by Annie Jones
“Oh, hey!” She broke into a warm, genuine smile but didn’t slow her pace. Her breath made moist little clouds in the nippy morning air as she said, “What’s with that? I talked to my mom this morning and it’s colder in the Carolinas than it is in Vermont!”
“My office is right up ahead. If you want to—”
“Can’t stop and chat now.” She gave him a wave and kept moving. “On the trail of a hot popover. Don’t want it to get cold.”
Get cold? The trail or the popover? Neither one made any sense to him. He pulled forward and took his preferred spot in front of McFarland Construction and Restoration. He got out and caught up with her, his long legs easily matching her hurried stride. “You’re out and about awfully early.”
“Ha! You call this early?” She was walking so fast that the heat rising from inside her coat steamed up her glasses slightly. “Back home I’d have already put in more than a couple hours of work by now.”
The bright coat, the determination, the puff, puff of her breath put Andy in mind of the little steam shovel determined to dig a cellar for the new town hall right out of a children’s book. Never in his life had he ever thought of a woman in that way and to his surprise, it made Corrie Bennington all the more interesting to him. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of the khaki-colored down vest he wore over his red-and-black flannel shirt and cheerfully kept up with her. “You said something about a popover?”
“Word around the free continental breakfast at the motel this morning was that anyone who helps the First Friday Christian Fellowship Club string up Christmas lights this morning for the big Light Up Hadleyville tonight is entitled to real homemade popovers made by honest to goodness Vermont church ladies.” She pointed toward a crowd of people shuffling around town square a half a block away. “Yum!”
“You’re going to crash a service project for a popover?” He paused.
“What crash?” She didn’t hesitate as he fell out of step with her, just kept her eyes on the prize and went full steam ahead, calling back to him. “It’s the first Friday of the month. I’m a Christian. I like fellowship. And I have a great eye for decorating, me being—”
“I know, I know, a baker.” He had to jog a couple steps to catch up with her again. “You’ve mentioned that before.”
“Besides…” This time she did stop, even did a half turn toward him.
He had to pull up short to keep from slamming into her and probably knocking her to the ground.
“Besides…” she began again more softly as she looked up at him, all innocence and expectations. “I came here to find my father. I don’t have to tell you that any records from the inn, particularly from before I was even born, are long gone. I think it’s time I got out and asked around a bit. Somebody might remember him. Somebody might even know what happened to him. Maybe he’s even a local.”
“Your mom didn’t tell you if he was or not?”
“My mom doesn’t talk about him. I forced the issue once, when I was thirteen. She tried to find him. I overheard her trying and when it didn’t work out, then I overheard her crying…for days and days. I never talked about finding him to her again.” She looked away for a moment then turned her face upward and gave him a hopeful smile, nodded toward the group gathering in the park and started to walk again. “I got a name from that, though. James Wallace. Did some looking around on the internet. Didn’t find him, but I did find out about the gingerbread house competition.”
“So you’re using the competition as a kind of cover to come to the area and see if you can find out more about your father?” For something so simple, she seemed to have made it awfully complicated. Andy’s lips twitched as he tried to rein in a grin. That, he decided, was Corrie’s biggest obstacle and one of her most endearing charms—a confounding mix of complex simplicity and simple complexity.
He should run from that, of course. She didn’t really have a big problem with her gingerbread house. He could call out his advice right now and be done with it. Done with her.
He watched her striding purposefully toward the park full of unsuspecting strangers, hung his head for a moment, then took off after her, asking, “Does your mother know that’s what you’re doing?”
“I can’t tell you she doesn’t suspect I might try to find out about him. The truth is, I have been struggling between finding my own way back in South Carolina. I tried finding a way to fit into her business, but it’s really small, just getting by and she doesn’t need me there. Two years ago, I entered a local gingerbread contest and got the bakery some good PR. So when I found one in a small town just a short drive from the Snow Eaves Inn…” Corrie stopped again, blinked and tears pooled above her lower lashes. “Mom encouraged me to go. But she didn’t offer any help looking for my father and I didn’t ask. I couldn’t ask. That’s just the way it is.”
Andy gazed into her sweet, fresh-scrubbed face. The openness and longing to have answers, the weight of her strained relationship with her mother, her longing to find herself, her place in the world and where she came from, it all cut through him. “Okay. You got me. I’ll help.”
She sniffled and her expression brightened. “You’re going to string Christmas lights, too?”
He’d been talking about helping her with the competition but he realized she hadn’t even considered that he hadn’t planned to do that all along. He shook his head. She was so vulnerable. So fragile and didn’t even realize it.
There was a chance that what this girl was undertaking could leave her shattered. He thought of the pieces of the broken snow globe that he had gathered in a box but could not quite bring himself to throw away.
“Yeah, I’ll help string lights and then we’ll go to my office and I’ll see what all I can do to help you stabilize your gingerbread house.” He winced a little as he said it. “But that’s it. I have so much on my plate and nobody to help me, so I can’t afford to vary my course any more than that, got it?”
