Page 66 of Carpenter's Christmas Bride

“Would you and your dad like to go with me, Walt?” she asked.

“Yes,” Walt crowed.

“Okay, who’s going to put the angel on top?” Aidan asked.

“Me, me, me,” Walt yelled excitedly.

“Oh, thank you, Walt,” Kenzie told him. “I could never reach all the way up there.”

Aidan handed him the angel, and Walt took it reverently in his little hands.

“See how her skirt has an opening?” Aidan asked Walt.

Walt nodded.

“You’ll put her on top of the tree with that tiny little branch in her skirt to hold her on,” Aidan explained. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Walt said, raising his arms with the angel in one of them, ready to be lifted.

Aidan swept him up effortlessly, and Kenzie watched as Walt placed the angel in her place of honor, his little face soft with wonder.

“Great job,” Aidan told him softly as he set him down. “Should we plug in the lights and see how it looks?”

“Yes,” Walt cried.

“Okay, let’s count down from three,” Aidan said with a smile.

“Three,” Walt yelled as Aidan knelt to plug in the lights. “Two… one.”

Aidan pushed the plug into the wall and the whole tree came to life. The lights twinkled, highlighting all the ornaments Kenzie had put on the tree every year since childhood.

Her favorite, a painted plastic ballerina that was a gift from her grandmother when she was small, hung right at Kenzie’s eye level. The ballerina’s colorful paint was chipping, but it made Kenzie’s heart soar to see her dancing on the tree, like she did every year.

“Wow,” Walt said softly.

“It’s so beautiful,” Kenzie told them. “Thank you.”

Aidan stepped back to admire the tree and she couldn’t help feeling that he was more handsome than ever now that he was relaxed with a satisfied smile on his face and his little shadow by his side.

An hour later, they were curled up on the sofa in the family room, with a half-empty pizza box on the coffee table in front of them.

They had started the movie with Walt sitting between them, but he had scrambled into Kenzie’s lap during one of the scary parts with the Ghost of Christmas Past, and gotten very comfortable there.

Now he was leaning back against her, his warm, snuggly weight so pleasant against her chest that she wished she could freeze time. His breathing was evening out, so she was pretty sure he was falling asleep. And if she wasn’t careful, she might fall asleep herself.

“Do you dance in a big dress?” he suddenly asked her.

On the screen, a young Ebenezer Scrooge was at a country dance.

“Um, no,” she told him. “In the ballet, the dresses are called tutus, and they have to be kind of small and shorter than that, so the audience can see what our legs are doing, and so it’s easier for our partners to lift us up. And they look soft, but ballet dresses are scratchy.”

“I’ll bet Kenzie had a pretty dress like that for prom though,” Aidan said.

“No,” Kenzie said, chuckling. “I was already in New York by junior year. I never went to prom.”

“What’s that?” Walt asked.

“The prom is a fancy dance, just like this one,” Aidan told him. “Teenagers all go to it, and they get to dress up and be fancy, and have fun.”

---