Their First Noel (3 page)

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.”

A
ndy dropped Greer off at school at 7:30 a.m. then turned 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.”

“Oh, hey!” She broke into a warm, genuine smile but didn't slow her pace. Her breath made moist little clouds in the nippy morning air as she said, “What's with that? I talked to my mom this morning and it's colder in the Carolinas than it is in Vermont!”

“My office is right up ahead. If you want to—”

“Can't stop and chat now.” She gave him a wave and kept moving. “On the trail of a hot popover. Don't want it to get cold.”

Get cold? The trail or the popover? Neither one made any sense to him. He pulled forward and took
his preferred spot in front of McFarland Construction and Restoration. He got out and caught up with her, his long legs easily matching her hurried stride. “You're out and about awfully early.”

“Ha! You call
this
early?” She was walking so fast that the heat rising from inside her coat steamed up her glasses slightly. “Back home I'd have already put in more than a couple hours of work by now.”

The bright coat, the determination, the puff, puff of her breath put Andy in mind of the little steam shovel determined to dig a cellar for the new town hall right out of a children's book. Never in his life had he ever thought of a woman in that way and to his surprise, it made Corrie Bennington all the more interesting to him. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of the khaki-colored down vest he wore over his red-and-black flannel shirt and cheerfully kept up with her. “You said something about a popover?”

“Word around the free continental breakfast at the motel this morning was that anyone who helps the First Friday Christian Fellowship Club string up Christmas lights this morning for the big Light Up Hadleyville tonight is entitled to real homemade popovers made by honest to goodness Vermont church ladies.” She pointed toward a crowd of people shuffling around town square a half a block away. “Yum!”

“You're going to crash a service project for a popover?” He paused.

“What crash?” She didn't hesitate as he fell out of step with her, just kept her eyes on the prize and went full steam ahead, calling back to him. “It's the first
Friday of the month. I'm a Christian. I like fellowship. And I have a great eye for decorating, me being—”

“I know, I know, a baker.” He had to jog a couple steps to catch up with her again. “You've mentioned that before.”

“Besides…” This time she did stop, even did a half turn toward him.

He had to pull up short to keep from slamming into her and probably knocking her to the ground.

“Besides…” she began again more softly as she looked up at him, all innocence and expectations. “I came here to find my father. I don't have to tell you that any records from the inn, particularly from before I was even born, are long gone. I think it's time I got out and asked around a bit. Somebody might remember him. Somebody might even know what happened to him. Maybe he's even a local.”

“Your mom didn't tell you if he was or not?”

“My mom doesn't talk about him. I forced the issue once, when I was thirteen. She tried to find him. I overheard her trying and when it didn't work out, then I overheard her crying…for days and days. I never talked about finding him to her again.” She looked away for a moment then turned her face upward and gave him a hopeful smile, nodded toward the group gathering in the park and started to walk again. “I got a name from that, though. James Wallace. Did some looking around on the internet. Didn't find him, but I did find out about the gingerbread house competition.”

“So you're using the competition as a kind of cover to come to the area and see if you can find out more about your father?” For something so simple, she seemed to
have made it awfully complicated. Andy's lips twitched as he tried to rein in a grin. That, he decided, was Corrie's biggest obstacle and one of her most endearing charms—a confounding mix of complex simplicity and simple complexity.

He should run from that, of course. She didn't really have a big problem with her gingerbread house. He could call out his advice right now and be done with it. Done with her.

He watched her striding purposefully toward the park full of unsuspecting strangers, hung his head for a moment, then took off after her, asking, “Does your mother know that's what you're doing?”

“I can't tell you she doesn't suspect I might try to find out about him. The truth is, I have been struggling between finding my own way back in South Carolina. I tried finding a way to fit into her business, but it's really small, just getting by and she doesn't need me there. Two years ago, I entered a local gingerbread contest and got the bakery some good PR. So when I found one in a small town just a short drive from the Snow Eaves Inn…” Corrie stopped again, blinked and tears pooled above her lower lashes. “Mom encouraged me to go. But she didn't offer any help looking for my father and I didn't ask. I
couldn't
ask. That's just the way it is.”

Andy gazed into her sweet, fresh-scrubbed face. The openness and longing to have answers, the weight of her strained relationship with her mother, her longing to find herself, her place in the world and where she came from, it all cut through him. “Okay. You got me. I'll help.”

She sniffled and her expression brightened. “You're going to string Christmas lights, too?”

He'd been talking about helping her with the competition but he realized she hadn't even considered that he hadn't planned to do that all along. He shook his head. She was so vulnerable. So fragile and didn't even realize it.

There was a chance that what this girl was undertaking could leave her shattered. He thought of the pieces of the broken snow globe that he had gathered in a box but could not quite bring himself to throw away.

“Yeah, I'll help string lights and then we'll go to my office and I'll see what all I can do to help you stabilize your gingerbread house.” He winced a little as he said it. “But that's it. I have so much on my plate and nobody to help me, so I can't afford to vary my course any more than that, got it?”

