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Bodie closed his eyes.
“This year’s tree has to be extra special. Everything has to be perfect.”
Why was he still squatted on the bathroom floor? Sarah needed a truck so she could get a tree. Wasn’t his purpose for being in Pine Hill to help Sarah?
Gritting his teeth from the discomfort in his hip, he stood, and then marched forward, just the way he used to march into battle.
He found Sarah in the kitchen, having just placed an antique candelabra with red candles on the island. Thick green garlands with red ribbons adorned the piece.
She was just as he’d imaged, phone to ear, pretty in her Christmas green sweater and jeans. Her hair was pulled up and tied with a red ribbon patterned with strings of colorful lights. Around her neck, she wore a necklace made up of more Christmas lights. He’d bet anything that there was a button that made them twinkle.
Sarah liked things that twinkled.
Seeing him come in, she smiled.
The inside of his chest did the little fluttery thing it had started doing when Sarah was around. He should probably see a doctor in case they’d missed something in the scans he’d had that year. He wouldn’t say the flutter felt like shrapnel moving, but there was definitely something up in there.
When she smiled at him like that, something inside of him twinkled like he was a string of lights going off in multiple bursts of color.
Him. Bodie Lewis. Twinkling.
It was enough to make him want to slap his hand across his forehead and see if he could knock his brain back into gear because apparently his injuries had extended to his head, after all.
Tough soldiers didn’t twinkle.
He winced. He might not be a tough soldier anymore, but he wasn’t embracing twinkling, either. The sooner he finished this job, the better.
Her gaze holding his, she held up a finger as if to say to hold on and she’d be off the phone in a few. Rather than wait for her to finish, B
odie pulled his truck key from his pocket and tossed it to her.
Catching it, she looked at the key, then back at him.
Putting her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone, she asked, “What’s this?”
“My truck key.”
Keeping her hand pressed over the mouthpiece, she veed her brows in question. “I know that, but what am I supposed to do with this?”
“Get your tree.”
Her jaw dropped a little as she realized what he meant. “You want me to drive your truck to Harvey’s Farm?”
“If it makes you happy.”
Because, more and more that seemed to be what motivated his every move. Making Sarah smile.
Sarah stared at Bodie in disbelief. They’d only known each other a short time. That he trusted her enough to let her borrow his truck had her insides filled with warm fuzzies.
“You going with me to get my Christmas tree would make me happy,” she admitted, hearing the bit of longing in her voice and not really caring if Bodie heard it, too.
“Well, if you want me to go, I will,” Maybelle said over the cellphone.
Oops. She’d forgotten about her conversation with Maybelle and had neglected to keep her hand over the mouthpiece to block out her conversation with Bodie.
“Not you,” she clarified, then winced as she realized how that sounded. She should have muted her phone or ended the call. Something.
She took a big breath and tried to dig herself out of the hole without ending up in a deeper mess.
