Chapter 6
SIX
EVIE
My alarm clock went off, but instead of rolling over to press the sleep button, I hopped out of bed. Above me, Nick’s floor was silent. The night before, I had nodded off to the sound of his footfall, wondering what he was doing and how it went with the Bobcats.
When the bathroom was steamy, I stepped out of my polka dot pajamas and into the shower.
As soon as the hot water hit my skin, I realized that I had forgotten to get the contact cement we needed for the dishwasher.
It was still functional, but that pipe could burst at any time.
An ounce of prevention is something, something, I racked my brain to remember the saying. It was one of GJ’s favorites.
I wasn’t a morning person, but there was something about running into a hunky hockey player before noon that had put a spring in my step. It launched me out of bed and into a full makeup routine—something I hadn’t done since I’d moved to Chance Rapids.
The breakfast uniform hung on the back of my bedroom door. “Well, he’s seen me in it already…” I sighed and squeezed myself back into my slutty milkmaid outfit and swept my hair up into a loose ponytail.
Country music played in the kitchen as Eugene rattled around getting everything ready for breakfast. “What have we got today?” I shouted.
Eugene hopped in his chef’s clogs and then turned with his pudgy hand on his chest. “You scared me, Evie.” He looked at his watch. “You’re in early today.” A wry smile spread across his face. I was never early for breakfast service. “Would you like to try my new creation?”
The conditions inside my stomach had felt tenuous ever since I got up.
Butterflies battered its walls, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep anything down—especially one of Eugene’s experiments.
“I’ll make myself some toast today.” The toast station was on the server’s side of the line and I picked up a bag of sourdough bread.
“Are you sure I can’t interest you in this?” He slid a plate across the line.
“A croissant?” I picked up the plate and examined the very ordinary-looking pastry.
“It’s stuffed with goat cheese and Clementine’s haskap berry jam from her cousin in Saskatoon.”
It sounded incredible and smelled even better. “I’ll see if there are any left after breakfast. I have the feeling this is going to be a big seller.” I smiled and popped a piece of toast on the conveyor belt of the industrial toaster.
“What should we call it?” He smiled beneath his salt-and-pepper mustache.
“Hmmm.” I tapped my lips. “Let me think about it.”
The toast slid out of the bottom of the machine, and I was about to grab it when a clatter from the dish pit almost made me hop out of my Mary Janes.
I tip-tapped my way across the tiles into the dish pit.
GJ’s feet poked out from under the steel countertop, like the Wicked Witch of the West, only instead of green and black stripes and ruby slippers, GJs legs were argyle with Birkenstock clogs.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ll be damned.” GJ shimmied out from under the machine. “When did you fix this?” She pointed to the pipe.
“I…I didn’t.” I crouched, and sure enough, there was a sheen of something fresh on the plumbing joint. “Maybe Edward found what we needed in the supply cupboard.”
“I’ll ask him.” GJ brushed her hands together. “That’s one less thing to worry about today—no floods for the holidays.”
I ran a rack of dishes through the washer and double-checked to make sure that there wasn’t a puddle of water on the floor. Everything looked like it was working perfectly.
Breakfast service went smoothly, but I was distracted. Every time there was movement at the entrance to the dining room, my eyes were drawn from whatever it was that I was doing to see if Nick was waiting there to be seated.
By the time the last table was cleared, and Nick hadn’t shown up, I wondered if he’d gone somewhere else for breakfast—or had slept in.
Euguene checked his watch and then turned off the poached egg water.
“Looks like we’re done for the day.” He took the plate with the croissant and tucked it under the Salamander.
“You still haven’t finished your breakfast.” It only took a second for the pastry to heat up and he slid it across the line. “This little guy still needs a name.”
I’d been a bundle of nerves during breakfast, but now the hunger pangs were real. I took a bite. The cheese pulled into a long string as I set the pastry back on the plate.
It’s an orgasm, I thought to myself. The jam and the cheese and the pastry, it was perfection. “Hmmm.” I think I’ll need to finish it, there are a few names that are coming to me.
All of the names were naughty in nature and with each bite, they just got dirtier. Orgasmic Jam, Croissant Climax, none of the names were dining room appropriate. I had to get my mind out of the gutter.
“How about the Saint Nick…because it’s Christmas.”
Eugene was taking this as seriously as if we were trying to name his firstborn.
I was worried that he hated the name, but then a smile spread across his face.
“I like it.” He held up the spatula like a sword, “And you’ve given me an idea.
I’m going to do a Christmas-themed special item every day this week. ”
“I love that concept.” My eyes darted to the spare Saint Nick on the line.
Eugene used the spatula to nudge the plate toward me. “It will be your job to convince that grandmother of yours to put Saint Nick on the menu.”
“She’s a hardheaded woman, but…” I cut the croissant in half. “Let me see what I can do.”
My shoes tapped on the tiles as I marched out of the kitchen on a mission. “GJ,” I shouted as soon as I reached the lobby.
GJ was sitting at the front desk, scratching at her house book with a pencil. Eraser crumbs were all over the top of the desk. “We have a family of six coming in tomorrow and I can’t figure out where to put them.”
Grandma Janie’s system was pencil and paper.
The sheet of paper looked like a Tetris game.
Like everything at the inn, her system was as old as, well, the hills at the base of Sugar Mountain.
A computer booking system would be much more efficient, but GJ’s acceptance of technology was even less open than her consideration of new items for the breakfast menu.
I set down the croissant. My skirt swished as I swung around behind the desk to peer over GJ’s shoulder. “What if we move this room here.” I pointed to a square that had been erased so many times the paper was almost transparent.
“I tried that.” GJ set down the pencil. “It’s booked with the Mullins, they’re coming in for Christmas Eve and have requested that room.
