“Morning!” chirped a voice from the kitchen. Nothervoice. But close. Her mom.
I gave a grunt that could be interpreted as hello, help, or don’t talk to me, depending on the context.
The mom emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of biscuits and a knowing smirk. “Sleep alright?”
I poured my coffee too fast and nearly overfilled the mug. “Sure.”
She gave me a look like she’d raised several children and could smell a lie from across a county line.
“Mm-hmm. This morning, breakfast is self-serve. I’ve got scrambled eggs in the chafing dish, sausage links, and the cinnamon rolls Violet made last night. Fifi’s improved-upon recipe, of course.”
That name again.
I cleared my throat. “She’s not... here?”
Her smirk grew sharper. “She’ll be in soon. Probably bounding in here like she didn’t spend all fall, winter, and spring covering for her sister.”
I nodded, pretending thatreliefwasn’t currently fightingdisappointmentin my chest like two bears wrestling in a phone booth.
“Thanks,” I muttered, and carried my coffee to the farthest corner of the room, where I could face the door and brace for impact.
Not that I was watching for her.
Just being... strategic.
The eggs were good, the biscuits even better, but the cinnamon roll was outstanding. A war crime in how soft and rich it was. I took a second one before I could stop myself and tried not to imagine her beaming when she made them, declaring that the secret was in the “honey swirl of joy.”
Because, ofcourse,she’d say something like that. And what was crazier is that her mom didn’t even say she made them thistime. Yet, I still wanted an excuse to fantasize about her and the cinnamon roll.
Things were bad, real bad.
Because she was the kind of woman who made breakfast into a love language, and soap into a personality test.
And I?
I was the kind of man who ran from both.
I chewed slowly, drank my coffee like it owed me answers, and waited for her to walk through that door.
Half of me hoped she wouldn’t, and the other half of medesperatelyhoped she would.
Because no matter how much I tried to scrub her from my head with hot water, coffee, and cinnamon rolls, Fifi had somehow become the thing I couldn’t stop wanting.
And I wasn’t sure how much longer I could pretend that wasn’t true.
She was probably accustomed to guys like me coming to the lodge and knew how to handle us.
I had just poured myself a second cup of coffee, because apparently the first one hadn’t been strong enough to wipe the night off my brain, when the dining room door flew open with the force of someone who either didn’t believe in hinges or just really liked dramatic entrances.
A woman bounded in.
I looked up. For half a second, my breath snagged.
Fifi?
And there she was with the same bright energy and the same easy grin. Her dark, messy hair was swept up into a knot thatprobably had a name like hummingbird hair. But something was off. Her eyes were a different shade. She was slightly taller, and her voice was more like jagged wind through the trees, not Fifi’s warm honey and sparks.
“Hey, you must be Ben,” she said, grinning and heading straight toward me like we were old friends or coworkers at a company retreat. “Room four, right?”
