10. Lacie
LACIE
I left my sunglasses in my room and regretted it almost the instant I stepped out onto Harper’s Inn’s porch with Jared. But I wasn’t about to dash back in for them. What was it about sunlight on snow that made everything so blinding?
The fabric of my snow pants swished with each of my steps. I adjusted my gloves and stared across the snowy mountainside. With the sky blazing overhead and the trees standing guard in nature’s courtyard, the day couldn’t have been more perfect.
Jared stomped through the snow, creating tracks a few feet ahead of me before turning back.
“Here we are,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing my gloved hands together.
I didn’t mind the cold, not now that I was properly bundled up and ready to meet the frigid chill head on. My breath ghosted out in excited puffs.
“What exactly are we playing?” he asked.
“Do you need a guidebook?” I gestured to the blanket of white surrounding us. The snow was at least three feet deep. “The possibilities are endless. Angels. Forts. Fights.”
“You mean you’re leaving what we do up to me? You disappoint me.”
“I mean, have a little fun.” I kicked through more snow while memories coursed through me.
Jared and I had both grown up in southeastern Idaho where snow slumped like this from October to May. So many years, we’d gone trick-or-treating in boots and coats over our costumes and then waited impatiently in what should have been springtime for the grass to be allowed to green without getting newly dumped on.
As bored as I’d gotten with snow lasting so long during the year, I missed the white stuff sometimes down in Fort Worth. It snowed down there occasionally but never like this.
I bent for a handful. This was exactly what I needed—motion, movement, distraction.
“This is the perfect packing snow,” Jared said, following my lead, bending for a scoop and pressing it into a ball in his hands.
“You’d better not throw that at me,” I said.
He grinned. “Didn’t you just say snowball fights were an option?”
“I’ll throw one back at you.”
“Ha. You might try, but you’ll never take me down.”
He scooped more, but rather than chuck the snowball in my direction, he rolled it around on the ground, creating a trail and increasing the ball’s size with every turn. He paused here and there to pack in stubborn bits of snow and smash them into place before rolling on.
Smiling, I joined in, starting my own ball. This snowman was going to need a head and a body, wasn’t he? I rolled on, not paying attention to where I was going until my head nearly collided with Jared’s.
“Watch out,” he said, playfully shoving me.
I laughed. “You watch it.”
“You were in my way. I started this first.”
“And I’m helping you finish it. Look, mine’s almost as big as yours.” I stopped rolling, smoothing over the rounded side of my large ball of snow.
“Roll it this way, then,” he said, stopping to stretch his back.
I did so, rolling my ball to meet his. Together, we crouched and lifted, stacking my smaller ball onto Jared’s.
“Headless.” Jared tsked and dusted his gloved hands together to shake off clingy snow.
“Not for long.” I bent to roll the final, smaller ball and lifted it to where Jared stood.
The ball threatened to roll off and didn’t situate at first. Jared pounded the top of the second, creating a sort of notch for the head to fit into, and then we stood back to admire our work.
The snowman was nearly as tall as I was, which was impressive. The last time I’d tried building a legit snowman, I’d been a lot smaller. Without the necessary height, I hadn’t been able to get the head into position like this.
But this guy? He could put any Frosty imposter to shame.
“He needs a nose. And a hat,” I said, packing bits of snow along the creases between the three varying-sized snowballs so the snowman had a better chance of sticking together.
“I’m on it.”
“What—Jared!”
He was already halfway to Harper’s Inn but shouted behind his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
I laughed. This was the most fun I’d had in so long. I’d always been too busy. Snow-play was never anything I’d have made time for on the regular—but I saw it as a necessity now. That was one reason I’d insisted on the activity.
Would Wyatt have played in the snow with me?
I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t let what he thought matter any longer.
Soon enough, Jared came tromping across the snow from the inn toward me with a black hat and a carrot under one arm. My laughter reached the sky as he approached. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes were bright with excitement.
“Where did you find a top hat?” I asked.
“The receptionist, Junie, was in the kitchen when I went in for a carrot. She had one in her storage and nabbed it for me. Check this out.”
Jared situated the hat on top of the snowman’s head. He jabbed the sturdy, blushing-orange carrot in the center of the head.
