Page 16 of Welcome Home for Christmas
“I haven’t been here in years,” he confessed, as they climbed uphill toward the attraction.
Allison paused as the tree came into focus. “Oh, wow. It’s beautiful.”
Troy looked at it through her eyes, seeing it for the first time, too. Yeah, Paradise Point’s Christmas tree was pretty spectacular, large and decorated with a thousand yellow twinkly lights. Huge round balls painted red and silver hung from the heavy tree branches.
“Come on. We’ll be warmer if we huddle on the bench. We can watch the kids skate, fall down, and get back up. It’s a lot of fun.”
She laughed as she continued to follow him to an iron bench near the rink.
He sat, then patted the seat beside him. “I don’t bite, hard.”
She left a few inches between them. She was nervous again; he could tell by the way she fidgeted with her hands in her lap. She’d grown relaxed with him at the restaurant.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. It’s just very…romantic here, isn’t it?”
He lifted a brow. “Ice skating is romantic? I guess I’ve been out of the game for too long. I had no idea. But don’t worry, baby. I’ll behave.” When she frowned, he grinned and said, “Thought that was part of the arrangement.”
“I never agreed that you could call me baby.” She was smiling easily again, though. Relaxed. And so was he.
“Okay,” she said. “Favorite Christmas memory?”
He lowered his brows. “I thought we were done with the questions.”
She shook her head, her hair scraping along her shoulders. A few strands picked up with the cool breeze and tickled his cheeks. “That’s the point of tonight, remember?”
“Right.” He nodded resolutely. The point was learning her ins and outs, personalitywise. He could forget about the ins and outs of a more physical sense, which he’d been fantasizing about since he laid eyes on her. “Okay. Well, I grew up with three brothers, so individual time with my parents was a hot commodity. The Christmas when I was eight years old, I got this red plastic bow-and-arrow set that I’d been asking for. I’d begged for the thing relentlessly.”
Allison laughed softly.
“I’m not kidding. I circled it in the toy catalog, cut it out, taped it to the fridge. My parents knew exactly how much I wanted it. Anyway, I got it under the tree on Christmas morning and it was a total piece of crap.” He glanced over at Allison, watching her expression falter. “The piece of junk was impossible to shoot on my own. My brothers laughed it up. They thought it was hilarious.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe you heard me wrong. I saidfavoriteChristmas memory.”
He nodded. “Dad took me outside that morning. Just me and him. We set up targets and shot that bow and arrow together. He gave it a new string, one that I could easily pull. We played for maybe two hours out in the cold.” Troy focused on the skating rink in front of him. Music swirled with the sound of laughter. “He wasn’t just pacifying me, either. He was having a good time, too. It was the best Christmas I ever had. The best day of my whole damn childhood.” Suddenly Troy’s eyes were burning. “God, I miss that man.”
Allison reached over and touched his thigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” The feel of her touch zinged through him, flipping off sentimentality and turning on something completely different. “He died a couple years back. Heart attack…Okay. Your turn. Favorite Christmas memory?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t really have one specific Christmas memory. It’s really a collection. Every Christmas my parents and I went out to find the perfect Christmas tree for our home. We drove an hour away to this big farm and searched for what seemed like hours. And it was always my choice.” She smiled, hugging her arms around herself. Troy wished that he could wrap his arms around her, too.
“Sounds nice.”
She nodded. “It was.”
He tore his eyes from her because if he didn’t, he might have to touch her. He scanned the skaters again, his gaze snagging on someone from his past. Not too surprising, considering that he was in his hometown.
Jess.
Jessie was an old flame that’d burned out when he’d joined the Corps. The military life wasn’t for her. She’d expected the Marines would take him to all kinds of far-off places. Places she’d had no intention of going at the time. He’d thought he’d be far away from Paradise Point right about now, too. But instead he lived just around the corner. He’d reasoned that splitting up with Jess was for the best. She was a nice girl, but he didn’t love her the way she deserved to be loved. He didn’t love her the way she’d professed to love him.
So he’d gone and broken her heart, which had never sat with him very well. He’d been a love-’em-and-leave-’em guy before that. Always restless. He’d stayed with Jess a good while, though. Long enough for her to believe that they might be the real thing. That they might last. He regretted that he’d let her believe that.
Jess saw him now, too. She stopped skating and stared across the distance. The last time Troy had seen her, she’d been in tears and he’d felt like the prick of the century.
She started a slow skate toward him. “Troy Matthews. It’s been a long time.”
