Page 11 of Bad Boy Bachelor Christmas
“I pay people to cut them down.”
We wove through many sections of the property, and I showed her all the different crops of trees and explained where all their fates would lead them. We sold mall trees, suburban trees for people to buy at tree markets and bring home strapped to the roofs of their cars, Santa’s village trees. You name it. We sold it.
“I grew up with a fake tree,” she said. “But it might as well have been real. It was old, my grandmother’s actually, inherited by my mom who never wanted to buy anything new because it wasn’t nostalgic. It drove my dad crazy because the stupid thing would lose pine needles every year like it was real.” She giggled. “Imagine that, having a fake tree that still shed needles like a real one. What’s the point? You don’t get the heavenly smell of a real tree, but you still get the mess.”
I sped up, letting the hum of the engine drown her out.
Good grief, she talks a lot.
Winter seemed oblivious to my efforts to evade making small talk with her. I liked working with trees. They didn’t have opinions or stories they wanted to share. They were consistently silent, and that made for my favorite kind of company.
“We tried a real treeonetime,” Winter said, raising her voice over the engine, “but Dad dragged sap all through the house and ruined one of Mom’s favorite rugs, so that was a one-time deal. She was so mad. And it ruined a lot of our ornaments, too. I think Mom called it Christmas Armageddon or something. Looking back though, it makes us laugh, and it’s one of our favorite memories. Funny how it goes that way, isn’t it? The things that feel the worst in the moment are the things we remember most fondly?”
“Uh huh.”
About a mile from her cabin, I brought the four-wheeler to a stop in the middle of a clearing, killed the engine, and got off. I helped her off and her boots crunched on the frozen grass underfoot as I showed her all the chopped trunks. “This section was cut last year and sold. In the spring, when the soil is soft and thawed, we’ll pull out all the trunks and fertilize the earth. We won’t be able to plant until another year after that, once the soil has been replenished.”
She nodded, arms wrapped around herself, hat pulled down over her ears. “You sure like trees, don’t you? When are you going to show me the stuff I get to do? What am I working with? Ballrooms? Guest suites? Dining rooms? Ooh,” she gushed, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, “Ilovesetting a good holiday table. I’m really good at it, too.”
I eyed her. “Trees.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re a big tree guy. But what aboutme? What amIdoing?”
“Trees,” I said again simply. What was so hard to understand?
She blinked. I blinked back.
“What do you mean, trees?”
“That’s why you’re here.” I arched an eyebrow and stared down the length of my nose at her. “You’re my tree designer’s replacement. Didn’t they tell you that when you sent in your application for the internship?”
“Tree designer? What exactly does that mean?”
“It means what it says. You’ll design Christmas trees for all our special vendors. In other words, you’ll be in charge of decorating them.”
Her mouth fell open. She looked like she’d just been told that Santa wasn’t real.
“They sent me all the way out here… with my degree… to hang ornaments on trees?” She pressed her hands to her head, and I had the distinct impression that she was talking to herself, not to me. “I gave up the holidays with my family for this?”
“You didn’t know what you were doing?”
“I was under the impression that I’d be using my design degree to bolster my portfolio and work on relevant projects,” she said, her voice hitting a higher pitch. “Nobody worth their salt is going to offer me a job because they appreciated the placement of where I put a ribbon on atree.”
“It’s a little more involved than that.”
“How so?”
I shrugged. “You’re going to be in charge of a lot more than just ribbon.”
She gave me a fake smile for the first time since she’d arrived. “Let me guess, there’ll be tinsel, too?”
CHAPTER6
WINTER
Trees.
Fucking.
