Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

Noelle

I dress baby salad greens and some tomatoes from Nick's garden in a balsamic vinaigrette then uncork a dusty bottle of chianti and leave it to breathe. I lean against the counter and watch him whip up a quick sauce while the pasta boils. The smell of garlic sizzling in olive oil fills the small kitchen and my stomach growls appreciatively. He tosses a handful of basil into the pan, followed by salt and pepper. Then he opens a can of crushed tomatoes and dumps them on top.

I hand him the red pepper flakes. "Homemade sauce. I'm impressed."

"Don't be. My Italian grandma would never pay for jarred sauce. She made hers the right way, simmered her Sunday gravy all day long. My sister still uses her recipe. This quick version can't compare, but it's better than the stuff in the supermarket."

He shakes the flakes into the sauce and gives it a stir. Watching him cook is disturbingly sexy. This thought pops unbidden into my brain. I give myself a horrified, silent scolding and distract myself from the way his rolled-up sleeves show off his tanned forearms by pouring the wine.

"Cin cin." The Italian toast emerges from the recesses of my mind.

I hand him a glass and he clinks it against mine. "Cheers. I forgot about your time in Italy. Don't judge my sauce too harshly, please."

I sip the smooth wine and smile. "Noted. Since I do use the grocery store stuff, you're safe."

The timer dings, and he jerks his chin. "Can you drain the pasta?"

I grab a potholder, carry the pot over to the colander he's set up in the sink, and dump the pasta. I give the colander a shake, return the pasta to the pot, and drizzle some olive oil on top. He nods approvingly and switches off the stove. We plate and sauce the pasta, wordlessly anticipating each other's movements in the cramped space. It's an oddly intimate silent dance and I'm hyperaware of his body in relation to mine as we work. His thigh grazes mine as he slides behind me to open the refrigerator, and heat surges to the surface of my skin. I freeze, not moving. Barely breathing, for that matter.

Maybe ease off the wine, I tell myself. Immediately ignoring myself, I take a big gulp.

He digs around in a kitchen drawer to find a cheese grater then shaves some fresh hard Parmesan on top of the pasta. I take my plate and the salad bowl and follow him to the tiny table. Once we're seated and have portioned out our salads, he gives me an unreadable look.

"What?"

"I almost said ‘three things.'"

I furrow my brow. He says it like I should know what he's talking about, but I'm lost. "Three things?" I parrot.

He huffs out a quiet laugh and picks up his glass. "Sorry. Force of habit. When the girls were little, Carol started this nightly tradition at the dinner table. We'd go around the table and list three things from our day—one thing we were grateful for, one thing we regretted, and one thing we planned to do to make the next day a better day. We kept it up even after the girls moved out."

Three things sounds like a quintessentially Carol ritual. She was always finding ways to be present, be thankful, be better. I bite back the conflicting emotions stirred up and warring inside me—guilt, gratitude, uncertainty—and raise my glass.

"So, what's one thing you're grateful for?"

His voice is husky. "That's easy. I'm grateful that you agreed to stay. Sometimes, I think the loneliest part of my day is eating dinner by myself."

I blink at the raw honesty. "I can see that. I'm used to eating alone. To be honest, I like it. To me, there's nothing better than enjoying a good meal with a good book. But for years and years, you've had someone to talk to, to share those meals with."

"What are you grateful for?" he counters.

I don't have to think about it. "The scavenger hunt. I haven't been feeling super festive lately. And that's hard when the entire town is in Christmas in July mode. But having an activity to focus on is lifting my spirits. Whoever planned this couldn't have timed it better."

I spear a tomato. After I chew and swallow, I say, "What's one thing you regret about your day?"

He pauses with a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth and his expression tightens. "Not catching that bastard out there." He gestures at the outdoors through the floor-to-ceiling window.

Somehow, I forgot all about the watcher in the woods. Until now. I track the motion of his fork and turn to look out the window. The light has almost completely faded now. The lake glints silver in the distance. The trees gather in the shadows. Somewhere, a whip-poor-will chants his name. I shiver and look away fast. When I turn back to the table, he's watching me. His hazel eyes bore into me, like he's peering into my soul or something.

"What's your regret?"

I shovel some food into my mouth to buy time. He waits, patiently holding my gaze.

I exhale. "Regrets? I have a few. Not all from today, though."

"Any from today?"

I drink and think. "I regret wearing a skirt and sweater set," I answer lightly.

He cocks his head. "Why? It's a cute outfit. Very library lady."

