up next, draped in perfect swoops around the entire tree.
Then came the ornaments, each one carefully placed according to Joy’s increasingly detailed specifications.
She had one placed and then leaned back to make sure it was perfect.
By the time we reached the fake-snow stage, the sun was starting to set, and most of the volunteers were looking distinctly tired. But Joy was still going strong, fluffing and arranging the cottony stuff around the base of the tree with the dedication of someone creating a masterpiece.
She was really taking her job seriously.
“There’s already real snow on the ground,” I pointed out as she added yet another layer of fake snow.
“But it’s not white enough,” she said seriously. “And it might melt. This way we’re guaranteed perfect snow.”
I looked at the inch of actual snow covering everything else in the square, then at the blindingly white pile of cotton batting she’d assembled. “Right. Perfect snow. Got it.”
More people drifted away. Soon it was just me, Joy, and a handful of die-hard volunteers putting the finishing touches on what had to be the most thoroughly decorated tree in the history of Christmas.
“Okay,” Joy announced, standing back to survey their work. “Time for the star.”
She pulled out a box that had been sitting to the side, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. Inside was a star that was absolutely gorgeous—silver and crystal with tiny lights woven through it. It had to be at least two feet across.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and meant it.
“It’s a new one my aunt ordered,” she said.
“Let’s get it up there and get this over with,” I said.
That was when we discovered our first real problem. The scissor lift, which had seemed plenty tall when we were decorating the middle of the tree, suddenly looked pathetically inadequate next to the towering top of our Christmas giant.
“It’s not going to reach,” she moaned. “Dammit. I didn’t think about the logistics of getting that star up there. The lighting ceremony is tomorrow night!”
She looked so stricken that I felt something crack inside my chest. All her excitement, all her careful planning was going to be ruined because they picked a tree that was too damn tall.
“There’s got to be a solution,” she said, but her voice was small and defeated. “Maybe I could climb up there. Or I could put a ladder on the platform of the lift and I should be able to reach it.”
I gave her a dry look. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
She frowned. “No, I’m not. The tree has to have a topper.”
“As safety coordinator, I can’t sign off on that.” I stared up at the top of the tree, my mind racing. There had to be a way. I had climbed plenty of tall things in my day—water towers, grain silos, that ridiculous cell phone tower on a dare when I was eighteen.
“Give me ten minutes,” I told Joy and started walking away.
“Where are you going!”
“Just trust me,” I called back. “I’ve got a plan.