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He lowered his chin, shook his head and put the van back into gear again. “I’m telling the truth,” he said as he drove. “You’re the one who’s lying now.”
“Me?” She shot him a surprised look. “What have I lied about?”
“When you said you don’t have any problem trusting men.”
She looked away. She needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t as if he had a snowball’s chance in hell of reading whatever flashed into her eyes.
An hour later they pulled in at the house, and Maya reached over to blow the horn. Within minutes several bundled-up women came scrambling out the front door. One was carrying a small chainsaw. Mel, of course. She tossed it in the back of Caleb’s pickup, then came to the driver’s door of the van, tapped on the window. Caleb rolled it down.
“Where do you think you are, Caleb? New York City?” she asked him.
“Huh?”
“Keys,” Mel told him, holding out a hand, palm up. “You’ve got that thing locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Oh. Right.” He dug in his pocket, fished out the pickup keys and handed them to her. “It’s not that I think anyone’s going to steal that heap,” he told her. “Just habit.”
“Oh, yeah? I suppose it would be, for a guy used to tooling around in a Mercedes.” Mel wore a blue knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top over her short dark hair. Her bangs stuck out from under it and a couple of snowflakes had landed in them and clung like glittering ornaments.
“Lexus coupe,” he told her. “It’s less pretentious.”
“Oh, yeah, right. That’s downright slumming.” But she said it with a smile. “So you may as well drive the van over. I’ll take Mom with me in your truck; That is, if you trust me with your wheels.”
Already the side door of the van was sliding open, and Selene and Kara were clambering into their seats, snapping their belts. “Sure I trust you,” he told her.
“You should,” Mel said. “I figure any collisions I might have can only improve the looks of that thing, anyway.” She sent him a wink and turned away.
“Hey, I saw yours in the barn, Mel. Makes mine look like a luxury car,” he called.
Mel stopped, turned and eyed him.
“And, I might add, mine runs.”
She grinned and sent him a mock salute, then walked away. As he rolled his window up, he heard Vidalia say, “I told you he’d loosen up once he got to know us.”
In the back seat, Kara and Selene were still laughing at his exchange with Mel. As he put the van into motion, Kara said, “Can you believe it’s snowing! It’s perfect that it’s snowing on tree day, don’t you think?’’
“Oh, yes,” Selene said, sobering. “Snow is a great backdrop for murdering a tree.”
“Oh, gee, here we go….” Maya muttered.
“Oh, come on, Selene!” Kara cried. “Don’t spoil it for us!”
“I can’t help the way I feel! I just don’t think it’s nice to chop down millions of living trees every year just for our own selfish pleasure. Hell, we only throw it out a few weeks later!”
“It’s not like we’re chopping down wild trees, Selene,” Kara argued. “These trees wouldn’t exist without the custom! For Pete’s sake, they are planted and raised just for this purpose! Selling them helps farmers make ends meet. You’re so narrow-minded!”
“I am not. Life is life. Trees have spirit, and I don’t see the sense in murdering them.”
“Dammit, you two, enough!” Maya shouted. They went silent as she glared at them over the seat. “We are going to be joyful and filled with Christmas spirit while we choose our tree, do you understand?’’ She practically growled the words through clenched teeth. “Now stop fighting and be joyful, or I’ll come back there and make you sorry!”
Caleb looked at the two pouting faces in the rearview mirror, then at Maya’s angry one beside him. He cleared his throat and very softly said, “Can I…make a suggestion?”
All three sets of eyes turned on him. He swallowed hard. “The ground’s not frozen yet. It wouldn’t be all that hard to dig the tree up, instead of cutting it down. We could wrap the roots in burlap and soil, put it into a big tub of dirt, feed and water it all winter. Then, come spring, we can take it out and plant it again.”
Selene’s pout eased into a smile so soft and genuine that Caleb thought she might lean up and kiss him. She looked at Kara, and Kara smiled back and nodded.
Then he looked at Maya. But she wasn’t reacting at all to his suggestion. Instead she said, “What do you mean ‘we’?”
