Here's part one of chapter one of It Started With A Christmas Tree
“I blame the shops!” I stated
looking at Riley, my arms crossed over my chest. He looked back at me and
sighed. “If they didn’t put up their decorations in September then I wouldn’t
be quite so impatient to put up my own! And this is my first Christmas in this house so really, how can you expect
me to wait!”
I’d bought this house about
six months ago and had inherited many problems with it—the least of which was
dry rot. But I did get Riley because of it.
“Lizzie, it’s not even
December yet. Your mum said it’s bad luck to put decorations up before
December,” replied Riley, running his hands through his short blonde hair. His
patience was wearing thin. Riley was usually a very patient man, so I must be
really pushing him here.
“Oh,” I replied, waiving my
hand around dismissively. “Take no notice of her. She has a superstition for
everything. Explain to me how putting up our Christmas tree exactly three days
before December the first can change our luck.” I looked at Riley and felt
victory sweep over me. He had nothing. “Come on give me a hand. It’ll be fun!”
He looked at me doubtfully. “No,
fishing with my brother is fun. Fooling around with you is fun. Putting up a
Christmas tree is definitely not something I consider to be fun.”
“That’s because you’ve never
put a tree up with me,” I explained. This was also the first Christmas that Riley
and I have been together so he has no previous experience with just how excited
I get.
It’s my favourite holiday and
has been for as long as I can remember. The only other people in the world who feel
the same level of excitement for it are children and my siblings, Molly and
Danny. Actually, I can probably put us all under the children banner when it
comes to Christmas. We all love it.
I pulled over one of the boxes
that I’d stored under the stairs and ripped back the tape holding it closed. Inside,
peeking out at me, were the white branches of my tree. Excitement coursed
through me as I pulled out the first branch and lay it on the floor, ready to
place others in piles around it. Approximately one minute later, the box was
empty and I had five neat piles of foliage. I straightened up and moved the box
to the side, out of my way. I smiled at Riley, sitting on the couch watching
me. “Just wait. It’s a really beautiful tree.”
“It’s plastic,” he stated, a
smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”
He shrugged. “Nothing I guess,
but in my family we have real trees.”
“Oh, well….we like plastic. We’ve
never had much luck making real trees last long enough. They always die and
look really horrible by the time January comes around,” I explained,
disappointed that Riley wasn’t feeling my excitement.
“That’s probably because you put
them up too early,” he said. “I’m sure you’re right though,” he said, sensing
my feelings, “this one will be awesome.”
He smiled again, making me
forget about the tree altogether as I felt the world move on it’s axis. Riley’s
smile is so amazing that it can actually make the world stop turning. And even
though we’ve been together for six months now, it still has the power to make
me lose my breath.
Shaking myself to clear my
head, I knelt on the floor and put the base of the tree together. Carefully, I
fitted the trunk then pushed the branches into place, fluffing them as I did
so. This process took about five minutes.
Standing back up, I felt the
anticipation as I looked down on it standing approximately one metremeter
tall. Humph.
“Wow. It’s awesome!” stated
Riley, giving his best attempt at hiding his smile. He stood up and moved to
stand in front of it. The tree didn’t even make his waistband. “As I’m the
tallest, you’ll be wantingwant me to put
the angel on top, right?”
Smart-ass. “I remember it
being bigger than that,” I mumbled, feeling the disappointment sit heavily in
my chest. Riley seemed to sense my mood and pulled me in close. He kissed the
top of my head.
“That’s because you shared a
very small apartment with your friend Aimee and it wasn’t in a living room with
twelve foot ceilings,” he said, kindly. “But I’m sure you’re right. It would
have been beautiful. And the upside is, it won’t take long to decorate.” There’s
that bloody smile again.
I leaned into him, feeling his
heat seep into me and contemplated how I could make the tree look bigger. I
could put it on a box but then that would probably look stupid, or maybe I
could put it on the window seat but then Cat would probably knock it over. He
was very protective of his spot on that seat. I folded my arms over my chest
and sighed. Maybe I should just replace it.
“I know,” I cried. “We’ll buy
a new one. And because I love you we’ll make it a real one, I said, excitement
starting all over again. I felt Riley’s sigh as I pulled away to look at him.
“You’ll pay for this later,”
he smiled.
“I’m counting on it,” I
replied breathlessly. Making me ‘pay for things’ was one of Riley’s favourite
pastimes, if you get my drift. And I will admit that I spent a lot of my day
thinking up things that I needed him to do just so that I would have to ‘pay
for it later’.
I reached for the back of the
chair to steady myself as Riley’s smile turned up to full wattage and his
gorgeous blue eyes twinkled. His eyes are his most stunning feature and let me
tell you, that’s saying something because all of his features are incredible. But
his eyes are the colour of a beautiful blue sky and framed with the most
beautiful dark lashes I have ever seen on a man. Sometimes I find myself
staring at him, totally hypnotized by them. Of course he always catches me, as
next to Christmas, embarrassing myself seems to be top of the list of things
that I enjoy the most. Actually, scratch that. Christmas is third on the list
of things I like to do the most.
I cleared my throat attempting
to dispelldispel
the lust that crept through me.
“We need to start our own
tradition,” I said, trying to steer my mind down a different path. “So from
this year on, we’ll pick out our tree together,” I croaked.
Noticing Riley’s pupils dilate,
I quickly realized Riley’s thoughts were somewhere other than on our Christmas
tree.
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