Page 10 of Holiday Tides

I stride toward the front of the gazebo to give my antsy legs something to do. “Why shouldn’t I have questions? I haven’t seen you in years. You could have a mullet, or a slew of children, or”—my eyes subconsciously dart to Mae as Nick keeps step with me—“sixteen puppies.”

“Sixteen puppies? What if I want cats?”

It’s a mistake to look at Nick’s playful green eyes. The holiday lights aren’t yet illuminated, but there are plenty of antique streetlamps surrounding the courtyard. I almost trip in the darkforest ring surrounding the pools of bright mossy green before I tear my gaze away.

“Then have cats. Have guinea pigs. Have ferrets. I don’t care.”

“You seem awfully flustered, Summer. Why is me carrying another man’s baby bothering you so much?” Nick gently palms the back of Mae’s head, steadying her in a way that messes with my internal organs. I can’t stop focusing on how tenderly he’s touching her. “Maybe I like carrying beautiful women. I carried you earlier.”

I don’t react. Nick didn’t mean it asa compliment. He only says stuff like that to rile me up.

“I know what it is.” The tone of Nick’s voice makes my neck pinch. A blow is coming. He’ll wrap it up in a smile so it doesn’t seem like an attack, but I know better.

“Are your ovaries exploding?”

“What?” I wheel on him. “No! Also, that’s not anatomically possible. Cysts can rupture, but not the ovar—”

“You want to sniff her head. Don’t you?” That smirk, thatdarnedsmirk. I’d like to smack it off his stupidly handsome face. “It’s killing you that I’m in sniffing distance and you aren’t.”

“I do not want to sniff a stranger’s baby.” I try to infuse ice into my words, even though holding newborns is the best part of my job, and I have, on several occasions, surreptitiously sniffed many a skull while examining a baby’s growth plates.

“Go on.” He pulls off Mae’s candy-cane cap with a flourish. “Give her a good inhale.”

“Absolutely not.”

We stand in this odd baby-sniffing standoff for five seconds before I hear my name.

“There you are. I’ve been texting you,” Cooper tells me.

“Sorry.” I slide my phone out of my peacoat pocket, noting twelve missed messages. “It’s noisy, and I couldn’t feel the haptics through my coat.”

“It’s fine,” he says, looking around. “Wow. You weren’t kidding. It’s like a Christmas movie vomited all over the place.”

I try to view the festive display from an outsider’s point of view. The exterior of the library is laced with a webbing of unlit Christmas lights, wreaths in every window. Lights drape the gazebo’s roof, encircling each post. Near the entrance to the library, a children’s choir is assembling to sing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” like they do every year before Santa flips an oversized switch to light the whole complex. Since this ceremony is about Christmas, not commerce, there are no craft stands or snack vendors. It’s a time to get together with your neighbors, enjoy the crisp sea air, and officially start the holiday season.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The effervescence in Nick’s voice is gone.

“Come on, man.” Cooper tilts his head. “It’s a bit much.”

“The only person I see unhappy with any of this is you.”

Cooper straightens, taking in Nick for the first time. An undeniable tension surges between them as Cooper replaces me in the standoff. What used to be teasing now takes on the air of danger—even with Perry Como’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” playing in the background.

“Nick, get over here,” the man in all black calls from the line to see Santa. Nick’s ‘brother’ and the baby’s father, I guess?

After a slow, nasally exhale, he moves, cradling Mae as he strides off.

“Who was that guy?” Cooper asks once we’re alone.

Normally, I’d explain our rival past, but I’m suddenly exhausted. Cooper not even trying to subdue his dislike of my favorite holiday on the heels of seeing Nick so affectionate with baby Mae is a confusing slap to the face. And was Nick defending Wilks Beach ormejust now? I push away the swirling thoughts. I’m only feeling unsettled because it’s been a long day.

Instead of spending the day contentedly decorating Gramma’s cottage, I made call after call to different heating and plumbing companies, discovering that no one can help me for another two weeks. Then, when I tried to make a grilled cheese with the groceries I’d purchased at Dotty’s, a burning metallic smell followed by smoke informed me that the oven and range no longer work. After a fierce text conversation with Sam, he admitted he hadn’t used the range to boil water since he began dating Willow six months ago—almost exclusively eating and showering at her place.

“He’s nobody.”

It’s a lie, but Cooper accepts my answer, pulling me away as I use every ounce of restraint not to glance back at Nick.

seven

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