Caroline slammed the medicine cabinet, having finished with her clarifying toner and eye cream and night cream. It might be a little unfair to expect a straight, hunky firefighter with naturally-perfect skin and thick glossy hair and even white teeth to know the ins and outs of the cosmetics industry. But still.
She stomped down the hall to her bedroom, not that there was anyone to hear—and where was he, anyway? Usually the pager warnings were followed pretty closely by the arrival of the tipsy lovebirds—and then Caroline heaved a deep sigh and went back to the bathroom, stopping at the linen closet for clean towels. Because it wasn’t the young lady’s fault that Fiver was a thoughtless cad, and besides, if past experience repeated itself, she was going to end up with a broken heart eventually. Which was the same reason Caroline always made pancakes for the girls in the mornings. She couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Fiver’s conquests: after all, they were as much victims of the Bonny curse as she was.
She closed her bedroom door quietly and climbed under the down blankets and antique quilts. Before she switched off the fluted-edge, milk-glass lamp on her bedside table, she rubbed in lavender cuticle cream that smelled divine and kept her hands smooth all winter long.
Then she whispered good night to her great-great-great-grandparents, whose wedding portrait hung in the place of honor next to her vanity mirror, and pulled the blankets up over her head, burrowing down into the delicious warmth.
Somebody would be getting some action in the ancestral home tonight. But as usual, it wouldn’t be her.
***
As Fiver dug out his keys and opened the shop door, Lance noticed something out of place in the old-fashioned tableau. In the shop windows were not the displays he might have anticipated—dusty displays of toothpaste and aspirin, outdated road maps and ice scrapers. No, in the window to the right of the bright red shop doors were glass shelves stacked with what seemed like a hundred different fancy tubes and bottles and jars, all tastefully lit with tiny spotlights. There didn’t appear to be a single speck of dust, and the display was arranged with the sort of precision that suggested OCD or at least an employee with way too much time on her hands.
On the left side was a large signboard resting in a gilded rack, "Upcoming Demonstrations, Reservations a Must", with the word “must” underlined and bolded. Underneath that was an confusing list. The first couple of entries—“Microdermabrasion Non-surgical Skin Resurfacing” and “Corrective Blending for Hyperpigmentation”—were incomprehensible enough that Lance quit reading.
“The Old Maid’s got quite a following,” Fiver said drily, following Lance’s gaze. “Some of the old biddies drive fifty miles for her classes. ‘Course, it helps that they’re free, though most of them end up buying a ton of product. But Caroline won’t turn anyone away, even if they never spend a cent here.”
Some sort of medical device training for the elderly, Lance decided, as Fiver got the door open.
“There’s a back entrance too, but it’s quickest to go through the shop,” Fiver said, stepping aside for Lance to pass before locking the door behind them. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Lance said. He followed Fiver through aisles that looked untouched by time. The wooden floors, though clean and polished, bore the deep scratches and joinery of another era. The shelves were wooden too, arranged in rows and laden down with everything the sign promised: a selection of grooming products and household items and non-perishable groceries; over-the-counter medications and magazines and stationery; mittens and reading glasses and windshield scrapers; and a neat row of pink bottles of antifreeze shared shelf space with souvenir mugs. A polished marble countertop took pride of place above a glass case.
But as they approached the back of the store, the old-fashioned feel gave way abruptly to entirely different surroundings.
“The Old Maid’s little shop of horrors,” Fiver said, heading for the staircase at the back of the store.
“Wow—that’s quite a setup,” Lance said. Unlike the rest of the store, which was lit by small glowing fixtures, the area was dark. He could make out cabinets and shelves and counters loaded with products and implements, some of them positively sinister looking. Mirrors everywhere reflected their ghostly images. Stools were lined up in front of a pair of glass bowl sinks.
“Yeah, especially considering it used to be where they kept the pickle barrel and the whiskey. They even had chickens in here for a while—there’s a picture around somewhere. The men used to sit back there and shoot the shit while the ladies shopped. Okay, just up the stairs here….”
