Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
NATALIE
I gaze at the text from Aunt Lou, my heart crawling up to my throat.
AUNT LOU
Fire at theater overnight. Electrical. No one hurt.
My hands shake as I open the attached photos, which show that all the scenery the volunteer crew and I had made is ruined. Some of it is charcoal, some charred around the edges, some soaked with water. And part of the stage is completely wrecked.
Panic sends my eyes darting across the image, from the blackened backdrop to a hole in the floor to a pile of debris where just yesterday ten large cutout pine trees had stood.
The disbelief quickly turns into a heavy weight of dread in my stomach.
Shit. The kids will be devastated. What the hell am I going to do ?
The warmth of Gabe’s large form next to me cuts through the shock.
“A fire at the retirement home?” There’s genuine concern in his voice, and a furrowed brow under his tousled mass of thick, dark, morning hair.
“No.” I hold up the image of the wrecked stage. “At the theater.”
He leans in closer, bringing a delicious waft of warm bed with him, and screws up his eyes as he examines it. “Shit. Were there a lot of people there?”
“No one. It happened in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, that’s not so bad then.” There’s a beep from the coffee maker behind us and he turns to attend to it.
Someone like him will never understand how important this is to the kids, and therefore to me.
“Hopefully someone can fix that up fairly quickly in the new year. Sit and rest your ankle. Maybe by the time you’ve drunk your coffee the road will be cleared and you can go.”
Does he not think I want to be out of here just as much as he wants me gone?
For God’s sake, I’m not making cookies because I want to hang out. I’m only doing it to distract myself from feeling so damned awkward. And also because I can’t stop myself from trying to do something to thank him for putting me up for the night even though he had no choice.
My ankle doesn’t think all that activity and the standing at the kitchen counter were great ideas though.
“The repairs to the theater can’t wait till the new year.” I limp around the island and perch on a stool.
“Cream?” He opens the fridge door.
“Please.” I rest my bad ankle on the opposite thigh and give it a rub. “And a teaspoon of honey if you have it. ”
He pulls his head back, managing to look puzzled even from behind. “Honey in coffee is weird.”
I’m so tired of hearing that through the years that I don’t bother to respond.
“And I have no idea what I have,” he adds, scanning the fridge before closing the door.
“Fixing the theater can’t wait because we need it for the kids’ play.” I have no idea why I’m bothering to explain. He won’t give a damn. He doesn’t like Christmas, doesn’t like me, and probably doesn’t even like kids.
He opens a couple of cabinets. There’s an ah-ha on the third one, and he pulls out a jar of honey with a classy label.
“We put on a play on Christmas Eve every year,” I add, even though he doesn’t seem to be listening.
He pours some cream into the coffee, then turns and reaches over the assorted baking debris to plant the mug in front of me along with the jar of honey and a teaspoon.
“I don’t want the responsibility of the honey,” he says, as if adding it would be an operation as rife with danger as knowing which wire to cut on a ticking bomb.
Then he leans his hips forward against the island, the edge of the counter cutting across his sweatpants just below the drawstring, and rests his hands on the edge with his arms out at full stretch.
The definition in the lines and twists of his muscles from his forearms up to his biceps and under the edge of the T-shirt sleeves might have made me a bit woozy if I didn’t have the theater to think about. And if I thought he was a nice person. Which I don’t. Despite icing my ankle, lending me a T-shirt, and making me coffee. Oh, and how nice he was to Aunt Lou last night .
Yeah, he’s awful.
“There must be somewhere else you can stage the play.” He looks at me for a moment, tips his head to one side like he’s trying to will me to come up with something.
Then he turns back to the coffee maker and inserts another pod. The back of him is just as impressive as the front. Are all hockey players built like this? Like wide, solid, rippling mounds of masculinity the likes of which I’ve never seen walking around in real life, let alone making coffee wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants—shame the pants are black, not gray.
He peers at me over his shoulder. “Is there not a community center or school gym or something?”
I drag my eyes from the hulking mass of moodiness and pick up the honey jar. Goddamn it if the lid isn’t too tight.
He turns to face me and holds out a shovel-sized hand.
Pride will not allow me to pass it to him. “I can manage.”
The edges of the lid cut into my fingers as I try with all my might to shift it.
“Sure,” he says. “That’s why your face is red and all the blood vessels in your eyes are about to pop.”
Why did I have to ask for honey?
My shoulders slump as I admit defeat and slam the pot into his palm.
“The community center is booked for a tech company’s retreat,” I say, as he wraps his other hand around the lid and unscrews it in the blink of an eye and with about as much effort.
Okay, those hands are impressively strong. And his tight grip has made the veins stand out on the back of them.
He holds the jar and the top out to me, one in each hand, an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth lifted in a satisfied smirk.
