Wish For Me (Quince Valley Romance #6)

Chapter 1

Noelle

That night, my greatest wish was a night to forget. Because I didn’t just come back to my hometown of Quince Valley, Vermont, for a Christmas visit.

I came back broke, jobless, and dumped.

It was two days after my twenty-sixth birthday, and I found myself standing in the doorway of my childhood bedroom, suitcase in hand, staring bleakly at a wall of clear totes filled with holiday accoutrements of every stripe.

Mom’s collection really was impressive.

“Are there more totes in here than last year?” I asked. That seemed physically impossible.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Mom tapped her fingers on her chin, like that might magically make the tubs of ribbon and wrapping paper levitate off my dusty twin-sized bed.

I sighed, kissing my mom on the cheek. “It’s fine. I didn’t expect to be back here either.”

“It’s just that you and Patrick always get a hotel room…”

I let go of the handle on my suitcase. “Can we not mention him for a bit?”

“I’m sorry. Too soon?”

“Considering he broke up with me this morning, yes, I’d say it’s too soon to mention his name.”

Mom grimaced, looking truly remorseful.

Guilt ran through me. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t her fault my boyfriend—sorry, ex-boyfriend, had ruined not just our relationship, but might have tainted theater for me altogether. Theater. The only true love I should have relied on. My one dream.

Mom sighed, beginning to move the tubs. She still moved with the grace of a performer, even though she hadn’t been on stage since before I’d been born.

Guiltily, I started helping her shift the tubs, biting back a yelp at a decorative robin that must have fallen off some garland and lay prone on the bedspread.

“Oh, sorry honey. I know how you feel about birds.”

“It’s fine,” I said, backing up as she tosses the cursed thing into one of the tubs. It’s not a phobia so much as an aversion. Mom says it’s from when I fell in goose poop when I was a toddler. Maybe it is, but I think it’s just because birds are creepy. They can fly, for God’s sake.

“I’ll only need to stay a couple of days,” I said, stacking tubs out in the hallway.

Mom stopped moving, looking at me with wide, worried eyes.

Her chestnut hair, the same shade as mine, was rumpled, and one side of her pale face was pink and lined by a pillow.

She’d been sleeping when I used my old key to crash through the front door, of course.

On top of being broke, jobless, and loveless, I was selfish to come back here like this, too.

I always worried acting would do that to me.

“Aren’t you staying for Christmas?” Mom asked. She looked truly distraught.

I hesitated. “I’m not sure.” I only planned on staying home to nurse my wounds for a bit and make a new plan for what to do back home in New York.

Patrick and I lived together, we shared all the same friends, we worked together—we used to work together.

I just needed a full extraction from the city.

A reset. Then I was going to head right back and start over, wasn’t I?

The thought of getting back out and pounding the pavement for not only new auditions but an apartment and some kind of part time job made me exhausted just to think about it.

Mom’s face softened. I must have let all of that play out on my face.

“I’m okay,” I said, but I know it didn’t sound all that convincing.

Mom put her arm around me, rubbing my arm in that brisk but comforting way moms do. “You stay as long as you need to, Noelle. A day, a week, a year—but you know you’d make all my holiday wishes come true if you stayed at least through to Christmas.”

My mom lived for Christmas, as these dozens of totes attested. Patrick hated Christmas. He called it frivolous and capitalistic and a waste of time. Last year he’d done that at Christmas dinner in front of Mom.

Fuck Patrick. “Okay,” I said, making the decision on the spot. “Of course I’ll stay for Christmas.”

Mom teared up as she threw her arms around me. “Oh honey. That’s wonderful.”

The idea of staying here a couple of weeks made my shoulders loosen. I could chill out, gorge myself on Mom’s Christmas cookies, and make a plan for jumping back into everything in the New Year. Plus, making Mom happy gave me a special kind of warm and fuzzy feeling.

The feeling didn’t last. Fifteen minutes later, we’d transported enough totes and décor to clear the bed and the dresser; made the bed; and Mom now stood yawning at the door.

I smiled, trying to hide the fact I was rethinking all my life choices. “You better get to bed. Dad’ll be worried.”

“Your father’s out cold. He played squash today. He has a new friend who’s twenty years older than him and can kick his butt on the court. It’s funny, he knew John’s son through work, but had never met him…”

As Mom went on about Dad’s new BFF, I slumped onto the bed.

“…then tomorrow I’ll make everyone my favorite breakfast muffins and maybe we can head up to the mountains and do a sleigh ride! One of John’s friends just bought a ranch up there and—”

Mom cut herself off when she saw me. “I’m sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. You must be exhausted.”

I wasn’t, actually. More like defeated. Devastated. And pissed off at a man who was probably right now screwing the woman I woke up this morning looking up to. “It’s fine,” I said stiffly. “Can we talk about all this tomorrow?”

“Of course, honey. You get some rest.” She kissed me on the forehead. “You’re going to make your dad’s month when he sees you tomorrow. Heck, his whole year!”

After she slipped out, I flopped back on the bed, groaning.

I could already see Dad’s disappointed expression when he found out Patrick and I were over.

He’d warmed up to Patrick over the years.

They weren’t buddies or anything, but he’d cooled it, at least a little, on his initial protective frostiness.

I wonder what he’d think now if I told him I’d caught Patrick banging our play’s artistic director—my boss—in his Ebenezer Scrooge costume this morning, before I’d even finished my first cup of coffee?

