Chapter Eight
Christmas Eve went far more smoothly than the day prior, thanks to the power’s having been restored during the night, a fabulous breakfast show put on by the dauntless Hudson, and the snowplows freeing the guests from being snowbound by midafternoon.
They also freed Stevie up to drive her SUV out to the greenhouse. Sawyer had taken the industrial snowblower to clear a path along the trail, and Sunny was already there, hard at work. Stevie had promised to be back at the inn by dinner, and Noah had begun missing her before she’d pulled out of the parking lot.
“You’ve got it bad, mate,” Hud said, observing his new boss staring out the window as the sun started down that evening. “You’ve spent more time at that window than you have in your office. She’s coming back.”
Noah grinned, looking over his shoulder. “Why, because her suitcase is here?”
“No, mate, because I saw the way she looked at you before she hiked out into the frozen tundra.” Hud grinned his broad, toothy smile. “She’s got it bad, too.”
“God, I hope so,” Noah said, and they both shared a laugh. He marched resolutely back into his office, knowing he had a few phone calls he had to make. The deliveries couldn’t be rescheduled until Monday, and even that was a holiday, so he’d had to pull some strings and do more than a little begging to make it happen. In the meantime, he had been calling the local markets to see what stock he could source that way. Local to him being anything within an hour’s drive, and that was without three feet of snow on the ground making everyone drive like a Sunday school teacher. Earlier that morning, Hud had offered to take the inn’s van and head out after lunch service to pick up whatever Noah could order, and Noah had taken him up on the offer.
Jenny and Melanie had been sent home with his undying thanks and their promise to be back on Monday after spending Christmas Eve and Day with their respective families. They’d put in way more time than he could have hoped for, but his other two part-timers hadn’t made it in today, and he counted them doubtful for tomorrow, so that meant he was pulling laundry duty. Stevie had been gracious enough to help him with the rooms. She’d surprised him by telling him she’d done them the day before with Jenny, so she knew the drill. The only good thing about losing his other holiday bookings due to the storm was it meant there were fewer rooms to clean.
For the first time since he’d opened the place, he found himself wanting to be somewhere other than in the inn. He wanted to fetch Stevie from her greenhouse and go play in the snow. Then he wanted to bring her back and take another long, heavenly shower with her. Memories of the one they’d shared that morning would fuel his fires for a very long time to come. He wanted to see her sprawled across his bed in the daylight, wanted to feel her next to him when he went to sleep at night. He’d woken up a total of one single morning with her beside him, and he was already dreading the day when he’d wake up alone again.
“Well, mate,” he muttered under his breath, “that is what you signed on for.” Somehow, though, in the span of one night, all his fancy ideas about how he could commute to the city and she could come out to see him on the weekends were already feeling like sorry, sorry, substitutes for having her with him full-time. He’d do it, and he hoped she’d be game to meet him halfway, but if it already felt like too little, how would the arrangement hold up? And to what end? Would he start looking for property he could convert to an inn in DC? The very idea of living anywhere near, much less in urban sprawl made his neck itch. But if that meant you had her smiling face in your life every day, her warmth next to you every night?
He scowled and scratched the back of his neck, and thought . . . maybe. He had to be willing to consider it, though, didn’t he? He hadn’t where Carolyn had been concerned; not once had that been a viable solution to their problems, not that Carolyn had asked him to consider it. She’d already known his answer. But then he hadn’t truly ever missed Carolyn when she’d been away at work. He’d been busy running the inn, and he had been content knowing she was doing something she enjoyed. She’d have likely said the same thing. It had been . . . okay, being apart.
This, however, was not going to be okay. Not remotely so.
Just then his phone rang, and he scooped it up, thankful for the interruption to his moody thoughts. He hadn’t even looked at the caller ID, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear Stevie’s voice on the other end of the line. “Having fun with botany?”
“I was, yes. Then I decided I simply couldn’t go a day without snow swimming.”
He sat bolt upright in his chair. “What happened? Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “My SUV, mmm, not so much. It’s presently taking a dip in a little ravine just down the road from the inn.”
He was out of his chair and grabbing his coat and keys before even considering who was going to look after his guests. “I’ll bring the truck down. I’ve got a hitch and a tow rope.”
“I’m thinking it’s going to take something a bit more specialized. Could you call a tow service for me? Will they come all the way out here, do you think?”
He could hear her teeth chattering a bit on that last part and thought she was trying to put on a brave face.
“Done,” he told her. “I’m coming to get you, though. Stay there, but off the road, okay? And away from where your car went in, in case someone else follows suit.”
“Done,” she told him. “I’m maybe just a little more than a mile away, right at that turn by the red barn.”
Noah brought Hud up to speed as he pulled on his coat and boots, told him to call the number for Andy’s Garage on the taped-up list next to the kitchen phone, and to keep the natives happy until he got back. Unfazed, Hud simply nodded and said he’d take care of it.