Lance followed Fiver up well-worn stairs, his hand on a wooden bannister smoothed with age. At the top of the staircase another door opened into a darkened hallway. To the right was a hallway; to the left, streetlight through the windows dimly illuminated a large living room. Ahead, the stairs continued up.
“Old Maid’s down the hall there. Bathroom’s here. I’ll get you some blankets. Couch is in the living room….”
He switched on a lamp, and the living room came to life. It was surprisingly modern. The rough-plastered walls were painted a soft blue-gray; the tall windows were original, unadorned by curtains or drapes. A kitchen, with simple dark wood cabinets and sleek marble counters, opened off the great room. Underfoot the floors were the same scuffed and scarred wood as downstairs in the shop, lovingly sealed and waxed but unapologetically bearing the history of their long life.
This was exactly the sort of place Lance realized he would like to live in—having never given a thought to his living space before. Back in Sacramento, his loft looked roughly the same way it did when he moved in: bachelor furniture, giant screen TV, most of the foyer taken up by his bicycle. The boxes of books he’d never gotten around to unpacking now served as a surface on which to pile his hiking gear.
“Nice,” was all he said, though it was so much more than nice. The boxy gray sectional sofa looked like just the place to kick back and watch a game. The bookcases invited browsing, some of them groaning under the weight of a second row of books. The kitchen island featured a grill, so even on the coldest day of the year you could fix yourself a rib-eye.
“Yeah, I overruled the Old Maid on a few things,” Fiver said, yawning as he took out a stack of linens from a closet next to the stairs. “It’s one thing to live with your sister, but I wasn’t about to live in a girl house. Here, this okay?”
“This is great,” Lance said, tossing the pillow, towels, and blankets on the couch.
“And, uh….” Fiver reached into the closet and handed Lance a toothbrush, still in its packaging. “I keep extras around for company. I always tell girls that they’re my sister’s.”
Fiver’s apologetic shrug and gap-toothed grin suggested he knew he could get away with a lot. Lance laughed. “I feel like I’m in the presence of a master. Thanks.”
“Sure, use whatever you want. The Old Maid’s got her stuff all over the bathroom, but there’s normal toothpaste in the medicine cabinet. Hey, I’m beat. Just give me a minute in the bathroom, and then it’s all yours, okay?”
While Lance waited for Fiver to brush his teeth, he found a glass and poured himself water from the tap, drinking deeply. An aspirin would be nice—maybe he’d take a spin through the bathroom shelves and see what he could find. Fiver didn’t seem like he’d mind. Lance skimmed out of his jeans and boots and thick ski socks and sweater, down to his T-shirt and boxers. Bed was sounding better and better—teaching third grade had definitely gotten Lance out of the late night habit.
When he heard Fiver head upstairs to his room, he went to the bathroom, clutching his new toothbrush and the towel Fiver had given him. He turned on the light and blinked in surprise. As sleek as the rest of the place was, the bathroom was jammed full of stuff, every spare corner taken over with shelves of bottles and tubes and jars and brushes. There was room for a towel rack with two towels—one navy blue and indifferently tossed over the bar; the other pale pink and neatly folded. Dirty ath
letic socks and the T-shirt Fiver had been wearing lay in a heap under the sink.
It smelled girly. Nice—fresh and sort of flowery and citrusy, but definitely girly. This must be Fiver’s sister’s refuge, the place where she entertained dreams of—what, a lost youth? The boyfriends she never had, the person she longed to be? It was sad, and also a little…pathetic. Lance found that he felt sorry for the poor woman who hoarded all these accouterments of femininity. It reminded him of Norville Dinkus, the principal at Lance’s school, who drove a beige Ford Taurus but kept small scale models of Italian sports cars on the credenza behind his desk.
