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Brad dunked the tip of his croissant into his coffee and took a large bite so that he found the cream on his first try. It was truly sensational.
“I found them at the bakery attached to the grocery store!” Maya said with a funny smile. “I can’t believe how good they are! They rival anything in Manhattan.”
“Maybe Manhattan was never good enough for your blog, anyway,” Brad suggested.
Maya sipped her coffee contemplatively. “It’s funny you say that. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Five years ago, after Phoebe was set up at college, I asked myself what I wanted the rest of my life to be. I’d always dabbled in food writing, and I had a pretty good following on social media. When I got the gig atFood & Drinkmagazine, I thought— this is it! The rest of my life is beginning!”
“I’m sure it was exciting,” Brad said softly.
“While it lasted, yes. But when they fired me, I felt so lost.”
Brad shook his head. “I can’t imagine being in a field like that. I’ve never been frightened of losing my job. You’ve met Rainey Michaels. We keep everyone at that school, even if they’re terrible teachers.” He winced. “I’m sorry for saying she’s terrible. I just really resent the way she treats the children sometimes. She acts like they’re disposable. Or like they’re not really there, paying attention to every little thing she does.”
Maya wrinkled her nose for a split second. “That woman is so in love with you.”
Brad took another bite of croissant, chewed, and swallowed. It was wonderfully easy to speak with Maya about anything that came to his mind. “Rainey is the kind of woman who always gets what she wants,” he said. “When I felt her targeting me, I panicked. I knew that if I didn’t give her what she wanted, she would make my life miserable.”
Maya nodded. “And now, I’m here.”
“You’re here,” Brad agreed. “And it’s the first time she’s really realized I might not like her. Ever since she met you, she’s laid everything on extra-thick. It’s suffocating.”
“She’ll catch on. She has to.” Maya frowned in a way that made an adorable wrinkle form between her eyebrows. “I mean, she wants to keep her job, right?”
“I assume so. Not that she cares about the children at all.” Brad laughed. “I don’t mean to say she’s only there for me. She obviously isn’t.”
“You’re a good man, Brad,” Maya said quietly. “I understand why she loves you. She probably looks up to you, in a way.”
Brad wasn’t sure that was true, but he didn’t want to say so. He took a long sip of coffee, his eyes on the glinting blue sky through the window. “We should go outside today,” he said. “Do you have snow boots?”
Maya and Brad crept around lazily that morning, in no rush to do anything besides hug and kiss one another, explore other hallways in the house, and eat whatever they got their hands on. By the time one-thirty rolled around, they were fidgety and eager to leave the house, and they donned their boots and winter layers and stepped out the back door to walk along the veranda. On high were the blue mountains, tracing their path across the horizon, and the woods just beyond the property were dense and slightly frightening. Brad imagined they were filled with wolves.
Brad stepped off the veranda and onto the “ground,” where his boot dropped over a foot into the snow. He laughed and whirled around to gaze up at Maya, who remained on the veranda. Because of the angle of the rooftop, the veranda hadn’t gotten as much snow as the rest of the property.
“Are you going to disappear in there?” Maya asked.
“Help me, Maya! I’m falling in!”
Maya laughed and took a photograph of him with her phone. Brad couldn’t help but smile. “You coming out?”
Maya stepped gingerly onto the snow and walked beside him, her boots crunching. “I wish Phoebe could see this,” she said softly, speaking of her daughter. “Down in Pennsylvania, we never got this much snow in winter. When we did get snow, Phoebe spent all day out in it, playing. Before the divorce, Steve and I did our best to spend as much time as we could out there. I always felt guilty for not giving her a sibling to play with.”
Brad’s heart softened with every new story Maya told him. He felt her drawing him deeper into her world.
Brad and Maya surveyed the backyard, walking all the way to the edge of the woods. There, they turned back and gazed at the massive house, which seemed to hunker down over the snow like a large animal.
“If I stay here,” Maya whispered, “I can’t be there alone.”
Brad’s heart banged in his chest. He wanted to say he’d move in immediately; he wanted to be by her side. But it felt too earnest.
“Maybe I could transform it into a bed and breakfast,” Maya suggested. “Although I don’t want to encroach on Felicity’s business.”
“Hollygrove gets plenty of tourism,” Brad told her. “You and Felicity would host very different sorts of people.”
“This would be more of a luxury vacation, I suppose,” Maya agreed. “Felicity’s bed and breakfast hosts people like me. People who embrace coziness.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thank you again for taking me there that first day. I drove to Hollygrove without a plan. Looking back, it was pretty reckless.”
Brad tugged Maya into an embrace. How could he explain what had come over him when he’d first heard her talking to Thaddeus at the law office? He’d felt an urgent desire to know her. He’d wanted to protect her, too. But she didn’t need protecting. She just needed love.
After an hour in the chill, Maya and Brad went back inside, put a kettle on, and discussed what they wanted to make for lunch. Maya announced she had ingredients for chili, and Brad leaped at it— happy to slice vegetables all afternoon long if it meant chili was the result.