Stevie was exactly where she’d said she’d be. He could see where she’d climbed up the bank through the deep snow, and the front of her was still covered in white, but she didn’t look otherwise worse for the wear. But when he pulled her in for a hug, not caring about the snow still caked to the front of her, she was more than trembling; she was shaking.
“Thanks,” she said. “I know you can’t just run out, but I didn’t know who else to call. Sunny and Sawyer already went back up to Addie’s and—”
“Shh,” he soothed. “It’s fine. Hud’s there, and I’d have come for you even if he hadn’t been.”
“I’m covered in snow,” she said, trying to step back, but he only tightened his hold on her.
She didn’t put up a fight. He felt her take fistfuls of his jacket at his back and hold on tight. He was perfectly fine with that. “I’ve got you; it’s okay. We’ll get you towed out.”
“I wasn’t even going fast. I was in four-wheel drive, doing about half the speed limit. The sun had melted a lot of the snow on the road, and I thought the pavement was just wet, but in the turn, it was shady, I guess, and the next thing I knew . . . It was like slow motion—it happened so fast, but at the same time, it took forever for me to slide off the road and down.” She shook and pressed her face into his shoulder. “I couldn’t make it stop and . . . I didn’t know if it was going to roll over and—”
He heard a sob catch in her throat, and his own closed. The SUV hadn’t rolled, thank God; it was sort of drunkenly leaning to one side, the depth of the snow in the ravine cradling it and keeping it from going over, which would have taken her down the side of the mountain and—he shut that visual down right there, but he might have tightened his hold a little. “You’re okay,” he said, then leaned his head back. “You’re not hurt? Did the air bag deploy? Did you get hit in the—” He was already searching her even as she shook her head, but she looked unharmed. It was just fear making her shake, and he couldn’t blame her. He might have been feeling a little shaky himself right about then.
“I didn’t really hit anything. Once the car stopped, I opened my door and just kind of carefully jumped out. I was afraid the car would sink deeper and I wouldn’t be able to get out, but then I went in up to my waist and thought, well that was stupid—”
She was talking too fast, and her teeth were chattering so hard he could only half understand her. He thought she might be a little shocky, but all of the emergency training he’d taken as part of owning a guest house fled him, so he did the only thing he could think of that would calm them both down. He kissed her.
She kissed him back almost greedily, as if his mouth were her only lifeline and she was not letting it go. He was perfectly fine with that, too. He had a moment of understanding why folks trapped in dire situations often ended up in heated sexual entanglements, because he was at least partly sure that if Andy hadn’t sounded the horn on his big tow trailer just at that moment, they might have started clawing off their clothes.
“Get a room,” the older gentleman jokingly called out. He slowed as he reached them. “I’m going to head on down to the inn to turn this thing around, then come back, and we’ll get you up and out of there.”
“Thank you,” Stevie said, sounding as heartfelt as Noah had ever heard her. “I really, really appreciate it.”
“Not a problem, only doing my job. Just keep your clothes on, and I’ll be right back,” he said with a wink to Noah, then drove off down the road.
To her credit, Stevie laughed, and she finally sounded more like herself. “Well, that’ll get the town talking,” she said.
“We do seem to be keeping the gossip mill in business,” Noah said, matching her smile. He helped her brush the snow from her coat and legs, then pulled her back into his arms and kept her huddled against him. As much to keep her damp self warm, as to help him ward off the persistent vision of her rolling off the side of the road. “I’m glad you called me,” he told her quietly, once they’d both taken a few calming breaths and he felt her finally relax a bit. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “Me too. Scared the daylights out of me, I’m not going to lie.”
“Me too,” he said. “Stevie . . .” It had been right on the tip of his tongue to tell her. Tell her what? That you love her? You’ve known her, what? A couple days? That much was fact, but so were the strong feelings presently all stirred up inside him. Fear, relief, joy, and yes . . . something that felt a lot like love. Or at least the strong beginnings of it.
“What?” she asked, still looking at him, searching his eyes the way she did, being completely in the moment with him always.
“I don’t—” He’d started to say he didn’t want her to leave, to go home, but that was unfair. No matter how much he felt exactly that. “I was thinking, back at the inn, about how we can see each other. After you go back to the city.” There, that was better, more rational, and fair.
There was a flash of bleakness in her green eyes, but she blinked it away. Still, it took another moment before she looked back at him. “Me too.”
Now his heart clutched. “I’m trying really hard not to sound suffocating and stupid here,” he said, “but I think it’s safe to say I’m really going to miss you. You scared the bejesus out of me. And I don’t mean that as a criticism—what I mean is, you have the ability to—” He broke off again, knowing he was making absolute rubbish out of this. “I care about you,” he said, finally. “Really care about you.”
She smiled and reached up a damp, gloved hand to brush his cheek. “Okay, so maybe you’re a novice at this part,” she said quietly, her eyes sparkling now. “And I think it’s maybe the sweetest thing I’ve learned about you yet.”
