Page 78 of Snowed In with Benefits

“—but you are picky,” Hunter finishes.

“Picking a Christmas tree is as much of an art form as decorating one,” I say stubbornly. “We’ll find the right one. We’ve barely been out here ten minutes, be patient.”

They follow me good-naturedly as I wander the yard, snapping photos of everything, capturing all of the Christmas cards I saw from the window and many, many more. Behind me, Beau throws a snowball at Hunter, who lobs one back. It hits Emmett. Emmett picks up an armful of snow and dumps it over Hunter’s head. Laughing, I take pictures of the entire thing. In the process, the perfect tree finds its way into my viewfinder.

“There!”

“Where?” Beau whirls as if he’ll miss it, nearly slipping in his haste. Hunter wipes the snow off his glasses and squints in the direction I’m pointing. Emmett is already heading for the tree, inspecting it with the kind of attention he usually saves for his woodwork.

“It’s straight,” he says.

“It’s symmetrical,” Beau adds.

“It’s just a couple inches taller than me,” Hunter says with a grin.

“It’s perfect,” I declare.

They don’t disagree with me, but they take a moment to deliberate.

“Do you think there’s a better tree somewhere?” Beau asks.

“Absolutely not,” I say staunchly.

“Maybe,” Hunter says doubtfully. “It seems like we found the ‘perfect’ tree a little too fast, doesn’t it?”

Emmett grunts and swings his axe. That’s the moment I realize that the other two were just giving me shit. I glare at them, but I’m fighting a grin. Having them include me in their shit-giving makes me feel all warm inside, like I’m one of them, like I’m part of their strange little family. I snap pictures of them cutting down the tree, pictures that could easily be the cover of a Hallmark movie. My heart swells with happiness and pride, in them, in myself, in my art and the magic of these frozen moments.

They haul the tree inside. I make myself useful by documenting the whole thing with my camera. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle getting the tree through the kitchen, but eventually they manage to coax it into the living room. They move around the tree the way they move around me, instinctively adjusting to each other, communicating in glances and grunts and gestures rather than words. Eventually, the tree is propped up against the stairs.

“There,” Hunter says breathlessly. “We have a tree.”

I look at the leaning tree doubtfully. “Okay, but do you have a tree stand?”

Beau groans.

“It’s not going to stay up on its own,” I point out. “Something needs to hold it up!”

Beau and Emmett exchange a look. Emmett nods.

“We’ll figure something out,” Beau tells me. “But you’re going to have to make yourself scarce. You’re distracting.”

That admission surprises a laugh out of me. I can tell he’s serious and it brings me a kind of joy I’ve never felt before. A joy that feels quite a bit like power.

“I’ll keep her distracted,” Hunter says with a wink. I blush, and he takes my hand. “Come on.”

I swear I hear the other two grumbling for a moment, but they stop when Hunter leads me to the kitchen rather than up the stairs. I have to admit I’m a little relieved myself. I’m in a Christmassy mood, the kind that isn’t sexy, and I’m much more excited about the tree than I thought I’d be.

“Christmas needs cookies, right?” Hunter asks. There’s a childlike gleam in his eye that makes me want to cheer. Instead, I throw my arms around him and kiss him squarely on the mouth.

“It sure does! Do you have cookie cutters?”

“Uh…” He looks frantically around the kitchen, finally landing on the knife block. He grabs one and wields it like a wand. “The old-fashioned kind?”

That makes me laugh. “That’ll work,” I tell him. “But tell me you at least have decorations for the tree.”

“Uh…” He looks around frantically again, but this time he comes up empty. “We could make some?”

I’m not even disappointed. Laughing, I prance over and preheat the oven while Hunter hunts down ingredients. He finds ginger, more than enough from the looks of it, and adds it to the growing pile on the table. I pull up an easy recipe on my phone and we get to work, rolling out dough and cutting it into somewhat Christmas-like shapes with knives, stars and trees mostly. When Hunter reaches in to steal a chunk of raw dough, I swat his hand away.