I searched for something that could be used for eyes and arms. I scurried across the sparkle toward the line of trees and relieved a skeletal pine of its lower hanging branches and a few pinecones.
“Here we go,” I said, returning breathless but exuberant. I squished the small pinecones in where the eyes should go.
Jared took one of the branches, stemming it from the snowman’s left side while I armed his right.
“The best work I’ve ever done.” Jared slunk back for the full picture.
I joined him, cupping my face in my gloved hand. The snow was cold against my chin. “He does look very typically snowman-y.”
“What should we name him? Parson Brown?”
“Ha ha. Don’t even go there.”
A shiver swept over me at the memory of the moment we’d shared in the living room. It wasn’t that long ago that we’d heard the radio in the inn’s front room crackle-play that Christmas carol.
“What? It’s the ultimate snowman name.” Jared moved in and slung his arm around the snowman protectively as if I’d offended him.
“Not for my snowman. I need anything but marriage right now.” Not after the meltdown I’d had last night because of my ex’s brutal words.
I was trying as hard as I could not to think of how it should be him here with me.
How the future I’d been visualizing and planning for was never going to happen.
I’d have to readjust my planner back to single-mode.
“Come on. You’ll find the right one,” Jared said. “I’m sure when the time comes, once you get over that loser, you’ll reconsider. Just ask this guy.”
I approached, and Jared lowered his arm from the snowman with sympathy on his face. This was what I loved about him. He always knew the right thing to say.
A peal of quiet thunder crackled across the cloudless sky overhead. I staggered backward, my foot sinking into the snow behind me. Jared startled as well, glancing around as though a plane were approaching.
“What was that?” he asked.
The thundering ceased, and a tinkling spray of sound followed. It was the same light dusting of music that had wafted from the radio the night before. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought the snowman’s carrot nose twitched.
“Did you see that?” I pointed in the snowman’s direction.
“Are you married?” came a voice.
Jared and I exchanged a glance in disbelief.
“Did he just—?” I began.
Jared frowned. “Why does everyone instantly assume that about us?”
I smacked his shoulder with my gloved hand. “No, come on. A snowman?”
I dropped in closer, letting my gaze sweep across the piney tree line, the blazing blue sky, the snowy mountainside, and back to the snowman’s carrot nose.
“Hello?” I said softly and knowing how stupid it was.
I was talking to a snowman.
Jared bent in, too. Not to the snowman. Toward me.
“You did say magic happened here,” he muttered.
His breath was hot against my cheek, and he whispered as though we were inside the dining room instead of out in the open air.
Music tinkled again, surging through in soft surround-sound. Again, came the voice with it. It sent chills down my back.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
My brows shot to the line of my beanie over my forehead. Nothing else from the snowman moved, but I could have sworn the voice came from its direction.
Cold air tumbled down my spine. I rounded on my bestie. “Very funny, Jare.”
He surrendered his hands. “It wasn’t me.”
I scoffed. I couldn’t believe he thought now was a good time for a prank. Did he think he could get me to move on and start dating again?
To even think about marrying anyone else when my whole world had been focused on Wyatt—and where we were going to live, and how we were going to run our finances, and who was going to do the cooking—was ridiculous.
We were going to take turns, for the record. Because I didn’t want the full responsibility of food planning and prep solely on my shoulders.
“I remember your ventriloquist phase, but can we not? I asked you to come with me, to help me cope, not play jokes.”
Sure, pranks were a sort of go-to where he was concerned, but he knew how much I was hurting. Wyatt hadn’t just broken up with me. He’d obliterated every good thing I thought about myself, and Jared thought it was okay to tease me about marrying someone else?
About marrying him ? After how standoffish he’d been since we got here?
Granted, he was probably trying to help me in his goofy way, which was so like him. I couldn’t grasp why I was taking his teasing this seriously. I rarely did before.
But this was too much.
“Lace,” he said, stepping toward me. “I didn’t do anything. Lacie—wait up!”
I stomped through the snow, back to the awaiting inn with its wraparound porch and welcoming exterior. The trek didn’t take long, and I didn’t pause to see if he followed.
