“I’m tired and my feet are cold,” Lydia said on a whine. As Holly had feared, the excitement of the day had been too much for her daughter, even with her nap after school in the break room.
“We can’t have that,” Ryan said. Before Holly could respond, he swept up the girl and set her on his broad shoulders. Lydia gave a surprised shriek then giggled.
“I’m big,” she said.
“You sure are, honey,” Holly said. As she looked at the pair of them, she felt the ice she thought encased her heart chip away a little more.
“Did you have fun?” she asked Audrey. “Your friend’s group was really good.”
“It was,” Audrey agreed. “I liked when they rang the bells, too. That sounded cool.”
“And you found a few purchases.” She nodded to the bag Audrey carefully guarded.
“Yep. I think I’m almost done with my Christmas shopping, thanks to you paying me way too much to babysit Miss Lydia.”
“The paltry sum I’m paying you isn’t nearly enough for the great job you do,” she assured the teen.
They reached his truck first, which had a light coating of snow.
“You don’t have to walk us to my car.”
“Don’t have to, maybe, but I’m going to,” Ryan answered.
“Like Lydia, my feet are killing me, too,” Audrey said. “Can I wait in your truck, Uncle Ryan? I can start it up for you.”
“You know how?”
“Sure I do. I warm up my mom’s car all the time.”
He pulled a key ring out of his coat pocket and handed it to Audrey. Looking gleeful, she unlocked the driver’s side door and climbed inside.
“I’m trusting you to lock the doors until I get back and to make sure that gearshift doesn’t leave Park, even for an instant,” he said sternly. “Got it?”
Audrey made a face. “I won’t touch the gearshift, I promise. I’ll just start it up and then look at my phone.”
They walked through the alley toward Holly’s parking space behind the store.
She pressed her key fob to activate the remote start in her own SUV. By the time they reached it a moment later, Lydia’s chin was resting on Ryan’s hair and her eyes were half-closed.
After Holly opened the rear door, Ryan lowered the girl carefully from his shoulders and set her into her booster seat.
“I think she’s going to be asleep the moment I get her home.”
“Or earlier,” he said, his expression amused in the glow of the streetlight in the empty parking area.
While she hooked Lydia’s seat belt, he grabbed her scraper without a word and went to work brushing the snow off her vehicle for her.
His thoughtful gesture meant almost as much as his offer earlier to deliver her flowers.
“Thank you,” she said when he finished, after she had closed Lydia’s door.
“You’re welcome. Thanks for dinner,” he said.
She smiled. “It was a really fun evening.”
“Even seeing your ex?”
She thought about her reaction to unexpectedly encountering Troy. “It was totally fine.”
