A Cowboy Under My Christmas Tree (4 page)
Read A Cowboy Under My Christmas Tree Online
Authors: Janet Dailey
Sam nodded. “Once the snow’s up to the eaves and the back roads get blocked, a cord of wood goes pretty fast.”
“I bet. There are some Manhattan apartments with fireplaces—not mine, though. I live in a fifth-floor walk-up. But I probably wouldn’t use it much even if I had one. I get so busy this time of year.” Nicole shook her head. “Holidays in the city are just crazy.”
More customers had come in, waiting in line, taking off coats and craning their necks to see if there were any open tables. Some headed for the bar. Piped-in music began to play over the din.
“That’s New York, I guess.” He smiled. “I have to say I’m enjoying it so far.”
Nicole was glad to hear it. “You mean you don’t miss Colorado snow?” she teased.
“Nope. Not yet.”
“Well, if we get any, Manhattan streets usually get plowed pretty quickly. Around here snow isn’t what you would call scenic after the first day. So, um, how long are you staying?” Nicole meant the question to sound businesslike, but she wasn’t sure it did.
“Until New Year’s.”
She wanted to ask him who’d put him up, but she couldn’t bring herself to be so nosy. The thought that he would be leaving in less than a month was unsettling. It wasn’t like she could hire him for the next job, not when her goal was to join the staff of a large store—
Sam tapped on the table to get her attention.
“Hey, that reminds me—you ever go to Times Square on the big night and watch the ball drop?”
“No. It’s too crowded and I’m too short to see anything.” She couldn’t help looking at his big shoulders. He was more than strong enough to carry her on them. Nicole imagined ringing in a brand-new year with Sam Bennett instead of sitting at home in her bathrobe watching the revelry on TV with her cat. Whiskeroo just was not a party animal.
“If you change your mind—” Sam ventured.
“Thanks, but I doubt it,” she said quickly. They would probably have a great time. And he’d be gone the very next day. Not how she wanted to start the new year. She reminded herself once more that he was going to be working for her. And that she didn’t date out of state.
“Then I guess I’ll go alone.”
There was a pause. Nicole suppressed a smile. “You’ll have a blast. It’s New York’s biggest party. Now, getting back to the new design—”
He was suddenly all business. “Right. I had a question about that. Don’t you have to get approval before we start?”
Nicole shrugged. “After I did the windows for Now last Christmas, Darci doubled her sales. I can always scan the drawings and e-mail them to her.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t add anything to that one quiet word, but she felt compelled to ask if he’d witnessed Darci’s tantrum. “Were you outside when she stormed out?”
“Yes. I was hoping she wasn’t you. I mean, I knew there was a Nicole inside, but I hadn’t quite figured out who was who.”
“Aha. How long were you lurking outside the window? ”
He knew she was teasing him, and he grinned at her. “Not very long. I was having a sandwich at the place across the street and I saw the shop and thought I’d pick up a gift.”
Now sold only clothes and accessories, in sizes and styles that targeted a young, female demographic with outrageous taste. Nicole debated whether to ask whom he had been shopping for, though by now she could guess.
He took the initiative. “For my younger sister, Annie. In case you were wondering.”
“Of course not.” Nicole beamed at him. “But I can help you out with that. Darci gives me a ten percent discount.”
Sam seemed a little puzzled. “Even when she’s mad at you?”
Nicole waved his concern away. “She’s always mad at someone. We happened to be in the line of fire that day.”
“Oh. Say, how’s the kid who fell? I forgot to ask.”
“Josh is better,” she said. “Nothing broke. But he did sprain his ankle.”
“Bummer. Especially before Christmas.”
Nicole nodded. “I paid him anyway. Falling off ladders is one of the hazards of the profession, unfortunately. Window dressers work practically around the clock during December. You get so tired, things like that just happen, and you keep right on going.”
She didn’t add that Josh got plenty of sleep on his mom’s couch no matter what, according to her mother, who knew his mother from back in their sandbox days. It had been Nicole’s decision to give him a chance.
“How long have you been a window designer?”
Nicole thought back. “Since my last year at the School of Visual Arts. I started as an assistant, then took my portfolio around to design directors at the big stores and got turned down at every single one. But New York has a lot of little boutiques like Now, so I got some gigs. Took me a couple of years to make a living at it and charge enough to pay a crew.”
The burger platters arrived, heaped with fries. The alehouse was a zoo at this point, and the waitress didn’t stay to ask if they needed anything else.
“That’s great. Good for you.” The warmth in his voice and the admiration in his eyes embarrassed her.
Nicole picked up round, thinly cut slices of pickle from the side of her platter and made a flower out of them on top of the melted cheddar. She studied it for a second and added a circular squiggle of ketchup in the middle.
“You don’t ever stop, do you?” Sam asked, laughing. “Pass the ketchup, please. Unless you plan to paint a mural with it.”
She handed over the squeeze bottle. “Don’t give me ideas.”
Sam decorated his fries with ketchup, not very artistically. They ate quickly—they’d both been working hard. She finished first, and wiped her fingers with a paper napkin, then pulled several more out of the dispenser, arranging them on the table and unclipping a black marker.
He let her do the talking. The cheddar burger was great. She started sketching on the napkins, then turned them around so he could see. Sam seemed to follow just fine, nodding now and then.
“Okay. We’re still going for a snow scene, but I repainted the backdrop—you’ll see it tomorrow. The scene is going to be a winter cityscape. ”
“Sounds good.”
She looked up, giving the marker a triumphant little wave. “Did I tell you Darci gave me a photo of the street from the 1920s with her storefront right in the middle?”
“No.”
