stop by later this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Seth.”
“No problem,” Seth had replied, which wasn’t really true. It was a problem to move around on the pitched roof with ice under your boots. But the job was simple, and he was almost finished. The Santa was now in the back of Philo’s truck and Seth had just one more brace to remove.
Actually, the view from here, twelve feet above Main Street, was pretty interesting. The town looked like a Currier and Ives Christmas card. Spruce boughs, accented with big silver balls that dangled and swayed in the wind, were wired to a cable that stretched from one side of the street to the other, and holly wreaths hung on the old-fashioned lampposts. It wouldn’t be long before all those decorations were taken down, too.
Seth pulled out another nail from the brace.
Cooper’s Corner was beautiful all year, but winter was special. He’d first seen the town in December a long, long time ago. He’d been eighteen then, a sullen kid who’d bounced from one New York City foster home to another, with no bigger plan than to find a job at one of the ski resorts, make a few bucks and then move on. But he’d found something here, not just a job but a way of life that had turned his life around.
Even at eighteen—hell, especially at eighteen—he’d been a cynic, world weary and hard-shelled. At first, he’d scoffed at the town’s old-fashioned setting. Surely it was phony, something carefully constructed for the tourist trade.
After a couple of months, he’d been surprised to learn that the town was what it seemed, a village whose residents cared about each other and even about him, tough guy that he tried to be.
Gradually, without him even realizing it, his carefully constructed walls of cynicism started to crumble. Tough guys weren’t supposed to fall in love, but Seth had, with the pretty little town that time seemed to have bypassed. He’d fallen in love with its solid, old-fashioned houses and quiet roads, with its friendly people…
…with a girl whose hair was the fire of maple leaves in autumn, whose eyes were the blue of a mountain lake in midsummer.
“Damn it!”
Seth mouthed a string of four-letter words as the brace broke free and clipped the side of his hand. Well, that was what you got for daydreaming. You worked with tools, you worked on a slippery roof, you had to pay attention. A mistake could be a lot worse than a bruised hand, and what in hell was wrong with him, anyway, thinking about what used to be? Wendy was history. Ancient history. It made more sense to think about the people who’d left the giant stone heads on Easter Island than it did to waste time thinking about the year Wendy had been his girl.
The giant stone heads, at least, were still around. Wendy sure as hell wasn’t.
Seth shoved the hammer back into his leather tool belt. He had no idea why she’d been on his mind so much lately. Maybe it was because he’d met her this time of year, and lost her the same time, too. No, he thought as he gathered up his tools, no, that couldn’t be it. Nine Januarys had come and gone since then, and except for the first two—okay, the first two or three, or maybe even four—except for them, the pages of the calendar hadn’t triggered memories of Wendy.
Not like this.
He woke up thinking about her, fell asleep the same way. Just last night he’d shot up in bed, yanked from sleep by a dream of her in his arms, her mouth on his, so real that, just for a second, he’d believed she was there.
“Wendy?” he’d said, and Joanne, curled beside him, had sat up, too, and put her hand on his arm.
“What’s wrong?” she’d murmured sleepily. “Seth? What is it?”
The image of Wendy had faded. Joanne’s perfume, a scent still not as familiar to him as the scent that had clung lightly to Wendy’s skin so long ago, filled his nostrils. He’d thrust his hands into his hair, shoving it back from his forehead.
“Nothing’s wrong. I was dreaming, that’s all.”
Jo started to put her arms around him, looking to soothe him, he knew, but he’d drawn away, as riddled with guilt as if he’d actually been about to go from holding Wendy to holding another woman.
“It’s late,” he’d said. “I have an early start in the morning. I might as well get going.”
He’d felt Jo’s disappointment and couldn’t blame her. He never stayed with her through the night, and even though she hadn’t commented on it, he knew damned well she was aware of it, just as she was surely aware that he’d never asked her to spend the night at his house, never made love to her there.
“The roads will be bad,” she’d said softly as he dressed in the dark. He’d kissed her temple and assured her that the roads would probably be clear.
He’d been half-right. The roads were awful, but halfway to the home he’d built for himself on Sawtooth Mountain, he’d lucked out and fallen in behind a state plow going straight up Route 7 to where he made the turnoff onto the long driveway to his house. His truck’s four-wheel drive had seen him safely through those last couple hundred feet.
Once inside, he’d built a fire in the living-room hearth, poured himself a brandy and sat in the flame-lit darkness, staring out the wall of glass that overlooked the valley until the first, faint light of dawn, telling himself there was no reason in the world he should be thinking about Wendy….
And thinking about her all the same, just the way he was right now.
Enough.
Carefully, Seth made his way across the icy roof, then down the ladder he’d left propped against it. He dumped his toolbox in the truck and headed into the store.
The bell over the door jingled merrily and Philo came out from the back room, wiping his hands on his denim apron.
“All finished?”
Seth handed him the braces and nodded. “That’s it until next Christmas.” He smiled. “Still planning to put up George and Abe for Presidents’ Day, same as always?”
“Absolutely.” Philo tapped a key on the old-fashioned cash register. “How much do I owe you?”
“I’ll send you a bill.”
“You sure? If you want me to pay you now—”
“No need.” Seth rubbed his hands together. “But I’ll hang around a few minutes and warm up by the stove, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. One minute, and I’ll join you.”
Philo disappeared behind the curtain. Seth tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, whistled softly between his teeth and strolled over to the cast-iron, pot-bellied stove that radiated heat throughout the store.
It was a cozy setting. Half a dozen chairs were drawn around the old stove; prints hung on the nearby walls. Seth recognized some—there were lots of Norman Rockwells. No surprise there, he thought, smiling as he rocked back a little on his heels. Rockwell had lived in these parts and his paintings and illustrations had immortalized the hardworking people of the area. One print in particular, of a boy warily dropping his trousers for a physician holding a hypodermic syringe, made him smile.
“That’s always been one of my favorites.”
Seth turned. Philo grinned and eased into one of the chairs.
“Same here.” Seth sat down, too, and extended his hands toward the stove. “That’s a good fire you have going.”
“Pretty cold work up on that roof, huh?”
“Sure was.”
The men sat in companionable silence. That was another thing Seth liked about Cooper’s Corner. Nobody ever felt the need to fill the air with chatter. If you had something to say, fine. If you didn’t, it was perfectly okay to keep still.
“So,”