Page 142 of Season of Gifts

Letting him go, she sighed with ostentatious relaxation.“Now that was the refill I needed.”

Tipping his head toward the counter, scanning the cups, Jay snorted.“It for sure wasn’t your drink.We can at least heat these up while we’re in here, though.”

Henry unwound his arms and squeezed her shoulders.“And then, perhaps, we might exchange our gifts.I do have some small tokens suitable for this audience.”

“We do, too.”She flashed a smile at Jay, and he added a double thumbs-up.Hopefully Henry would appreciate the coordination that had gone into his gifts from them.“One hundred percent family friendly.”

The tray Jay carried out featured a plate of caramel apple slices alongside the topped-off drinks.Once the goodies had been distributed, Jay knee-walked between the piles of gifts the boys had opened and dug their much smaller stack from under the tree.They were the last of the adults to exchange gifts.Probably an age order thing—Mother had started, and then Henry’s brother and his wife went, all in brief breaks as the boys quietly absorbed themselves in the latest things they’d opened from Santa Claus.Jay’s robe trailed him like a bridal train on his way back to them, and he presented their gifts with a game-show flourish.“So, rock, paper, scissors to see who goes first?”

While Jay had his hands full, she threw scissors.He stuck out his tongue at her, flexing between solid and curled, then waggled his eyebrows.

Henry lifted the top two boxes from the stack.“I would prefer to be last, my dears.Why don’t we start with the two of you exchanging gifts?”

Jay tipped the rest of the stack toward her.She caught their gifts for Henry, thin and matching, and a midsize box.Jay kept the bottom one, her gift for him.She patted his leg with her foot.“You go first.”

He rotated the box in all dimensions.He pressed his ear to one side and shook it gently.The contents rustled and rattled.“Could be dangerous.Awful lot of noise going on in there.Is it an ice cream maker?”He shook it again.“Must be an archery set.”

Gabriel crept forward.“The box isn’t long enough for the arrows.”

“Shoot, it isn’t, is it?”Lips pursed, Jay stared intently at her and infuriatingly slowly ran his finger under the tape at one end.“It’s too big to be socks.Maybe a coat covered in alarm clocks.”

Laughter turned the boy’s cheeks red.“That’s not real.”

“It could be, though.”Jay shook the box and winked at her.“Until we open it, what’s inside the box could be anything.”

“That’s science.”Gabriel’s brother craned his neck for a look.“But based on your specific box and on the gift-giver, we can narrow the possibilities to the most probable.Santa Claus has properties beyond physics, so maybe he could fit an archery set in that box.But Aunt Alice has to obey the rules.”

She’d never been an aunt before.And now she was anawn-taunt, not anantaunt, and instead of staring at the blank white walls of a rental apartment, she was watching her husband enlist their nephews in a game ofwhat ifover the gift she’d given him.

“And she loves you, so she would have chosen a gift she thought you would enjoy.What do you like, Uncle Jay?”

“I dunno, what do I like, Alice?”That fucking innocent face.If a smirk could wear a halo, Jay would manage it.

She aimed for a nonchalant shrug, big emotions clouding her eyes and closing her throat.“You’d know if you’d open the box.”

Jay ripped through the paper with a dinosaur roar.Gabriel squealed and flopped backward.Mother wore a grand smile, holding her phone steady in two hands, panning with the slow precision of an expert videographer.

Henry laced his arms around Alice’s waist, the waiting gifts surrounding them on the short sofa with its fancy scrollwork edges.“How are you feeling now, dearest?”he whispered.

“I love this.”She cupped her hands over his, squeezing happiness from heartache.“I love everything about this.”

“Then we shall repeat it in endless variations.”He kissed her temple just as Jay folded back the box lid.

“Holy s—smokes, Alice.”Sweet brown eyes wide, jaw open, Jay flipped his gaze between her and the box of goodies in his lap.He unloaded piece after piece withoohs andahhs and acoolor six.“Did you rob a science lab?”

She might have gone overboard.But the pieces weren’t expensive, and the memories they’d make would pay for them a thousand times over.“It’s all necessary, I swear.The kit didn’t come with the graph paper for charting, and then I thought, you know, as long as we’re doing ballistic trajectory, we could also do projectile motion—”

“That’s a slingshot!”The children perused the pile without touching, calling out the kits as Jay unpacked them.“And a catapult!”

“A trebuchet, actually.See the mechanism in the design image?”Pointing out the difference to his little brother, Robert gave Jay a nod.“You’re lucky, Uncle Jay.Aunt Alice is like Santa Claus.She knows the best gifts are educationalandfun.”

“I’m the luckiest guy I know, Robert.”Jay turned the box over and shook it, but his gaze never left her.“That’s it for me.Thank you, Alice.We’re gonna have a blast with all of these.You wanna open yours?Less exciting, but I did think about it real hard.”

“I know you would’ve picked it out with a lot of care.”Letting go of Henry, she lifted the box and tossed out an evil laugh.“Mwha ha ha!The prize is mine!”

Snowmen and reindeers and nutcrackers fell prey to her long swipes across the paper as Jay and the boys laughed.The lid lifted from the top.Nestled in tissue paper rested a pair of calf-height black boots.The rugged bottoms would be perfect for commuting.The leather uppers had a stylish dominant feel about them, thanks to the decorative buckles.She stroked the butter-soft outsides and the cozy-fuzzy insides.“These are gorgeous, sweetheart.”

“I asked Henry for help finding the right pair.They should fit.”

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