Their First Noel (7 page)

He couldn't help sighing at his own bullheadedness as he trudged upstairs to tend to Greer. It didn't take much, once he mentioned Corrie's name, to refocus the girl's energy. She wrapped herself in her robe and took off like it was daybreak on Christmas morning, insisting that Corrie would need her immediately.

Andy took the time to change out of the clothes he had slept in and into some fresh jeans and a work shirt. He washed his face and neck to get the last of the flour, then brushed his teeth and checked his email to make sure his mom hadn't sent any new information. He wasn't stalling, he told himself, or worse, pouting because he didn't want to surrender to Corrie's offer. He was just going about his business. Stick with the plan. She was the one intruding, after all. Doing things that weren't even necessary. Again, he knew that was
pride talking, and when he got sick of hearing his lame justifications, he made his way down the stairs.

“Mmmm. What smells so good?” he called out when his foot hit the concrete floor and he turned toward the dining room across the way from the big, open lobby.

“Only a southern breakfast so good it will make you want to slap your mama,” Corrie said as she lifted up a huge platter.

Greer gasped.

Corrie set the platter on the table in front of Jim Walker, who tipped his head to one side and narrowed his eyes to study her.

“That's just an expression, Greer, honey. A good southerner would never slap his mama.” She smiled at the girl then noticed Jim staring at her and inched back a bit. “Have I got flour in my hair? Jelly on my clothes? Egg on my face?”

Jim shook his head and chuckled. “No, no. I'm sorry. It's just that there is something familiar about you.”

“Me? Really?” She worked the knot of her apron free, slid it from her neck and hung it on the back of a chair before taking a seat. “Were you at the lighting last night, maybe you saw me there?”

“Oh, yeah.” He shot Andy a discerning look, like he was having trouble making all the pieces fit. “That must be it. Last night and then to see you here a few hours later.”

“I hope I don't have to remind you that we called you because it was a surprise to find Corrie here this early in the morning,” Andy said. He hoped his tone came off protective to Corrie and maybe just a tiny bit menacing
to Jim, just in case the guy was jumping to the wrong conclusion about what had gone on since the lighting.

“Yeah. Yeah. Of course,” Jim blurted out. “I didn't mean to imply anything.”

A puzzled look came over Greer's face and Corrie's expression looked a bit bewildered as well.

“Look, it's not like Corrie is going to stay here. She came by to use the kitchen and will be gone as soon as possible.”

“By Friday at the latest,” she chimed in before she raised a small bowl with a spoon in it and asked, “Who wants gravy on their biscuits?”

“Friday?” The legs of Andy's chair squawked over the hard, cold floor as he scooted it forcefully backward. “Friday is, like, a whole week.”

“Five days, if you don't count today. Or Friday.” The spoon in her hand, brimming with thick, steaming gravy, hovered over Andy's plate.

“I have a timetable, you know.” Suddenly, he didn't feel like such a heel for not instantly bowing to this woman's seemingly benevolent offer of help. Benevolent? Yeah, benevolent like a bulldozer.

He gazed into her eyes, trying to figure out what she was up to. She must have taken that as a sign that he wanted gravy. Lots of gravy.

She began ladling it over the golden, fluffy biscuits she had already laid out on a plate for him.

At the table, Jim couldn't seem to shovel the meal in fast enough.

Greer was pushing broken bits of biscuits dripping with sweet-smelling amber honey into her mouth like
it was popcorn and Andy and Corrie were an action-packed movie.

Andy didn't care. He felt hemmed in and at the same time completely outside his element. He found himself torn between how much he cared about Corrie and his drive to come to her rescue and the carefully laid plans he had made to get the inn ready by the Christmas Eve open house. Those plans had been more than a year in progress. Corrie had popped up uninvited, unexpected, uncontainable.

But hadn't he allotted Corrie enough of his time already? He'd told her how to brace the top half of her gingerbread inn. Sure, it didn't deal with the roof issues, and he didn't know until they put it together if his suggestions would work, but… “I have a ‘to-do' list as long as my arm.”

“And what a nice, strong arm it is.” She patted his biceps. “I have my own list, you know. And none of it can get done if I have to stop and move my project around, maybe risk ruining it and having to start over. As for
your
list, if you would let me—”

“I have a plan. A deadline.” It was less of a protest and more of a proclamation of the simple facts. “Any of this ringing a bell with you?”