I’d wanted him to be with me, but not for this. Just because things were going well for him and Tia didn’t mean he needed to rub it in my face.
Not that he had. Maybe it was all my thoughts of finding someone else.
I didn’t want anyone else.
I wanted…
The thought was too raw, so I cast it aside and stormed up the porch steps. The inn’s bell tinkled as I entered. I didn’t kick off as much snow from my boots as I should have before passing the reception desk and stomping up the stairs to my room.
I rifled the key from my pocket, needing time alone to think. To cry in private if it came to that.
This was so not how I planned on spending my vacation.
Sure enough, tears blurred my vision, making it harder to see the doorknob and its keyhole. I wiped my eyes and tried again, but the key didn’t work.
Frustrated, I checked the room number. 11, just as it’d been that morning when I’d left.
For a second, I worried I’d gotten the wrong door.
I turned the key, trying to jam it in a different direction. Still didn’t work. I jiggled the handle. Rammed the key in a final time only to have it not fit again.
“What is with this thing?” I grumbled.
A key card I could understand not working. But a key? Especially when it had worked this morning?
Irritation simmering, I glanced toward the stairs just as Jared made it to the top. He headed in my direction, his nose bright red, his face penitent and concerned.
“Hey. I don’t know what I said back there, but I’m sorry.”
I lowered the key to my side, allowing my frustration to dim as well. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. I think I’m just overemotional and need a little time.”
He rubbed his gloved hand along my arm and then pulled the beanie from his head. His hair stuck out in multiple directions.
“Good idea. Maybe take the afternoon. Does that work with your schedule? We can meet up for dinner or something.”
My schedule.
I hated my stupid, all-encompassing schedule.
Couldn’t I just let loose? Go with the flow? It was probably good Wyatt hadn’t come after all.
“My room key isn’t working,” I said, holding it up.
His brow creased. “What?”
“I keep trying the key, and it’s not working in the lock.”
“It worked last night, didn’t it?” He took the key from me and tried it himself. He jiggled the handle a few times, but it didn’t respond the way it should have.
I was relieved. At least I wasn’t crazy.
“If this was one of those magnetic keys with the stripes, I could understand,” he said, turning to me. “But the only reason this key wouldn’t work is if the staff changed the lock for some reason.”
“Why would they do that when I’m staying in that room right now?” I asked.
“Have you checked the front desk?”
I shook my head. “No one was there when I came in.”
“That girl Junie is there now,” he said. “Let’s ask her.”
Together, Jared and I scurried back down the stairs to find Junie Harper with her brown hair tied back in two braids. The white collar of her shirt peeked over her festive red sweater, and she offered us a pleasant smile.
“Hey, there,” Junie said. Her eyes darted to the window where evidence of our snow play was visible. “Your snowman is one of the best I’ve seen. Looks like the top hat was a great fit.”
“Yeah, it worked out perfectly,” Jared said kindly before switching tack. “Listen, did you by any chance change the locks on any of the doors while we were out?”
Junie’s face pinched in thought. “You mean the guest rooms? No, I haven’t. Though I will be doing my routine checks in a few minutes. You know, towel clean up, taking out the garbage, making beds. That kind of thing.”
Wasn’t that the maid’s job? How much did this girl do around here? Didn’t they have more staff?
I couldn’t worry about that right now.
“Then do you have a different key I could try? Mine’s not working.”
“Sorry about that, Mrs. Kingston. We always keep a spare—I’ll get you a new one?—”
I inhaled so hard I choked on my spit and had to cough. One of my gloves slipped from my grasp and fell to the ground. I hurriedly bent to retrieve it.
“What did you call me?”
Junie’s eyes flicked from me to Jared and back again. Jared patted a hand on my back to soothe my coughing, but he rested an arm on the desk, leaning toward Junie, as interested in the answer as I was.
“You and your husband checked in yesterday,” Junie said, pointing to Jared. “I thought…”
I loved his joking nature. Most of the time, his pranks made me laugh and instantly set me thinking of a way to get him back.
But this was too much.
He was the one who’d acted so standoffish when we’d arrived yesterday, when Junie had assumed we were married from the get-go. What was he doing playing this game now?