CHAPTER SEVEN – THOMAS #2
“What did you say to him?”
“That if he didn’t care, to just let her choose it. Their wedding isn’t overly large anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much. It’s not like their families have to travel far.”
“True,” she agreed. “It’s just a lot of trees that I’m going to have to end up decorating, and I’m not hugely happy about it.”
“All by yourself? Twenty-two trees?”
She waved a hand. “That’s just me moaning. Mum, Nana, and Julian’s mum are going to help, but it’s still going to take us a few days.”
“I have a six-year-old boy you could borrow. He’ll likely want paying for his time, though.”
“No, thank you. I’m too much of a perfectionist for that.”
I grinned. “I thought as much. These are the…” I grabbed the tag on one of the branches. “The nine-foot ones.”
“Right. They need to be kind of… similar. Nice and triangular. Aesthetically pleasing, if you will.” Sylvie stepped in front of me and started examining the trees.
I dug in my pocket for the sold tags and pen and waved the tags. “Just tell me which ones you want, and I’ll tag them as sold.”
“Oh? Does that mean you’ll do whatever I say? That’s a tempting thought.”
“I could hide a body really well among these trees, Sylvie.”
“I suppose. Just not enough room for your ego though, right?” She flashed a quick smile at me and grabbed one of the identifying tags from a branch. “None of them have prices on. Just the size.”
“They’re priced to order since they tend to be a bit more resilient than ones that are already cut.”
“How do I know which ones to choose if I can’t keep a tally of the price?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What?” She looked over at me, confusion marring her pretty face. “I am working with a budget, you know.”
“Don’t worry. Julian called me before you got here. He said you were on your way and to send him the bill when you’d picked them all.”
A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead. “Oh.”
My lips curved to the side. “He said it cuts out the middleman, so just choose the best trees, I’ll tag them, and I’ll bill him for them.”
Discounted, of course.
It was for his wedding, after all.
“Oh,” Sylvie said, this time in a smaller voice. “That seems like a lot of pressure to stick to a budget.”
“What’s your budget?”
“Eighteen hundred.”
I choked on thin air. “On bloody Christmas trees?”
She paused, but her gaze skittered from left to right and back again. “Look, I don’t set the budget, I just get given it.”
“But eighteen hundred pounds on Christmas trees? Do you not think that’s…” I trailed off.
Sylvie put her hands in her pockets, bringing her shoulders up to her ears. “Insane? Excessive? Financially careless and irresponsible?”
“Your words, not mine.” I chuckled.
She shrugged. “Julian’s richy-rich-rich.”
So was I.
Richer than him, in fact.
“So am I, but I wouldn’t spend eighteen hundred pounds on Christmas trees.” And I was someone who had seventeen of the fucking things in his house.
“Not even for a good cause?”
“A wedding isn’t a good cause,” I said dryly. “It’s an overpriced, overexaggerated, needlessly extravagant party where one party always dips out.”
She blinked, staring at me. “Wow. Tell me how you really feel, Thomas.”
I rolled my shoulders, stretching my neck from side to side. “Sorry. Weddings are a sore spot.”
She eyed me. “I want this tree.”
“What? You’re not going to pry?”
“It’s none of my business. I can’t pry in your life after telling you yesterday that you have no right to do that to Beth.” She turned her attention back to the tree. “This one.”
I stepped forward and put a sold tag on it with her initials. “Next?”
“Hmm.”
We perused every tree in the line until she’d found the ones she wanted, then moved to the next size on her list. We looked at literally every tree in this area of the farm until all she needed was the four-feet ones.
I took her into the barn to see all the potted trees, and she chose them one by one until they were all ticked off her list.
“Are you sure that’s all the trees? You’re not missing a, oh, twenty-foot tall one for outside the old town hall building?”
Sylvie shot me a dark look. “Do not say that in front of my sister. She does not need any more ideas. Getting her down to twenty-two was hard enough. She wanted the bridesmaids to carry a bloody mini tree instead of flowers, for goodness’ sake.”
I grimaced. “Christ. That would have been like something out of a horror movie.”
“You’re not kidding,” she replied, following me to the side of the barn. “Thank you for this, by the way. I know it’s a big ask.”
I raised my hands just before I pulled off my gloves. “Hey, if she wants twenty-two trees, she can have twenty-two trees. I’m not going to turn down money.”
Sylvie’s lips twitched into a tiny smile. “I can’t wait to decorate those.”
“Well, if you do feel the need to let a kid loose, you can borrow Danny.” I pulled down the commercial order book from the shelf and put it on the worktable. “When do you want them delivered?”
She smacked her lips together. “Um. The wedding is Christmas Eve, if I allow four days to decorate, three extra in case of emergencies… so like ten days?”
I leant over to the calendar and counted days. “The sixteenth?”
Sylvie stared at a random spot of the barn and wiggled her fingers one by one, her lips moving. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. In the morning though, please.”
“To the old hall?”
“No, Thomas. Deliver all twenty-two trees to my grandparents’ house. I thought we could all grab a tree and drag them across town to the venue one by one like a parade.”
“Your choice.”
“Yes, the bloody town hall!”
Laughing, I opened the book and scanned the orders. “I can’t have them delivered that morning. We’re already booked for wood and coal deliveries out of Castleton. It’s going to take more than one truck and probably two trips. I’m gonna need the fuel trucks so… The fourteenth? About dinnertime?”
She sighed. “Yes. I guess that’s going to have to do if that’s all you’ve got.”
“It is, sorry. I’d reschedule the fuel orders for you, but we only go out of the village once a week, and these Christmas ones are all pre-booked.”
“No, it’s fine. Thank you. I’ll make sure I’m there to take the delivery.”
“Do you have tree stands for all the taller ones?”
She pressed her lips together, then shook her head.
“I’ll lend you some.” I sighed as if it was some great sacrifice for me to make. “Have you considered how you’re going to decorate them all?”
“Oh, I know how they’re being decorated. How the decorations are being paid for is something else entirely. That is for my sister to worry about.”
“You’re going to worry about it, aren’t you?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“She can’t choose her first dance song. Do you really think she’s going to organise buying all the decorations?”
Sylvie cupped her hands over her nose and mouth, dropping her chin. “This wedding is going to turn me into an alcoholic.”