“I'm not trying to become a guest at the inn. I'll only work here during daylight hours then go back to my groovy digs at the Maple Leaf Manor.” She smiled.

He tried to smile at the reference to the seventies-era decor of the Maple Leaf but he couldn't quite manage it.

“I won't get in your way. I promise,” she said softly. “You know how strongly I feel about people keeping
their promises, especially at Christmas, especially in this inn.”

He met her eyes. He almost expected her to start humming “The First Noel,” the song from the treasured snow globe that Greer had broken. From anyone else it would have come off as manipulation by guilt. “Please?”

From Corrie, it sounded like a plea from the heart. She was getting nowhere on the search for her father. She hadn't seen so much as a flake of snow. She couldn't go home without even managing an entry in the contest. She'd told him that first night that he was the only one who could help her with that.

“Andy?” she prodded softly. “What do you say? Can I borrow some kitchen space until Friday?”

That's what got him. The call to be her hero. Corrie needed a hero. She had no hope of accomplishing anything she had come to Vermont to do without one.

He took a bite of the biscuits drenched in gravy to buy himself some time. The dense, savory flavor of butter, salt and pepper, herbed sausage and a hot, perfectly baked biscuit flooded his mouth. He chewed and swallowed and without taking even a second more to plot the right move, he looked Corrie in the eyes and said, “Take the whole kitchen. I'll do whatever I can to make it work.”

“T
hat smells great.” Andy came through the kitchen doors near mid-day just as Corrie slid the last pan of gingerbread out of the oven. He stopped to take a deep breath and asked, “When can I get a sample?”

The professional-style baking pan, one of four that she had hauled all the way from South Carolina, clattered as she settled it over the top of the stove. She waved her hand over the baked cut out that would eventually serve as the side of the inn. Unintentionally, her action sent the aroma of fresh, spicy gingerbread wafting throughout the baking-warmed room. “Believe me, you don't want anything I've got here.”

“Yeah?” He moved in to peer over her shoulder, leaning in close. “It certainly looks—”

Corrie didn't realize just how close he was standing until she turned around and found her nose practically nuzzling his soft flannel shirt.

“Good,” he said softly.

“Thank you,” she murmured. At least she tried to
murmur. Her lips formed the words but she didn't seem to make a sound.

He held her gaze for a moment.

Her heart fluttered. He was close enough to kiss her.

In another time and under better circumstances, she couldn't think of anything she'd have liked more than that. To kiss Andy? Just the prospect that it could, maybe, one day happen made her lips tingle and her skin tighten into a million tiny goose bumps.

Actually, even knowing that nothing could come of it, Corrie wouldn't have stopped the man if he had closed the gap between them and put his lips to hers. She wouldn't have pushed him away. Well, not right away.

He pulled back. “No way can you convince me that something you've spent this much time on isn't any good.”

“Oh, it's good all right.” She cleared her throat and turned back to the gingerbread in the shallow pan. “Good and sturdy. Not exactly a term we'd use to sell baked goods back home.”

“Oh?” he reached out as if he might steal one of the scrap cookie bits and pop it into his mouth.

She slapped his hand. “You really don't want to try that.”

Andy leaned back against the counter which made him able to look at her face as he said, “I thought you said everything on this gingerbread contest entry had to be edible.”

“Edible, yes. Tasty?” Still flustered from thinking of kissing him and him clearly not interested in doing so, she gave a one-shouldered shrug to let him draw his
own conclusion. “They don't give points for that, so it's okay to fiddle with the recipe to get the best building material.”

“Really?” He crouched down and ran his open hand over the largest of the multiple gingerbread cut outs. “Too bad we can't improvise like that in the renovation business.”

That caught Corrie's attention. If she really wanted to show this man that he could turn loose of his control issues, she had to use every opportunity to point out options. “As long as you're not compromising quality or safety, I don't see why you can't use some basic ingenuity to improve on—”

“It smells like Christmas in here!” Greer burst into the room, her hair flying behind her in a thick, shining ponytail that kept bouncing even after the child came to a stop, shut her eyes, poked her nose in the air and took a deep, noisy breath. “Ahhhh. I think you should bake gingerbread every day, Corrie.”

“She does bake every day, you goof.” Andy gave her pony tail a tug to get the kid to stand still.