Biting my lip, I slid the paper over so I could take a better look at it.
GJ was right, even though the inn wasn’t booked, the configuration of rooms wasn’t going to work for the guests coming in for the holidays.
“How did this happen?” GJ was meticulous with her room assignments and a mistake like this was extremely unlike her.
GJ took the pencil from my hand. “I’ll figure it out.” She pointed to the croissant with the eraser end of the pencil, which was almost gone. “What are you doing with that?”
“I noticed that you didn’t have breakfast this morning, I thought that you might be hungry.”
“There’s been a lot going on here, dear. I’m so glad that you’re here to help us out, I don’t know what we would do without you.”
“You wouldn’t eat. That’s what.” I handed the plate to her.
She picked up the croissant and took a bite, washing it down with the black coffee that looked like it had been cold for hours. “My goodness. What is in this?” She pulled down her round glasses to peer at the Saint Nick.
“It’s goat cheese and Clementine’s haskap berry jam.” I held my breath as GJ took another bite.
“What does Eugene call this?” She licked the pastry flakes from her fingertips and then wiped her hands with the napkin.
“He’s calling it an…” don’t say orgasm, don’t say orgasm, “a Saint Nick.”
“Like Christmas.” GJ balled up the linen napkin and set it on the plate.
“I have an idea.” She held up her finger.
“What if Eugene does a special every day leading up to Christmas, and we name it something to do with the holidays? I know that you two have been pushing to get his experiments on the menu.”
“Really?” My lips wanted my smile to be huge, but I held them back. GJ had walked right into my trap. The only way change was going to happen at the inn was if GJ thought that the ideas were her own.
“On one condition.” She swiped the eraser and croissant crumbs from the desk. “I get to approve the experiment a day in advance. Tomorrow, the Saint Nicholas can be the breakfast special.”
Eugene was going to be thrilled. “It’s the Saint Nick.”
“Nicholas.” GJ returned her glasses to the bridge of her nose, the strings that attached to the arms were Christmas lights, but she only connected the tiny battery at nighttime.
No sane person turns Christmas lights on during the day, was her response when I mentioned to her that they were not lit up.
“All right. The Saint Nicholas will be on the menu tomorrow.” I cleared away the plate.
“Make sure you spell out Saint. I don’t want any abbreviations on the board.”
“For someone whose name is an abbreviation, you sure do have a lot of rules about them.” I shimmied out from behind the desk.
“It’s taking all of my strength not to call you Evelyn, Evie.” She grinned. “Oh. I almost forgot. You have the rest of the day off.”
I paused at the French doors that led to the dining room. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been working so hard, you haven’t had a chance to see any of the Christmas Carnival events.
You also said that you wanted some ski lessons with Clementine.
I’ve arranged for her to give you a lesson.
” She pointed to the grandfather clock, the heartbeat of the inn that I had to wind every day.
“You’d better get going, she’s going to meet you at the chalet at noon. ”
“GJ. It’s ten thirty.” I pulled out the skirt of my dress. “And, I don’t have any ski clothes.”
She grinned. “I thought that might be your excuse.”
The door to the first-floor hallway opened and Eddie wheeled in a brass luggage cart. Hanging from the bar was a one-piece snowsuit that looked like it was made from purple tinfoil.
GJ clapped her hands together. “I knew you would find it.” She hustled out from behind the desk and pulled the snowsuit from its hanger. “This is mine. I think it will fit you perfectly. I was a lot taller in the eighties.”
Hand-knit mittens hung on strings from the sleeves of the one-piece snowsuit.
GJ unbuckled a suitcase and pulled out a matching hand-knit hat with a pompom the size of a softball.
“Clementine will meet you at the rental shop. Apparently, my skis and boots are, what’s the word she used…
obsolete, but back in my day all we had was a rope tow, so I guess things have changed. ”
I couldn’t help myself from rubbing the fabric of the snowsuit between my fingers. “Is this, rubber?” It was slippery, but felt durable, like a fisherman’s rain slicker, but somehow thinner.
“Nylon.” GJ smiled. “Don’t get too close to a fire.”
Skiing was something I’d always wanted to learn, but it was one of those things that I thought would always stay just that—a dream, like one day owning my own house and horse. Now that the dream was in front of me, in shiny Barney purple, I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted it.
GJ’s face lit up as I took the suit from the hanger. Her crow’s-feet were a permanent mark of her life full of living. I could almost see my own reflection in the outdated Sunice snowsuit, and I realized that if I wanted laugh lines like GJ, I was going to have to do a lot more smiling.
“Are you sure you can manage without me for the afternoon?”
“We’ve got it,” Uncle Eddie said.
I looked to GJ. She didn’t have to answer, she shoved the suitcase at me. “Make sure you remember to pizza pie.”
“Pizza?”
“You’ll figure it out. Don’t be late, Clementine is taking the afternoon off to teach you two how to ski.”
With the snowsuit crinkled in my arms and the hard-sided, teal suitcase in my hand, I headed to my room to get ready, but I paused on the bottom stair. “Taking the afternoon off from what?”
GJ shrugged. “I guess it’s a powder day, and she’s wasting it on a couple of beginners. Those are her words, not mine.”
If I hadn’t been so rushed to get to the mountain, I would’ve noticed that GJ said skiers, plural. It didn’t click in until I was zipped into the purple space suit that there were going to be two people at my lesson.
Before I left, I searched the lobby for GJ, but she was nowhere to be found. The keys to Edward’s Cadillac SUV and a note were all that was left on her desk.
Everything was going to be okay. It was time to go work on my laugh lines, try not to break my legs, and hopefully make a new friend.