Miss Hales shakes her head. “Last guest must have been thirty minutes ago. I’d guess we have our crowd.”
My heart thumps in my chest. “I’ll take this and see where we’re at then.”
Miss Hales nods, reaching out to rub the back of my shoulder. “Any idea where Mr. Bates got off to? Someone owes me a dance.”
Her hand slips lower down my back. Unintentionally, I’m sure, but I still fight back a yelp as her spindly fingers graze the top of my ass. Mr. Bates is about to get an all new Miss Hales experience if I send her his way.
“Try the barn,” I tell her. “Last I heard, he was refilling the punch bowl.”
Maybe I’ll spare him a drunken assault when there are so many minors around Santa to bear witness.
Miss Hales smiles at me, exposing a mouthful of crooked, aged teeth before she hops through the lobby and toward the back door.
“Eugene-y!” She trills.
The corner of my mouth twitches in response, the first relaxed smile I’ve felt coming on all evening. I glance down at the cash bag in my hands; if it’s full, it might just be enough to save this place. It might be another reason to smile. I push open my front door and step out onto the quiet of the veranda, not caring about the snow and cold.
It’s so still out here. I glance down the narrow street, realizing that none of the other businesses have their lights on. Snow has long since piled over guest tracks, although it’s stopped snowing since. The whole town must be at my little party, trying to help me save my piece of Little Haven.
There’s a new pang in my heart at that.
I love this inn. I always have, ever since I was a girl, and I’d visit my grandmother running it. But when I inherited the place, it didn’t necessarily play out like my dream come true.
It wasn’t until Gray came that I finally started to feel some ownership over it. Some hope in what I was restoring, and what I was building anew. Shit.
I open the cash bag and peer inside. It’s a fair bit of money, but bills this large won’t take too long to count. I walk over to the veranda railing, place the bag, and start in on my work.
Five hundred. A thousand. Folks have been generous.
But the bag is emptying faster than I expected, and when I’m left with the last few measly twenties, that pang in my chest has grown to a full-on heart attack. It’s not going to be enough. All this work, all this trying to resist and thenget overGray Smith and it’s all going to be for nothing. I can’t save the inn.
It’s too goddamn quiet to scream into this darkness. Instead, I shove my fists into my mouth and let loose a muffled yell. I stamp my foot like I’m a girl again and—
I slip in the melting slush of the porch, landing flat on my ass with my legs splayed out past the veranda’s edge. I sit there for a moment too long, dumbfounded at how so much bad could be packed into such a small window of time.
The snow is already melting. I reach out, running a finger along the dripping porch railing. That’s the last sign worth noting, isn’t it? When even the magic snow is giving way and telling me to wrap up this effort, this season, this childhood crush I’ve let linger for far too long.
This time, when the curses come to my lips, I let them go.
“Fuck!”
My voice is absorbed in the slushy snow. Damn it, somehow noting that fact only makes me feel further alone.
Something crunches in the distance. I take a deep breath and force myself to open my eyes. It could be more guests to pay for entrance to the party, to pay for drinks, or pay for Santa pictures. I could still make it out of this hole, right? I squint into the darkness as a pair of headlights round the corner of the road and head for the Little Haven Inn.
And then I scramble up to my feet, simultaneously hating how my heart rate has picked up and clinging to that last flicker inside of me that holds onto sugarplum dreams and Christmas miracles.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: GRAY
“Molly, what the hell?”
I throw the truck into park in the middle of the street and rush out. She’s standing up now, snow still clinging to her leggings as she stares at me, mouth ajar.
“Damn it,” I mutter as I shrug off my coat and march up her porch steps. Molly is stiff and awkward as I drape the thing over her shoulders and pull it tight across her chest. “Why are you sitting in the cold during a snowstorm? Why don’t you have on any layers?”
“It’s not a snowstorm anymore.” She’s still watching me with that strange, detached expression. Her eyes are narrowed and dark as she lifts a skinny finger to point at the slush at our feet. “It’s already melting. It’s a sign from the universe, right?”
“A sign…?” That’s when I notice the discarded bag of cash in a slush pile just behind her. Bills are sticking out at random angles, like she just got done sorting through it. There’s a pressure across my rib cage as I turn back to Molly and take her chin in my hand, making her look at me. She doesn’t resist my touch as I thought she might, but her eyes narrow more. They look tired. Wary. A new pang of guilt washes through me at that. “Moll, it’s not a sign from the universe. And the cash…”