A Nantucket Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

wriggled cheekily. “
I
do. I brought a couple of boxes when I moved here. Plus, we can buy more lights in a flash!”
    Sebastian chuckled at her weak joke. “I’m afraid I’m not much help with all this tree business.”
    “You’ll be all the help I need when you carry it into the house,” Nicole assured him.
    A burly sales clerk in a red-checked flannel jacket and a fuzzy green hat appeared.
    “What about this one?” he suggested, pulling out an eight-foot-tall tree and shaking it so its branches fell away a bit from their tightly twined position.
    “Look, Seb, it’s
flawless.
” Nicole clapped her hands in delight. She’d never seen such a sublime evergreen. “It’s shaped like an A. Each side is bushy, so we won’t have to tuck one bad side in a corner to hide it.”
    Sebastian glanced fondly at his wife, who was practically levitating in her pleasure. “Okay,” he surrendered. “This tree.”
    At the small shed where they paid, Nicole bought a wreath for the front door, too. A
tasteful
wreath with a large red bow and nothing else, no small decorations, no candy canes, no pine cones dusted with faux snow, which she would have preferred. This was her private concession to Sebastian’s decorous (lackluster) tastes. While he and Katya had never had a Christmas tree in the house, Nicole couldn’t imagine Christmas without one.
    With the lumberjack’s help, Sebastian easily hefted the tree to the top of his SUV and fastened it with rope and bungee cords.
    Getting it into the house was a different matter entirely. The tree was heavy. Sebastian removed the cords and wrestled it to the ground, but once he’d gotten his hands on the trunk, he had trouble lifting it and for a moment stumbled around the car as if dancing with a clumsy drunk in a green fir coat.
    Nicole stifled a giggle. “Let me take the top to guide it in.” She stuck her hands in between the branches, grabbed the slender trunk, and together they carried it into the living room. They dropped it on the floor, then wrestled it into the stand Nicole had placed in readiness.
    Sebastian stood back, staring at the tree. “It’s awfully big.”
    “I know,” Nicole agreed smugly. She cocked her head, studying her husband. “Tell you what. If you’ll help me put the lights on, I’ll do the rest of the decorating.”
    His posture relaxed. “That’s a deal. I was hoping to meet the guys for lunch at Downyflake.”
    After they strung the lights on the evergreen, Sebastian walked into town to meet his friends. Nicole brought out her beloved old ornaments, set them on the floor, and evaluated them. She was in a new stage of her life, this was the biggest tree she’d ever had, and she wanted it to be the most glorious. She hurried into her car and drove to Marine Home Center.
    In the housewares section of the shop, “White Christmas” played softly over the sound system. Christmas baubles filled the shelves, each more adorable than the other. Mothers with children knelt down to discuss which miniature crèche scene to purchase for their houses. Honestly, the ornaments became cleverer every year, Nicole thought, in a frenzy of confusion over how to limit herself to just a few choices. Penguins on ice skates, red-nosed reindeer, trains with wheels like red and white peppermint candy, airplanes with Snoopy waving and his red scarf flying backward, snowflakes, grinning camels, tiny dolls in white velvet coats with red berries in their hair … Oh, Nicole
loved
this season!
    She bought lots of decorations, and if she thought she might be going just a wee bit overboard, she remembered Maddox. What fun it would be to have a child in the house for Christmas!
    Back home, she listened to a holiday CD while she hung the ornaments. As she worked, she discovered she needed to rearrange the furniture, to push the sofas and chairs away from the tall, bushy tree. Standing back, she wondered if it wasn’t just a bit overwhelming. Had she made a mistake?