Christmas at the Riverview Inn

“Yeah. So when can we do it?”

“Well, we’re a little busy right now,” he said, hedging.

“I won’t bring up your mom,” she said, and he glanced up at her. She looked as contrite as Alice ever looked. “I’m sorry I did last time.”

“No,” he said. “It’s okay. I mean…it just surprised me is all.”

“We can pretend like we don’t even know each other,” Alice said in a cheery voice that made his soul cringe. “We can—”

“Alice,” he said quietly, needing to put a stop to her so cheerfully vowing to pretend she wasn’t the person who’d put him on this path with food. “Let me just…think about it.”

“Sure,” she said, her voice in some strange octave. “Let me know.”

They worked in awkward silence until the back door flew open and there was Josie, wild-eyed and wrapped in cables, holding her laptop.

Her phone was pressed to her ear and she waved at Alice and Cameron as she walked through the kitchen to the living room. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds fine. But does it have to…okay. But if the optics are bad, isn’t it just bad? Like, can’t we try for good optics? Fine. Yes.”

The door closed behind her, and he and Alice shared a knowing look.

“That girl is wasting herself on that stupid show,” Alice said.

Cameron tended to agree, but kept his mouth shut. He thought of her new idea and he hoped it would happen. She deserved to be proud of her work.

“She helped me do a Five Questions with Mateo yesterday.”

“Mateo gets five questions and I don’t?” Alice cried.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said with a laugh.

“Was it nice? Working with her?” Alice asked, spreading ricotta mixture over the noodles in the silver pan in front of her.

“Different,” he said. “I mean, working with anyone would be different, but she’s so smart, you know? And insightful.”

Alice nodded and the conversation faded because she wasn’t going to push and he wasn’t going to say anything else.

Three hours later the foil-wrapped bread and pans of lasagna had been loaded into the back of the van. The bread was still warm from the oven and he could feel it through his gloves. Smell the garlic and basil and tomatoes through the wrap. His stomach growled despite his having just eaten a giant slab of lasagna for lunch.

But he’d reverted to his teenage self here at the Riverview—he was hungry. Hungry for food and for the girl he never got to have.

He’d spent the last three hours looking for reasons to go out into the living room to see her. Talk to her. He took her coffee and fresh focaccia. A piece of lasagna for lunch. And each time he’d gone out, there she’d been, on the phone, but her eyes were warm with thanks and…awareness.

It buzzed between them.

And having her now felt inevitable.

It was the most logical thing. And the idea made his blood leap and his dick hard, and there was a kind of righteous symmetry to the whole thing.

They would have sex and say goodbye to the kids they’d been.

It was enough to make a guy smile.

She was not, he could tell, opposed to the idea. He’d learned a thing or two away from the Riverview. And he knew when a woman was interested in him as a man. And every time he got close to her—setting the coffee cup down, his fingers brushing hers when he handed her the focaccia—her interest practically sparkled and fizzed in the air.

Yeah. As plans went, he liked it.

With the van full of the food for Haven House he went back into the kitchen, where Alice was finishing up the dishes. “You got everything?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“You sure you don’t want help?”

Oh, I want help. Just not yours.

“I’m good,” he said. He left the kitchen and went back to the dining room and the chair and table where Josie had set up camp. Working, it seemed, nonstop. Empty cups of coffee. A plate with smears of lasagna left on it. She’d put on glasses, those big, thick black ones that a certain kind of woman wore.

That certain kind of woman—bookish and serious—was his catnip.

The tree was on, the fire was lit, and she looked like a Christmas angel sitting there.

“Hey,” he said, coming up on her side.

“Hey,” she said with a careful smile.

“Can you take a break?”

She looked at him like she’d never heard those words before.

“All right. You clearly need a break.” He picked up the laptop that she used as a barricade and set it aside. “Let’s take a ride.”

If there was a person on this planet who needed to relax, it was his old friend. She was wound tight and holding herself so still and so carefully she was about to crack.

Did she know that? he wondered. Could she feel it under her skin, the way her sharp edges were grinding together?