“Morning, boss.”
“Boss?”
“I expect my pay in cake, by the way.”
He smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I spent all night thinking up how to turn this place into a holiday party, and it starts with a sleigh ride.”
“A what?”
“A sleigh ride. You know—dashing through the snow? One horse open sleigh?”
Right. “I…we don’t have a sleigh. And I don’t know the first thing about horses.”
“I called around and found a stable. And a sleigh. And don’t worry—a driver for tomorrow. It’ll be fun, and I promise you won’t have to do anything.”
He looked at her.
“It’ll be perfect. Now, tell me why you’re watering the lake.”
“Ice-skating rink. I need candles in bags, I guess, and a bonfire.”
She looked at him, and a slow smile crept up her face. “Oh, we can do better than that, boss.”
Guest. Just a guest.
“What’s with the sigh?”
He looked at her, grinning into the sunlight, and shook his head. “I’m just wondering how in over my head I am here.”
She winked. “Very.”
Stella hadn’t been as crazy proud about something since she nailed the entirety of Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante in E minor for cello and orchestra, op. 125, without a glitch.
And that had taken her months, the better part of a year to get right. This feat—creating a winter wonderland skating arena—had only gobbled out most of her day.
But it seemed, with the stringing of the twinkle lights around the four corners of the rink, then across the middle, creating a festive glow to the late afternoon gray, it had also sent the shadows of the past month into hiding.
“It’s pretty magical, I’ll give you that,” Romeo said, standing in front of a growing fire.
She grinned at him. Nope, she wasn’t a complete failure. She’d added battery-operated candles in paper bags along the edges of the snowbank and had connected her phone to a pair of Bluetooth speakers now playing “Joy to the World” into the crisp air.
“I’m just hoping people show up,” she said, sitting down on a bench topped with a blanket.
“I put flyers under the door of every guest cabin,” Romeo said. He tossed a log onto the fire, and it showered sparks into the brisk air. Somehow, being around him felt easy. As if her heart didn’t have to try so hard to relax.
Shoot, she really liked him, and maybe she should be sprinting the opposite direction, but really, what did she expect? Happily ever after didn’t happen in a week, and it wasn’t like, really, she was going to give up her plan of finishing her education, right?
Nope. Not thinking about that. She pulled on one of the skates she’d dug up in the pile Romeo had brought out from the maintenance shed. She glanced at Romeo. “Are you going to join me?”
He stared at her, wide-eyed, for a moment. “I…um…I’m not very good—”
“C’mon. No judgment.”
His mouth lifted on one side, and something sweet sparked in his eyes. “Promise?”
She crossed her heart, and he came down to the ice.
“Last time I went skating was the year I stayed with Uncle John and Aunt Ingrid. I’d never learned to skate, but you can’t be around this family without getting on the ice. My cousin Owen—he runs the place—is a former hockey star. And my cousin Grace is married to Max Sharpe.” He was pulling on a pair of hockey skates as he spoke.
“Max Sharpe? He used to play for the Blue Ox. I heard he retired. Illness?”
“Huntington’s disease.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It is. He’s in a study, and it seems to be helping. But he’s a fighter, and his faith seems to keep him going.”
Faith. For some reason, the word pinged inside her as she got up and circled the rink. The ice had frozen into a sleek, smooth layer. Maybe that was what she was missing. Faith that at the end of the journey, she didn’t make the wrong decision.
She almost ran into Romeo.
“Sorry!” He grabbed her, trying to keep them from falling. “I told you I’m not very good.”
She took his hand. “Stop thinking and just glide over the ice.”
He pushed out beside her. “That’s my problem—too many scenarios playing out in my head.”
“I get that.” They rounded the end of the rink and turned. “I lie in bed replaying songs, trying to get the fingering right.”
“How long have you been playing the cello?”
He nearly fell, and she righted him. “For as long as I can remember. My parents were given a hand-me-down cello when I was about four, and I got free lessons from our choir director at church. I guess I took to it, because they sprang for private lessons when he retired and moved away. That led to private schools, recitals and travel, and…well, they’ve sacrificed so much for me, I can’t imagine giving it up.”
She turned, skating backward, still holding his hand. His gaze found hers. “And yet, you’re not in Vienna—look out!” He yanked her away just before she plowed into the snowbank. The force turned them, and in a second, they’d landed on the ice.
Romeo grimaced. “Now I remember why I don’t skate.”
She made a face. “Story of my life. I get too focused on something and completely miss the disaster ahead.”
He lay back on the ice, looking at the sky. “And now we’re talking about the international smuggler?”
She lay beside him. The sky had turned a deep gray, the sun barely fracturing it. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was so humiliated in Brussels, sitting in customs, wondering how I was so easy to fool. It was so…stupid to fall for him. I know better.”
“It’s hard to see the truth when your heart is in the way.”
She glanced at him. Frowned.
He met her eyes, then looked away. “I told myself for years that the world was simply unfair to my mom, to me. That we were homeless because people were cruel or did us wrong, that my mother was just trying to do her best.” He sighed. “But she was simply selfish.” He drew in a breath. “And I was in the way.”
His words stripped any from her. What?
“When I was ten years old, we found an old van that we decided to call home while Mom tried to find work. We’d been kicked out of our apartment—everything I owned was in this shopping bag from a department store. A big red one, like you get at Christmastime. One night, she left me in the van to…I don’t know. It‘s not important. But I was afraid, so I went out searching for her. Some cops found me and took me to a shelter, and later I ended up in foster care. Everything sort of changed after that—my mom really went downhill, and I was in and out of foster homes. I can’t help but think that…”
She tried to imagine him at ten—cold, alone, scared. Sheesh. And here she’d been, whining about her life—
“Well, anyway, the thing was, I’d left the bag behind. Mom came to the shelter—I don’t know how she found it, but when they opened the door, I just—I just ran to her. My brother had joined the army, so he wasn’t around, and I thought—she’d come to get me. And maybe that old van wasn’t a warm bed, but at least I was with someone who…” He swallowed. “Anyway. She hugged me, then she pushed me away and said ‘Merry Christmas.’ Then she handed me that red bag and walked away.”