“Stevie—”
“I care about you, too, Noah. Really care,” she said, not mocking him, but reassuring him. “In that stupid, slow slide off the road, I was terrified, and I thought for sure I was going off a cliff or something, and I didn’t think about work, or my plants . . . or anything except that I’d never have the chance to finish falling in love with you, and I—” She broke off then, and ducked her chin.
He propped it right back up again, and this time he didn’t hesitate to say exactly what he was thinking. “I’d really like to give you that chance, because I’m pretty sure I’m most of the way there already.” He grinned, and his heart was pounding so hard, he’d have been surprised if she couldn’t feel it thumping against her. “How’s that for smooth?”
She laughed and tipped up on her toes and kissed him. “I don’t know about smooth, but I do know it’s perfect for me.”
He heard the tow truck coming back toward them from a distance down the road. “I’ll do what it takes, Stevie. Whatever it takes. Meet you halfway, spend the time we need to make sure, hell, move the inn if it comes to that.”
“You most certainly will not,” she said, looking horrified at the mere suggestion. “Your inn is your home, and it’s perfect, just where it is. You’re perfect, just where you are. My life . . .” She lifted a shoulder. “My life is more about my plants than it is about the city.” She looked around here. “It’s gorgeous out here, and I’m already half in love with it, too. I couldn’t figure out how Sunny had been so sure.” She looked back to him. “About Sawyer, or moving herself out here. It all happened so quickly; it didn’t make sense to me. How could she know? How could she be so sure?” Stevie smiled. “I get it now. In fact, we talked a bit, about the possibility of my helping her out on a more full-time basis.”
Noah thought his heart really had leaped right out of his chest then. He scooped her up against him and kissed her full on the mouth, then did it again, and a third time, just to make sure he wasn’t still in bed dreaming.
She was laughing and tapping his shoulders for him to put her down, motioning to the tow truck, which had slowed to a crawl as it approached the icy bend in the road. “It won’t happen right away,” she told him. “But that will give us some time, too. Sunny has a ways to go before she can hire anyone, and I can use that time to secure more grant funding for the project. Sawyer even mentioned the possibility of getting the other side of the greenhouse functional by the summer and, if I was interested, possibly making that side a commercial greenhouse venture, open to the public. Sales would help to support Sunny’s work in between grants, and possibly provide me with a full-time gig. Once the silk mill is operating as the new craft center, that might actually be a possibility.”
“Is that something you’d find satisfying?” he asked, trying really hard to be as rational and fair as possible, seeing as she was handing him everything he’d ever wanted.
She shrugged, but nodded at the same time. “I think it really might be. Especially if it means I get to spend my days inside that lovely old place. I don’t have the same drive Sunny does, in terms of the research work she’s been doing. I just love digging in the dirt and putting my degree to good use. I have a pretty strong suspicion I might be able to find a way to make that work out here.” She smiled up at him. “Of course, I’d need a place to stay while I get myself situated. Know anyone who could rent me a room?”
He grinned. “I happen to know a guy who runs an inn, not too far from here. He won’t charge you room and board, but that’s because you’ll probably end up helping him enough around the inn to make you think twice about ever giving up your place in the city.”
She pulled his head down to hers. “Now that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“I’ll do my best to make sure you never regret it,” he said against her lips.
He took her face in his hands and tilted it to just the right angle. “Merry Christmas, Stevie,” he said, and he kissed her.
“A very Merry Christmas to you, too,” she murmured, kissing him back. “I think you’ve got yourself a Christmas convert.”
Neither of them so much as jumped when Andy sounded the horn the first time. Or the second.
Finally Andy just shook his head and climbed on down out of his rig. Kids these days, he thought, then found he was smiling to himself as he heard them laughing and talking excitedly. He and the missus had been like that back in the day. Still were, when they found the time. Maybe he’d stop and pick Ruthie June up some flowers on his way back in that night. She’d like having a little color in the house.
By the time he got home, she’d have gotten the grandkids to bed, done all the stockings, and wrapped all the presents, knowing he’d be out to all hours after this storm. He knew she’d offer him a back rub no matter what time he rolled in. He thought about how they used to open one present, just the two of them, before the kids woke up on Christmas morning. Their way of keeping a little of that Christmas spirit, just for themselves.
He’d picked her up something special this year, like he always did, even if he hadn’t wrapped it quite yet. Maybe tonight, instead of that back rub, he’d take her downstairs, and they’d start their Christmas celebration like they used to when they were younger. He grinned to himself, thinking, maybe if he played his cards right, he’d get lucky like he used to back then, too. He glanced at the young couple up on the road, stars in their eyes, but he wasn’t seeing them so much as he saw himself and the missus, back when they’d been that age.
Merry Christmas, to you both, he thought, thanking them for reminding him of what was important this time of year. Holding the ones you loved, and loving the ones you held. “And to all of us, a very good night.” He chuckled at that, then whistled a little “White Christmas” as he started unloading his gear.