Read Online A Yorkshire Christmas by Kate Hewitt - Free Book Online Page B

the tree, and for a second he just savored the feeling of having his daughter next to him, both of them breathing in the scent of the pine needles. It was enough to make his throat close up with emotion, his heart beat fast with joy.
    “Okay,” he said finally. “Hold the saw like this. Do regular, even cuts, back and forth.” He placed her little hands on the saw and guided her for a few moments, until she’d got used to its motion. He let go, watching her carefully, her lower lip jutted out, her eyes screwed up in concentration.
    “This is hard ,” she panted, but didn’t stop.
    After a few minutes he had another turn, and then he scooted out from under the tree to look up at Claire. She’d been watching them, he saw, with a little smile on her face, softening her features.
    “Your turn,” he said, and Claire blinked in surprise.
    “Me—”
    “You didn’t just come along for the ride, did you?” He held out the saw. “You said you’d never cut down a tree before. Now’s your chance.”
    “Okay,” Claire said after a moment, and she clambered under the tree too, so all three of them were squeezed together, sheltered by the branches.
    “This is hard,” Claire exclaimed when she had her turn with her saw.
    Her hair brushed Noah’s cheek as she moved and every time she pulled her arm back, her coat was pulled taut across her breasts and Noah couldn’t keep himself from looking, or from a shaft of desire piercing him so sweetly.
    He took over again, and then as they got closer to finally felling the tree, he had them do one cut each, taking turns with the saw, guessing who would make the final cut.
    He made sure it was Molly, and he saw Claire give him a small, secretive smile, so he knew she understood. The tree was practically hanging by a thread when Molly finally made the last cut, and Noah pulled both Claire and Molly back as he nudged the tree with his boot to make sure it fell away from them.
    “Timber,” he announced cheerfully. “Now we’ve got to get this beauty home.”
    They all helped to load the tree on the toboggan, and then Noah bound it with rope. He clowned around for Molly’s sake, pretending the toboggan was too heavy to pull, before they started the trek back to Ayesgill Farm. As the farmhouse came in view, the most familiar sight in the world to him with its whitewashed stone walls and slate roof, a curl of bluish-gray smoke snaking up towards the sky from its chimney, he felt a powerful surge of feeling—whether it was love or joy or gratitude, he didn’t know. It was good, of that he was sure. He felt, for the first time in a long while, that he was truly coming home.
    *
    It was all so weirdly, wonderfully normal to come into Noah’s house as he unbound the tree. Claire took off her coat and boots, and hung up her and Molly’s gloves and scarves on the rail of the Aga, savoring the warmth that rolled out from the battered beast of a stove for a moment.
    “Can we have hot chocolate?” Molly asked hopefully, and Claire thought she remembered seeing some cocoa in Noah’s overflowing shopping cart yesterday.
    “I don’t see why not,” she said, and bustled about the kitchen in search of a pan and milk, sugar, and cocoa. Was it wrong to enjoy these little domestic tasks so much, she wondered, or just stupid? Dangerous, maybe. It wasn’t as if this were real. But it was so fun, so lovely to pretend, for just a little while, that this was her life. Her home.
    Husband, child. A family. A cozy kitchen, the dog sprawled out on the floor in front of the Aga, so she had to step around him as she made the hot chocolate. Jake seemed used to it.
    Molly sat on one of the stools by the kitchen island, a huge rectangle of chopping block that yesterday had been covered with junk mail and dirty dishes, but was now still swept clean.
    Outside the sun sparkled on the snow and in the distance she heard Noah wrestling the Christmas tree into the sitting room. All of it together, the