Their First Noel Read online

  But what about the good stuff? Wasn’t it also possible that if you were open and not too set in your ways that you could sometimes be caught off guard by things like opportunity, joy and love? Corrie had always wondered that when her mother tried to teach her yet another lesson about the harsh realities of life. Unlike her mom, Corrie wanted to believe life was also full of wonderful discoveries if you were brave enough to go after them. Though until this little adventure, in her whole twenty-three years, Corrie had never been quite this bold.

  She followed the man she knew from his postings on the inn’s website into the lobby and took a long, sweeping look at the surroundings, then at the man she had come specifically to see. Talk about caught off guard.

  Her pulse raced. She hadn’t expected this Andy McFarland guy to be so big. Or so cute. Or young. Or to have his adorable daughter with him. But then she hadn’t planned much except to come to Vermont and pray she could find her answers here.

  But most of all, she hadn’t prepared herself for the overwhelming awe she would feel at just coming through the doors of… “The Snowy Eaves Inn. I’m really here.”

  “Yeah, but why are you here?” The man stopped in a huge, darkened room with exposed framework and wiring where walls should have been. He stood there like a wall himself, only in faded jeans and a dusty flannel shirt. Big as life. Bigger, actually, in contrast to the huge windows with rain pounding against them. The occasional lightning flash in the distance highlighted the breadth of his wide shoulders. “You said something about a problem?”

  Be bold. There is no recipe. If she gave him the chance, he would find a reason to rush her away and Corrie wasn’t ready to leave yet. So she gripped the oversized bag tucked under her arm and met his question with one of her own. “You said something about drying off and warming up?”

  “I haven’t said anything yet but if I did…” interjected the little girl in pink jammies and jet black pigtails clutching the sock monkey tugging at Corrie’s thick coat, “I’d say, can you make hot chocolate?”

  “Are you kidding?” Carrie whooshed out one long, relieved sigh. This was perfect. Cooking always cleared her head and now having met Andy McFarland and finding him just a bit intimidating, she needed a clear head more than ever. “I grew up in my mom’s bakery making every kind of sweet concoction you can imagine. Just point me to a kitchen and—”

  “This way.” The child clamped both hands around Corrie’s wrist and tried to drag her across the spacious lobby toward a closed door.

  “Wait!” Andy made a lunge. He caught Corrie by the coat sleeve.

  That was perfect because Corrie needed to get out of the cumbersome outerwear. She happily slid her arm free from the heavy, wet sleeve then gave a twirl to slip the rest of the way out.

  She felt lighter already, just not because of the coat. She was in the place she had dreamt of seeing for most of her life, she had a pretty good idea what she wanted to do and she had just made an ally. “Thanks. Once you hang that up why don’t you join me and your daughter in the kitchen and we’ll discuss the details of the job I have for you?”

  “She’s not my daughter!” he called after her.

  That news shouldn’t have made one bit of difference to Corrie, but it did. It made her heart and her footsteps instantly lighter.

  “I’m his sister, silly,” the child said with a giggle as if it were perfectly obvious that the big lumberjack-looking, auburn-haired man and the delicate Chinese girl were siblings. “My name is Greer.”

  Corrie’s clunky fur-lined boots—the ones she had had to order special since the stores in her tiny town in the southern most part of South Carolina didn’t usually sell snow boots—scuffed over the grit-sprinkled concrete floors of the lobby and hallway. When they stepped into a large, totally dark room, the floor beneath her soles changed.

  Greer hit the light switch and the room flooded with brightness.

  Corrie gasped. Unlike what she had seen of the rest of the place, the kitchen was not just finished, it was gorgeous. Though totally updated, careful attention had been paid to getting the ambiance right, the way it must have felt from the time it opened sixty years earlier until the place suffered a fire more than a decade ago. “This must be almost how it looked when they walked in here all those years ago.”

