“Thanks again for dinner, Gigi. It was great. The mashed potatoes especially.”
“Anytime,” she said, lips twitching. “Sorry you got caught in the boys’ crossfire. How’s your head?”
“It was a dinner roll, not a grenade.” I suppressed a smile of my own. “I think I’ll recover.”
She sighed the distinctly martyred sigh of a single mother doing her best to raise two hellions with a proclivity for food fights at the dinner table. It was late, and the boys were finally asleep — no doubt tuckered out from forty-five straight minutes of bickering over dinner. I’d pedaled Declan’s bike back to the inn just in time to join them. The second I stepped through the door, Gigi had plunked the“Back in a few, ring the bell for service!”sign onto her desk and ushered me to the table. She hadn’t even given me a chance to change out of my latte-splattered jeans.
The back apartments on the first floor weren’t spacious, but they were surprisingly cozy. Gigi had taken pains to make the space feel less like a hotel, more like a home. There was little-kid artwork on the fridge — Rory’s colorful masterpieces in crayon — and a straight-A report card from Declan’s sixth grade classes shoved proudly beneath a plastic magnet.
The kitchen was painted in warm shades of yellow, and decorated with cutesy clutter. Family photographs covered the walls. Most of them showed the boys at various ages, spanning from infancy to now, but a few featured a man I didn’t recognize. He was so burly, he looked like a freaking lumberjack, with a thick head of red hair, a bushy beard, and hands the size of hams.
Donny.
I’d watched Gigi as she puttered around her kitchen, setting out placemats and mashing potatoes, corralling her hellions into their seats, and wondered what sort of strength it took to set out photographs of the man who’d done you wrong, for the sake of your sons’ innocence. What sort of iron will a woman had to have to stare at that face every day, so her boys wouldn’t realize their father was a monster.
A heck of a lot of strength, I decided. More than most people had in all their muscles.
Dinner was, in a word,loud. It was so unlike the solitary meals I’d grown accustomed to these past few years, it shocked me mostly silent. The boys were more than capable of carrying the conversation. There was laughter and teasing, ribs being elbowed and tongues being stuck out. I’d forked down my meatloaf and tried to stay out of the fray as they flicked green beans over the centerpiece and kicked one another’s shins under the table, much to their mother’s chagrin.
After the rolls stopped flying and the boys retreated to their rooms, Gigi had instructed me to get showered, then meet her at her desk for a nightcap. Truthfully, I was tired enough to crawl straight under the covers, but I’d forced myself down the creaky steps to the reception area instead.
“So, how was your first day?” Gigi asked. “Long?”
I blew out a breath. “You havenoidea. Today was madness. Tomorrow will be worse, according to Gwen, since it’s Halloween. She actually used the phrase, ‘apocalyptically busy’ — whatever that means.”
“Welcome to Samhain in Salem.”
I grimaced. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.”
“You’ll be fine. Trust me.” Gigi sighed heavily. “You want to talk about a long day? I’ve spent the past twenty minutes glueing tractor beam activators onto the sleeves of this costume. My fingers are all stuck together. I have paddle hands.” She held up her hand. Her digits did indeed appear to be fused together.
“What’s a tractor beam activator?”
“Beats me.” She shrugged. “But Rory says they’re vital to his role as an intergalactic planetary patrol officer.”
“Sorry, but I still think my day was worse. My favorite jeans reek of espresso, I only did two readings in eight hours, Gwen and Flo forced me into an unsanctioned girl-talk session, and an eighty-year-old Wiccan who looks like a well-endowed Betty White told me I have to come over to her house on Monday morning and learn to bake cheesecake for god only knows what reason.”
Gigi stared at me for a long beat. Then, she lifted her fused-appendages into the air and waved them at me. “Paddle hands, Imogen,” she repeated severely. “Paddle hands.”
“Okay, okay! Fine. You win.”
“Come on.” She waved me closer with her paddle-hand and I snorted at the sight. “Sit your cute butt on that stool and we’ll toast to your first day.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She tilted her chin toward the desk. “Third drawer down. I’d open it myself, but…”
“Paddle hands. Got it.” Grinning, I bent and pulled open the drawer she’d indicated. Inside, there was a bottle of limoncello and a set of low-ball glasses. “Aren’t you working? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Oh, relax. We have three guests in the whole dang inn, including you. No one else is going to check in this late. Even if they do, who’s going to scold me?Me? I’m the manager. And Rhonda will be here at eleven to take over the desk.”
“What about Mr. Monteith?
“He’s a snowbird.”
“Is that slang for someone who does lots of cocaine?”
She giggled. “No, silly. He flies south for the winter. He’ll be down in Florida for the next few months. There’s no one to get me in trouble. So, pour. We aren’t getting any younger.”