I groaned and stretched, rolling out of bed. The floor was cold, and so was the rest of the Inn. I shook as I rushed to the bathroom then raced back to bed.
Fucking hell. The whole damn place needed the heat upgraded. Radiant floor heat would be a nice improvement, but it probably wasn’t in the budget. There was so much to do to upgrade the Inn. More than I thought Aunt Gina was really prepared for.
I waited until the pitiful excuse for heat kicked on then jumped out of bed again. I pulled on a pair of sweats and a tee then added a sweatshirt and socks. Thick ones. The kind I wore when I took my niece and nephew sledding. It should not be that cold inside.
The smell of something amazing hit me as soon as I opened the door. Aunt Gina was an amazing cook. It was the reason the Inn was full most of the time. It certainly wasn’t because the place was that spectacular. MacKellar Cove Inn matched the town it was a part of. A little run down, in need of a fresh coat of paint, a little extra love and care, and maybe a wrecking ball.
But I wasn’t going to tell my aunt that.
Just like I wasn’t going to tell Piper I thought her building had seen better days.
The thought of Piper warmed me up on my way downstairs to the kitchen. She was gorgeous, and the way she handled herself with the customers was a sight. Not many women could move around the way she did, avoiding getting her ass pinched and stepping around drunks with no concern for where she was.
She definitely caught my attention, but I was clearly not the only one checking her out. And she didn’t seem all that interested, which was more than a little disappointing.
It was going to be a long, cold month on the edge of the North Pole.
“Are you hungry?” Aunt Gina asked when I walked into the dining room. She had a spread of food that would have easily served three times as many people as were there. But that was Aunt Gina. She always cooked too much and insisted it was fine.
“I’m starving. Thanks. All this looks great,” I told her.
“Good. Sit and start eating. You were out late last night.”
I nodded. “I went to O’Kelley’s.”
“Hudson Grant’s place?”
I nodded and added sausage to my plate.
“He’s a good man. Too bad about his wife, though.”
“What happened to his wife?”
“She died years ago. Poor man is alone. And he’s so handsome. He should date someone else.”
“You never dated again once Uncle Rob died,” I said.
She waved the dishtowel in my direction. “Oh, I’m an old lady. I don’t need to date. Hudson is young. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Some people enjoy being alone.”
She harrumphed and went back to the kitchen.
I added eggs to my plate as I crunched on a piece of bacon. The silver dollar pancakes were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. All this food was so good. I never cooked for myself like Aunt Gina did. Most of my meals were takeout on the way home from the office at the end of the day. Not healthy, but not the worst food either.
“Have you heard from Zoey?” Aunt Gina asked when she came back into the dining room.
I shook my head. My sister’s divorce was finalized the month before. Her ex wanted to spend Thanksgiving with the kids, which meant Zoey was staying in Pittsburgh so she could be near them. Her ex was less than reliable when it came to spending time with the kids, so Zoey never went far.
“I hope she comes for Christmas. She needs some of the good old MacKellar Cove charm to get her out of the funk she’s in.”
I snorted. “It’s not really a funk, Aunt Gina. Her husband is a workaholic who’s more interested in his business than his family. It was a blow to her confidence, and it hurt.”
“She’s the one who asked for a divorce,” Aunt Gina said.
“Yeah, but she didn’t think he would agree so easily.” Zoey and I were four years apart but had always been close. As adults, we still were, so close that I spent more time with her kids than her ex-husband did. I had only been with Aunt Gina a few days and I already missed the little rugrats.
“Well, it just shows that she’s better off without him. She’s another one who shouldn’t be alone. Maybe she should move here and meet Hudson.”
“Don’t start matchmaking, Aunt Gina,” I warned her. “That’s a sure way to get Zoey to stay in Pittsburgh for Christmas.”
Aunt Gina mumbled something I couldn’t hear. The back door opened, bringing the icy cold wind through the entire house.
“Holy shit,” I groaned, pulling up my hood. “We need to do something about the heat here.”
“I’ve been telling her that for years,” Sebastian said, walking in with a load of firewood. “Morning, Gina.”
“Hello, Sebastian,” Aunt Gina said with a wide grin. She walked over to him and cupped his cheeks. “Ooh, you’re so cold. How is the lighthouse this morning?”
“Good so far. How are you?”
“Good. Just talking to Gavin about Zoey coming for Christmas. What do you think about Zoey and Hudson?”
Sebastian drew back like Aunt Gina slapped him. His cheeks reddened under his full beard and he shook his head.
“I’m sure I have no idea what Zoey likes in a man. Or anything else,” Sebastian said.
I felt for the guy. Sebastian managed the lighthouse just off the coast near the Inn. He’d grown up in MacKellar Cove and lived there his entire life, as far as I knew. One night, when we were drinking, Zoey told me she and Sebastian had a thing. She’d already said yes to marrying Trevor when she told me about Sebastian. That she thought she was going to marry him. But Trevor swept her off her feet and she chose him.