The sight had been so absurd, I’d actually laughed when I’d opened the door to Beth’s office and saw them there.

For a moment I’d thought it was some kind of bizarre prank.

But when she and Patrick jumped apart, tucking themselves back into their clothes—or in Patrick’s case, his frock-coat—I hadn’t just freaked out.

I’d sworn like a sailor and hurled my coffee mug.

Their affair, as it turned out, had been going on since the summer.

It didn’t just mean the end of my seven-year relationship.

It meant the end of my job as a stage manager at the Hourglass Community theatre—a job I was lucky to get with so little real world experience—and any prospect of a reference from my boss, who’d sustained a travel mug to the chin injury, even though I’d been aiming at Patrick.

My penchant for drama didn’t just extend to the stage, apparently.

All those throwaway jokes Patrick used to make about our director being too hot for backstage work. His encouragement to keep busy heading out for auditions, even though I discovered through this job that I loved working backstage.

I pictured Patrick’s stupid, sweating face, and Beth’s too, the guilt there as she pulled away, knowing as my mentor she’d broken my heart as badly as he had.

Suddenly, I was violently opposed to lying in my sad little twin bed with its Christmas tree sheets. I’d been serious for far too long. Since Juilliard. Hell, since high school.

I needed to forget all of that, just for tonight. I needed to either get blackout drunk, or find something—someone—to help me forget.

Maybe both.

O’Malley’s was Quince Valley’s local pub, which I figured was the best place to find a man most unlike pretentious Patrick.

In the summer, downtown was only a fifteen-minute stroll from my parents’ house.

But in the winter, through a whole foot of freshly fallen snow that was still coming down, it was a different story.

I probably—no, definitely—should have turned back the first time I went ass over teakettle.

Or the second time, when I rolled my ankle.

But by that time I was determined I was going to let nothing stand in the way of erasing Patrick and Beth from my mind.

That was, until I was standing across the street from the bar, and the reality of what I was doing.

The door to the bar swung open as I stood there, and a pack of dudes staggered outside into the snow, the song “Stop the Cavalry” blasting out the front door behind them.

I don’t know if it was the fact that they looked so drunk they could barely keep upright, or the song, which had always reminded me of Patrick because it had played endlessly in the pubs in London the one time he took me back there for Christmas.

I loved this song, even though Patrick hated it.

I loved Patrick, too. Didn’t I?

Tears welled in my eyes.

Christmas was a time for love and comfort. Not the drunken fumbling of a one night stand. If that’s what one night stands were even like. I’d only slept with one person in seven years, and before that, I’d only made out with a few boys in high school.

Somewhere in the distance, I swore I heard a little dog barking.

Beth had a cute little dog she brought to the theater sometimes. Until she found out Patrick hated dogs.

For a moment, my tears turned angry, but when they spilled over, I had to clap my hand over my mouth to contain the sob.

This was insane. I was in no place to jump into bed with a stranger.

I spun on my heel to head home.

Except spinning in the snow is a great way to lose one’s balance.

So is having one’s vision blurred with tears.

I cried out as I skidded sideways. I tried to regain my balance but as I did so, my foot hit the giant hardened snowbank behind me.

I slipped fast as I tried to stand, my legs flying out from under me.

I landed on my stomach on the packed snow and wheezed as the wind was knocked right out of me.

Then, because I was still on the apex of the tiny mountain of filthy road snow, gravity took over.

While I gasped for air, I rolled down the bank, finally coming to a stop on my back on the sidewalk.

From somewhere nearby I heard little yipping sounds. Was it me, trying to breathe? I gasped hard. It took me a few tries, but I finally got a decent breath of air into my lungs.

Then a fluffy beige puffball exploded from the snow next to me.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!”

The dog barked so hard its whole body shook, snow shaking off its body like powdered sugar.

“Floof!” a voice called.

Floof?

The dog looked up over my back and barked again.

A moment later, a man appeared.

Well, his boots appeared.

“Oh shit! Miss?!”

The man dropped to his knees next to me.

I looked up, still struggling to get a full lungful of air.

The man’s face was framed by a fur-trimmed hood.

He looked young. In his twenties, maybe, like me.

Rich brown hair, dark slanted brows, sexy scruff on slightly tanned skin, like he lived somewhere warmer than here.

Even on his knees I could tell he was tall and slim, but still broad in the shoulders, though it was hard to tell for sure in the big coat.

His eyes were big and chocolate brown, with unfairly long, thick black lashes.

Damn it, he was handsome. Extremely handsome, but in a kind of reserved way I could tell meant he didn’t look at himself like that.

His dark eyebrows slanted with concern. “Miss, are you hurt?”

I tried to tell him I was fine. That he could go away. But I couldn’t quite form any words yet.

And I wasn’t fine. My life was in shambles, and I’d failed at even trying to forget that.

The dog pressed its little paws on my arm and barked furiously.

“Floof, get down!” The man said, lifting the dog off me.

Guffaws sounded from across the street and the man looked up. His expression darkened.

They were probably laughing at me.

He leaned in, his voice low, anger swirling in those beautiful eyes. “Did someone hurt you?”

But it was those words that unhinged me. Did someone hurt me?

I pictured Patrick with his ridiculous pantaloons around his ankles.

All I could say was, “Yes.”

Then I burst into maniacal laughter.