My Kind of Christmas

“I love this. I think I might decorate the whole tree for you. At least the top part.”
    “Angela LaCroix,” he called. “Lower, please.”
    She leaned out of the box and grinned at him. “Are you going to ground me?”
    Mel was standing beside him, looking up. “Angie, see that red streamer to your left? Pull that one a little right please, it’s all wonkie.”
    She reached out of the bucket and Jack flinched. “Got it,” she said. “Tell me when it’s straight.”
    “Better,” Mel said. “Now move around and pull the white one over.”
    “Mel,” Jack said. “She’s just having a ride. I want her down!”
    “Jack, take it easy, she’s twenty-three, not three. Better, Ange. If I give you some balls, want to hang them up there?”
    She leaned out of the bucket and stared down. “If I come down there to get them, your husband is going to grab me.”
    “No, he won’t,” she said. “I’ll hold him down. Come on.”
    Jack growled and began to pace. He spoke softly to Mel. “What if she gets dizzy?”
    “Then she’ll come down. She’s better off in the bucket than on a ladder. Angie, are you dizzy?”
    “Of course not,” she said, lowering herself. She leaned over and accepted a box of shiny gold balls from Mel. Then she quickly went up again to avoid Jack.
    “Leave plenty of room for the unit badges we’ll also use as ornaments.”
    “Will do,” she said, raising the cherry picker while holding on to the ornaments.
    Jack watched her some, paced some, grumbled some. The number of people in the street and around the bar grew, but Jack was focused on Angie. No one paid any attention to his worries; Mel continued to yell up at Angie to move a ball or fix some garland. Angie laughed happily as she ran the cherry picker down to the ground, then up again with more ornaments. Or possibly she was laughing at her uncle Jack.
    Jack had been oblivious to what was going on around him until he noticed that Angie stopped in midair and looked across the street. Jack followed her line of vision to see Patrick Riordan leaning against his Jeep, watching her. As Jack glanced between the two of them, Angie gave a wave and Patrick waved back.
    Crap, he thought.
    Well, he should’ve known—it was written all over her face that she was smitten with Patrick’s good looks. Jack stopped pacing because Angie was all done playing around in the cherry picker now that Patrick had appeared. She brought it down, stepped out and brushed off her jeans. Her tight jeans.
    “Thanks, I’ll take over,” Mel said, as though there wasn’t a thing in the world to be worried about.
    “That was fun,” Angie said to her uncle.
    Jack glowered.
    “What?” she asked.
    Jack tilted his head and glanced to the right, across the street, where Patrick patiently waited for her to be finished.
    “Oh, excuse me,” Angie said. And she walked casually across the street as though this was perfectly fine.
    It was not perfectly fine in Jack’s opinion.
    Mel was raising the bucket with her box of ornaments while Jack was following Angie with his eyes. But Angie didn’t look back. She had Patrick in her crosshairs.
    So Jack looked around until he spotted Luke Riordan with young Brett on his hip. He walked over to him and said, “Luke.”
    “Looking good, Jack.”
    “Look over there, Luke,” he said, again with the head tilt. “Your brother.”
    “Yeah, he made it to town for the tree. That’s good. I think he spends too much time alone these days.”
    “What’s up with Patrick, anyway?” Jack asked.
    “Flying stuff,” Luke said with a shrug. “You know. Threw him for a while, made him rethink the Navy. He just needs some decompression time. He’ll be fine.”
    “What kind of flying stuff?”
    Luke turned his head to meet eyes with Jack. “His wingman went down.”
    Jack just whistled.
    “He got some leave,” Luke went on. “He has a decision to make. He always planned on a Navy career, but I guess he’s rethinking it. He has until Christmas to figure it out. Who’s the girl?”
    Right about then Patrick put a hand on Angie’s shoulder. She looked up at him, he looked down at her. Jack shivered. “My niece, up for a visit.”
    “Nice,” Luke said.
    “She’s been valedictorian twice in her life already—for her high school class and for her college class. She’s a medical student, but she was in a car accident and had to take some time off. We’re all hoping she plans to go back to med school after the