Page 33 of Mechanic’s Christmas Match

It’s because I love you. I’m doing this because I love all of you.

9

RORY

The next day, Rory paced the family room in his sister’s massive new home after work.

The two of them had grown up in a row house, and even now he lived in an apartment so tiny that he could stand in the center and practically touch all the walls.

But his sweet Evangeline, the least materialistic person he had ever known, now lived in a brand-new house that was big enough to get lost in. And she honestly looked like she fit right in.

“You okay?” she asked him from her place at the dining table.

A mountain of gifts sat on the big table, along with rolls of wrapping paper, thick stacks of tissue paper, and two mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows and a mini candy cane in each. Christmas music played on the radio, and the biggest Christmas tree Rory had ever seen glimmered and glowed by the giant windows that overlooked the fields and the hillside beyond.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Your head is in the clouds,” she said with a fond smile.

Her son, Leo, was upstairs napping. And her husband, Grayson, was out supervising details on the building for veterans’ housing that had been his project this year. He’d named it Isaac’s House in honor of a fallen serviceman, and a lot of people in town were very excited about it.

For now, Rory and Evangeline were alone together, just like when they were kids, for the first time in forever.

Only technically alone though, he supposed. Evangeline’s massive pregnant belly jumped now and then with the movements of his second nephew. He would be arriving very soon, and seemed like he wanted to say hello right now.

“Is he going to hang in there long enough for us to wrap gifts, Buttons?” he teased her. “Or does he smell the hot chocolate?”

“I think he’ll let me finish with the presents,” Evangeline said with a smile, wrapping a loving arm around her swollen midsection. “He wouldn’t want to mess up his big brother’s Christmas.”

“Good man,” Rory told her belly.

“I guess I’ll start with Leo’s things,” Evangeline said, grabbing a box with a set of magnetic tiles and a roll of paper.

Rory picked up the toy tow truck he’d brought for Leo, and Evangeline handed him some tissue paper.

“Wrap it in this first,” she told him. “So it doesn’t rip through the wrapping paper.”

“Right,” Rory said. “You’re good at this.”

“I used to wrap all our presents back home,” she said with a smile.

“Such as they were,” Rory remembered, feeling that twinge of guilt he always got during the holidays. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more for you.”

“Are you kidding,” Evangeline said, putting down her wrapping paper and turning to him. “You did everything for me.”

“That’s nice,” he said, turning back to his toy tow truck and wishing it were true.

“You’re not okay,” she said, still facing him. “You care about her. A lot.”

“I’ll be fine,” he told her.

“It’s not fine,” she said. “Does she really not like you back?”

“It’s a complicated situation, Buttons,” Rory told her, not wanting to say anything about Ana that might make Evangeline angry.

“Go on,” she said, giving him a pointed look.

“I think she likes me as a friend,” Rory said.