Without asking me if I needed a ride, Nick carried my things to his truck, tossing everything into the rear cab.
Nick opened the passenger door and turned to watch me walk in his footsteps through the snow. A look of concern settling over his fine-looking face. “Are you limping?”
A warm feeling descended over me.
Oh, yeah. We were still friends.
“No limp,” I lied, trying my best to walk like my right metatarsal hadn’t suffered a stress fracture from overuse and had been bothering me since October. “Cut me some slack. My foot fell asleep on the bus and the snow is six inches deep.”
His gaze narrowed with suspicion. “We’ll see.”
I climbed into his truck and smirked down at him. “How did you know when my bus would arrive?”
He laid a finger on his nose and wiggled it from side-to-side, a private joke between us that Santa’s magic was at play.
I used to chuckle when he did that. Today, I wasn’t buying it. “Did you overhear my mom mention me while she picked up coffee at the Sleigh Café?”
“I might have heard her mention your bus was arriving this afternoon and heard her say you’d call when you needed a ride.” Grinning, Nick closed the door on me and came around to the driver’s side.
I snapped my safety belt in place, noticing a big, handmade sign resting on the dashboard in front of me. It had a large, hand-drawn Christmas tree and the words:Welcome home, Allie!
Knowing Nick, he’d seen me and forgotten all about his sign.
Dork.
I wanted to hug him all over again.
“Cute sign,” I told him when he buckled in and started up the truck.
I’ll be Home for Christmasfilled the cab, provided by the radio he always left on. There was a cardboard air freshener in the shape of a Christmas wreath dangling from his rear view mirror and a candy cane in his cup holder.
Christmas dork.
I grinned. That used to be me, too, before I’d been bitten by the dancing bug.
“Al, you can take that sign and put it in your scrapbook with all those rave reviews I bet you got in New York.”
There were no rave reviews for the chorus line. The scrapbook he’d given me when I left Christmas Mountain a decade ago was largely empty.
Reality check time.
I knew why broke me was in town, I had to make a decision about my career – return to New York City to dance, try my luck elsewhere, or…retire.
My gut clenched at the idea of giving up. I took slow, calming breaths and thought of other things, like Nick.
I turned the radio volume down. “I thought you were in New Orleans, apprenticed to some great chef.” I kept up with news of my hometown. I was on the Christmas Mountain Herald daily email newsletter. Just last summer, they’d done a feature on Nick. “I wouldn’t expect you to be home so soon after Thanksgiving.”
“I came home early because there’s a family emergency.” Nick smiled though, as if the crisis wasn’t dire, and then went on to explain, “My younger sister Noelle is having her first baby. She and her husband live in Denver. Mom plans to drive down there this week.”
“Leaving you in charge of the Sleigh Café?” The coffee shop his mother owned.
He spared me a reproachful look. “Don’t make it sound like covering at the café is a step down for me. I love that place. And so do you.”
I nodded. It was true.
The Sleigh Café was one of Christmas Mountain’s most popular restaurants, located across from the town square on Main Street. They did a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner business but also provided a good cup of coffee and a pastry for folks on the go.
The Sleigh Café was a large part of the pleasant memories I had of my hometown. Just thinking about it brought to mind cheerful customers bustling in for refueling or because they smelled Nick’s baked goods and couldn’t resist. I’d had my first sip of coffee there. And my first look at a family different from my own, where everyone had equal importance.