Chapter 4
S adie
A knock at the door interrupted her cozy dream. Unable to remember where she was, she popped one eye open. Yep—still in this nightmare. It wasn’t a bad dream after all, as she’d hoped.
“Housekeeping!” called out a chipper voice. “I need to clean this room!”
“No—not yet—what time is it?” Sadie hollered back.
No answer, only muffled voices in the hallway.
“Tess!” Kreston’s patient voice came from down the hall. “Let her sleep. She had a rough day yesterday.”
“What’s her name? I have to clean the room, Mayor Kreston! Did you know we have a guest from New York? Did I miss Christmas? Where is New York, anyway?”
“Her name is Sadie, and she’s from Seattle. No, you didn’t miss Christmas, and New York may as well be on another planet,” he explained, as if talking to a child. “Please take the soaps and shampoos out of the ice maker. We don’t store them there, remember?”
Telling a person with severe memory problems to remember was like walking backwards up Mount Denali, thought Sadie as she lay on her back, listening.
As the voices faded, Sadie wondered what she had wandered into. Now that she was fully awake, she crawled out of the surprisingly comfortable bed and wandered into the bathroom. She warily eyed the shower and turned the handles. Nothing happened. She spun the handles again, and still nothing happened.
Sadie wandered out of the tiny bathroom and let out a frustrated sigh. As she unzipped one of her large bags, a sudden burst of water sounded from the bathroom.
“Finally!” she muttered, stepping in to see a steady brown stream coming out of the shower nozzle. “No, not dirty water!” she yelled.
There was no phone in her room to call the reception desk, and her phone still had no cell bars. Great. She’d have to get dressed, go downstairs, and demand a room with clean water.
Sadie stomped back into the bathroom to find clean water shooting out of the nozzle. All traces of brown had gone down the drain. She stepped into the shower, grateful for the intense pressure massaging her skin. In fact, it was almost too hard, but compared to no water or brown water, she’d take it.
After showering, she pawed through her bag and took out a pair of fleece-lined leggings and her heaviest wool socks. She searched her other large bag on the floor to find her ankle boots with stiletto heels, slightly more sensible than her thigh highs with six-inch heels. She tossed on a heavy sweater over a t-shirt, slicked her wet hair back into a sleek ponytail, and headed for the door. She grabbed the moose key and let herself out to the hallway and down the stairs with one aim in mind: coffee.
Kreston was in his winter gear, but before she could call out to him, he’d disappeared out the door. This guy always seemed on the go. Where on earth did he get his energy ?
Sadie moved toward the Crooked Spoon restaurant and bar on the hotel’s first floor, a cozy space, more like an oversized kitchen than a restaurant. A massive copper-topped bar dominated one wall, its surface burnished by years of elbows and coffee cups. Mismatched tables filled the room, each topped with a mason jar of pine branches and twinkling lights.
One corner housed an ancient wood-burning stove, radiating heat and nostalgia. Ink sketches of mountain landscapes and wildlife in hand-hewn wood frames dotted the walls. Garlands of evergreen wrapped the exposed beams overhead, and someone had arranged Christmas cards from what looked like decades of past guests along the windowsills.
It was still pitch-black outside but the seven a.m. breakfast crowd filled every available booth and table, their conversations creating a warm hum beneath the clatter of plates and silverware.
Every head turned in Sadie’s direction when she entered and stood looking for a seat. Then the heads leaned together to gab in low voices, stealing looks at her. Okay, she was the new fish-out-of-water attraction in a small town .
“Well, look what the storm blew in!” Jessie’s bottle-blonde hair was in another messy bun. “You’re skin and bones. Get over here and have a bite.” She tapped a chair at the only empty table, and the smell of fresh bread and coffee beckoned Sadie to take her up on it.
“I would appreciate a cup of coffee. Please,” Sadie politely added as she sat down. A twinge poked her chest after her grouchy behavior yesterday. She felt the need to explain.