What we never talked about after that night was that she wasn’t sure she was making the right choice. The next day, she acted as though her relationship with Sebastian had never happened. She married Trevor and built a life with him. A life that he never took part in.
Zoey was lonely for most of her marriage, which was part of why I spent so much time with her. She loved her kids, but over time she began to resent her husband. Asking him for a divorce was her plan to wake him up and get him to realize what he was missing. It didn’t work.
I wondered what Zoey’s life would have been like if she’d returned to MacKellar Cove and married Sebastian instead of letting Trevor dazzle her. It would have been different, but I wasn’t sure if it would have been better. I didn’t know Sebastian well when we were younger, but he wasn’t the warmest guy around from what I could tell. Zoey didn’t need another guy like that.
“Sit down and eat,” Aunt Gina said, already grabbing a plate for Sebastian. They had an easy friendship that showed they’d been close over the years.
A part of me felt guilty for not being around more since I finished high school. College was nothing like what I expected and when I finished, I jumped right into building up the business I started with my college roommate. Being there to help Aunt Gina was the most time I’d been away from work in more than a decade.
Sebastian helped himself to the food on the table and shoveled it in while Aunt Gina talked. She had plans for the Inn for the holiday season. Big plans from what I could tell.
“How are you going to do all this, Aunt Gina? And why?” I asked her.
“Oh, psh. It’s easy. And everyone in MacKellar Cove does something. Every day of the season there is an event. I just host the cookie decorating. And that’s easy because all I need to do is have cookies ready for people to decorate.”
“When is this happening?”
“In two weeks. Two weeks before Christmas.”
I groaned. “I thought I was here to help you get the Inn ready to sell. We have work to do.”
Sebastian’s brows went up. “That’s what you told him.”
“Oh, you hush,” Aunt Gina said. She smoothed her hand over the frilly white apron she wore and avoided my gaze.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking between the two of them.
Sebastian gave Aunt Gina a pointed look that said he wasn’t going to let her get away with whatever she was trying to get away with.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“Oh, fine. I wanted you here so you would take over the Inn for me. I’m ready to retire, and it’s clear that I should. I thought you and Zoey would have moved back up here by now and would just start taking over more, but I can’t wait for you two to decide you want to be here. I need you to start handling things. This is my last Christmas here,” Aunt Gina announced.
“I…what…Are you insane?” I asked.
Aunt Gina rolled her eyes, and Sebastian snorted.
“Aunt Gina, Zoey and I have lives in Pittsburgh. We live there. We’re not moving up here. I mean, this is the first time I’ve been back here in years. Why would you think I wanted to take over? That either of us did?”
“I told you,” Sebastian mumbled.
She glared at Sebastian, and he leaned back with a grin. He was enjoying the show. I half expected him to kick back in his chair and put his boots up on the table to watch.
“When you two used to come up here for the summer, you loved it. You had so much fun. You were the only kids I knew who enjoyed making beds and cleaning the Inn and doing laundry. You were made for running this place. You even told me one summer that you wanted to. Both of you. You said after you finished school you wanted to come back up here and work with me forever.”
“We were kids, Aunt Gina. I had a lot of plans when I was young, but…things change.”
Sebastian grunted in agreement.
“I know plans change, but I still think you should stay here. Give it a chance.”
“Aunt Gina, no. I’m not going to get your hopes up by telling you I’ll think about it. I’ll help you fix the place up. I’ll do whatever work I’m able to do. I’ll update your website and write some awesome ad copy for you, but when it’s all done, I’m going back to Pittsburgh.”
Aunt Gina sighed and shook her head. “I wish you would reconsider.”
I forced a smile. “I love this place, Aunt Gina. I’m not going to tell you I don’t. But I love it because you’re here. I don’t want to live in MacKellar Cove. I came now because the Inn is quiet through the winter and we can get the work that needs to be finished done.”
“You didn’t even tell him about the guests?” Sebastian asked. He snorted a laugh and shook his head. He ran a hand over his sandy hair and smashed his hat back on over his head. “I’m heading back outside. It’s warmer out there than it’s about to be in here.”
Sebastian grabbed a few strips of bacon and left Aunt Gina and me facing off.
“Aunt Gina?”
She got up from the table and started carrying plates to the kitchen. She scraped the leftover food into containers and stuck them in the fridge.
I was patient. And I needed answers.
When she was finished putting the food away, she finally turned to me. “I have guests coming.”
“Who?”
“They’re regulars. They come every year this time.”
“How many?”
She averted her dark gaze and shrugged.
“Don’t give me that. How many, Aunt Gina?”
“The Inn will be full. Starting tonight through the first week of January.”
I groaned. “And you’re only now telling me this?”
“Well, I thought it would be a good thing that the Inn is booked. That we have customers. It not only means that money is coming in, but it means you get to see how amazing this place is.”
“Aunt Gina, I know how amazing this place is. But that doesn’t mean I want to live here.”
