I stiffened. No one called me Nicky. If it had been anyone but a sweet old lady, I would’ve corrected her—and not in a nice way.
“Oh. She raised her index finger. I know you’re only at the inn until you find an apartment. I’ve got the entire book club on it. We’ll get you a great place to live, but don’t rush, you can stay here as long as you’d like.”
It wasn’t going to be necessary, and a lump formed in my throat. If the Chance Rapids hockey team was so beloved, I was going to be the villain in this Christmas story.
FOUR
EVIE
Nick was sleepingon top of me. Not literally of course, but the “penthouse,” as GJ liked to call it, was directly above my room. For a man so huge, he was like a cat on his feet. After the book club devoured all the beaver tails and went on a tangent about the book not having enough steamy scenes, I excused myself.
People underestimated the old ladies of Chance Rapids. Most of these senior citizens were homesteaders before it was cool. They could bake a pie from scratch, chop firewood, and Clementine still held the record for number of ski days on the mountain. GJ had been showing signs that her memory was going, but she was still one of the most active women I’d met. She’d been running the inn since Grandpa Gary passed away twenty years ago.
Her brother, my uncle Eddie, was the one who called me to come and help out for the holidays. The situation helped out everyone involved. Great-uncle Eddie and GJ got help over the busy season, and I got a place to live. The timing couldn’t have been better, my tiny basement apartment had been sold and I’d been given two months to find a new place.
Now, Room 222 was my home. The carpet was worn, thewiring was outdated, and the radiators clanked at all hours of the night. The inn’s rating had slipped to two stars. It always got five stars for location and service, but every comment mentioned that the interior was so dated they could film a Roaring Twenties movie here.
The inn had good bones, but GJ and Edward couldn’t afford to renovate the place—unless they could do the work themselves. While GJ was a spitfire, she couldn’t climb a ladder with two-by-fours on her shoulder anymore—and Edward wasn’t much better.
An incessant beeping woke me up. For a second, I forgot that I was in the mountains, the noise of the truck reversing bringing me back to the city. I bolted upright, worried that I was late for work at the grocery store. I pulled back the lace curtain to get a better look at the street below. The sun had just crested over the top of Sugar Peak, the tallest mountain in the Chance Rapids range.
Above me, the floor creaked as Nick paced. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and realized that I could hear the music from his room echoing through the pipes. I stood on my toes and cocked my head, as though it could help me figure out what music he was listening to—whatever it was, it sounded angry.
The beeping returned and a rumble shook the inn. I ran to the window with my toothbrush in my mouth. It was a dump truck, unloading a pile of snow onto the street in front of the inn. The skijoring event was going to be held on Oak Street. A good base of snow would ensure that the event would happen even if we didn’t get any new snow.
“What the hell is going on out here?” a voice shouted. I didn’t have to look to know that GJ was out on the street in her fuzzy slippers, yelling at the city employee. “It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning. I have guests here.” I sidled up to the window. GJ was known around town as a bit of an eccentric, and I hoped it was in theshe’s a sweet,crazy old batkind of way rather than apain in the ass old ladykind of way.
“Do you know who is trying to get some sleep up there?” GJ pointed to the window above me. “That’s the new goalie for the Bobcats. How are you going to feel if he loses the game because he didn’t get enough sleep?”
GJ was crazy for sure—crazy about the Bobcats. The whole town was a little nutty about hockey, which I didn’t get. The big draw to Chance Rapids was the ski hill. People came from all over the world to stay in the fancy chalets at the base of Sugar Peaks. Like a lot of the locals, I didn’t know how to ski. The lifts had been installed on the mountain long after I moved away.
The man shrugged and pointed to his wrist. “We start working at seven. We gave the new goalie an extra half an hour.”
The music above me stopped and the penthouse door slammed. The stairs creaked in a weird pattern. Nick must have been taking them two or three at a time. Sure enough, the bells on the wreath that hung on the front door jingled and Nick burst onto the street—shirtless. He was wearing flip-flop slides, athletic shorts, a backward hat—and not much else.
I bit the plastic of my toothbrush and hoped that I was well hidden behind the lace curtain panel. I couldn’t hear what Nick was saying. Unlike GJ, he spoke at a normal volume. The muscles on his back flexed as he gestured to the truck. The worker grinned and nodded. He must have been explaining the skijoring, because he mimed holding reins, made a galloping motion, and raised his hard hat in the air like a rodeo star.
Nick’s skin glistened in the sunlight. He must’ve been working out to the angry metal music I heard through the pipes. Even from way up on the second floor I could see his perfect teeth as he smiled. The city worker shook his hand.Nick patted the side of the dump truck and offered his elbow to GJ, but not before he glanced up at the inn.
“Shit.” I jumped back from the window and my toothbrush clattered to the floor. Had he seen me spying on them?
My life was in shambles. I couldn’t be getting all moony for the player upstairs. Men didn’t make your life better—they made it harder—and my life was as hard as I could take at the moment.
I rinsed my toothbrush and started the shower. Breakfast at Snowy Peaks started at eight, and I was the entire serving staff. Watching the drama on the street had put me behind schedule, and as I stepped out of the shower, I realized I wasn’t going to have time to dry my hair. I put on a little bit of concealer and a swipe of mascara and then wound my wet hair into two long braids, squeezing the last bit of moisture from the ends into the sink.
GJ was resistant to change, and one of the battles I was having with her was over the staff uniform. I called it sexist, but she called it classic. The milkmaid uniform looked more like a slutty Oktoberfest Halloween costume. The frilly shirt was a little small. The spillage of my boobs over the top was made worse by the tight red and green dirndl strap that squeezed my rib cage. I pulled on the green felt skirt, knee-high white socks with lace trim, and as I did up the buckle on the shoes, I prayed that Nick was one of those intermittent fasting guys who skipped breakfast.
I picked up the ivory-handled phone and dialed 0.
GJ answered on the first ring.
“Snowy Peaks. Janie here.”
“GJ. Do I really have to wear this uniform?”
There was a pause on the other end. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this discussion, and GJ’s exasperated sigh told me that she wasn’t in the mood to have it again.
“It’s Christmas. We can discuss a uniform change after the holidays. Breakfast is in two minutes.”
