“Love you,” her mom said.
“You too!” Julie quickly switched to the other call. “Hello?”
“Well, hello there, Julie.” The voice on the other end of the call belonged to Ned Wheatley. “I don’t suppose you have a minute for me to swing by? I’ve got the parts we need to fix that old sink.”
Thank goodness!
* * *
This time,Julie kept an eye on Kringle while Ned shuffled onto his back beneath the sink. The old man still seemed to think she had adopted a dog rather than a cat, and the very last thing Julie needed was another unexpected vet bill. All the money she was spending on the cat and on buying new decorations to make the party the best it could be was eating away at what little she still had in her bank account.
It wasn’t yet two o’clock in the afternoon, so when she heard a knock on the front door, Julie frowned. Ned didn’t appear to hear it and was still working away beneath the sink. But she didn’t trust the cat, so she scooped him up on her way to answer the door. To her surprise, Kringle allowed it. He even pushed himself higher in her arms to rub his cheek against the underside of her chin.
He must realize that she would be dropping him off at the animal shelter in a couple days and was mounting a campaign to get her to keep him. “Sorry, buddy, I wish I could keep you,” Julie muttered under her breath.
When she opened the door, the cat stiffened in her arms. He clawed his way up her shoulder to jump to the ground, where he huddled behind her legs. But he didn’t hiss, which might be an improvement. Well, not for the state of her sweater and her skin beneath.
The man on the other side offered her a sheepish smile. He had one hand on his dog’s collar, not that Snowball seemed to notice. She leaned forward, putting her entire weight into reaching Julie and sniffing the cat through the gap in her legs.
“Sorry,” Nolan said. “I didn’t realize you’d be holding the cat.”
“It’s fine. At least they’re not fighting.”
Not a hiss, not a growl. Kringle even endured Snowball’s nose, wet and cold with snow. Just in case one of them decided to bolt, Julie stepped to the side. She didn’t want to get caught in the middle.
“Do you want to come inside? It’s freezing out today.”
Nolan shrugged. “It’s not so bad.” But he stepped into the house and pulled the hat off his head. “I’ll only stay for a minute. I brought you something.”
Snowball advanced until she backed Kringle against the wall, giving him a vigorous once-over. Sitting back on his hind legs, Kringle batted her on the nose, but he hadn’t unsheathed his claws. Progress.
Julie turned her entire attention on Nolan. “You did?”
With a nod, he pulled something wrapped in yellowed tissue paper out of his pocket. She took it, feeling the hard planes of glass and maybe wire in the figure hidden beneath.
“To replace the one we broke.”
He’d brought her a tree topper. “You didn’t have to. You didn’t break it. It was an accident.”
“It was my dog that caused the accident.”
With a wry smile, Julie shook her head. “It takes two. Kringle is no saint. But thank you. That’s very sweet. Do you want to stay for a cup of coffee?”
“I’ll stay for a minute or two, but I don’t need the coffee. Maybe we can finish what we started?”
Julie hadn’t realized how close they were standing until he said those words. He still had most of his outerwear on, his hair a tousled mess from the hat. His smile made her stomach flip.
Finish what we started.They’d stood close like this on the ladder just before disaster had struck. She’d been leaning closer, thinking about kissing him. He was close enough to kiss now, and he wasn’t pulling away…
He cleared his throat. “With the ornament? I don’t like to leave a job unfinished.”
Right. The ornament. He wasn’t talking about kissing her at all.
Julie’s cheeks flamed. She turned her back to hide it and said, “Right. That’s a good idea. Let me get the stepladder.”
He took a minute in the entryway to remove his boots and coat. That gave her the time she needed to get herself under control. Yes, Nolan was attractive. Yes, he was sweet and thoughtful. But she was leaving in only a couple days, so there was no future.
She had the stepladder all set up by the time Nolan joined her in the living room. Snowball trotted in after him with a curious white cat lingering in her shadow. Julie snatched up the still-wrapped ornament from where she’d set it down on Gramps’s rocker, just in case the two animals got rowdy again. Although she felt a bit self-conscious with Nolan watching her, she carefully unwrapped the gift.