At least the toothpaste was easy enough to find. After he’d brushed his teeth, Lance searched for something for his headache. The medicine cabinet shelves were filled with jars with confusing labels: "Savon de Vetiver", "Gelee Fortifying Masque.” Maybe Fiver’s sister had some sort of skin condition or something…or maybe she was just fighting a desperate battle with the ravages of age.
There, up in the far right corner, a bottle of Tylenol. Lance reached for it and accidentally knocked over one of the colorful jars. He grabbed for it, and caught it before it fell in the sink, but he accidentally hit the glass shelf, which somehow slid off its supports and crashed to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, the rest of the jars and tubes rolling into every corner of the bathroom.
“Holy cannoli,” Lance muttered the epithet he’d adopted so he wouldn’t curse in front of his third graders. Jars had broken open, and the scattered shards of glass were covered in several shades of glistening slime.
He heard a door open down the hall. Shit. The Old Maid, the one who was supposed to be able to sleep through anything.
“Don’t move!” a feminine voice called. “You’ll get cut. I’m getting a broom. Stay right there. Just a second….”
Lance looked around in panic. After Fiver’s hospitality, all Lance needed was for Fiver's poor spinster sister to come in on him in his underwear. He reached for his towel and too late noticed where he placed his foot, stepping on a big shard of glass. “Dang it,” he whispered, abandoning the towel and carefully lifting his foot to see blood pouring out of it.
The door burst open, and he turned to face his doom, a string of apologies ready on his lips.
But nothing came out. Because, framed in the doorway was no old maid, but a tall, willowy woman with inky hair cascading around her long neck, strands falling over thick-lashed brown eyes and curving against full lips parted in alarm. She was wearing some sort of slithery, slinky garment that looked like it would fit in an envelope, in a shade of ice blue that made her skin glow, especially the patch leading down to the vee of the nightgown or whatever the thing was called, and her thighs, nearly all of which were on display below the hem. She blinked, and Lance felt himself stir in ways that were absolutely, entirely inappropriate for the situation. He looked down at the mess on the floor, and saw that her feet were also bare, the toenails painted sparkling violet. He tried mightily to return his gaze to her face, but got distracted by every inch of slender ankles, long legs, a narrow waist, and barely-covered breasts, and holy cannoli her nipples were pretty much outlined for him to see. He tore his gaze away and got as far as that neck again, and where was that damn towel when he desperately needed it for camouflage?
“You’re not a girl,” she said, in a vaguely accusing tone.
No. He wasn’t. But she was girl enough for both of them.
***
Caroline Bonny was a whirlwind of efficiency. After leading Lance to the kitchen, which he managed by walking on only the heel of his injured foot, so he walked like a bloated goose, she filled a pot with hot soapy water and placed it on the floor in front of him. She took his foot in her hands and examined the cut, pronouncing it free of glass before plunging his foot into the steaming water. Lance bit down hard to avoid yelping, and he figured he’d prefer third degree burns to letting this incredible woman think he was even more of a walking disaster than she already did.
“Sit still,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I’ll just be a minute.”
It took more than a minute. Lance heard the sounds of sweeping and glass being dumped into a trash can; then there were a few more minutes where he could hear her moving around down the hall. When she emerged again, she was carrying a translucent pink basket and wearing a robe which matched the nightgown but, although she’d tied it tightly and wrapped it to cover as much of her flesh as possible, did nothing to disguise the body underneath.
Lance had grabbed a dishtowel which he’d been just able to reach from his chair, and draped it in his lap. His traitorous body parts had settled down some in Caroline’s absence, mostly due to his mortification over destroying her bathroom and wondering how he was going to explain it to Fiver in the morning—though come to think of it Fiver had a little explaining to do himself, having suggested to Lance that his sister was a dried-out troll—but the second she returned, his body parts sprang back into full attention.
Carolyn looked at the dishtowel and raised her eyebrow.
“I was, uh, cold,” he mumbled.
