Page 22 of Stocking Stuffers
“Nor Mr. Rochester’s wife?”
Perry’s laugh echoed through the stairway. “No, but I’m sure there is a copy ofJane Eyre.”
“Ooo, exciting!”
The room came slowly into view, and it took her breath away.
It was a huge attic room with a pitched cedar roof and white shiplap walls. Someone had built bookshelves into the large triangle-shaped wall at the end of the room, and there was an old-fashioned record player next to retro blue velvet furniture. The floor was a dark wood, but their footsteps were muffled by a soft white rug.
A door off to the right caught Sasha’s eye. She pushed it open to find a small shower and bathroom. God, this was all the space she’d ever need. It was perfect.
“I love it.”
Perry’s warm smile was worth the price of admission for this whole stupid snowed-in adventure.
“This is where my grandparents lived until it was too hard for them to make it up the stairs. Once Valerie took over the daily operations of the inn, she turned it into a personal library.”
“What about your parents? Where are they?”
“My dad passed when we were young. My mom and Valerie eventually took over until Valerie was experienced enough to run it on her own. I own quite a large share of it, but it’s Valerie’s baby. We grew up in the carriage house with Grandma and Grandpa up here. Now our mom is living it up in Hawaii with her much younger boyfriend.” Perry laughed, like he couldn’t be happier for his mother, and sat down on the blue sofa.
Sasha moved toward the bookshelves. The books were arranged by genre, and unsurprisingly, a large portion were romances. She trailed a finger over a row of cracked spines.
“And you live in Topeka and do what, exactly? I want to hear about your complicated living situation,” she said. These were probably topics they should have covered before their little bathroom foray last night, but she’d been able to tell Perry’s job was a sensitive subject for him, so she’d let the opportunity to learn more pass her by. To be honest, she normally knew someone better before she fooled around with them. Most of her partners in the last year, as well as the years before her failed engagement, had been friends, with only a handful of one-night stands mixed in.
The corners of his mouth tipped down, and a wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.
“I was a CPA, but I got laid off at the beginning of December.” He stared up at the ceiling, seeming to select his words carefully. “I didn’t see it coming. They cut the accounting department by a third and eliminated all the middle managers like me. They’d lost a big client and decided it’d be cheaper to outsource the work.”
“That’s a horrible thing to happen right before Christmas.”
He nodded, his lips tight. “I was overcome by this horrendousreliefafterward.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He smiled sadly. “I didn’t like my job, and I don’t think that’s an issue that’ll be fixed by getting a new job as an accountant for some other company. So when I was pulled into that office and my life was turned upside down, I thought there must be something wrong with me because I was elated. I could breathe again. I felt as if a door had been opened.”
“Maybe it has.”
“I haven’t told Valerie yet. She’ll worry over me, and I wasn’t ready for that. I needed to make a plan first, you know? Of course, my plan involves moving in with her. I should have asked her before I sold my furniture, packed the rest of my life into my SUV, and showed up in a snowstorm, huh?”
Sasha laughed. “I’ve always heard Christmas is a great time to make huge, life-changing decisions.”
He chuckled and scrubbed his hands down his face. “My girlfriend broke up with me after I lost my job. She didn’t understand why I’d put everything on the line, waste all my severance package, to chase a misshapen dream. It made me feel like I couldn’t trust my instincts about people. I’d thought we were solid together.”
Her thoughts rebelled at the relationship talk, so she steered the conversation away from it. “What’s your dream?”
She sat down next to him. He reached up and thumbed her bottom lip. The tug of his skin against hers resonated deep inside, like he’d plucked the harp string of her heart.
“Flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“And trees. Horticulture, basically. I enrolled in a horticulture and landscape architecture program at the college in the city. I want to own my own landscaping company one day.”
“Wow. That wasn’t what I expected.”
He smiled, his thumb still on her mouth. “You wouldn’t be surprised if you’d seen me naked.”
