Page 16 of The Inn at Evergreen Hollow

He wasn’t sure if that was a relief or a disappointment.

Aiden turned back to the ladder, intending to leave the rest of the talking up to Blake. Company or no, he intended to finish the roof tonight, and get some rest tomorrow. Whatever else they had to talk about, it wouldn’t require his input.

He couldn’t help listening though. Nora was asking about the size of the space, if there was room enough in the back for keeping food hot, or if someone would need to go back and forth from the grill throughout the day. She mentioned something about a hot cocoa bar, which sounded like a nice idea, but she was concerned with the space for outlets to once again—keep everything warm.

It surprised him that she was giving it any thought at all. She was clearly home for the holidays, sure, but that didn’t mean that she needed to have any input about the festival. No one would have blamed her for just taking a back seat and showing up with her family on the appointed day—or maybe not showing up at all. The festival was really a resident and tourist thing, and Nora was neither of those.

He reminded himself, as Nora asked about decorations and whether or not they avoided anything fragile with so many children, that she worked at some fancy ballroom back in Boston. He didn’t know much about what she did now, but he’d heard that through the grapevine at least. She probably couldn’t help herself, thinking about the details at any venue she was in that happened to be hosting an event.

When Melanie said their goodbyes, the sounds of two sets of boots crunching off in the snow toward a waiting car, Aiden couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief. That had gone better than he’d thought, at least.

“That new girl seems to be a good businesswoman,” Blake said thoughtfully, climbing down from his own ladder to put away some of the tools. He hadn’t gone to high school in Evergreen Hollow, so he didn’t recognize Nora. Aiden didn’t particularly feel like catching him up. “Not a bad looking one either,” he added wryly.

Aiden didn’t say a word, focusing on putting the final touches on the roof, but inside he couldn’t deny that Blake was right.

Nora Stoker had grown up to be a very fine-looking woman, indeed.

CHAPTER NINE

Nora was sitting wrapped up on the front porch of the inn, looking out over yet another fresh snowfall and drinking hot tea when her cell phone rang.

She set down her breakfast—a homemade banana muffin leftover from breakfast, soft and airy and still warm on the inside, with fresh butter from the local farm that tasted better than anything she’d had in a long time—and reached for it.

“Hello?” She reached for her tea, wanting the warmth of the mug in at least one hand.

“Nora! How’s the small-town life treating you?” Her coworker Linda’s voice chirped over the line, bright and cheery. “Have you turned into a snowman yet?”

“Not yet. But I’m sure they’ll be rolling me up into one any day now.” Nora tried to sound upbeat, but she felt a flicker of self-consciousness. She knew Linda—and her other coworkers, probably—were expecting her to have more to report. They were probably expecting stories of pink-cheeked sledding days and handsome lumberjacks, bonfires, and plenty of town gossip. But Nora had never been a fan of sledding, bonfires weren’t really a common pastime in Evergreen Hollow, and she avoided gossiplike the plague. The propensity for it in a small town was, in fact, one of the reasons she’d been glad to escape.

There were few things she liked less than people knowing all of her business, all of the time.

As far as lumberjacks went, Evergreen Hollow still seemed to be in short supply, although there had been that pair of carpenters working on the roof. But one of them had seemed to have eyes for Melanie, and the other had been the strong and silent type.

So… nothertype.

“Earth to Nora!” Linda giggled on the other end of the line. “Come on, spill the tea. What’s it like being home?”

“It’s nice,” Nora hedged. She truly didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t as if she’d been helping out much at the inn—her mother seemed insistent that Nora was on vacation, and Melanie said the same whenever Nora offered help at the coffee shop. Caroline determinedly did whatever she could to keep Nora from sticking her noseanywherenear the inn’s business. So she’d spent the past days just puttering around town, and everything moved so muchslowerin Evergreen Hollow. Like maple syrup through snow, really, and she couldn’t measure her days by her productiveness the way she could back in Boston. There was no hustling out here, and that was really all she knew how to do.

She’d become very good at hustling, and standing still felt a bit like she might vibrate out of her skin at any moment.

“How are things there?” she asked, pivoting quickly to a more comfortable topic. “Nothing has exploded since I left, right?”

“Not at all,” Linda assured her. “It’s all running just fine. Not so much as a hiccup.”

Nora knew Linda meant to be reassuring, but the response made her a little sad. She’d always worked so hard to begoodat her job, irreplaceable, really—and she knew she was good at it.But it was clear that they didn’t actually need her there. It wasn’t that she wanted things to fall apart in her absence, obviously, but she found herself wishing that Linda had said things weren’t the same without her—orsomethingalong those lines.

Rob clearly didn’t need or want her either. There really was no one in Boston whodependedon her. No one who noticed her absence acutely, and needed her to come back as soon as possible.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Linda continued, driving the knife in deeper. “You enjoy your vacation for as long as you want. Goodness knows you’ve earned it.”

“Absolutely.” Nora tried to sound cheery, hoping Linda couldn’t hear the small crack in her voice.

“Tell me more about this Evergreen Hollow! You never really talked about home. What’s it like there?”

Nora leaned back in the rocking chair, tucking her feet in their fluffy Ugg slippers underneath herself. “This time of year, everything really centers around this festival. The ‘Evergreen Snowman Festival’. It’s this huge event, and people come out of town for it. There’s booths and costume contests and everyone goes completely over the top—but at the same time it’s really rustic? They’re reusing decorations from the school’s winter dance, for goodness’ sake.”

Linda laughed. “It sounds very quaint and fun. A little haphazard, maybe, but unique. Really sounds like it has that small-town charm.”

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