Page 26 of Unwrapped

“I know who you are. I’m not expecting anyone else tonight,” she reaches back to grab my arm again, taking me into the coziest kitchen I’ve ever seen. The smell of percolating coffee and gingerbread fills my nostrils. Red plaid curtains frame the windows. A small Christmas tree sits in the center of an oak table. More fresh garland is looped around the room. The strange woman bends over and checks on a rack of baking cookies as she opens a fire-engine red commercial grade cast iron oven.

“Almost done.” With a dishtowel draped over her shoulder she pins her gaze on me, taking in the man’s coat hanging over my small frame. She cocks an eyebrow, grabs two ceramic Santa coffee mugs and fills them almost to the top with fresh coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

I nod my head for both. She grunts in satisfaction, fixes a plate with fresh gingerbread cookies and hands the mug over from across the counter. “So, tell me Shiloh Corbett, what’s your story? A fancy, young woman booking a stay in the middle of nowhere alone… this outta be good.”

I should be insulted. Taken aback by this whole situation. Instead something about the short, pudgy woman makes me want to spill my guts.

I sigh. “My mother was a washed-up Hollywood starlet. She slept with so many of her castmates—my father could be anyone from Tom Selleck to Robert Redford.”

“Oh my,” she flushes and starts fanning herself with the elf dishtowel.

“Mmmm,” I sip the delicious coffee and bite into a cookie. Bursts of flavor make my taste buds rejoice. “I wasted too much time with the wrong man. This holiday is about me. Discovering who I am—what I want.” I munch on the rest of my cookie feeling self-conscious as she studies me from over the rim of her mug. I can’t stop talking. Everything just bubbles to the surface as I tell Mrs. Claus my life story… “end then when I landed in Medford. The most infuriating jerk had the gall to bully me. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I couldn’t because he was the only other car on the road that passed me on my way here. I ended up needing his help when my car slipped, and I ended up off the road. This is his coat.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Come on. You need a hot bath and some fresh clothes. I’ll have dinner ready when you’re done and then we need to bake eight dozen sugar cookies.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

She smiles. “Sally McBride. Live-in manager of the inn. And you Shiloh are my only paying guest. It’s just us and somehow my she-devil friend, Luce talked me into baking all these damn cookies for the tree lighting ceremony tomorrow night. Are you in?”

“Sure,” I grin. Half afraid to even say no to this woman. She scares the heck out of me in her Rudolph apron, palming the heavy oak rolling pin in her hand like a weapon. “But I must warn you—I’m not a baker. I can’t even make toast without burning it.”

“By the end of your stay, you’ll be ready to cook in a restaurant.”

“Did I miss the part where it said guests here have to work?”

“It’s in the fine print,” she smiles and takes the cookies from the oven as the timer goes off. “I only came to Springdale for a two-week visit. I never left. This place has a way of sucking you in.”

“Not me. I wanted to give myself a white Christmas, but I have a job and friends to get back to in California.

She smiles. “They all say that.”

“Who?”

“You’ll meet them tomorrow. You’re driving me to town.”

I cock an eyebrow and finish my coffee.

“The arthritis in my right leg really acts up this time of year. I could kill myself.”

“Don’t you have friends that could come and get you?”

Her eyes twinkle. “I have a few. I’ll introduce you to them tomorrow.”

I throw my hands up in the air. “Okay fine. But I want a discount on my spa services.”

“I’m sure the boss man won’t mind.”

“Boss man?”

She nods as she uses a spatula to carefully remove the cookies to a cooling rack. “My niece sold the Inn last fall to some fancy man in a suit from Chicago…Roque Salvatore. When I first saw him in a Club in San Francisco, I wished I’d die and instantly come back as a twenty-eight-year-old. Maybe then…,” she sighs breaking off. “The man is something else.”

“Rich men in designer suits don’t do it for me anymore.”

“He’d bring back a DNR. I’m telling you he’s sex on a sinful stick. Anyway, rumor is he bought this place because he needed a new place to clean his money.”

I roll my eyes “Please. The only mob left is in old Hollywood movies.”

“You’re wrong,” she waves the spatula in the air and whispers, “we can’t Google him here. I did. And he called me…wanting to know why. I almost went out and bought Depends after. There was some trouble in New York…a mob boss was gunned down and another went missing. They never found him. I read articles online speculating Roque went in and cleaned house. He’s the new head honcho.”

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