1
Tessa Sullivan knew Lucas De Angelis loved her.
He told her often and, unlike her late husband, he wasn’t shy in showing her, either. From little things, like bringing her flowers or cooking her favorite dinner after a long day of interviews, to bigger things, like how he supported her through the whole trial of figuring out what to do with Jack’s ashes.
Even though she moved out of the apartment she shared with Jack and into a whole new city a few states over, Tess didn’t feel right leaving Jack behind. It was bad enough she was the reason his cremated remains were in the small cardboard box she picked up from the funeral home. The least she could do was find a fitting resting place for the man whose only crime was loving her long after she stopped loving him.
And Tess knew that Lucas continued to love her more and more every day because, despite being the one who put Jack in that box, he didn’t just chuck it out of their sixth floor apartment after he discovered it in one of her moving boxes.
When she finally decided to take a weekend trip and scatter Jack’s ashes so that he didn’t haunt their new place, Lucas drove her out to the mountains and held her as she watched with a dry eye as her husband’s remains drifted off into the early winter wind, away from them and out of their lives forever.
But sometimes… sometimes Tess wondered if Lucas loved her too much.
Was such a thing possible? Perhaps.
Case in point: the whole, well, putting Jack in the box thing. Four months ago, after close to a year of planning, Lucas did what he had to do to make sure that Tess was free of a husband who didn’t believe in divorce.
It was okay, though. Because there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do—or any lengths that she wouldn’t go—to make sure no one ever separated her from Lucas De Angelis. Even if that meant that she couldn’t always get exactly what she wanted. What was good for Lucas, was good for her, she decided.
And that’s when, after making up her mind about the upcoming holiday season, she started dropping hints. No matter how fiercely she wanted to keep Lucas all to herself, especially since they were poised to spend their first Christmas together, Tess knew that that wasn’t what Lucas needed.
It might be what he wanted, sure, since his love for her bordered on desperation. But she adored him enough to make sure he had what he needed. And what Lucas needed, more than anything, was to go home for Christmas.
He’d never admit it. When he tossed their plans to the side, leaving Hamlet after six weeks instead of the three months Lucas initially decided to wait, Tess felt guilty for everything he was giving up to be with her.
His home. His sister. His practice.
In essence, his whole life.
Lucas told her she was worth it. Even now, after everything he’d done to prove he meant it, she still struggled to believe it.
Christmas was a time for family. Lucas was all she had. As long as she was with him, she was happy. And Tess knew he’d be happy—or, if not happy, then content—if he could check in on Maria and make sure she was doing fine without him.
So that’s exactly what they were going to do.
When he failed to pick up on her hints, the way she left Maria’s frequent e-mails open on her laptop, or when she asked questions about how Hamlet celebrated holidays like Christmas or Hanukkah, Tess finally came out and told Lucas that she wanted to go back and spend Christmas with Maria in his hometown.
Lucas, who could deny her nothing, only pretended to be put out by her request. It didn’t take long for him to agree, though he had his own condition. Hamlet was a five or six hour drive from Dayton, depending on the traffic and the weather. They could take the drive and surprise Maria—but only if they left on Christmas Eve. He was adamant that Christmas Day be saved for the two of them alone.
Since that meant she wouldn’t have to worry about transporting all of the presents she bought for him so that he had gifts to open on Christmas morning—something she absolutely refused to budge on—Tess accepted his condition.
And that’s how, only two months after she swore that she would never set foot in Hamlet again, Tessa Sullivan found herself planning on going back for the two days leading up to Christmas.
“Is it straight now?”
Since all she could see were Lucas’s feet sticking out from under the tree as he lay flat on his belly, wrestling the monstrous douglas fir into the tree stand, Tess didn’t even bother to keep the smile off her face. Whether it was because the sight of him struggling with the tree more than twenty minutes after she first left him cursing it made her want to laugh, or because it delighted Tess to know that he did this all for her… she wasn’t so sure.
Still, she had to try again before he started snapping off branches in utter frustration.
“You don’t have to do this, Luc. I think I brought my tree with me when we moved—”
“You said that Sullivan insisted on a fake tree every year even when you asked for a real one. I’ll be damned if I put that plastic crap up in our living room. You wanted a real tree,” he said, grunting a little as he repositioned it again. “You got one. Now, Tessa, baby, is it straight?”
She muffled her snort behind her hand. It was maybe straight—if she cocked her head all the way to the left and squinted.
But since she couldn’t tell Lucas that, she settled on saying, “Um, try shifting it to the right.”
“My right or your right?”
“Your right.”
With another grunt, Lucas heaved the tree until it was far more straighter than it had been.
“Better?”
“Perfect.”
And it was, to Tess at least. It was absolutely perfect.