“Not gingerbread,” Corrie said. “Definitely not this kind of gingerbread. If you want I could—”

“As long as I don't have to eat the yucky stuff.” She crinkled up her nose, giggled then covered her mouth with both hands. “Mom made gingerbread people last year and we spent all day decorating them. It was so much fun. But when I ate one. Blech!”

“Maybe my mom was using your improvised recipe,” Andy gave Corrie a wink. “I'd forgotten that, short stuff. But now that you bring it up, I didn't much care for those gingerbread cookies, either.”

Corrie moved the gingerbread, baking parchment and all, on to a rack on the last empty space on the counter. “Well, if you didn't come in here for the gingerbread, why are you both in here?”

“Lunch.” Greer rubbed her tummy.

“Is it that late already?” She'd lost all track of time. She understood that it was meant to be a commercial kitchen but if she had designed it, there would have been more windows than the three high, narrow ones on the side wall that a person couldn't even see out of. She found the lack of natural light disconcerting.

“No, it's not quite lunch time. We came to ask you if you have plans for lunch?” Andy put one hand on his sister's shoulder. “We thought maybe we'd grab a bite to eat over at the Mt. Piney Café on the highway. After that we could take the full tour of Mt. Piney, which would mean we'd cruise through the post office parking lot then shoot across the street to see if the minister put up a funny saying on the sign at the All Souls Community church. Once you'd recovered from all that excitement, we could come back and build us a gingerbread inn.”

“I'd love to embrace the whole Mt. Piney experience, but even if we had a huge lunch and took the long way around the town we still couldn't come back and start work on the inn.”

“But I thought the plan was—”

“To keep it here until Friday,” she reminded him. “The gingerbread has to cure overnight to be stable enough for construction.”

“Oh.” He rubbed the shaggy auburn waves flipping over his collar. “It's just that I have this afternoon open.”

“No work on the inn?”

“Drywallers are in this afternoon,” he explained.

“Hooray for drywallers!” Greer peered at the pieces of the inn laid out to cool.

“Hooray?” Corrie looked to Andy to clarify.

“Drywall is one of the last steps. The guys have agreed to work today until it's done, even into the night. So now I have all this time and no gingerbread. None to eat. None to build with.”

“Aww, poor baby. Maybe we could—”

“What's this?” Greer, on tiptoe, had a piece of the cardstock template for the gingerbread edifice.

“Greer! Put that down. Haven't you learned your lesson about not touching things?” Andy took two long strides and had Greer under the arms, lifting her away from the counter.

The action sent the neatly stacked pattern pieces spinning and sailing out on to the floor. Corrie followed their descent, bending at the knees with her hands spread and her head down.

Andy bent forward as well, taking Greer with him and effectively turning the child's noggin into a battering ram.

A noise between a thunk and bonk…a
thonk
…resounded through the huge kitchen. Corrie went staggering backward.

Greer let out a cry.

Andy set the child down and gave her forehead a quick examination. “No damage done.”

“It hurts.”

“It's fine,” he assured her.

“Mom would kiss it.” She drew her mouth up into an overplayed pout.

“Well, Mom's not…” He caught himself midreminder of the child's absent parent and looked up at Corrie. When his eyes met hers, she saw a man who wanted to protect his sister but wasn't sure what answer would do that.

She chewed her lower lip. It was the kind of small, seemingly insignificant moment that could define a person to anyone paying attention. If Andy insisted on doing things his way, not the way his mom would have done them, then Corrie would know her hopes of getting him to loosen up his thinking would probably be for nothing. On the other hand…

“Mom's not the only one whose kisses can make things all better,” he concluded.

On the other hand there might just be hope for him yet.

He planted an over-the-top lip-smacking kiss on his sister's head.

She giggled and wriggled and pretended to wipe it away, then looked up and pointed. “Now Corrie.”

“What?” Andy suddenly looked anything but open to loosening up. He held his hand out and shook his head. “No. I don't think that would be appropriate.”

“Corrie got bumped, too.” Greer pointed to her own forehead. “You kissed
my
head. Corrie is company and you shouldn't give something to me and not give it to company. Mom says.”

He stared at his sister for a moment and a slow smile crept over his lips. He laughed softly then gave Corrie a
resigned look. “She's right. Mom does say that. Where did you get thumped?”

“Uh…here, I guess.” Corrie put her finger to a spot just above her temple.

Andy leaned in.

