A Family Christmas. Carrie Alexander

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      The girl exhaled expectantly, looking at Rose with her shining eyes.

      Rose knelt near a fallen log so old it had gone all soft and mossy. She put her sketchbook on it and opened to the first page. “Would you like to see?”

      “Yes, please.” Lucy came close, standing beside Rose as she flipped through the pages. The book contained ink drawings, pencil sketches and small watercolors of outdoor scenes. She’d made a number of detailed studies of leaves, flowers, birds, clouds. Amateur stuff.

      No princesses or flying dragons to delight a child. Rose’s dreams were as mundane as her reality, but she’d captured on paper the only beauty she knew. The only goodness that was everlasting.

      “Pretty,” Lucy said, stopping Rose at a watercolor of the climbing rose vines that blanketed one side of her little stone house. “I like pink flowers.”

      “They’re roses.” The painting did have a fairy-tale quality, she realized. Misleading as that was.

      “Like your name.”

      “Yes. Wild roses.” They clung to the stones, somehow surviving the harsh winters to return each spring. She’d painted the cottage scene just last week, knowing the roses wouldn’t last much longer. On impulse, she tore the page from the book. “Would you like to have it?”

      Lucy made a small sound of pleasure. “Thank you very much.”

      “Put it in your pocket so you don’t lose it.” Rose helped Lucy slide the small watercolor into the kangaroo pocket of her windbreaker, thinking too late about her father’s reaction. Well, he’d have to live with it. She’d done nothing wrong.

      “I wish I could draw like you,” Lucy said.

      “Keep practicing.” That sounded about right, like something a wise adult would say to a child. “And try this—” Rose pulled a pen out of her pocket and flipped the sketchbook to a clean page. “I always work from nature.” She plucked a leaf from a maple sapling and laid it on the paper, then gave Lucy the pen. “Trace the leaf.”

      Lucy dropped to her knees in the mulch. Leaning over the book with a look of utter concentration, she carefully drew around the leaf. “Is that right?”

      “That’s a tracing. But now your fingers know what to do and you can draw the leaf on your own.” Rose tapped an empty space on the page. “Go ahead and try it.”

      Lucy put the pen nib to the paper, squinting hard at the leaf.

      “Uh-uh. Not that way.” Rose covered the leaf and the tracing with one hand. “Draw it from the picture of a leaf in your head. Your fingers will know how.”

      Lucy was doubtful. With her small face all scrunched up, she drew a fair approximation of the leaf. She studied the lopsided sketch. “It’s not as good as the other one.”

      “It’s better. Draw another, only faster. Don’t try to be perfect. Make your pen race. Let it go all squiggly if you want.”

      Lucy smiled and drew a second leaf, glancing at Rose for approval.

      “Make more of them,” she said. “One on top of the other. Faster. Faster.”

      Lucy laughed as she drew, her ink line becoming loose and free. The first careful leaf became a scribbled pile.

      “There, you see?” Rose showed the girl the real leaf again, green mottled with a soft rusty red. “You’ve made your own kind of leaf. But you should color your drawing in. And, see, if you study the pattern of the veins—”

      A man’s voice interrupted them. “Luce, where are you?”

      Lucy’s head came up. “That’s my dad.”

      “Lucy?” With a crackle of branches, Evan Grant pushed through the underbrush. “I heard you laughing—” He saw Rose and stopped. “You.”

      She met his eyes. “Me.”

      A stiff nod. “Hello.”

      “Hello.”

      Evan said, “Time to go, Lucy,” in a calm voice, but he stared at Rose, his expression severe.

      A blush stained her cheeks. She was furious that he’d made her feel guilty. In spite of her reputation, she was not a criminal.

      Lucy went to her father, head down as she tugged at the zipper of her jacket. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked softly, “Why did you run off, Luce?”

      “You said I could play in the woods.”

      Evan’s gaze returned to Rose. “Yes, I did.” He shrugged. “I didn’t expect her to do it, though.”

      Rose realized that he wasn’t accusing her. He was merely…surprised. Surprised at Lucy, for some reason. That put her off-kilter.

      “I was drawing leafs, Daddy,” Lucy said. “Rose showed me how!”

      “That was kind of her. Did you say thank you?”

      Lucy’s solemn little face transformed into sweetness and light when she smiled. “Thank you.”

      Rose’s voice came out so rough-hewn it might have been hacked with an ax. “Err…welcome.” She stood, hurriedly tucking the sketchbook under her arm. An explanation poured out of her, despite the raw throat. “I was walking in the woods. Lucy came across me. It wasn’t— I didn’t intend—” She gritted her teeth. Damn. Always on the defensive.

      Evan shook his head, telling her he didn’t want a justification. “Lucy, do you want to go on over to the car now? I’ll follow you in just a sec.”

      “All right.” The girl threw Rose another shy smile and turned away, her pale hair lifting off her neck as she reached the field and started to run.

      Rose stretched her neck to see past the branches. Practice was over; the boys had departed. She tucked in her bottom lip and swallowed.

      “Thank you,” Evan said.

      Rose blinked. “What for?”

      “You made Lucy laugh. She doesn’t do that a lot.”

      Rose didn’t reply. She wasn’t accustomed to handling sincerity and appreciation.

      Evan spoke haltingly. “Her mother died. Less than two years ago. She’s been very quiet and shy since. Easily frightened.” He looked down, crossed his arms over his chest, kicked up leaves with the toe of one running shoe. “I try to encourage her. But she always wants to stay near me. I didn’t think she’d actually go into the woods. She says the creaking of the trees scares her. You know, as if they’re alive.”

      He looked up to the forest canopy. The sun had lowered in the sky. What remained of the filtered, dusky light dappled his face and inside Rose there was a stirring…an attraction. So unfamiliar it startled her.

      Logically, she could see that Evan Grant was a handsome man. He had short brown hair that matched СКАЧАТЬ