“It didn’t look that different from now. It was a haberdasher’s back then. Anyway, I’m having the photo blown up large-scale and printed on vinyl for a fast installation. Then ...”
She kept on drawing and explaining through the rest of the meal. But she wasn’t totally oblivious to everything around them. When they declined dessert and the check arrived a minute later, he put a hand over it. A split second later her hand landed inadvertently on his.
“This is on me,” he said with a wink, before she could protest.
She withdrew her hand, feeling a little awkward. But she didn’t argue. He paid and they got ready to go, shrugging into their jackets, then collecting the rolled design and her tote. Nicole drew on her gloves. The warmth of his skin stayed with her.
“Thanks,” she told him, walking toward the curb. “That was fun.”
“My pleasure.” He put on the Stetson and angled the brim just so. “What’s next?”
“Oh, I’m heading home. Long day. You too, I guess. ”
“Yeah. I’m beat. Time to turn in.”
Nicole looked down the street, squinting into the rows of headlights coming at her. With the tote slung over one arm, she waved the other, looking for a taxi.
Sam wasn’t sure of the urban etiquette involved. Did guys whistle down taxis for girls, or was that something only doormen did? She seemed very much in charge.
A yellow cab flashed its lights and cut across oncoming traffic to reach her.
Nicole opened the back door and hoisted the huge tote bag into the backseat.
“Thanks again,” she said. “See you Saturday.”
“Bright and early.”
“Where to?” the driver asked her.
She slid in but didn’t quite close the door, reaching for the handle and rolling down the window instead, as she told the driver where she was going.
Sam had the address memorized before it occurred to him that she lived only a block or two from where he was staying now. Nicole slammed the door and waved as the cab sped off. He didn’t have her apartment number or floor, but if he had to, he’d ring every bell on her block. It was one way to make friends and a few instant enemies in the city.
But not just yet. She had to give him some kind of sign that she was interested. He thought she might be, but he couldn’t quite read her. They might be living around the corner from each other for the next few weeks, but when you got right down to it, they were worlds apart and he was a long way from home.
He flipped up his jacket collar against the cold, walking downtown.
Sam stopped only once, at a sidewalk vendor’s table on the way back to the trailer. He looked over the knit caps, looking for one that wasn’t too thick to wear under a hard hat. He picked a stretchy black one, handing it to the vendor.
“That’ll be three fifty. But I can give you two for five bucks. It’s a good deal, man. That way you have one if you lose one,” the vendor said.
Sam chuckled. “Okay. The price is right. Can you take the tag off?” He handed over the cap he’d picked and selected a second, identical one.
“You bet.”
Snip. Snip.
Sam put both caps in his pocket. “How much for a scarf?” They weren’t tagged.
“Five bucks.”
He found a ten and gave it to the man. Couldn’t beat the shopping location for convenience. He seemed to be the last customer for the night.
The vendor started piling up his stock and moving it into the van parked behind him. Sam said good night and walked on, wrapping the scarf around his neck and pulling the Stetson down just a bit. He didn’t mind the occasional look or comment when he wore it.
New Yorkers seemed to sport every kind of hat there was except Stetsons. Still, if it happened to snow, it would serve him well. The wide brim and thick felt protected like nothing else. His was an old friend, a little worn, but broken in right.
He stopped at a corner after a while. Nothing seemed familiar, though his glance at the green rectangular sign on the pole told him he’d reached the right street. He looked around. The Hudson River glimmered faintly on the other side of Eleventh Avenue, beyond the whizzing traffic. He would have to head in the opposite direction on long crosstown blocks to get to where the trailer was.
Sam turned his back on the traffic and the river and kept on. He didn’t feel tired. Nicole’s enthusiasm for the redesigned window was contagious. She wanted him at Now by eight Saturday morning, and he would be. He glimpsed Christmas tree lights a few blocks ahead and quickened his pace.
Uncle Theo waved to him from his folding chair on the sidewalk, so bundled up he could hardly move. The fake-fur trim around the hood of the old man’s padded jacket was the same gray as his bristling mustache, which reminded Sam of a walrus. Theo’s deep, rumbling voice clinched the resemblance.
Sam waved back without calling a hello. Theo couldn’t hear too well inside the hood.
The old man was somewhat protected from the wind by Christmas trees lined up in rows against a high A-frame made of wood. A heavy-duty extension cord ran from the frame into the all-night newsstand and cigarette shop a few steps away, courtesy of the proprietor, who welcomed the extra business the tree-selling brought in.
Strings of big colored lights, the old-fashioned kind, cast a luminous, welcoming glow over the trailer where Theo and Sam and a rotating lineup of relatives helping out with the lot slept in shifts. Out in Astoria, according to Greg, the extended family numbered in the low hundreds.
It was a good thing that Theo was a night owl and didn’t mind the cold. There was a microwave and coffeepot in the trailer if he needed a hot drink or soup and time to warm up. Sam knew a cousin was coming in from Queens on the N train to keep the old man company and guard the trees.
They never encountered any trouble. The cops on the beat drove by on a regular basis until dawn, when another relative showed.
Sam wouldn’t be sharing the trailer much longer. His sublet, a first-floor apartment in an old building, was supposed to be ready for him to move into it by the weekend. Theo had told him about it in the first place. The tenant, Alex Walcott, had been a customer of his for years. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Theo.
He reached the folding chair and thumped the old man’s thickly padded shoulder in greeting. “Hi, Theo. How’s business?”
“Could be better. How are you? How is my nephew?”
“Greg is fine. He went home. I thought I wasn’t tired, but it all just caught up with me.”
Theo jerked a mittened thumb toward the trailer door. “You work too hard. Sleep.”
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