She pantomimed crossing her heart. Then she grabbed his arm and headed for the crowd hovering around two long tables piled high with strand after strand of tiny lights in front of an oversized gazebo where, once upon a time, the town had held summer concerts and where, years ago, the town had put up an ice skating rink every winter.
It didn’t take long for Andy to realize he wasn’t the only person pleasantly rattled by the unruly energy of this southern belle of a baker. Almost as soon as he introduced her to them, she had the town’s grizzled old bench sitters, the fellows who would give you the shirt off their backs but grumbled about everything from the weather to the ways of the world, hanging on her every word. It would have been the perfect time to ask if any of them knew her father.
Instead, when the mayor, Ellie Walker, who had been in charge of deciding how and where to hang the lights in the park for the last eight years, threw up her hands to proclaim she had run out of new ideas and asked for input, Corrie rushed to the rescue. The two women put their heads together for a few minutes while the whole group shifted and huddled in the cold. The next thing Andy knew, the mayor ushered the pink-coated visitor onto the bandstand gazebo as a makeshift stage to make an announcement.
“We wanted the centerpiece of the town’s Christmas decor to look like a confection, so who better to trust with the job than a sweet young baker, Corrie Bennington?” Mrs. Walker, a sturdy, stalwart type that Andy had never seen without two pair of glasses, one always on her nose and the other always on a chain around her neck, threw out her arms as if offering the world, or at least their little piece of it, to Corrie. “Her coming here a whole week early for the contest is a very special sort of Christmas surprise, I’d say. Corrie give us some directions, or ask us anything, we’re ready for it.”
All eyes fixed on her.
“I just want to say that I’ve been in your town less than a day and I already love it. Honestly, I think I loved this part of the country long before I got in my car to come here two days ago. I loved the idea of it. I loved the histo
ry of it, what little I knew, and am honored to be here and happy to pitch in.”
The group applauded.
Her smile beamed brighter than a crystal and silver Christmas tree star.
Andy couldn’t take his eyes off her. His mind should be on his own work, on what needed to get done today but looking at Corrie, all he could think was how much he hoped things worked out for her.
“And I’d like to ask…” She seemed to scan the faces trained her way.
Andy shoved his hands into the pockets of his vest and concentrated on her, trying to let her know she had his support in asking the crowd about her father.
Her slender shoulders rose then fell as she exhaled, her warm breath visible in the cold air. She pressed her lips together. Cleared her throat. She started to say something, paused, tucked her hair behind her ear then pushed her glasses up on her nose. At last she smiled. “I’d like to ask if anyone knows this song?”
She broke out singing.
The crowd laughed. Some scratched their heads. Some chimed in. But when Corrie came down the steps and began giving orders, all of them began to work together to get the job done.
Andy shook his head as he watched the dark-haired young woman move from the tables of workers to the grand bandstand. Her hands flitted delicately as she described how to drape and wind the strands, making Andy smile. Despite being a poorly outfitted little steam shovel of a person, she had style and graciousness that he hadn’t found in any other woman he’d met, he had to admit that.
And that worried him. He had so much work to do that he didn’t see how he could accomplish it all. He had a budding reputation as a master renovator to uphold and an inn that he had promised to open two weeks from today. Nothing Corrie was asking of him would further that goal. He really needed to hurry her along, give her his advice and then…
“I really did get here at the right time. They had two strings of twinkle lights with green wire instead of white.” She tucked the coils of lights into her purse presumably to keep the decorating group from mixing them in the decor again. Then she grabbed Andy by the hand and began trying to pull him toward the grand bandstand. “And speaking of right time—time to hang the big light-up star shapes. We need someone tall and strong who won’t try to override the plan. I told them I had the perfect man in mind.”
He resisted. At least he had intended to resist. But when she grasped his big old work-roughened hand in her soft, supple fingers and she smiled up at him, he was done in all over again.
“C’mon.” She tipped her head toward the waiting workers, her eyes sparkling with joy in what she was doing.
It was a temporary thing, he told himself.
He dragged his feet and feigned a protest.
Just this morning, he laid out a clear boundary in his mind.
She walked backward, laughing at his feeble show of reluctance.
When she left his office later this morning with whatever solutions he could provide, that would be it. He reinforced his decision silently. No more Corrie. Bye-bye, baker. He’d do what he could to help her, of course, but then…
“I can’t wait to see how this looks when they flip the switch and light it all up tonight.” She stepped up into the bandstand and did a twirl, her arms extended. When she spun around to face him again, she laughed lightly. “What do you say? Want to bring Greer out and we’ll all watch it together?”
“I’d like that,” he said softly. But…
“Please say yes. It would be so sad to have to come down here tonight alone.”
She had no father, issues with her mother, she was an outsider here. Corrie didn’t just rattle Andy, she needed him.
Andy was a man who had made his life’s work restoring things ravaged by time and neglect. He made things whole and right whenever he could. He couldn’t change that about himself but he had to be smart about it. Keep it under control. “Okay, stars this morning, lights tonight. But after that I have to get back on track.”
“Okay, but just bear this in mind, if you stick to the tracks, you may miss some of the best scenery.” She handed him a star.
