“I hope we get a white Christmas.”
“From the sound of it, you’ll get that and more.”
He reached her vehicle before she could answer and she hurried to open the door for him and offer help if he needed.
He seemed to be moving around even better on the crutches than he had two days earlier and slid in easily. He tucked the crutches at his feet, with the ends extending between their two seats.
“Hi, Marshall!” Will chirped from his booster seat.
“Hi!” Chloe added her voice.
“Hey, Will. Miss Chloe. Been decorating any Christmas trees lately?”
They both giggled.
“Nope. Just yours.” Chloe gave her sweet smile.
Andie couldn’t hear Marshall’s response as she moved around the vehicle and slid in behind the wheel. When she climbed in, Will was talking.
“Guess what? Santa Claus comes in only one more week!” her son exclaimed, as if nobody else on earth knew Christmas Eve was on the way.
“Is that right?”
“Yep. We only have seven more days left on our ’vent calendar.”
“What are you asking Santa to bring?”
It was the sort of question guaranteed to keep two kids chattering the entire drive from Riverbend Road down to the lakeshore and the downtown park where most of the festivities would be.
“Oooh, look!” Chloe breathed when the park and all its holiday lights came into view. “It’s so beautiful!”
The long, narrow lakeside park served as the nadir of Haven Point’s holiday decorations. While the town itself and the property owners and downtown merchants all did an excellent job of holiday decorating, with wreaths on all the vintage-looking streetlamps and lights in all the windows, here the holiday spirit was in overdrive. Each massive pine tree was lit up with hundreds of thousands of lights, and bulbs were strung from tree to tree. In an open space of the park, a life-size winter village provided interest the entire month.
She and the children and Sadie had walked through the park one evening in November, just after the lights had been turned on. Now the entire north section of the park was covered with more lights and several rows of booths that would be selling crafts, food and gifts.
“This is gonna be so awesome!” Will exclaimed, just about jumping out of his booster seat with excitement.
Marshall turned in his seat and did something wholly unexpected. He smiled. Not just a perfunctory, casual sort of thing, but a full-on, ladies-grab-your-britches smile, overflowing with warmth and delight.
Those butterflies could hardly contain themselves. Andie wanted to simply stare at him all evening, but she swallowed and forced herself to move. She parked, then climbed out and walked around the vehicle, wishing the air were a little more brisk to cool her down.
He didn’t need her help, apparently, and was already pulling himself to stand, balancing on his good leg, so she turned her attention to the children.
“I’ll need both of you to help me carry things,” she said, fumbling for a moment with the key until she found the right button that would release the cargo door.
She handed Chloe one of the blankets and gave Will the small bag of snacks, then reached for the other blankets and the soft-sided cooler with the water bottles.
“I can take the cooler,” Marshall said.
“You’re going to have enough trouble navigating through that crowd as it is. It’s not heavy at all.”
“Then I should be able to carry it just fine.”
With an implacable expression, he held out a hand. Arguing only made her look foolish, she knew, so she finally handed over the bag, which he pulled on cross-body style, as he had his laptop bag the other day.
“Perfect,” he claimed, though she knew it couldn’t possibly be comfortable.
Will looked as if he was ready to race through the crowd at top speed, but Chloe was watching, eyes worried, as Marshall moved slowly on the crutches toward the area of the park where Charlene Bailey told Andie the VIP seating could be found.
“Will and me will go in front of you to make sure everyone gets out of your way,” Chloe announced. “Otherwise you might trip on people.”
“We don’t want that, do we?” Marshall said with another one of those potent smiles. “That’s a great idea.”
Chloe seemed to relish his approval. “Come on, Will,” she ordered her brother, then the two of them walked side by side with a slow formality normally reserved for royal standard bearers.
They made quite a procession, she couldn’t help thinking with amusement.
“Hey there, Sheriff!” A man with a bald head, thick mustache and leather jacket that made him look like a middle-aged motorcycle bandit waved and offered a friendly smile.