I chew my bottom lip and take a quick pull of my drink. “She did seem pretty pissed when I ran into her today.”
He blinks at me a couple of times before shaking his head in pure disbelief. “Yeah, I wonder fucking why.”
CHAPTER 6
Noelle
Only sixty-nine more days till Christmas.
Seventy more days to get married.
And, oh yeah, my high school sweetheart who broke my heart out of nowhere is home for the holidays which means I’m going to be running into him all over town. The same boy who has grown into a really hot, perfectly built man who scrambled my brain with one stupid smirk just like he used to do in chem lab.
Focus, Noelle.
One thing at a time.
Life has thrown harder things at you before.
You can do this.
You can do this.
“I can do this,” I whisper to myself under my breath.
“I’m sorry?” A voice I don’t recognize startles me. Blinking a few times I realize that a couple of guests are standing in front of me, waiting for me to help them.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I apologize quickly. “Got lost in a thought. How can I help you?”
They smile kindly at me and start to ask wheresome of the best shops are to find holiday gifts and local goods. As I show them the map of town and point out my favorite places, a loud crash comes from the kitchen. This isn’t the first time this has happened in the last week so I brush it off with a casual laugh.
“Everything’s fine,” I say to them, showing them to the door. “It’s only our new chef finding her way around the kitchen. Be sure to come back in time for dinner so you don’t miss out on her world famous pork chops!”
As soon as they close the front door behind them, my face falls in panic. I nearly sprint down the hallway and shove the kitchen door open to see what happened.
“Eve, what the hell is going on in here?” I call out, glancing around the kitchen trying to find her. While it’s spelled like ‘Christmas Eve,’ it’s pronounced as if you’re saying the two letters individually. ‘Like the Pokémon’she likes to tell people.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, I’m okay.” When she stands up from the other side of the prep table, I see a couple new stains on her chef’s coat that weren’t there when I last saw her. Wearing her hair in two low buns, one is frayed around the edges and the headband she’s wearing is slipping halfway off her head.
“Jesus, Eve, you need to be more careful. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” I release a sigh and clutch my chest with my hand.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic, Noey.” She waves a wooden spoon at me. “I know how to handle myself around a kitchen. Even a little kitchen like this one.”
I don’t miss how she seems to turn her nose up at our quaint, albeit small, kitchen space.
“Frank never crashed into things the five years he worked here,” I say pointedly. “And he’s like three times the size of you.”
“Well Frank organizes his fridge with the vegetables on thebottom and his meats in the double–wide like a moron,” she snaps back.
She landed back in Evergreen a few days after our phone call last week. The same phone call that ended with me running smack into Nick for the first time in more than ten years. The same Nick who told me we should ‘explore new things and that includes new people’ since we were going off to separate colleges. Even after we talked and agreed to make long distance work. The same Nick who I thought would be my husband one day only for him to pull the rug out from under me and not even offer to help me back up when I fell.
Fucking ass.
“Noey, hello? Are you listening?” I blink when I feel a puff of air hit my face and see Eve waving the wooden spoon in my face.
“I am now. What did you say?”
“I said I’m changing the menu for dinner tonight if that’s okay with you?”