"That's my vibe," I agree. "It's not really ideal for scavenger hunting, though. And definitely not my outfit of choice for an impromptu sleepover."

He dismisses the concern with a wave of his hand. "There's a drawer full of what the Jolly women call ‘cabin clothes' in the bedroom. T-shirts, sweatpants, hoodies. You'll have your pick of comfies."

"Fuzzy socks to sleep in?" I can't sleep when my feet are cold. It's a thing.

"Almost certainly," he tells me in a mock-serious voice.

We finish our meal in companionable silence. Then we carry the dishes over to the sink. I wash, and he dries. And again, it feels like choreography. Like something we've been doing for ages. I consider whether maybe this is an old pattern from a million years ago, from London. And then I remember that I never once turned on the oven in my flat because I used it for sweater storage. No, the Nick and Noelle of the late nineties were anything but domestic.

I must giggle because he turns to me with a curious smile. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. Just remembering my flat in London and its startling lack of closet space."

His grin widens. "I remember. You used your pantry as a linen closet and, if I'm not mistaken, your oven was your sweater drawer. That feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?"

"It does."

In part, I realize with a start, because we never talk about it. For more than two decades, when Nick, Carol, and I reminisced together, she and I told stories from our girlhood, he and she told stories about the early days of their relationship, and he and I told no stories. Shared no memories. Is that absence—the lack of shared history—what made Carol think I still had feelings for him?

He folds the dishtowel with a snap, drawing me out of my thoughts.

"Clean up's all done. Why don't we finish this bottle under the stars?" He picks up the chianti and the glasses and jerks his chin toward the back porch.

"Sure. I'll change into cabin clothes and meet you out there."

He opens the sliding glass door and steps outside, and I hurry down the hallway to the Jolly sisters' shared room. I feel around, patting the paneling on the wall just inside the door until my hand connects with the light switch. I flick it on and blink as my eyes adjust.

Two sets of bunk beds are pushed up against the side walls and a long low dresser anchors the far wall under the windows. I pull open the top drawer and dig out a pair of yoga pants that look like they might fit and a soft blue t-shirt that must be Holly's. It's emblazoned with the logo for her law school's ‘Ambulance Chaser' 10K. I shed my librarian attire, step into the buttery pants, and yank the tee over my head. I let out an appreciative sigh as my comfort increases approximately ten thousand percent. I'd pay a small fortune to ditch my bra, too, but it feels inappropriate to go braless in this particular situation. So the girls remain captive in their underwire prison. Still, it's a vast improvement. I stack my discarded clothes in a neat pile and pad out to the hall, my bare feet slapping the floorboards.

I slide the kitchen door open and join Nick at the cedar table built into one corner of the porch. The exterior lights are off, but the glow from the light over the kitchen sink spills out in a diffuse halo. He pushes my glass toward me. I settle onto the bench beside him and inhale deeply. The warm air carries the sweet scent of wildflowers and the soft chanting of the birds. Fireflies twinkle in the meadow behind the house.

"Comfy?"

"Mmm-hmm." I take a contented sip of my drink.

"Look up," he suggests, tipping his head back.

I do the same. The sky is already a dark purple. A silver sliver of a crescent moon hangs over the shadow of the mountains. And the stars. The sky is an explosion of bright pinpricks. There's not much light pollution in town, but this display is next level.

Awe flows through me, filling my chest. "Wow," I breathe.

"This is my favorite thing about the cabin."

"I can see why."

We sit side by side, our throats open to the sky and soak in the celestial display. His shoulder is pressed up against my bare arm and an image flashes in my mind. We're sitting in Regent's Park in London, a picnic blanket spread out on the ground, Nick's arm draped over my shoulder as I snuggle into his side, staring out at another panoramic view.

"This reminds me of watching the sunset from Primrose Hill," he says in a low voice.

A shiver runs along my spine. "I was just remembering that night."

I feel his gaze slide away from the stars and toward me. "Yeah? "

"Yeah."

I leave unsaid the rest of that memory. I wonder if it's playing out in his mind, too. That night, when I met him after he got off work and we had a sunset picnic in a spot famous for its romantic vibe ended exactly how we both knew it would.

I wriggle slightly so we're no longer touching and reach for the wine bottle. I top off my glass, and then his. He raises the glass toward me then takes a sip without moving his eyes away from my face. Based on the heat in his gaze, he's also thinking about the first time we slept together.

Is his face moving closer to mine? Yes, he's definitely leaning toward me. My pulse flutters. Why am I thinking about his mouth covering mine, the pressure of his lips, the salty taste of his tongue?