“Jeez, so you’re stronger than me. Who’da thought it.” I take them from him, diligently avoiding touching any part of those highly skilled and highly attractive hands. “Thank you.”
Where in the world was I? Oh yes. “The high school is also out while all its flooring is being replaced. And the elementary school only has a gym, and that’s being used for the Christmas arts market.”
“Wow, you are very up on all the local public building usage.”
I focus on scooping out a spoon of honey and stirring it into the creamy coffee to avoid another one of those smirks. “My aunt is the mayor, so I hear what’s going on.”
“Retirement home manager and mayor. Busy lady.”
“Very.”
Another beep and Gabe turns to retrieve his own mug of steaming coffee.
My eyes are drawn to the movement of the finely honed muscles that rise from up the back of his thick neck and spread across his shoulders and down his arms as he adds some cream, then pulls open the fridge door and replaces the carton.
This man has the physique of a god.
Jesus Christ, what am I doing ogling a miserable stranger who wants nothing to do with Christmas when I should be trying to save one of this town’s longest-running holiday traditions?
I bang my hand on the counter to try to snap myself out of the hypnotic state the rear view of Gabe Woods has sucked me into. “Fuck. I can’t let the kids down. And it’s bad luck if the play doesn’t go on.”
Gabe turns to face me and folds his right forearm muscles over the left and all of them across his pecs and whatever the hell all those other muscles are across his chest. “Bad luck?”
“Yup. It’s a tradition. Been going for forever. People might see it as an omen for the year ahead if it doesn’t happen.”
He pushes out his bottom lip from between the dark whiskers and nods slowly, like you would if a child were telling you something ridiculous, but you decide to humor them in case it gets funny. “Go on.”
I wrap both hands around my mug like it might keep me safe. “The play’s based on an old local legend. And the kids re-enact the story every year on Christmas Eve.” I lift the mug to chin height and the steam warms my lips. “About three hundred years ago. Or something like that. Everyone will tell you a different number of years. A nobleman was passing through town and fell for the mayor’s daughter.”
“A nobleman, huh.” He nods seriously and picks up his coffee.
“Yes.” Even though he’s obviously being sarcastic I carry on. “But Wendolyn?—”
Turns out that not only can Gabe smirk, he can also chuckle.
I let out a deliberately dramatic sigh. “I’m not telling you if you’re going to laugh.”
One of his large hands covers the bottom half of his face. “Promise. Wendolyn is a very serious name. Please continue.”
“Wendolyn wasn’t interested in Lord Percival.” I pause in case he finds Lord Percival as hilarious as Wendolyn. He takes a sip of coffee, possibly to quell any sign of amusement. “ But the mayor thought he would be an excellent match for her and raise the social standing of the family, so he gave Lord Percival?—”
Gabe splutters into his mug.
“It was the second Lord Percival that got you?” I glower.
Coughing, he circles one hand in a carry-on gesture while he puts down his drink and reaches for a paper towel with the other.
“I really don’t like you,” I say.
He blows his nose.
“I don’t like you either.” He throws the paper towel in the trash under the sink. “But I’m starting to like Wendolyn and Lord Percival, so tell me more.”
I should probably just stop talking and check to see if the tree is off the road, but I’ve started this, so onward I go.
“The mayor gave Lord Percival three chances to win his daughter’s heart or he’d have to leave Warm Springs and never return.”
“It was called Warm Springs even back then?” Gabe asks, resting back against the counter and crossing his ankles. “In the indeterminate period of ye olden times in which this happened?”
“Well, it would have been Warm Spring , singular, then. It was only pluralized when the second spring was uncovered in?—”
His chin has dropped to his chest, but I can still see his teeth digging into his top lip while his fist thumps the edge of the counter beside him.
And he clearly can’t stop his shoulders from shaking.
“Oh God.” He straightens and his face reappears, red blotches above the line of his beard. “Fucking priceless.”
I take a slow sip of coffee, which he has made annoyingly deliciously, while he sighs and shakes his head.
“Seriously.” I tell him. “I wish I could leave.”
“I wish you could too. But, please, not before you’ve finished this story.”
His eyes meet mine for a second. Maybe they really are green, and it wasn’t just the Winter Emerald lights. And obviously he detects something in mine that makes him realize he’s being a bit insensitive.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” He picks his drink back up. “So Lord Percival wants to bang Wendolyn, she’s not interested, but her father the mayor gives him three chances to change her mind. See, I’m following. Then what happens?”
He’s only going to give me an even harder time about the rest of it. But for reasons best known to whatever it is that’s come over me since I’ve been trapped in this house with this man for the last twelve hours, I plow on.
