Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

It was her and Steve’s fault for deciding to take out a mortgage on the house, in order to finance those repairs, yes…but it wasn’t her fault that Mr. Thomas Harrod was such a tight-fisted Scrooge when it came to making payments on time, to the last penny. The Inn was profitable; the old house had just run into a bad patch of luck. That was all. It was also more than enough to put the two of them teetering on the brink of ruin. Stress and worry had become a daily part of their lives, and Rachel just wished it would all go away.

The door to the mudroom opened. Her fiancé stepped inside, balancing two pails of milk in his hands. Snow still dusted his light brown hair, though he had removed his boots and overcoat in the mudroom. Setting the covered pails on the counter, he started to grin at her. His smile faltered, seeing her expression. “What’s wrong?”

Rachel gestured at the day planner. “Five guests canceled.”

Running his hand through his short, crisp locks, Steve winced at the chilly damp his fingers encountered. It was a reminder of the blizzard under way. “Which ones?”

“The Terwilligers and the Platz brothers. I haven’t heard from the Stoutsons yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time.” She sighed and ran her hands over her own hair, dark brown and pulled into a single, sleek braid. “This isn’t good, Steve. This isn’t good. We’re not going to make the mortgage payment, are we?”

“I don’t want to ask Mom and Dad for help, but if we can’t—” he started to say. Rachel shook her head, cutting him off.

“They just called a few minutes ago. They’ve probably boarded their ship already. I’m sorry,” she added softly. “We won’t be able to reach them until they get back.”

He spun away from her, hands fisting on the edge of the counter. Frustration alternately boiled and froze in his veins. Steve hated this situation, but he didn’t want to loose that anger in front of Rachel. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t his fault…well, maybe the mortgage they had cosigned, but considering how many years the Bethel family had partnered with the Harrod Bank, he heartily wished its current owner wasn’t such a tightwad.

Rachel crossed to him, lifting her hands to his shoulders. They were knotted with tension. She did her best to massage them, but he was almost a foot taller than her. “Come on; let’s get the rest of the milk in the house. And the eggs.”

“Oh, that’s what I meant to tell you,” Steve said, turning around and slipping his arms under hers. He cradled her against him, taking comfort in the feel of her soft curves against his harder muscles, in the trust of her cheek resting on his chest. The hug wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been, given how both of them were still stiff with tension. “I had to hang a rope from here to the barn, the snow’s threatening to fall that thickly, but I’ve already got all the eggs gathered. The chickens were cooperating today, not being nearly as nasty as usual. But the really good news is that I managed to draw off some colostrum from Ellen. If her first-milk is finally showing up, that means she’s getting ready to drop!”

Rachel winced at that, pulling back. “That’s not good news. We’re going to be snowed in, Steve, straight through Christmas! What if she has another breech birth, like the last time?”

“We’ll handle it, somehow,” Steve reassured her, cupping her shoulders in his palms. He looked down into her brown eyes and managed a smile. “One task at a time. No courting trouble, when we’re supposed to be courting each other, got it?”

She managed a smile of her own. Neither of them had been in the mood for “courting” since that tornado had struck last summer. Not for more than halfhearted attempts. “Alright, no courting trouble.” She found enough energy to smile and attempt to flirt with her love. “You’re certainly cuter.”

“Than what, a breech-birthed calf?” he joked.

She chuckled and mock-swiped at him. “Go on, get out there and get the rest of the milk. I’ll follow as soon as I can pull on my boots. And don’t break any of those eggs. If we don’t have any guests, we can at least have a nice quiche for supper.”

THE SLEIGH BELLS ON THE FRONT DOOR, HUNG IN HONOR OFthe impending holidays, jangled loudly. Rachel, joyful that the Stoutsons had made it safely through the storm, quickly wiped off her hands on her apron, hurrying out of the kitchen and around the bulk of the front stairs. She drifted to a stop, her smile faltering and fading in dismay. The three snow-dusted figures who had walked into her fiancé’s home in a swirl of cold air weren’t Mr., Mrs., and little Miss Stoutson.

They were Pete, Dave, and Joey. College-aged boys, but none of them college-educated. Their families were close friends of the Harrods, the family that owned the town bank, and with it, the mortgage on the Bethel Inn. Heart pounding in her chest, she dredged something resembling a smile back onto her lips. “Hello, boys. What brings you all the way out here, with a storm on the way?”

Pete—never Petey, that was his dad—closed half the distance between them with an ambling walk that spoke of time spent in a saddle. His father raised pigs, of course, but she had heard he’d spent his summers between school years on his uncle’s cattle ranch, farther south. He flashed her a grin. “Now, Miz Rutherford, you ain’t that much older’n us. You ain’t, what, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.” Asserting her age allowed her to assert her authority. She spoke the words crisply, too, without any of the local drawl. “And I do not recall inviting you over for a visit.”

“Ooh, college-educated,” Dave teased; his hair was dark brown, his face less lean and saturnine. He made a pretense of rubbing his jaw, using fingers perpetually stained with the grease from the engines he liked working on in his cousin’s garage in town. “Seems a shame ol’ Steve had to go all the way to Des Moines to find himself a pretty thing for a future wife. You know what they say: Big city wimmin get ideas that are too big for their little-bitty brains.”

“At least I have a brain that I can use,” Rachel retorted. She did her best to keep her smile as Dave stiffened. “But in the spirit of Christmas, I’ll be generous, and believe that you have one, too. Now, what are you boys doing in my house? Somehow, I don’t think it’s to rent any of our rooms.”

Joey, the redhead of the trio, finished unbuttoning the puffy front of his blue, down-stuffed parka and hooked his thumbs into his work belt. Of the three of them, he was the most polite and reasonably respectable; he was a journeyman plumber, having apprenticed with his aunt’s husband for the last two years. “Now, Miz Rutherford, you know why we’re here. You got until the twenty-fourth of each month to come up with the mortgage money. Mr. Thomas wanted us to remind you that, come snow or sleet, hail or dark of night, that money’s gotta be delivered this next Monday, or he’ll foreclose on this place. You don’t wanna be tossed out into the snow on Christmas Day, now do you?”

“We are not going to be tossed out,” Steve asserted from the top of the stairs. He thumped his way down the stairs, glowering at the trio. “And I thought I told the three of you to stay off my property!”

“Ain’t gonna be your property much longer, Stevie, ” Dave drawled, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. He rocked on his heels, coolly ignoring the glare the older man aimed at him. “Pretty soon, you won’t have a place to lay your head at night…and that pretty girl there is gonna come lookin’ for a real bed to lay in—something satisfying .”