  Corrie settled her bag gently on the butcher-block countertop as she swept her gaze over every inch of the expansive, immaculate room.

  Greer skidded across the shiny, red-tile floor toward the huge double-doored stainless steel refrigerator, asking as she went, “How it looked when who walked in?”

  “My parents.” Corrie paused. She so rarely had a reason to use that term. Corrie’s father had abandoned them both before Corrie was actually born and she had been raised by her mom who had never married. The concept of parents was, well, just that, a concept to her. “They worked here twenty-four years ago. It’s where they met.”

  A lump rose in her throat to think of two sweethearts filled with hope and possibilities and love. They had been young. She knew that much. Right out of high school and they had planned to marry, promised each other they would be together for the rest of their lives. But things did not always go according to plans.

  If she let herself, she could become a stew pot of conflicting emotions. Years of heartache, of wanting to please her mom and longing to know her father could clash with romantic sentiment then throw in a dash of excitement over what she had come here hoping to accomplish. To combat that, Corrie did what she always did when she didn’t know what else to do. She got busy in the kitchen. “When I read online about this place reopening… I didn’t even tell my mom about it. I just felt like I had to come…and now…did you see the look on your brother’s face?”

  Corrie spotted what was clearly the pantry and in it found a tin of cocoa, a bag of sugar and a bottle of vanilla. “I’m beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea, my coming to Mt. Piney without making more definite arrangements. I don’t know why I did it, really.”

  She spun around to find Greer staring at her.

  The young girl had set the gallon of milk next to the gleaming new professional-style stove then tucked both of her hands behind her back.

  Practically bouncing up and down in place, she whispered, “I know why you’re here.”

  “You do?” Corrie set the ingredients down, not sure what to make of that claim.

  “Well, I don’t.” The deep, masculine voice came from the doorway.

  Corrie startled but recovered quickly. Her years of training as a baker served her well. Food didn’t wait for you, you had to keep on task and moving smoothly. She didn’t miss a beat in the prep process, lining up the ingredients in the order they would be used. “Right now, I’m here to make hot chocolate. To do that I need…”

  She began opening and closing cabinet doors, looking for the perfect pan.

  “This?” Suddenly, Andy McFarland stood over her, his arms raised as he retrieved the perfect sized blue-and-white enamel pan from an overhead cabinet.

  Corrie looked from the pan to Andy’s face. What a good face. Steady, thoughtful, no nonsense. Whereas, what she was about to ask him? Wobbly at best. Totally impulsive. Maybe even a little nutty.

  He lowered the pan slowly, circling her in his arms as he did. Just when he got into a position that was almost an embrace, he pushed the pan toward her, stepped back and cleared his throat. “You said something about needing me to find your father?”

  “Actually, no.” Corrie slid the pan from his large hands then turned toward the stove and got to work. “I said I came to Vermont to find my father. However, that isn’t the only reason I came. The other reason I came, and why I came out to the inn tonight, that’s why I want to hire you.”

  She poured the milk into the pan, set it on the unlit burner then went to her bag on the counter. She couldn’t help playing up the drama a bit, so she paused long enough to give both Greer and Andy her best enigmatic look, which must have worked because they
each leaned in with their eyes on her. She sank her teeth into her lower lip, took a breath and pulled out a box and from that, the only family heirloom she actually owned. “I want you to help me recreate this.”

  “Wow!” Greer moved in to get a closer look at the old snow globe that Corrie held up. “Where’d you get that?”

  “My father gave it to my mother when they worked here twenty-four years ago.” The water had gone cloudy. An air bubble had formed at the top and exposed the galloping horse weather vane on the high ridge of the peaked roof of the small plastic replica of the charming Swiss chalet-style inn. She brushed her thumb over the raised words: Snowy Eaves Inn, Mt. Piney, Vermont. The movement jostled it just enough to cause the first few notes of a Christmas song to chime out from the tiny music box inside the stand. “It plays ‘The First Noel.’ He gave it to her as a promise that he’d come for her in South Carolina and they’d spend their first Christmas together.”