He looked down at her as he accepted it and said softly, “That’s over-simplifying the way of the world a bit for me, but I can tell you that I am enjoying the view right now.”
“Thanks,” she whispered just before she turned on her heel and pointed to the rafters. “Start hanging the decorations there and I’ll supply the music to work by.”
Chapter Four
Corrie went marching over the threshold of Andy’s office singing the song she had launched into at the park—a bellowing parody of “Jingle Bells”—at the top of her lungs.
The brisk winter wind snagged the door and blew it shut with a wham.
She gasped in surprise and halted her song, midlyric.
Andy eased his way around her to the other side of the large desk that dominated the small room. He chuckled under his breath as he slid off his down vest and hung it on a brass hook on the back wall. “I can’t believe you got that group of stalwart New England stoics to join in singing that song!”
“It’s a reliable old way of getting a team to work together, sing an upbeat song.” Every little object in Andy’s office vied for Corrie’s attention.
“It was also a pretty sneaky way of making it impossible to ask people about your dad.”
She whipped her head around. Heat flooded her cheeks. “I…it wasn’t…how’d you know?”
“The minute you put your foot on that gazebo you had everyone on your side, Corrie. They would have done anything you asked, and you asked them to sing.” He turned toward her and leaned forward with both hands braced against his desk. “You didn’t ask about your dad.”
She dropped her gaze downward, staring at the toes of her boots. “I dreamed about doing this for most of my life and now that I had the chance…”
“Dreaming about something is not the same as preparing for it,” he said softly.
If that same sentence had come from her mother’s lips, Corrie would have felt scolded, like the world’s biggest disappointment. Her mom would have meant well, but Corrie would not have taken it that way. Mother and daughter relationships were so complicated. The only relationships more complicated, Corrie figured, were between men and women. She met Andy’s eyes and felt comforted instead of confounded by his words.
“I’ve had a lot of experience with dreams not measuring up to reality in restoring the inn, and in watching my mom help people get ready to become parents to their adopted children.”
“I don’t know if it was spending time with them, or because we’d talked about how badly my first attempt at finding my dad had gone, but I looked at those people and suddenly realized that while one of them might have some answers for me, this wasn’t just about me.” She fidgeted with the fringe on her green-and-white scarf. “These good people had their own lives. My father has a life. Maybe he has a wife and other kids around the area. I needed more time. I needed to find a better way so once I had everyone’s attention, I had to think fast.”
“You do that a lot, don’t you? Shift gears.” He held his hand out to take her coat next. “You think fast.”
“I guess so.” She didn’t know if he meant that as a compliment or a criticism, or both. Or maybe neither. She was usually pretty good at reading people, but she just couldn’t get a handle on this guy. Probably because he’d gotten tangled up in her feelings about finding her father and his ties to the inn where her parents had met. That was it. That was all.
She wriggled to free herself from her heavy coat, but her arm got twisted. Her scarf snagged across her throat. She couldn’t quite reach it with her arms pinned at awkward angles by her sleeves.
“Here, let me help.” Andy stepped up and unwound the scarf, then with one gentle upward tug he set her coat right and slipped it from her shoulders. “You really don’t have a lot of practice with winter clothing, do you?”
Corrie felt immediately cooler and infinitely unco
oler at the same time. “If it counts for anything, I almost never get that snarled up in my flip-flops.”
He laughed.
She liked his laugh. It didn’t just put her at ease, it put things right. She stepped away from her coat and thanked him as he hung it on the hook next to his.
“Okay. We came here to talk gingerbread, so let’s talk gingerbread.” He swept out his arm to offer her the brown leather chair across from his desk.
She turned away, more interested in the books and photos on his bookcase than in sitting down. “I think better when I’m moving, if that’s okay.”
“Okay.” The wheels on the stiff-backed black chair on Andy’s side of the unadorned metal desk creaked as Andy dropped into it. Paper crackled. His boots scuffed over the industrial-grade gray carpet. “I’ve gone over the drawings you gave me of what you want the finished building to look like.”
“Uh-huh.” In contrast with the unremarkable decor of his dingy office, the books and objects on his bookshelf presented an intriguing mosaic of business, cultures, faith and family history. She peered closer at a photo in a handmade frame of a red-haired woman hugging Greer. “Is this your mom?”
“Yeah.” He barely looked up then went straight back analyzing her notes and sketches. He thumped the paper laid out on his desk. “I think the issue with the roof and keeping the second story stable can be solved with one pretty basic change.”
“Really? Great!” She dragged her fingertips along the spines of his books. The topics ranged from architecture to vintage designs to a collection of works by C.S. Lewis. “Were you able to figure that out by comparing what I came up with to your actual blueprints of the inn?”
“I don’t have blueprints of the inn.” He folded his arms over his chest. “The old place has been worked on and passed from owner to owner over the last six decades. No blueprints exist anymore, as far as I know.”
“Oh.” She turned to face him. He looked so substantial standing there. “Then how are you doing all the renovations on the place to make it like it was before the fire?”