“I’m really not a jerk, despite what some might think. It’s just that—well, I got dumped and then stranded in this flipping Alaskan time warp. No offense,” she added quickly.
“None taken.” Jessie held a coffeepot and turned over a sizeable mug. “Here you go. Then I’ll talk you into my sourdough pancakes. Been feeding my starter, which is older than you’ve been alive. Got it from a lady now deceased, who won it in a poker game from a sourdough miner back in 1942.”
Too much information. Sadie held up her hand in a stop motion. “No, thank you. Not a pancake eater.”
“We’ll see about that.” Jessie dashed off.
“It’s useless. Don’t fight it.” A bald man with a brown beard and a green plaid flannel shirt shuffled to her table, eyes crinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses. “Jessie will spoon feed you those pancakes unless you give in. Mind if I sit?”
Sadie motioned to a chair across the table. “Sure, have a seat. And thanks for the tip.”
“Jessie’s pancakes are a comfort to the mind and soul.” He pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it with the slowness of a man Sadie guessed to be eighty. “These days, I pay in sketches. Fire insurance, as it turns out, doesn’t cover vengeful ex-wives with matches.”
Sadie chose to leave that one alone. Instead, she looked around for a menu. Not seeing one, she sipped her coffee, waiting for Jessie to return.
He extended his hand. “Tucker Sweet. Former artist, contemporary poet, self-appointed philosopher, and perpetual admirer of the Alaskan way of life.”
She shook his hand. “Sadie Foster from Seattle. Current hostage of Polar Creek, and not a fan of snow and small towns. ”
“Ah, but snow in Alaska isn’t just snow,” Tucker mused. “It’s nature’s way of forcing us to slow down, to see the beauty in stillness. Like when I was painting the northern lights and became so mesmerized by the dancing colors, I didn’t notice my easel had frozen to the ground. Kreston saved the day by chipping it free with an ice pick. That boy has the patience of a saint and the stubbornness of a moose.”
“Does every story in this town involve Kreston?” The words came out sharper than intended, her defenses rising at the mere mention of his name.
“Most of them,” Jessie chimed in, sliding a plate of golden pancakes in front of Sadie. “The man’s got a heart bigger than Alaska. I should know—he found me crying in an Anchorage restaurant and brought me here. Next thing I knew, I had a fresh start running this place.” She paused, her expression warm with memory. “Kreston has a knack for knowing what people need before they figure it out themselves.”
“Sounds like he has a habit of collecting strays. Thank you, but honestly, I don’t eat pancakes,” she said weakly, eying the wild blueberry compote and freshly whipped cream resembling a snow-capped peak.
Jessie only smiled and dashed off to refill empty mugs with coffee.
“Kreston has done his share of saving those running from things bigger than themselves,” Tucker said quietly, his artistic eye scrutinizing her.
Sadie gave him a direct look. “I don’t need saving and I’m not running. Just inconvenienced by weather and poor cell reception.” She clamped her mouth shut before adding a scathing remark about her cheating fiancé.
Had she stumbled into the land of misfit toys, like that old Christmas cartoon? For all she knew, Kreston was an undercover Santa, complete with reindeer and a sleigh secretly stashed behind the Polar Creek Hotel.
Lucky O’Hara and Kreston ambled into the Crooked Spoon, Kreston’s coat draped casually over one arm. Sadie couldn’t help noticing how his Norwegian-knit sweater hugged his broad shoulders and chest. The room erupted in greetings to both. Everyone carried on as if welcoming the lead singers of the Middle-of-Nowhere Alaska Band, back from their world tour.
Sadie’s eye caught Kreston’s, and he smiled as he headed to her table. “Loving the sourdough, I see?” He stood grinning at her.
Lucky took the chair next to Tucker. “Miss Sadie, the weather report just came in, straight from the moose’s mouth.”
Sadie paused with her forkful of pancakes in midair, hoping for a weather miracle.
“The forecast is for endless snow. Around here we call such weather shitty to partly shitty.” Lucky beamed. “But don’t worry—you’re in the best place to wait out a storm.”