“You just let me know when you find the one you want.” He wandered off to help the newcomers.
“How you wanna do this?” Ryan asked.
Hannah kept her focus on the trees instead of him. They were arranged loosely in open stalls, each one leaning against the framework. “If you could just pull out the ones I point to and hold them up so I can check whether the trunk is straight and assess the fullness, that’d be great.” A blush suffused her cheeks as her gaze slid away.
What was that about?
She pointed to one. He slipped his hand through the branches and grasped the trunk, tugging it vertical.
“Crooked.”
He put the tree back and grabbed the next one she pointed to. As she studied the fall of the branches or whatever, he asked, “So are you gonna tell me who asked you to do this?”
She made a gesture for him to spin the tree. “Can you keep a secret?”
Given his entire career involved covert operations, he kinda had a lock on that. “Yes.”
“The woman who had the idea was one of Percy’s wife’s best friends. She’s a widow herself and she knows Christmas is the hardest time for him, so she wanted to do something that would maybe help with that.”
“That’s a helluva nice thing to do.” Was Wishful just that kind of community or was he so far removed from kindness that any of it surprised him?
“It is,” Hannah agreed, pointing to another tree. “But I kind of wonder if there isn’t maybe a little crush involved.”
“Yeah?” Maybe Ryan would get the chance at a little payback effort in the matchmaking department. Unlike him, Percy could really use it.
“I could be wrong, but there was something in her eyes when she asked me. I don’t know. She wanted to remain anonymous, so I’m not gonna mess with that and you shouldn’t either.”
He wasn’t making any promises there.
“So how exactly are you related to Percy? Miss—the woman who hired me led me to believe he didn’t have any family.”
“He doesn’t have any close family. Leastwise, not blood kin. He’s basically my great uncle, in a complicated Southern sort of way.”
“Family you adopted?”
He picked up the next tree and nodded. “He and my grandfather were tight from the time they were knee-high. They stayed close, even after each of them married. Percy and Janie—that’d be his late wife—never had kids, so they sort of adopted my mom and her brothers. The two of them were always in and out of our lives.”
Hannah shook her head at the tree, and he put it back. “It’s nice of you to come visit him. It’s awful when people are alone for the holidays.”
“My visit isn’t entirely altruistic. His health has been declining and my mom’s worried about him. I got sent to check on him because he’s rejected everybody else. Not that I can blame him. At the first mention of assisted living, a guy as independent as Percy digs in his heels. He’s been in that house for forty-five years.”
“So you’re—what?—supposed to talk him into it?”
“I’m supposed to assess whether he really needs it or not.”
“And if he does?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Throughout the exchange, she stayed way more focused on the task of finding the perfect tree than seemed necessary. He pulled out and put back almost every one in the size category and other than that one, brief glance, she didn’t seem to be able to meet his gaze. After her directness at the diner, the shift in behavior seemed out of character.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“What?” Her voice had that high, bright quality again.
“We’re supposed to be working together on this thing. That means sometime you’re going to have to actually look at me.”
The pink in her cheeks deepened and she sucked in a breath. “Okay, I deserved that.” Straightening her shoulders, she lifted her gaze to his. The earnestness there was almost painful. “I want to apologize for how I treated you at the diner the other day.”