Chapter 14 Nicole
“Do we have to go to Sugarfall?” Benny asked as Nicole turned onto the side street near her cousin’s bakery.
It was ten days before Christmas, and Park City was jammed with tourists, but Nicole found a parking spot and snagged it. “Your mom had to work late on a wedding cake, Benny, and I promised I’d bring you to see her after your choral practice was over.”
“But can’t we just go home to Snowberry? Santa—er, I mean Grandpa—is waiting for me.”
She looked in the rearview mirror, meeting his bespectacled gaze from his safe seat in the back and wishing he were up here next to her. He’d be allowed to ride in the front next year, Gracie said, but she was a very protective single mom, and Nicole respected that.
“You always want me to bring you here when she works late and I pick you up from school,” she reminded him. “I believe it has something to do with…cookies.”
“We had cookies at practice,” he said. “Bad boxed ones that tasted like cardboard covered in Elmer’s glue.”
She snorted. “You sound more like your great-grandfather every day.”
“Well, it’s true. They were just bribing us to sing louder.”
“Did you?”
He lowered his glasses and gave her a “get real” look, making her laugh. “I just really want to go home and, um, be with Grandpa. We had plans, especially if no one is booked on the sleigh.”
“It’s booked,” she told him as she unlatched her seatbelt. “I looked at the schedule because I had some customers ask and there are not many openings.”
“It’s booked? Is the whole lodge full yet? The way Aunt Cindy wanted?”
She climbed out and opened his door, beaming at him. “I love that you care so much about the adult stuff, Benny.”
“Oh, I do care,” he said. “Are we booked? Did she make December?”
Nicole shook her head, ever amused by this child-man, who refused her hand to help him onto the snowy curb. “Benny, you are ten going on forty, you know that?”
“I just…care about that.”
“Come on, big guy. Good cookies await. Hand made by your mama. What song do you not sing in the Christmas chorus?”
He moved his mouth, no sound coming out.
“What was that?” she asked.
“My version of ‘Winter Wonderland.’” He looked up and gave her a very serious look, adjusting his glasses. “Tech moguls don’t sing.”
She cracked up. “Hey, the only moguls around here are up in the mountains.”
“You’ll see,” he said as they walked toward the shiny gold sign that read Sugarfall etched into the wood over the door. When they got there, Nicole pushed open the bakery door, the bell giving a sweet jingle before falling quiet again.
Late afternoon light streamed through the front windows, spilling across empty display cases and chairs already turned upside down on tables. The rush was over, and the tourists had moved from cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate to cocktails and fine dining.
But Sugarfall’s scents lingered—warm butter, melted chocolate, and a faint ribbon of coffee that clung to every corner.
“Smells like heaven,” Nicole called, peeling off her gloves and tucking them into her coat pocket.
Gracie stepped out from the kitchen doorway, tendrils of her strawberry blond hair falling over her face, a bit of flour streaked across the apron she wore. She was MJ’s clone for sure, with lighter red hair and a more introverted personality.
“You always say that.” Gracie laughed, waving them inside. “There’s my Benny boy!” She held out her hands—one with a spatula—for Benny to run to her. But he just shuffled forward.
She cocked her head in fake exasperation. “Hello? Mom-love, please.” She shook her hands. “Been waiting all day.”
He gave a quick smile. “Can we go back to Snowberry soon?”
Gracie straightened and looked surprised. “I thought you’d stay while I finish this cake. It’s for a Christmas wedding. Want to see?”
He shrugged and let her hug him, then headed past her into the kitchen.
“Did he have a bad chorus practice or something?” Gracie whispered.
“He wants to get home to Red.”
Gracie made a face, then slipped an arm around Nicole. “Thanks for picking him up. There’s a red velvet cupcake with your name on it. Well, it says ‘St. Nick’ and has a red Santa cap, but it’s still your name.”
Hugging her back, Nicole let her cousin lead her deeper into the Sugarfall kitchen, a magically sweet place where the worktables gleamed under bright lights.
Stainless-steel bowls and measuring spoons were stacked neatly to the side, but one table was completely taken over by a towering white cake.
Buttercream already smoothed its sides to perfection, and some evergreen sprigs lined the bottom layer.
“Everyone’s gone for the day,” Gracie said, picking up a piping bag. “Have tea, cocoa, whatever you want. I just have to make the roses and add a few last-minute touches to this cake.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Nicole told her. “Where’s the wedding?”
Gracie looked over the cake. “Grand Hyatt, of course.”
Nicole rolled her eyes and wandered around her cousin’s workplace, which was so different from her own.