Caroline focused on the contents of her little basket, for which Lance was grateful. As she pulled out several items and lined them up on the table, he noticed that she had done something to her hair—pulled it into some sort of silvery headband thing—and was that lip gloss? And she smelled amazing, like the ocean mixed with rain. If that scent came in a bottle, Lance wished every woman would buy it.
“Give me your foot,” Caroline snapped in about the tone in which she might have said, you’ve got spinach in your teeth or your dog pooped under my rosebush. Without waiting for him to comply, she lifted it out of the pot and set it on a folded towel on her lap. She gently blotted his skin dry, and then squeezed some ointment from a tube. “You’re lucky that I’ve been taking care of Fiver for most of his life. He’s a disaster waiting to happen...this might sting a little.”
She wasn’t kidding, and Lance was back to clenching his teeth together for dear life as she cleaned the wound.
“So, what is that you’re using on me, anyway? Boric acid? Liquid nitrogen?”
She looked up at him coolly. “This product contains oil of burdock,” she said. “It’s a natural antiseptic.” A faint twinkle of mischief lit up her golden-brown eyes. “Though they don’t test it on animals, so who knows if it actually works?”
She applied a bandage, giving it an extra little jerk that was sharp enough to make him yelp. “I’m not usually so clumsy,” he blurted unconvincingly. His head was still swimming from the lingering effects of all those shots of tequila. He was going down fast, wearing nothing but a towel in his lap and a puffy bandage topped with what looked like an Easter bow, while a beautiful woman’s cool, slender fingers caressed the strip of flesh above the bandage.
“So what made you decide to spend Christmas in the mountains?”
“I’m a school teacher. Third grade. I came up here for my friend Matt’s engagement party, and then the three of us are going skiing. Do you know Johnny Cornelius?”
Her face softened, and the disgusted look on her face morphed into a smile that transformed her from merely gorgeous to positively irresistible. “I love Johnny! We grew up together. Him and Fiver and me and—well, everyone. Wait a minute. I was at their party tonight—I didn’t see you.”
Lance shrugged. “I came late. Got a little delayed….” Because he and Matt were doing a congratulatory shot, he didn’t add.
“I left early. I can’t stand crowds.”
“I’m kind of a night owl.”
“I like to get a good night’s sleep. Speaking of which....”
“Yeah.” Lance got to his feet, hopping on the un-bandaged one. “Look, I feel like I’m taking advantage of your hospitality here. I mean, Fiver offered me a place to crash, not a whole hospital wing and a private nurse.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Caroline said breezily, tidying up her first aid kit. “There’s nothing I like better than get
ting up in the middle of the night and finding someone bleeding all over my bathroom floor.”
“Let me take you to lunch next Saturday,” Lance said impulsively. “When I get back from skiing with the boys. To make up for ruining your night.”
Caroline looked at him in surprise. For a moment the cool gleam in her eyes was replaced by uncertainty. She looked…vulnerable. “I’ll be working,” she said.
Lance wished he had a window into her mind, because the hesitation in her voice might have meant, and thank God that I am, since that gives me an easy excuse to decline, but it also might have meant, which is a shame, because I’d really like to help you walk on that gimpy foot of yours, all the way down the hall to my bedroom where I’ll show you what I keep under this slinky little robe.
Well, it probably didn’t mean the latter. But it could, right?
Jeez, Lance needed to get some sleep. “That’s too bad,” he said. But she worked right downstairs. “I don’t suppose your brother could cover for you? Just this once?”
“Well…I guess I could ask him. I mean, he owes me about a billion favors. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Great! And thanks again for the, uh….” Lance gestured at his foot.
“No problem.” She picked up the pot of soapy water and dumped it into the kitchen sink. She dried her hands on a towel and walked past him toward her bedroom. At the hall she turned, hand on her hip. “A schoolteacher, huh? You’re not the first one of those that Fiver’s brought home.”
Then she giggled at her own little joke and disappeared into her room, leaving the living room silent and empty.
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas Page 33