“There you two are.” Owen’s words stopped the conversation in half a second.

Rachel painted on a smile. “I see you found cocoa and candy.”

Owen stirred his hot beverage with a candy cane.

Two kids ran past them and darted into the thick of the trees.

“Never enough sugar.” Owen licked the candy and turned around.

Rachel found Jason watching her, his smile a little less cocky, his eyes a little more serious. “What kind of tree do you like, Owen?” he asked.

“One that smells like pine.”

Rachel giggled. “I think we’re good, then.”

Thirty minutes of pulling trees aside and making sure they didn’t have massive empty spots where the wind had taken out the branches during their growth, and they finally had their tree.

Jason attempted to pull out his wallet, something Rachel bet was a common thing for him, but she refused. “My home, my tree, my bill.”

He scowled.

“You’ve helped enough already.”

He stood back and let her pay.

Chapter Eight

The tree overtook the living room. Owen’s smile outshined it all.

It was past nine when Jason secured the tree in the stand and made adjustments to Rachel’s satisfaction. Owen opened a box of unused lights and went to work.

“We really can take it from here,” Rachel told him.

Jason said nothing and stared.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Coffee?”

“That’s more like it. I’d love a cup of coffee.”

She disappeared into the kitchen; the sound of cupboards opening and closing emerged.

“She doesn’t like asking for help,” Owen whispered.

“I can tell,” Jason whispered back.

“I’ve been trying to paint her room for over a month, but she’s never gone longer than a few hours when I’m not at school.”

“Her room needs to be painted?” Jason glanced at the stairs, had a sudden desire to see the inside of her personal space.

“Everything in this house needed repairs and paint. I helped a little before school started, but she’s done most of it herself. You should take her out to dinner so I can surprise her.”

The kid was smooth, Jason gave him props. “I’ll see what I can do.” He lifted his hand, palm up. “I’ll give you my cell phone, and we can coordinate.”

Owen grinned, looked beyond Jason’s shoulder, and handed him his phone.

Rachel walked back into the room, coffee cups in hand, before Jason finished typing it in. “So that’s how you do that?” he said to Owen, handing over the phone.

Owen laughed. “Yeah. It came with the new update.”

“I’ll have to try it out.” Jason kept the ruse going.

“With your broken phone?” Rachel asked, handing him his cup.

Faking innocence, Jason said, “Right.”

She shook her head. “Did you want cream or sugar?”

He took a drink. “Black is fine.”

“Ha. That’s what she said,” Owen chimed.

“Very funny.” Rachel sat on the sofa, facing the tree.

Jason didn’t catch the joke. It must have shown on his face.

Owen pointed a finger at his face. “Black.”

Jason’s laugh started slow and built. “That was funny.”

“How are those lights coming?” Rachel pushed. “You do have school in the morning.”

Half an hour later, the lights were perfectly set, and the boxes of brand-new ornaments were empty. Jason didn’t remember the last time he trimmed a tree, and this year he’d done it twice. There had to be a message in there somewhere.

“My work here is done!” Owen dropped a plastic bag as if he were exiting the stage and dropping a microphone.

“Not bad for our first attempt.” Rachel rested with her back against the sofa, her legs crossed at her ankles and propped on the coffee table.

Owen stretched, looked at his feet. “Much as I’d love to help clean this up, I have school in the morning.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll leave it for you to take care of when you get home.”

Owen shook his head and walked toward the stairs. “Thanks for your help, Jason.”

“Anytime.”

Owen looked between the two of them. “She has to work in the morning,” he said.

Jason noted the suggestion. “My boss hates it when I’m late, too.”

“Okay, then. Good night.”

“Good night,” they echoed back.

“He’s a great kid,” Jason said once they were alone.

Rachel didn’t take credit. “Emily did a fantastic job.”

“You’re picking up the pieces like you know what you’re doing.”

She shrugged. “Trial by fire, I’m here to tell you.”

“You make it look easy.”

She finally looked in his eyes. “Thank you.”

“So, Owen’s grandparents . . .” The questions had burned in his brain all evening as he’d waited for a little time alone with her to understand the details of her situation.

Her smile fell. “They agreed not to file a custody suit if we moved here. I had to buy, not rent, as proof that we weren’t going to just leave.”

“So you found a job in Manhattan and made the move.”

“This year has been hard enough on Owen. I didn’t want the threat of him being forced to move away hanging around us for six months to a year, then see him here without living with me once the Colemans won.”

“You’re sure they would have?” Not that he wanted her to fight and move away. She was a valuable employee, and there was that whole hand-holding thing he wanted to eventually get to.

“They have money. They have a blood relation. And if TJ demanded custody, it would have happened sooner than later.”

“TJ is the dad?”

“Yep, Tereck Junior. He and Em had a thing for about a year. He went off on some photojournalist job when she found out she was expecting Owen. She never kept it from TJ, but according to her, he would have sucked at the dad thing, and they both agreed that Owen should stay with her.”

Jason had a hard time with any man who didn’t take on the weight of his own child. “Did he help her out, at least?”

“Sometimes. She didn’t demand it. I asked her about it a few times, especially when money was tight . . . she told me she’d always wanted to be a mother but didn’t see herself being a wife. That if Owen hadn’t have happened when he did, she might have taken matters into her own hands and never let the dad know.”

“That’s harsh.”

“It probably happens more than we think. In vitro is great and all, but expensive when you consider the alternative.”

“Does Owen know TJ is his dad?”

“Yep.”

“He seems well-adjusted, considering the man isn’t around.”

“Emily always said that having no dad, or not one you expected to be around, was better than thinking you were important to someone only to be disappointed.” Rachel sighed, looked at him briefly, then back to the tree. “She didn’t have a great relationship with her father.”

“Obviously.”

“But she didn’t stop TJ from having the chance with Owen. She simply never sugarcoated the man to Owen, never said he should be or shouldn’t be anything. It helped that TJ wasn’t around in the early years, and by the time Owen met him, he was old enough to take the man with a shrug.”