She braced herself for the same kind of comical, exaggerated smack-a-roo that he'd given his kid sister. So she was in no way prepared for the soft, sweet and all too fleeting kiss that Andy dropped on the spot where her head still throbbed slightly.

“There,” Greer summed up with a head nod. “All better.”

“All better,” Corrie whispered as she pulled away. Her eyes met Andy's and time seemed to take a deep breath and hold it for just a moment. She blushed. “I better check on that gingerbread.”

He looked away and cleared his throat. “Let's get this pattern picked up, Greer.”

Corrie spun on her heel and began to test the gingerbread cooling on the countertop.

“Look around, kid. This can't be everything.” Andy laid the handful of stiff paper pieces down.

Corrie looked from the gingerbread to the pattern. “No, that's it. That's all there is.”

“Where are the buttresses?”

Corrie glanced at the pattern then at all the pieces she had baked, the same number she had made on her first test run, plus the extra load-bearing pieces that Andy had recommended. “The what-tresses?”

“A construction system that supports the roof?” He tented his fingers to demonstrate. “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

She shook her head.

“It will be easier to just show you. Let's go take a look at the attic.”

“The attic?” Greer's head whipped around. She flung the pieces of paper she had gathered on to the counter. “I love the attic. Can I go, too?”

“Sure.”

“C'mon, Corrie. Follow me.” Greer shot out the door, leaving it swinging in her wake.

Andy took a step and caught the edge of the door in one hand. He turned, holding it open for Corrie, and motioned for her to come along.

She slipped off the bib apron she had on and in doing so, brushed against the spot Andy had just kissed. To forestall the heat she felt threatening to flood her face, she reached over and grabbed her cell phone then forced her thoughts to the reason Greer had suggested the kiss. “You did a nice thing stepping in to kiss your sister's hurt away without letting her dwell on your mom not being here. Are you worried about her being away so long?”

“Worried?” He seemed to consider that as she walked through the door past him. When he let it fall shut behind him and came beside her to show her the way, he had his answer, “No. I learned a long time ago, when she started making these trips all over, that I had to leave her well-being with the Lord. I won't pretend that I'm happy that the red tape on this particular trip has taken so long and the pinch it puts me in, having to take care of Greer while I'm under this last stretch of construction crunch. But that's about my timing, not God's.”

He was talking about his mother. Still, as Corrie
tucked her cell phone into her pocket, she couldn't help thinking
her
demands on his time didn't help that time pinch one bit. Still, he was a grown man, bringing a lot of this on himself with his stubbornness. “If you feel overwhelmed, then ask for help.”

“I took this on myself and I need to see it through on my own.” He started up the steps without so much as a glance in her direction as he said, low and quietly, “Expecting other people to step in to help finish what I started? Not my way.”

Corrie held her ground at the base of the stairs, her hand on the banister.

Halfway up the stairs, Andy turned to his left and finally seemed to realize she hadn't dutifully followed on his heels. He paused and looked back at her. “What?”

She put her fist on her hip and pressed her lips shut tight.

He looked heavenward, groaned out a sigh and came down again until he stood one step above her. “Something you want to say to me?”

“I hardly know where to start.”

He almost smiled, then his expression went serious but not stern. “Start by walking up the stairs with me to the attic.”

Corrie did not budge. “In other words, do it your way.”

He did laugh at that. He looked so good when he laughed. His eyes lit. His broad shoulders tilted back. Just the hint of tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, highlighting their green color.

The sight caused a flutter in Corrie's stomach but she
refused to let it throw her off track. “What if
your
way isn't working, Andy?”

He leaned down, not in any threatening way, but as if he wanted to catch every word, every nuance as he asked, “If you have something to say, Corrie, just say it.”

“I'm just saying that if your way isn't working, Andy, maybe it's time to ask—”

“Hey! Are you two kissing or something down there?” Greer's voice rang out from the hallway above them.

“No!” They both said at once.

“Then come on. I want to show Corrie the attic.”

“This discussion is not over,” she warned him with teasing in her tone she hoped let him know she wasn't angry or judgmental. After all, she only had his best interest at heart. She moved past him to join his sister in the hallway then up a narrow enclosed staircase. “Okay, Greer, what is so great about the attic that you can't wait to show…whoa!”

“This is something, isn't it?” Corrie had hardly stepped into the large, open space when Andy came through the door, right behind her. “I guess it's where the staff used to come to get away from the guests.”