Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(40)

“What?” I asked.

He had a weird look on his face, like he wasn’t sure he should say what he was thinking. “What if we went and cut one down?”

My face lit up. “Like at a tree farm or something?” I started bouncing. “Will you wear a flannel? Will you have an ax?”

He snorted. “I do not own a flannel. And if memory serves, they give you a handsaw.”

I bit my lip and squealed excitedly.

He smiled. “My dad used to take us to a tree farm every year. He’d cut one down. It was a tradition.”

Ahhh. Now I understood the hesitation. And the reason he never had a tree.

My face went soft and I peered up at him. “Was the last time you got a Christmas tree back when your dad was around?”

He paused a moment. “Yes.”

“So when your dad left, it was the end of your childhood,” I said.

He drew in a long breath. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

I smiled up at him. “But look! Now you’re the grown-up and you get to cut down a tree for Grace’s first Christmas and give that experience to her like someone gave it to you once.”

His eyes went soft and he looked at Grace in her stroller. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Though she’s probably too small to remember it.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know what she’s going to remember. There are things that will happen to her while she’s a baby that will form who she is for the rest of her life. She might be a hundred years old and still feel a sense of calm when she smells someone who smells like you.”

He wrinkled his forehead at me. “What?”

“Yeah. You don’t notice it? How she calms down faster when you pick her up? She already associates you with feeling safe because you saved her that night. She’s imprinting, right now. Little synapses are connecting and telling her that you’re good. She might be drawn to bearded men with kind green eyes and marry one one day, just because she knew you once. And she’ll never even know why.”

He blinked at me and something I couldn’t read moved across his face.

“Anyway,” I said, pushing the stroller toward the exit, “I think we’ve made real progress here today. Even if there’s not going to be an ax and flannel.”

He smiled and pushed the cart, following me out into the parking lot.

*



Half an hour later, we pulled into the tree lot. A woman in a heavy winter coat and a Santa hat approached the car and gave us a site map and a saw. The saw smelled like pine.

“You smell that?” I smiled. He rolled up the window as we crept down the snowy road toward the different plots.

He smiled back. “I do.”

I looked at the map. “So what kind of tree do you want?”

“Balsam fir,” he said without skipping a beat.

“Right answer.” I nodded to a lot on the left. “Those are balsams.”

He pulled into a parking space and we got out. I took Grace from her car seat and did a quick diaper change. Then I bundled her up, and we set out between the rows of pines.

It was a beautiful day. Sunny and around thirty degrees—a Minnesota heat wave for December. We crunched through the snow, looking at the selection.

“Isn’t this better than being at work?” I asked, closing my eyes and breathing in the crisp air.

“I have to admit this does beat depositions,” he said, holding the saw.

“So you’re a partner, right?” I asked, looking over at him. “What does that mean exactly? You’re the boss?”

“I am one of the bosses, yes.”

“But not the big boss?”

“The big boss is Marcus. He’s the owner and founder of the firm.”

“And what’s he like?”

He bobbed his head. “Serious. Shrewd.”

“So how does that work exactly? He’s the owner and you’re what? Like if this was a retail setting, what position would you have?”

He stopped to look a tree up and down. “Well, I guess if this was retail, I’d be the store manager. Marcus and I agree on what cases we take and who we hire. I consult with him if I need to, but he defers to my judgment for most things.”

“And how many lawyers are there?”

“We have nine right now. Plus three paralegals and a couple of administrative assistants.”

A soft wind blew and I tucked Grace’s blanket around her face, kissing her warm forehead. “So do you get all the best clients?”

We kept walking. “Technically clients belong to the firm. Any of us can show up to represent them. But I usually head up the bigger cases.”

“Ahhh. I see. And do you like Marcus?”

“I respect Marcus. Liking him isn’t really necessary.”

I stopped at a large tree. “What about this one?” I nodded to it.

Adrian examined it. “For me or you?”

“You. I’ll need something a little smaller. I don’t have as much room as you do.”

He nodded. “This works for me.”

He got down in the snow and tucked under the boughs of the tree and started to saw.

“So what’s Annabel like?” he asked, the tree shaking back and forth.