Benny perched on a chef’s stool in front of a tray of white frosted sugar cookies and a fresh glass of milk his mother had prepared. Next to it, a small plate with a Christmas cupcake decorated as Santa’s face that did, indeed, say “St. Nick” in fondant letters.
Nicole ruffled his hair as she passed. “Told you it was better than school.”
“Did you have cookies at school?” Gracie asked as she coaxed some icing out of the bag with the same tenderness she used to get conversation out of her son.
“Bad ones. Did Grandpa call?”
“No. Were you expecting him to?”
“Not really.” He pushed the cookies away. “Can I play a game on your computer in the office?”
Gracie looked up from the cake, searching her son’s face. “Sure. You okay, Ben?”
“Yeah, I’m good. I just wanted to, um, do something with Grandpa today.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“You know, our secret Christmas present.” He grinned. “You’re not the only one who has surprises planned this month.”
With that, he scurried toward the back, but only made it two steps before he stopped, turned, grabbed a cookie, and rushed off.
Gracie watched him, then closed her eyes. “That boy.”
“Not a boy.” Nicole took the stool he vacated. “He’s a tech mogul. I was just informed.”
Gracie smiled, but kept her attention on the icing, quiet as she turned an intricate leaf.
“Gah, you make that look easy,” Nicole said.
“It’s not easy,” Gracie said without looking up. “It’s just that after a thousand or so cakes, you stop worrying about ruining them.”
“I ruin cookies just by burning the bottoms.” Nicole pushed off to get a cup of tea. “So you’re still a wizard in my book.”
They were quiet while she went through the motions of brewing the tea, the only sound the hum of the kitchen dishwasher and the occasional ding from the office computer where Benny had started playing a game.
When Nicole came back, Gracie’s expression had shifted. She was still piping roses, but her eyes were softer and more thoughtful. Every few seconds, she glanced toward the back where Benny had disappeared.
“Everything okay?” Nicole asked.
“I guess,” she said on a sigh.
“Benny?”
She nodded. “He’s been kind of distant with me. Have you noticed?”
“Well, it’s Christmastime and he’s a kid,” Nicole said. “And I’ve noticed that he’s never far from Red, but that’s always been the case.”
“Right? Do you think that’s healthy?”
“Yes! Red’s his great-grandfather and Benny’s always been an old soul. Doesn’t shock me that he wants to hang around with an eighty-two-year-old who is the closest thing to a real live Santa who ever lived.”
“But he just…” She exhaled like whatever she was about to say pained her. “He really doesn’t have any friends, Nic. Did you see him talking to the other kids at school when you picked him up after chorus?”
Nicole thought about the groups of nine- and ten-year-olds waiting for their rides and, she was right—Benny had been separate from all of them.
“I don’t think he loves chorus,” she said, trying to be vague instead of selling out her beloved little Benny. “Maybe those aren’t his people. I mean, there wasn’t a tech mogul in the bunch.”
Gracie smiled at that. “I forced him to be in chorus so he’d make friends, but it didn’t work.”
“He’ll be fine,” Nicole assured her. “He’ll make more friends when he gets older. And in the meantime, he has us and Red.”
Gracie fussed with a rose petal, smoothing the icing with a tiny tool. “It’s why I have been holding off on the dog.”
“I thought you were worried about the commitment and caretaking.”
“That’s just what I say,” she admitted, speaking softly enough that Benny, a notorious eavesdropper, couldn’t hear.
“I’m afraid if he has a dog, he won’t make any effort to have friends.
It’ll just be Benny and his dog, and that would be enough for him.
He has no siblings, no friends, no cousin like you and I had.
And Red is getting older and…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Don’t worry about things that haven’t happened yet, Gracie.” But she knew that was wasted advice on Gracie, who didn’t have her mother’s blind optimism. Aunt MJ saw the glass as half full—Gracie was pretty sure someone was going to knock it over and get cut by a shard.
“I know what it’s like to be a shy kid,” she said. “It makes life harder.”
“Benny’s not shy,” Nicole said. “He’s just twenty steps ahead of the average ten-year-old and doesn’t have the patience to wait for their brains to catch up.”
“And he doesn’t have a father,” Gracie continued, clearly ready to let out some things that had been working on her heart. “There are no men around the lodge, he has no male figure in his life except for Red.”
Nicole rubbed her arms, thinking about some of the cryptic—and weirdly hopeful—things her mom had said when they had coffee in the ski shed this morning.
“You never know…” she said in a slightly sing-song voice. “There might be a man around here.”