Last thing I need is some visitor from Phoenix slipping and blaming the inn. Not that we’re packed right now. December’s always slow until the final stretch before Christmas. Most of our regulars check in closer to the holidays. The ones here early come for the quiet.
Which is fine by me.
I stomp my boots off on the mat and head inside, rolling my shoulders to ease the tension in my back.
The lobby’s warm, the fire crackling steady in the stone hearth. The pine garland over the mantel still smells fresh, and the stockings Loretta hung last week add a pop of color.
She even hung one for my father. I already told him not to fill it with tools or anything that needs batteries.
He grumbled. Then smiled anyway.
"You're going to ruin your eyes," Loretta calls from the kitchen doorway. She’s dusted in flour and still has curlers in her hair, even though it's past noon. "Staring out that window like it owes you money."
"I'm not staring," I say.
Iam,though.
After eleven years in the army, you learn to keep watch. You notice things. Take in details without trying.
Like the bakery girl showing up in the window next door about twenty minutes ago.
Scarf up to her chin, knit hat pulled low, cheeks pink from the cold.
Blue eyes scanning the street like she was memorizing it.
She looked soft. Curious. Like someone who didn’t belong here but might be trying anyway. And for a second, I couldn’t stop looking.
I scrub a hand down my jaw.
“Loretta,” I say, “you know who’s taking over the bakehouse?”
Her eyes light up. Gossip is Loretta’s favorite sport.
She crosses the lobby, drops into one of the armchairs, and pulls out a half-knit scarf from her apron.
“Of course I do. And before you ask, yes, she’s single.”
Heat creeps up the back of my neck. “Didn’t ask.”
“Didn’t have to. I can read that face, Sebastian Ford. Little Willa Mathews inherited the place from her late grandmother. Poor thing never even met the woman. Her dad was no good, so her mom took off with her when she was just a baby. But that grandmother? She put the bakery in a trust and paid for Willa’s culinary schooling without ever taking credit.
Willa showed up yesterday in a little car packed to the roof with her stuff and baking supplies. I went over first thing this morning to say hello. Sweet girl. She mentioned someone caught her when she slipped on the ice. Figured that was you.”
Willa Mathews.
The name fits her.
Something soft around the edges, but steady underneath.
“You don’t need to play matchmaker,” I mutter.
Loretta snorts. “I’m not playing anything. I’m telling you facts. You’re thirty-eight. You live in the room behind the kitchen like a hermit. You work yourself into the ground, you don’t flirt,and the last woman you were with left because she got tired of coming second to snowplows and furnace repairs.”
Correction: She left for someone else. But sure, blame the snowblower.
“What’s your point?”
“My point is maybe it wouldn't kill you to go next door and say hi. Show her where we keep the spare sidewalk salt. Try speaking to a woman who isn’t me.”