  “You want me to build another inn?” Andy held his hands out to his side to indicate the building where they now stood. “I’d like to help you, Ms. Bennington, but I can’t even seem to get this one finished. Sorry, but you came all this way for nothing.”

  “Don’t say that,” Corrie whispered, fighting back the tears.

  Even though she knew he didn’t mean she wouldn’t find her father, the very words tapped into her biggest fear. She had come so far, worked so hard. She just couldn’t let it all fall apart now.

  She set the globe down on the countertop and turned back to the hot chocolate fixings. She dumped in the cocoa and sugar then realized she needed something to stir it up with. She opened a drawer and on the first try found a wooden spoon. She gripped it tightly and finally turned back to him, refocused on her first task, getting the man’s help. “But you don’t have the whole picture. I’ve been working for almost a year to be accepted into the Hadleyville Holiday Gingerbread House Showcase with an entry titled Christmas at Snowy Eaves Inn. I’ve got the aesthetics down, but it’s the steep eaves, the way the second floor hangs over the first. It has those balconies on three sides, which don’t balance well. It may work with wood and stone but… I can’t keep the roof from sliding off, or the top from being, well, top heavy and tumbling over. I think your expertise could—”

  “Whoa, wait. You want to hire me to build a gingerbread house?” He held his hands up, his expression caught between a scowl and a smile. “Are you kidding me? I’m up to my eyeballs in real renovations and you want me to just up and—”

  “Yeah!” Greer went on tiptoe then sprang upward, clapping. “Do it, Andy! That would be so—”

  The girl flung her arms wide midjump. Her hand hit the handle of the enamel pan. She gasped. The pan flipped. Milk and clumps of cocoa went sailing in a high arch upward.

  Corrie dove for the pan, not sure if the milk might have gotten hot enough to scald the child. “Be careful, Greer.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll save the snow globe!” Greer’s small fingers stretched for the object but instead of grabbing it, bumped it and sent the treasured keepsake skidding to the edge of the counter.

  Corrie gasped.

  The globe seemed to teeter for a split second before it flipped over the edge, somersaulting downward.

  Corrie’s heart plummeted with it. She took a hurried step forward to try to save it. Her boot hit a puddle of milk and she lost her footing.

  Andy lunged forward to catch her.

  She’d have rather he’d tried to catch the snow globe. She pushed off Andy’s attempt at a rescue and thrust both hands forward to make a sort of safety net to catch the keepsake.

  The glass of the globe went slipping through her fingertips. It hit the hard tile floor, base first, did a sort of hop then came down hard with a sickening crash.

  Greer squealed and leapt backward, her hands on her flushed cheeks. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, honest.”

  Just before Corrie’s knees would have hit the unforgiving glass-cluttered tile, Andy bent down and caught her. She fell nose first against his muscular shoulder.

  The dust on the flannel made her sneeze.

  “Remember what I always say about there being accidents and there being consequences, Greer?” he asked firmly even as he steadied Corrie back on her feet. “The globe breaking was an accident. The milk spilling was a consequence of your actions.”

  Corrie covered her eyes with one hand. Consequence or accident, she just couldn’t look.

  Greer said something so softly that Corrie couldn’t make it out but the forlorn sound of it made her heart ache. She had been raised by a mother who often made her feel as if everything she did was wrong, or at least not quite good enough. Corrie understood her mother’s drive to create a sense of self-reliance in her only child and she loved her mom, but she didn’t want Greer to feel the way her mother had unintentionally made Corrie feel.

  She rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger then turned toward the little girl. Rally, she told herself. You can’t change what happened, only the way you respond to it. “Sweetie, you’re barefoot and there’s glass everywhere, maybe you should skedaddle.”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you head back to bed?” Andy suggested, giving her a tender nudge. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Greer sniffled and looked up at the big man bending down to lend her comfort. She managed a wavering smile and gave him a nod that seemed to say she believed he could take care of the mess and whatever consequences came with it.

