Page 35 of Mistletoe & Magic
Junie gasps again, practically bouncing in her booster seat. “Really? Any tree I want?”
“Really. Any tree.”
Ivy glances over at me, lips curved, eyes shining. That look goes straight through me. “Thank you,” she mouths. I nod before I get even sappier.
I carry the last of Ivy’s boxes in before she can argue. She makes a face at me when I refuse to let her take it, but I set it by the wall in the living room, out of the way. Junie immediately takes Lola and races from one end of the house to the other, squeals echoing up into the beams.
“She is going to sleep like a rock tonight,” Ivy says, shaking her head with a grin.
“Good,” I answer. The truth is, I don’t mind the chaos Ivy has brought into this house. It feels like a home when Junie is playing and laughing. Somehow, this house has gone from just feeling like a place we lay our heads down at night to feeling like a place where we can live. Have fun, make memories. And I have to catch myself and remind myself that this is the point. Not to just work non-stop and not be able to stop and enjoy it. And she’s done this in a week. I can’t imagine what would happen if she stayed longer.
Later, after Junie has had her bath and is in pajamas, I setup camp at the kitchen island with my laptop with receipts and invoices. The numbers blur, but I push through, needing to catch up on paperwork. My ears stay tuned, though. Ivy hums as she works through Junie’s tangles in the living room on the floor. My daughter giggles and leans in, closing her eyes, looking content.
My throat tightens at the sight of them. Junie should have had this with her own mother. But she doesn’t, I remind myself. Sloane made her choice. And no matter how much that hurt my daughter, I have to accept that. But I struggle when I see Junie struggle with those choices. Kids just don’t understand. Sloane never wanted a family or to get pregnant. She told me after she accidentally got pregnant that she had thought it would just be her and me. Kids weren’t something she ever wanted.
Had I known that, I don’t know if I ever would have married her. I always wanted a family of my own, and I thought after she had her and held Junie, she’d be happy about her, but Sloane seemed to move further and further away from us, working non-stop, and eventually, she just stopped coming home. I needed help, and when my uncle passed away and I had the chance to move home to Wisteria Cove and run the tree farm, I took it. I knew my mom and brother would be here, and Junie would have more solid people around her that loved her. I know, deep down, that I made the right choice. Sloane didn’t want to build a life here with us, or there, either. I had to do what was right for my daughter, no matter how hard that has been. When we moved here, Sloane told me she was relieved not to have the pressure of being a mother anymore. And I can never understand that.
Later on, the pipes clink loudly when Ivy shuts off the shower, as if something has broken. I go down the hall and knock. “Everything okay?”
“Well…no. I mean, yes. I don’t know. Remy…I need your help, but I am in the shower, and I don’t know what to do,” she yells frantically through the door.
I turn the handle and crack the door. “What happened?”
Her voice comes out high and panicked over the roar of water. “The shower knob came off! I can’t shut it off—it’s freezing!”
I open the door wider and step into chaos.
She’s standing in the glass shower stall, soaked, clutching a hand towel that’s doing its best to keep her covered. Water blasts from the showerhead, spraying off the tile and pooling across the floor. She’s dripping, trembling, clearly trying not to cry or scream.
Without thinking, I grab a full-size towel from the counter, swing open the shower door, and step in. I barely register the freezing spray before I reach for her, keeping my eyes averted.
“Here,” I say, wrapping the towel around her shoulders and pulling her gently toward me. “I’ve got you.”
Her bare feet slip a little on the tile, and I catch her. She’s shivering, light in my arms, the towel now soaked but holding for now.
I lift her out of the stall, keeping my eyes above her head like my life depends on it. Her hair is sticking to her cheeks, her arms gripping the towel tight as I lower her to the bathmat.
And then the towel slips.
She gasps. I freeze.
We both look at each other like we’re standing on a live wire.
Her eyes are wide, cheeks flushed. She scrambles for the towel, laughter bubbling up out of sheer panic. “Oh myGod, this is mortifying.”
I turn fast—too fast—and nearly knock over a bottle of lotion, my own shirt soaked through, water dripping onto myface from my hair. “Didn’t see anything,” I say hoarsely, staring very intently at the broken faucet in my hand. I definitely didn’t see her dusky nipples, hard and pebbled from the cold. And I didn’t see the dip of her waist, or where her hips flare out. And of course I didn’t notice— “Nope. Saw nothing at all. Promise.”
“Liar,” she mumbles, but there’s laughter in it.
I crouch down and fumble with the shutoff valve, trying to focus on the task instead of the fact that she’s behind me, half-naked and dripping, and I just had her in my arms.
This day is going to be permanently etched in my brain. Whether I want it to be or not.
The water is off. I’m soaking wet; she’s soaking wet, and we’re both breathing heavily as we watch each other, Ivy’s towel now firmly in place. All of a sudden, we both break into laughter.
“Well, that was…something,” she says with a grin.
“I had no idea that faucet was broken, I promise,” I say as I meet her eyes.