She sighed and busied herself at the sink. “Okay, I understand. I won’t bother you with it anymore. Maybe Zoey will be more interested in her family’s history than you are.”
I groaned inwardly. The only thing better than Aunt Gina’s cooking was her guilt tripping. And my sister was a sucker for falling for it. There was no way in the world she would be able to say no to Aunt Gina if she started the guilt trip.
“I’ll call Zoey. I need to check in on her anyway. I’ll let you know what she says.”
“Sounds good, Gavin. Thank you, sweetie. We’ll talk soon.”
She was dismissing me. She had something up her sleeve. There was no way Aunt Gina was giving up without a fight.
I went back up to the room I was staying in and called my sister. I knew the sooner I reached out to her the better because Aunt Gina was likely to call her anyway.
“Hey,” she answered, sounding sniffly, but like she didn’t want me to know.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said, too quickly.
“Tell me or I’m coming back there.”
She laughed. “You’re hours away. I will be fine by the time you get here.”
“Then I’ll send Chad over to see you.” Chad was my business partner and friend. He’d spent more than a few holidays with us, and he knew Zoey well. He was like another brother for her, a second pain in her ass, she frequently said.
“Don’t bother Chad. I’m sure he’s busy. And it’s nothing. I knew it would happen so I shouldn’t be upset.”
“Trevor is bringing the kids home early?”
“Oh, no, they’re already here. He brought them home first thing this morning on his way into work.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“Are they okay?”
She groaned. “Not really. They thought they were going to spend time with him, so they were crying when they got here. He basically pushed them inside and ran.”
“What an asshole.”
“That’s the nice way of putting it.”
“Yes, yes it is.”
She chuckled softly. “Anyway, I had to bribe them with extra snuggle time and a movie and dinner out tonight in order to get them to calm down.”
“If he’d have told you he wasn’t going to see them, you could have come up here with me. We could have spent Thanksgiving together.”
“I told him that. He doesn’t care.”
“He better not try to mess up Christmas.”
She snorted. “He won’t. He’d have to actually care. Will you be home by then?”
“Um, no. Get this, Aunt Gina is ready to retire and wants us to take over the Inn.”
“Oh, no,” she breathed.
I chuckled. “Oh, no? That’s what you have to say? She’s a crazy old woman.”
“I always thought she was joking about that. She said something when we were younger, but I thought she was kidding. Hell, we talked about it forever ago. I never thought it was something she’d still have in her head. We haven’t been there in forever.”
“Yeah, I told her that, too. I told her I’m not interested, and she said she’ll ask you.”
“I can’t.”
“I know,” I told her. She knew I understood what her hesitation was.
“I just…why does she think we still want to take over the Inn?”
I shrugged. “She sees MacKellar Cove Inn as her legacy. She wants to leave something behind, I guess. If she’d said something years ago, I might have considered it, but I can’t walk away from HQA. Not after everything Chad and I put into it.”
“I can’t leave either. I just…I can’t. Not after all this time.”
I nodded silently. “He’s single, you know.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I…He deserves better than me. He always did. And I deserve what I got.”
“No, you don’t. Trevor is an ass. The only good things he did are Alexis and Cameron.”
I could hear the smile in her voice when she breathed, “Yes.”
“You can’t make a decision about your life based on someone else.”
She huffed a laugh. “I can’t think about MacKellar Cove without thinking about Sebastian. Every inch of that place would remind me of him. Even if he wasn’t still there, I couldn’t go back. But knowing he’s there…I couldn’t live there. Besides, you’re not staying and I need you in my life.”
“Well, that makes me happy, but I don’t want you making decisions based on me either. I want you to be happy. You’ve been miserable for far too long, Zo.”
“I’m happier now than I have been in a while.”
“Good. So, Aunt Gina has one more request.”
“What?” she asked hesitantly.
“She wants you and the kids to come up here for Christmas.”
She sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Gav. I really just think—”
“Don’t think. I’m going to be here through mid-January at least, maybe longer now. Aunt Gina said this is her last Christmas here, and I’m going to do whatever I need to do to help her have a great one.”
“You’re a good man.”
“I learned from the best. Maybe we can talk Mom and Dad into coming up here for Christmas, too.”
“Do you think Aunt Gina could handle all that?”
I snorted. “The way she talks she can handle anything. She has all the rooms at the Inn booked through the first week of January.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. I hope I have half her energy when I’m her age.”
“Hell, I wish I had half her energy now. And some of her gumption, too.”
I laughed. “You have plenty of that. You just pick and choose when you bring it out.”
“I’m glad someone thinks so.”
Alexis said something in the background.
“Hey, I need to go. Tell Aunt Gina I’ll think about it. All of it. We’ll talk soon.”
“Okay. Love you, sis. Love to the munchkins.”
“Love you, too.”
We hung up and I shook my head. I really wish I’d have taken a swing at her ex. Just once. Maybe twice.