I gulp my wine and blurt, "So, what's the third thing?"

He freezes. "What?"

"The third thing. What is it—something to do better tomorrow?"

The intensity in his eyes fades, and he pulls back. "Oh. Yeah. What's one thing you're going to do to make tomorrow a brighter day?"

The moment successfully interrupted, I relax, too. "I'm going to let you join my scavenger hunt so you don't have to pretend to fish."

He laughs. "Very charitable."

"And what will you do to make tomorrow a brighter day?"

"What am I going to do?" He takes a drink while he considers the question. Then he snaps his fingers. "Got it."

I raise my eyebrows in a question .

"I'm gonna raid Merry's herb garden out back and make my famous herb frittata for breakfast."

Relieved at being on less fraught footing, I give him a skeptical look. "It's famous, huh?"

"Maybe not internationally famous. Locally famous."

I purse my lips. "I'm a good judge of frittatas, you know. Hope you can back up this claim."

"Oh, I can. It'll be a match for anything you've tried in the past."

Our easy banter pushes the earlier weirdness out of my mind. "Talk to me about these herbs."

"Some chives, a little dill, sage, parsley. But the secret ingredient is fennel."

"Hmm. That sounds like an authentic frittata. Italians love their fennel in almost everything." I laugh at a memory. "My landlady in Ravenna served sliced raw fennel at the end of every meal. She called it a palate cleanser."

"You know, I always wondered what happened in Italy."

His tone is casual, but the question sets my teeth on edge.

"What do you mean, what happened?"

"The last I heard, you had that traineeship at Oxford and then a research position for the summer at the University of Bologna. When Carol tracked you down you were about to start the masters' program in Italy. Then you came back to Mistletoe Mountain for our wedding and never left."

"Oh—I don't know. I guess I missed home," I say lamely.

I feel the weight of his gaze as he studies me by the starlight.

"Don't BS me, Noelle. What happened?"

Panic rises in my chest. "Nothing. It just wasn't a good situation. I wasn't really looking forward to going back, to be honest. Then, if you remember, Vashti's daughter had her triplets two months early, and Vashti resigned to move to Illinois to help take care of her grandbabies. Suddenly, the Mistletoe library needed a director on short notice. And there I was. A job that I never thought would open up fell into my lap. It was serendipity."

"Do you ever regret it? Staying here?"

I tilt my head and give him a curious look. "No. Does it seem like I do?"

He shrugs and swirls the liquid in his glass. "I don't know. The Noelle I met in London was chock-full of dreams, big ones. Don't get me wrong, Mistletoe Mountain's a special place. I know that better than most, but it's not a big place. Don't you ever feel constricted?"

"No," I tell him honestly. "I can do whatever I want at the library. I don't have to deal with bureaucracy or hierarchy. I can make a difference in this community. Besides, little places can accommodate big dreams. I love this big little place."

He squints at me as if he's not entirely convinced. "And you don't feel like you've missed out? I don't mean professionally. Personally."

"I'm not lonely." I sip my wine, and then amend my defensive answer. "That's not entirely true. Sometimes I'm lonely. Sometimes I look around and wonder how I ended up in my forties, without a partner or a family. But, on balance, I'm happy and fulfilled."

"Why don't you date more?" he asks.

I snort. "Have you looked around? Josh Morgenthal's taken. "

"Come on. I'm being serious."

"So am I. Pretty much everyone in this town is coupled up, unless I'm looking for a guy in his early twenties. And I'm not the cougar type."

He considers this. "I guess the local dating pool is kind of shallow. I never really thought about it."

"You haven't had to." Yet.

I wonder, will he start dating? Nick Jolly, eligible widower? Carol certainly didn't want him to live his days out alone.

As if he's reading my mind, he says, "I can't imagine ever putting myself back out on the dating scene."

"No?"

"No." He turns to look directly at me again, and, yet again, his eyes are molten. "What are the odds I'll find a true partner? I'm not sure lightning will strike a third time."

I clear my throat. "You mean second."

"No, Noe. I mean third."

I hold his gaze. Unbidden, my tongue darts out and wets my lips. He follows the motion, and his Adam's apple bobs. The air between us crackles. My heart thumps against my breastbone.

He's a magnet, pulling me toward him. I see myself leaning in, digging my fingers into his thick hair, and … I jump up from the bench before I can do something irreversible.

"Good night, Nick," I croak. Then I run into the cabin.