style="font-size:15px;"> “I’m making a braised chicken with artichokes and cherry tomatoes,” Nick said. “Nothing fancy.”
Matty laughed. “Well, you use words like braised, and it sure sounds fancy. You have company coming or something?”
“Nope. Just me. There’s no one staying at the inn tonight, so this is my dinner.” He hadn’t made any real friends in Stone Gap, just a lot of acquaintances. And that list included no one that he knew well enough to invite over to his room at the back of the inn. So tonight it was just him and the artichokes.
“Lot of work for one person.” Matty shook his head. “Me, I usually just throw in a frozen pizza, kick my feet up and watch the game. These days, that’s all I can do is watch the game.” His gaze went to the distance, then he shook it off. “Anyway, you enjoy. See you around.”
Nick said goodbye, then stuffed the bag of groceries in the cab of his truck. As he pulled away from downtown, he noticed the temperature had dropped since this morning, with winter taking as firm a hold as it could in North Carolina. It rarely got cold enough for snow, which was just fine with Nick. He’d had more than enough of below freezing temperatures when he lived up north. Plus, adding snow would just put the cap on Holly Jolly and he didn’t need that.
Nick parked behind the inn, where a single door led into the kitchen, and his room, just to the left of the airy, sunny space. He supposed he could have texted and asked Grady, who had been the one to inherit the two-story, if he could live at their grandmother’s now-empty house, but it had been easier to just stay here at the inn and settle into the small space that didn’t hold any memories or connections to anyone else in his life. Bah humbug.
Okay, so yeah, maybe he sounded like Ebenezer Scrooge. All the more reason to just stick to his own company until at least January 1. Keep his head down, be alone and avoid human contact as much as possible.
Especially contact with his family. Grandma Ida Mae had left Nick a note in the package containing her will. A note he had read and set aside. What she wanted was too much to ask right now. Maybe ever.
An hour later, he’d stowed the groceries, done the few dishes from that morning and straightened the pillows in the front room. After a busy week for Thanksgiving, the renovated antebellum house was almost empty for the next two weeks, and then the Christmas rush began. Della had taken the opportunity to go away for a few days, leaving Mavis Beacham, her business partner, and Nick in charge of the inn.
As far as Nick knew, the only people currently staying at the inn were one elderly man who was visiting his daughter and grandchildren in town and two women who had shown up with a baby early yesterday. A blonde and a brunette, around his age. The brunette he’d only glimpsed a couple times, but she was one of those stunningly beautiful women whose presence lingered long after she left the room.
Nick hadn’t talked to them, and they hadn’t been social either, asking that their meals be left outside their door, and except for the occasional cry from the baby, the women had been pretty quiet. He made a mental note to ask the women if the baby needed any special foods. He assumed it was still drinking formula or whatever, but considering all that he knew about kids could be written on a grain of rice, Nick figured it didn’t hurt to ask. There was some age when babies graduated to stuff like mashed bananas, right? Maybe the kid had already hit that milestone.
He had a couple hours until it was time to start his dinner. The women had asked for a late checkout today, and Mr. Grissom had already left to spend the afternoon and dinner with his family, which left Nick alone at the inn. Mavis would be in tomorrow morning, and they’d talk about the week’s plan after breakfast. He liked that his life had settled into a routine of meals, cooking, cleaning, then rinse and repeat.
Nick stepped into the shower in the tiny bathroom attached to his room. The hot water eased the tension in his shoulders. By the time he turned off the tap, he was fit to be good company for himself. Just as he was stepping out of the shower, he heard a sound from the kitchen. It wasn’t uncommon for guests to stop in and help themselves to a snack—free run of the kitchen was included in the price of the room—so the sound didn’t worry him. He slipped on some jeans, threw on a T-shirt and thought he heard the front door of the inn shut with a soft snick, then the crunch of car tires on the crushed shell drive.
Nick took a few more minutes to comb his hair and tidy the bathroom before he ambled out to the kitchen. As he did, he heard a soft sound that began to grow louder by the second. It took him a moment to figure out that it was crying. And that the sound was coming from a small white basket sitting on the kitchen table, flanked by salt and pepper on one side and a cheery flower-patterned place mat on the other.
Correction—a white basket with a pink blanket and underneath the blanket…
A crying baby. An honest to God, miniature human. On the kitchen table. On a Sunday afternoon.
He hadn’t seen the baby the women had checked in with yesterday—he had heard it cry only once in a while and had gotten a description secondhand from Mavis, who’d pronounced the baby the “cutest thing in the whole county,” but he assumed it had to be that baby. It wasn’t like babies rained down from the sky. At least, not in North Carolina.
But there was no one else in the kitchen. No one down the hall. No one at all.
He remembered the sound of the front door, the tires on the curved drive. He lingered in the kitchen, a few feet away, and waited. Surely they’d be right back.
But the door didn’t open. The baby kept on crying. Not an ear-piercing wail, but more of a stunned, snarfling cry.
“Hey!” Nick called out to the emptiness. “Your baby is here!”
No answer. He grabbed the basket, holding it as delicately as a nuclear bomb, and dashed down the hall. He called up the stairs. “Hey, uh…ladies?” If Mavis had told him their names, he’d already forgotten them. “You forgot the kid.”
Nick ran up the stairs, two at a time. His footsteps echoed in the empty house. He stopped at the Charlotte room, where he knew the women were staying, and knocked on the closed door. The door, which hadn’t been shut entirely, swung open with a soft creak. “Um, just letting you know that your kid is downstairs. And seems…upset? Hungry? Wet? I don’t know, but you should probably check on…um…her.” Given the pink blanket, he figured “her” was probably a safe guess.
Silence. Nick peeked around the door, but saw nothing. Just the empty room. Which was pretty odd since he’d seen them check in with two sets of luggage.
It seemed pretty unlikely that they’d checked out and forgotten both a bag and a baby, no matter how much of a rush they were in. He returned downstairs, half expecting to see one of the women in the kitchen, apologizing and looking for the kid. But there was only the baby in the basket with him—crying louder now.
He bent down and tugged back the edge of the blanket. “Hey, there. What are you doing here?”
Even crying, she was a cute baby. Pink in her chubby cheeks, bright blue eyes and a flutter of blond curls on her head. Not that Nick had a lot of babies to compare this one to. In fact, the last time he’d been this close to a baby had been at his cousin Deanna’s house three years ago on Easter, with his aunt Madge hovering over her “miracle” grandbaby like a helicopter. And even then, he hadn’t gotten close enough to do much more than say congratulations, and back away before anyone got any ideas about making him do something like actually hold the baby.
“Stay
