Page 12 of A Bright Winter Season

“Ugh,” she said, shutting her eyes for a moment. “Did the milk go bad or something?”

“No.” Grayson looked at her in concern. “Does yours taste bad?”

“No, it tastes wonderful, but I’m really nauseous all of a sudden.”

“Oh no!”

“It can’t be the cocoa, though, or you’d be nauseous too.” She sighed. “It’s weird, I’ve never had a reaction to drinking cocoa like this before. I must just be more fatigued than I thought. I’ve been super busy, and I’m probably wearing myself out more than I think I am.”

“Why don’t we put your cocoa in the fridge and you can reheat it tomorrow?”

“Sure. Sounds good.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ll just sit here with you for a bit while you drink yours.”

Grayson wrapped an arm around her and she closed her eyes. Soon she began to feel sleepy and her nausea subsided. She decided that it must have just been fatigue making her nauseous, and she thought to herself that she could launch her ads the next day instead. For now, clearly it was time to go to sleep.

CHAPTER SIX

Vivian hummed quietly to herself as she shuffled through a box of old papers. She was in the office at The Lighthouse Grill, looking for old photographs and magazine clippings.

Alexis had said that she wanted to decorate the walls of the dining room with framed newspaper articles about the pub and old pictures of Vivian and Frank working there when it first opened. Vivian loved the idea, and she was having a wonderful time meandering down memory lane. It made her miss Frank terribly, but it also brought many smiles to her face.

Occasionally, she wiped away a tear, but for the most part, she was laughing more than she was crying. She found a picture of Frank dancing and singing in the middle of the dining room—it had been late at night after they’d closed up the pub for the evening and everyone had been goofy with fatigue—and she chuckled and shook her head fondly.

Once she’d set aside a stack of pictures and articles for Alexis to frame, she began to tidy up the office. Julia generally kept things neat and organized, but she wasn’t the only one who used the office, and sometimes things got misplaced or left on the desk in a hurry, since the pub often called people away from the office to take care of some surprise issue.

As she worked, she thought about all of the things they would need to do in order to create a successful community Christmas celebration. She smiled, thinking that it was very sweet of her children to want to throw a party at the pub like that. She knew they were doing it for her, for the pub, and for the people of Rosewood Beach, and she wanted to help make their ideas a reality.

At first, she’d been a little taken aback by the idea, especially when Julia had told her that it would involve enacting Alexis’s redecorating ideas. The more they’d talked to her about it, however, the more she’d realized that it really was a splendid plan. When Alexis had shown her the illustrations of the design plan that she’d drawn up, she’d felt tears spring to her eyes. It was such a perfect blending of her and Frank’s original vision for the pub and new and fashionable design choices. She felt excited that her daughter was the one to change the way the pub looked, and she knew that Frank would have loved what Alexis had come up with just as much as she did.

She was deep in thought about the redecorating and the Christmas party, beginning to feel more and more excited about all of it, when she heard a knock on the office door.

She looked up, surprised, and saw a man standing in the doorway.

“Can I help you?” she stammered. She racked her brain, but she couldn’t remember ever having seen him before.

“I’m Terrence Rawlins,” he said, and then paused as though he expected her to realize who he was based on his name.

She frowned a little in confusion. “I’m Vivian Owens. What brings you to The Lighthouse Grill?”

Behind the scenes,I might add,she thought.Guests aren’t supposed to be allowed back here. I wonder who let him walk through the kitchen?

He frowned, and she thought to herself that he seemed a bit stiff. He was an older man, around her own age, and he was handsome and looked distinguished in an almost intimidating way. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt and a dark blue bowtie that went very well with the shade of his dark brown suit coat. His graying hair was slicked back, and he had a well-kept mustache which made his frown appear even deeper than it really was.

“Can I help you?” she repeated, doing her best to smile, even though she felt unusually flustered all of a sudden.

Terrence cleared his throat. “I’m the health inspector, Mrs. Owens. I’m here to complete my inspection of the pub.”

“Oh! Oh my. I’m sorry, it’s—well, I mean, everything should be perfectly in order. I mean, in health. Everything should be healthy.” She paused and took a breath. “I’m sure you’ll find our establishment perfectly up to standards, but it’s just that we weren’t expecting you.”

“You should have been. I sent you an email a week ago.”

“Ah.” Vivian felt as though she might be blushing a little, and then she scolded herself for caring what a stranger thought of her. Just because he looked all professional and serious didn’t mean she needed to be embarrassed about how hectic her schedule was! “I’m afraid I must have missed it. You see, I’ve been very busy. Christmas is a very busy time of the year for us. We bake a lot of seasonal pies and sell them—well, you’ll see that no doubt when you do your inspection. And on top of that we’re getting ready for a Christmas party event. It’s been a lot, so in the middle of everything, I guess your email must have slipped past me.”

Terrence pressed his lips together doubtfully. “I would think that as a responsible restaurant owner, things like successfully passing a health inspection would be at the forefront of yourmind. I would go so far as to say that those sorts of things should definitely be at the forefront of your mind.”

Vivian immediately thought of Judd McCormick’s remarks in the magazine article, and the way he’d implied that the pub wasn’t a truly professional business. She felt a little stung and she found herself speaking a little more crisply than she usually did. “It is certainly at the forefront of my mind,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t see your email and I didn’t know that you’d be here today. You’re perfectly welcome to do your inspection now.”

“Great.” He took a clipboard and a pen out of a messenger bag that he had slung around his shoulders. He clicked the end of the pen a few times rapidly, and the sound of it seemed to intensify Vivian’s jitters.

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