Snowflakes and Surprises (Evergreen Hollow Christmas #2)

Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Rhett glanced at his watch, and then at the front door, wondering when the next-door neighbor would get there to watch Jay for the evening. She still had some time, Caroline hadn’t even gotten there yet, but he was anxious and excited. He’d been a little afraid to hope that Caroline would take him up on the offer of another date, but she’d seemed just as eager as he was.

He felt hopeful. Day-by-day, what Pete had suggested, had been the right advice. So far, it was working out wonderfully.

Glancing once more at his watch, he walked over to the kitchen table where Jay was seated and working on homework. “How’s it going, buddy?” he asked, sinking down into the opposite chair, and Jay glanced up.

“My math is all done.” He pushed the finished pages toward his dad, and Rhett looked at them.

“What about the spelling homework?”

Jay frowned, kicking his feet against the chair. “I don’t want to do it,” he said, and Rhett felt a flicker of guilt.

He didn’t want to press the issue right now. He felt bad, telling Jay that he needed to sit there and do homework he didn’t want to do, while he was about to leave Jay with a neighbor and go out on a date.

But at the same time, he remembered what Caroline had said about kids needing structure. He knew he couldn’t just keep letting it slide, every time Jay didn’t want to do something he was supposed to. At some point, he was going to have to start enforcing rules and boundaries. He’d been letting things go to give Jay time to adjust, but that couldn’t go on forever.

He was debating how to handle it when he heard a knock at the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, getting up and going to open it.

It was Caroline, standing on the front porch. She was dressed up more than he’d ever seen her, wearing a deep purple dress with an asymmetrical, ruffled hem, knee-high black velvet boots, and a black, gray, and purple plaid wrap-style coat over it. Her hair was loose and curled around her shoulders, and he saw she was wearing the same opal studs she’d had on for their last date, but there was a matching necklace with it this time, the oval opal with small diamonds in a halo around it resting in the neckline of the dress.

She looked absolutely beautiful, enough to take his breath away, and he stood there in stunned silence for a moment.

Caroline laughed softly, her eyes glimmering with mischief that he rarely saw.

“Are you all right?” she teased. “Haven’t you ever seen a woman in a dress before?”

“Not one that looks like you,” Rhett retorted, recovering as he stepped forward, putting his hand lightly on her waist as he leaned in to give her a soft kiss. He felt her small intake of breath, the way she leaned into him too, and his heart flipped in his chest as he stepped back. “I feel super lucky that you’re going out with me tonight.”

“That makes two of us.” Caroline stepped into the warm house, shedding her coat for a moment as Rhett took it and hung it up.

“I’m just waiting on the neighbor to get here,” he explained. “Jay is doing homework.”

“I’m in no rush. How’s it going?” Caroline asked Jay, as she walked over to the table and sat down next to him. “You don’t look like you’re having a good time.”

“I’m not,” Jay mumbled, clearly in a bad mood. “I don’t like spelling.”

Rhett glanced at his watch again. The neighbor was late now, and as much as he knew Caroline wouldn’t complain about staying in for the night, he didn’t want to disappoint her by canceling the dinner she’d dressed up for.

“I’m just going to call and see where the neighbor is at,” he said quickly, glancing at Caroline, and she nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

Caroline waved a hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here.”

He stepped out of the room, finding the name in his contacts. She answered after a couple of rings, and he let out a breath.

“Is everything all right? Just wanted to make sure plans haven’t changed.”

“No, I’m so sorry. I should’ve called. Actually, you’re just the person I should have called, really. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to open the vent in my fireplace.”

Rhett heard her grunt on the other end, as if she were trying it again. “I forgot it was closed, and now it’s smoking up my house. I just need a minute.”

He took a deep breath. “I can come over, if you need me to. Take a look at it.”

“No, it’s okay. Can you just explain what I should do? And then I’ll be right over.”

He began to talk her through it, laughing to himself as he did. It was very different, being a small-town firefighter instead of working as one in Cleveland. He wouldn’t have handled it this way back then. But he really liked it. There was a sense of closeness and friendliness with the people around him that he hadn’t ever had before. It felt good.

“I’ll be right over,” she promised, as soon as he’d finished explaining to her how to open the vent and everything was under control. Rhett hung up, tucking his phone into his pocket and going back into the kitchen to check on Caroline and Jay.

He heard her talking to him, and paused in the doorway, listening.

“Okay—so the next word you need to spell is foliage . How about this? Some dinosaurs like to eat foliage off the tops of trees. F-o-l-i-a-g-e. ” Caroline spelled it out, and Rhett saw Jay nodding, copying the word onto his homework.

Something in Rhett’s chest tightened, a flood of emotion rushing over him as he watched the scene in front of him. It was sweet and adorable all at once, seeing Caroline sitting there at his dining table in her gorgeous dress, next to his son in his Spiderman pajamas and bare feet, helping him with his spelling homework.

It made him feel an emotion that was dangerously strong, looking at Caroline. Or maybe, just right.

He wanted to find out, that was for certain.

He cleared his throat, stepping into the room, and Caroline looked up. “The neighbor will be over in a minute,” Rhett said. “We can head out, soon.”

But to his surprise, Caroline shook her head. “Maybe we should stay in,” she suggested. “Jay is doing really well with his homework now. We’re on a roll. So maybe it would be a good idea to keep going, instead of breaking it up. We could have dinner here?”

He felt his heart swell in his chest at that, and he nodded. As much as he’d wanted to take Caroline out for a nice night, he was more touched than he’d realized he could be that she was so invested in helping Jay with his homework.

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll call her back and let her know we’re staying in.”