“I guess I could use a drink of water.”
“We’ll call you and our mom to come in and see it when we’re all done,” Chloe said.
“Fine. I guess I’ll go see what’s smelling so good in the kitchen.”
He made his careful way down the hall to the kitchen, which smelled of apples and cinnamon and cloves. There, he found Andie with her back to him, bending over to add something to the bottom rack of the dishwasher.
Yeah, he had a broken leg and an assortment of other aches and pains, but he was still a guy. He couldn’t have prevented his gaze from drifting to her shapely curves any more than he could stop the Hell’s Fury runoff in springtime.
His body stirred with awareness—which had the potential to be more than a little embarrassing, considering he wore loose, soft basketball shorts.
With her auburn hair piled on top of her head in a messy updo, she looked soft and pretty and he had an insane urge to press his mouth to the back of her neck just below her hairline.
He blinked away the impulse and moved farther into the room as she stood up. Her dog spied him first and gave a tiny, excited woof, which alerted Andie. She whirled and for an instant he could swear heat flared between them before she seemed to collect herself.
“Oh! You startled me!”
“Not sure how. No one could say I’m exactly stealthy on these things.” He gestured to the crutches.
Appealing color bloomed on her cheeks. “I guess my mind was somewhere else. Sorry. Are they about done in there?”
“I’ve been banished from the room while they put the finishing touches on.”
“You’re a good sport, Sheriff Bailey.”
That was something not very many people would have said about him, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. “I said this earlier and I meant it. Please call me Marsh or Marshall. Once you’ve decorated a man’s Christmas tree, you should be allowed to call him by his first name.”
Her color seemed to heighten. “Fine. Marshall.”
The way she said his name in her soft alto voice sent a funny little shiver down his spine. Probably some kind of nerve receptor misfiring, he told himself, even as he tried to rid his brain of imagining her using that voice in the bedroom.
She cleared her throat. “I know you weren’t crazy about having my kids decorate a tree for you. It means a lot to me that you let them do it anyway.”
He didn’t deserve her gratitude. He hadn’t wanted them to decorate a tree and had agreed only because he hadn’t had the heart to turn down the offer. He didn’t bother telling her it likely would be a chore for him to remember to even plug in the lights throughout the remainder of the holiday season—not to mention, taking the thing down once Christmas was over.
“Something smells good in here,” he said.
“Oh. That. It’s an apple brown Betty. I thought it would go well with that vanilla ice cream you had in your freezer. It should be done in ten minutes or so, and then I’ll see if I can hurry the kids along so we can get out of your way. I promised you we wouldn’t take long.”
He had been a complete jerk to her earlier, but she still had been willing to overlook it and was making him something she thought he might enjoy.
Her words and the reminder of his own behavior made him feel about six inches tall. His jaw worked. “You probably already figured this out, but I’m an ass sometimes.”
She flashed him a look that said she didn’t completely disagree. “You’re in pain and hate being laid up. I get it.”
“That’s not a valid excuse.”
“Honestly, Marshall, you apologized very sweetly earlier and you’ve more than made up for it this evening by being so kind to my children.”
“Kind? They’re the ones who wanted to do a nice thing for me. It’s not some huge sacrifice for me to let them, though I’m still not quite sure why they’re going to so much trouble for some cranky neighbor they barely know.”
“I can’t answer that for sure, but...” She hesitated. “I don’t know how much Will remembers his dad or really understands what happened to him, but Chloe does. She knows her dad was a police officer who died in the line of duty. You’re in law enforcement and were injured in the line of duty. I have to think maybe she’s made some kind of connection there between the two of you.”
“Between her dad and me.” He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“She adored her dad and used to love leaving little gifts for him all the time. A bracelet she made out of string, a picture she colored, cookies she saved from her own snack and packed in a little bag to tuck into his lunch the next day. That kind of thing. Since she can’t give Jason those little gifts now, maybe somehow she feels like doing something nice for another police officer is the next best thing.”