“First he showers her with jewels and gold and money, but she turns up her nose.” I’ll rattle through the rest of it to get it over with. “Then he puts on a huge show with performances and music and dancing and a massive banquet, but she still says no. So he goes away to think about it, and he comes back on Christmas Eve with a little piglet that’s been rejected by its mother and tells her that the piglet needs her love just as much as he does. And Wendolyn melts and they live happily ever after.”
“Wow, that’s some story.”
“Yup. And that’s why we don’t have a Christmas tree in the town square every year. We have a Christmas pig.”
“Right, yeah. Very funny.” He raises his eyebrows like that ’s the part he can’t believe, and reaches forward for one of the undecorated snowman cookies .
“It’s true. There’s a huge twenty-foot-tall pink pig that goes up every year, one week before Christmas Eve. Because that’s when Lord Percival is supposed to have arrived in town.”
Okay, maybe this is starting to sound ridiculous. “It’s semitransparent. And lights up from the inside. And also gets covered in other lights. And there are hooks all over it for people to hang decorations on.” A giggle plays in my chest. Yeah, I probably wouldn’t believe any of this either if I were new in town. “The schoolkids always make a bunch of stuff to hang on it every year.”
My mouth is twitching into an uncontrollable smile, so I press my coffee mug against it to try to bring it back into line.
“Sooo…” Gabe examines the cookie, obviously forcing himself to hold a serious expression. “One week before Christmas Eve, do all the locals gather in the town square for a pig lighting ceremony?” He bites off the snowman’s head.
My giggle rises higher, trying to claw its way out, but I’m not giving Mr. Grumpy Muscles the satisfaction of knowing I can see the funny side of it too. So, since there’s no way I’m going to be able to say anything without cracking up, I just press my lips together to hold it all in, and nod.
“And you are seriously not making that up?” he asks through the mouthful of cookie.
I take a deep breath and pull myself together. “You’ll see for yourself next week.” I drag the dusting of flour on the counter in front of me into a pile with my little finger. “And do you know where Lord Percival pitched his tent while he was trying to woo Wendolyn?”
“Surprise me. You’ve been doing a good job of that so far.” He looks at the remainder of the cookie in his hand and gives it a nod of approval.
I put down my mug and throw my non-floury hand out to the side. “Here.”
“Okay.” He holds up a hand to shut me up. “You’ve stretched my belief far enough now. Are you saying he set up camp on the exact spot where this house stands?”
“I couldn’t say it was this exact spot. But definitely somewhere here. It’s why it’s called Fool’s Hill. Because all the locals thought he was a fool for hoping Wendolyn would fall in love with him.”
Gabe’s shoulders sink and a look of realization grows on his face. “Oh, that ’s the story my Realtor was trying to tell me.”
“Your Realtor?”
“Never mind.”
“Anyway.” I reach for my phone. “I need to find a new home for the play. This will be my sixth and last one, and I want it to be memorable for the kids and the town as well as for me.”
“Is there a rink here?” He taps the remainder of the cookie against his lips.
“Nice of you to think of trying to get in some training while I’m telling you about the devastation of a local tradition that is going to leave kids across Warm Springs in tears. Though, it looks like you can get plenty of training in here—couldn’t help but notice when I went to bed last night that you’ve turned the sunroom into a state-of-the-art gym.” I gesture toward the room off the end of the kitchen.
“I wasn’t asking because I want ice to train on. I’m just doing PT by video call and some light workouts right now. Not allowed back on the ice yet. But is there one? A rink?” He shoves the snowman’s body into his mouth.
I scroll my phone for the town message board to check the tree situation. “Not an indoor one. Everyone skates on Turtle Pond, off Main Street. And last week’s cold snap made it safe early this year.”
“Then just do…” The rest of his sentence comes out covered in splutters as he half-chokes on the cookie.
I nudge the cooling rack toward him. “Have more. That one obviously didn’t quite finish you off.”
He clears his throat, takes a slurp of coffee and shrugs. “I was trying to say, just do it on ice.”
“Do what?”
“Jesus Christ.” He coughs again, his eyes watering and looking extra green and glossy. “The fucking play. Do it on ice.”
Oh, holy shit.
I leap to my feet and cry out in pain—“Fuck”—my left foot hit the floor too hard. “But that’s brilliant. Brilliant .”
He shrugs with a casual acceptance of his own genius.
But I guess his default setting is to think of ice because he lives his life on it and it’s his answer to everything. Twist your ankle? Ice it. Need somewhere to stage a play? Do it on ice. I bet if I asked him how to knit a pair of socks, his solution would involve ice somewhere along the way.
“And…oh my God…of course…” I hop about a bit with no real direction, almost turning a full circle with excitement at the fabulous idea that’s just come to me. “You can help!”
Gabe glares at me, eyes wide and full of horror.