  Corrie wished that even once in her lifetime she had known that kind of trust in another human being. Her mother had always pushed her to be strong, be self-sufficient… “Be careful,” she called out to the girl. “And don’t feel bad. Things happen.”

  Greer picked her way across the floor and out of the room.

  Corrie sighed. She still couldn’t stand to look at the broken bits and pieces of the only memento she had ever had of her father.

  “Leave this with me. I’ll do what I can.” He put his hand lightly on her shoulder.

  She shrugged it off, not to be rude but to let him know that she didn’t need his sympathy. “Things happen that you don’t see coming,” she said softly again. “What you do after that, that’s what matters.”

  “I know the owner of Maple Leaf Manor in Hadleyville. Let me call and make sure they have a room for you.” He went to the phone hanging on the wall. “That’s not too far a drive. I grew up there. My mom and Greer live there. That’s where my office is. With the rain letting up you can make it over there in twenty minutes or so.”

  He pressed in some numbers as he spoke to her, then quickly made the arrangements. After he hung up he told her, “You’ll have a room waiting.”

  “Okay. I actually was on my way to Hadleyville when I saw the sign pointing the way here and…well, the rest is history.” She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and sighed, adding, “Just like my snow globe.”

  “I meant it when I said I’ll take care of this. I’ll put this right.” His hand cupped her shoulder again, this time firmly enough to let her know he wasn’t going to be dissuaded from offering comfort. “That’s what I do, you can count on me.”

  Corrie looked back and up, deep into his searching brown eyes. She wanted to count on him. On someone. Her whole life she had wanted to feel like she had someone besides herself to fall back on. “Does that mean you’ll help me assemble the gingerbread version of the Snowy Eaves Inn?”

  He looked at the ceiling, groaned and then finally met her gaze. “Okay. I’ll do what I can. Meet me in my office tomorrow morning at nine and I’ll give you some pointers, if I can. But do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t tell anyone I’m acting as a consultant for a cooking contest. I’m having enough trouble keeping my reputation intact with all the setbacks and complications of this renovation without throwing that into the mix.”

  Chapter Three

  Andy dropped Greer off at school at 7:30 a.m. then turne
d his big black pickup truck toward his office just off Hadleyville’s town square. The trip wouldn’t take more than two minutes. So why had he told Corrie Bennington he’d meet her at his office at nine?

  It wasn’t like he needed a lot of prep time to discuss the best way to keep a gingerbread house from falling apart. Use better support. End of story, goodbye.

  He really needed to be back at the worksite if he hoped to get the place done in time for the newly rescheduled grand opening party slated for the evening of Christmas Eve. And yet, when he had hurried her to the door last night, trying to get her on her way so he could get back to the mess in the kitchen and try to sort that out, he had blurted out his office address and told her he’d be there at nine. Why?

  The simple answer? The woman had rattled him.

  “Some simple answer,” he muttered sarcastically as he pulled up to a stop sign around the corner from his destination.

  He was twenty-seven years old, a business owner, the man of his family since his dad died eight years ago. He spent his days on construction sites, or negotiating with customers and suppliers. He had helped raise his little sister when his mother’s work took her out of town for weeks at a time. He had once taken over for his mom teaching Vacation Bible School to five-year-olds! He did not get rattled.

  Especially not by a girl with wild brown hair and trendy glasses, bursting into his business bundled up in a bright pink coat and boots better suited to an arctic expedition than a rainy Vermont evening. He smiled at that memory. Then he turned the corner and busted out laughing.

  There she was. Corrie Bennington—trudging down the sidewalk in that unforgettable coat and those clunky boots.

  He pulled up alongside of her and hit the button to roll down the passenger window and called out, “You know, the weather forecast says no chance of snow whatsoever for today.”