She pantomimed crossing her heart. Then she grabbed his arm and headed for the crowd hovering around two long tables piled high with strand after strand of tiny lights in front of an oversized gazebo where, once upon a time, the town had held summer concerts and where, years ago, the town had put up an ice skating rink every winter.

It didn't take long for Andy to realize he wasn't the only person pleasantly rattled by the unruly energy of this southern belle of a baker. Almost as soon as he introduced her to them, she had the town's grizzled old bench sitters, the fellows who would give you the shirt off their backs but grumbled about everything from the weather to the ways of the world, hanging on her every word. It would have been the perfect time to ask if any of them knew her father.

Instead, when the mayor, Ellie Walker, who had been
in charge of deciding how and where to hang the lights in the park for the last eight years, threw up her hands to proclaim she had run out of new ideas and asked for input, Corrie rushed to the rescue. The two women put their heads together for a few minutes while the whole group shifted and huddled in the cold. The next thing Andy knew, the mayor ushered the pink-coated visitor onto the bandstand gazebo as a makeshift stage to make an announcement.

“We wanted the centerpiece of the town's Christmas decor to look like a confection, so who better to trust with the job than a sweet young baker, Corrie Bennington?” Mrs. Walker, a sturdy, stalwart type that Andy had never seen without two pair of glasses, one always on her nose and the other always on a chain around her neck, threw out her arms as if offering the world, or at least their little piece of it, to Corrie. “Her coming here a whole week early for the contest is a very special sort of Christmas surprise, I'd say. Corrie give us some directions, or ask us anything, we're ready for it.”

All eyes fixed on her.

“I just want to say that I've been in your town less than a day and I already love it. Honestly, I think I loved this part of the country long before I got in my car to come here two days ago. I loved the idea of it. I loved the history of it, what little I knew, and am honored to be here and happy to pitch in.”

The group applauded.

Her smile beamed brighter than a crystal and silver Christmas tree star.

Andy couldn't take his eyes off her. His mind should be on his own work, on what needed to get done today
but looking at Corrie, all he could think was how much he hoped things worked out for her.

“And I'd like to ask…” She seemed to scan the faces trained her way.

Andy shoved his hands into the pockets of his vest and concentrated on her, trying to let her know she had his support in asking the crowd about her father.

Her slender shoulders rose then fell as she exhaled, her warm breath visible in the cold air. She pressed her lips together. Cleared her throat. She started to say something, paused, tucked her hair behind her ear then pushed her glasses up on her nose. At last she smiled. “I'd like to ask if anyone knows this song?”

She broke out singing.

The crowd laughed. Some scratched their heads. Some chimed in. But when Corrie came down the steps and began giving orders, all of them began to work together to get the job done.

Andy shook his head as he watched the dark-haired young woman move from the tables of workers to the grand bandstand. Her hands flitted delicately as she described how to drape and wind the strands, making Andy smile. Despite being a poorly outfitted little steam shovel of a person, she had style and graciousness that he hadn't found in any other woman he'd met, he had to admit that.

And that worried him. He had so much work to do that he didn't see how he could accomplish it all. He had a budding reputation as a master renovator to uphold and an inn that he had promised to open two weeks from today. Nothing Corrie was asking of him would further
that goal. He really needed to hurry her along, give her his advice and then…

“I really did get here at the right time. They had two strings of twinkle lights with green wire instead of white.” She tucked the coils of lights into her purse presumably to keep the decorating group from mixing them in the decor again. Then she grabbed Andy by the hand and began trying to pull him toward the grand bandstand. “And speaking of right time—time to hang the big light-up star shapes. We need someone tall and strong who won't try to override the plan. I told them I had the perfect man in mind.”

He resisted. At least he had intended to resist. But when she grasped his big old work-roughened hand in her soft, supple fingers and she smiled up at him, he was done in all over again.

“C'mon.” She tipped her head toward the waiting workers, her eyes sparkling with joy in what she was doing.

It was a temporary thing, he told himself.

He dragged his feet and feigned a protest.

Just this morning, he laid out a clear boundary in his mind.

She walked backward, laughing at his feeble show of reluctance.

When she left his office later this morning with whatever solutions he could provide, that would be it. He reinforced his decision silently. No more Corrie. Bye-bye, baker. He'd do what he could to help her, of course, but then…

“I can't wait to see how this looks when they flip the switch and light it all up tonight.” She stepped up into
the bandstand and did a twirl, her arms extended. When she spun around to face him again, she laughed lightly. “What do you say? Want to bring Greer out and we'll all watch it together?”

“I'd like that,” he said softly.
But…

“Please say yes. It would be so sad to have to come down here tonight alone.”

She had no father, issues with her mother, she was an outsider here. Corrie didn't just rattle Andy, she
needed
him.

Andy was a man who had made his life's work restoring things ravaged by time and neglect. He made things whole and right whenever he could. He couldn't change that about himself but he had to be smart about it. Keep it under control. “Okay, stars this morning, lights tonight. But after that I have to get back on track.”