Snowflake Wishes (5 page)

She took a deep breath. He remembered, dammit. “One more thing.”

“Name it.”

“Let's please not talk about us—past, present … future. Let's just—enjoy the day.”

*   *   *

“How about this one for Sarah?” Hours later, Noah held up a pottery bowl that might look great on his sister Paige's table, but definitely not in Sarah's loft in New York City.

“Nope. Sarah gets the hand-blown glass. She's not a pottery girl—or a bowl girl, really.”

Noah set the bowl back down, confusion on his face. “Exactly how does one qualify as a—bowl girl?”

“I don't know, really. It's just a—I don't know.” She shook her head, embarrassed that she'd let the stupid phrase out of her mouth. “It's somebody with a homey sort of home—somebody who'd have it on the counter, or maybe up on a shelf above the fireplace with kids' pictures around it.”

She picked up a similar dish, balancing it carefully in her hands. “What would you put in this?”

“Probably my keys.”

“Exactly. So would Sarah. Pottery abuse.”

He laughed. “Okay, fruit?”

“Exactly. And last I knew Sarah, she didn't actually keep
any
nonperishable food at her apartment, let alone fruit.”

“Good point. I think she still wines and dines eight days a week.”

“Right. So a bowl would either sit in a cupboard, or it would drive her crazy gathering dust on some shelf. And this pottery's too nice to be tucked away or covered with dust.”

“So why glass, then?”

“Because
glass
she'll use. You give her a nice, classic vase, put some fresh-cut flowers in it on Christmas Eve, and voila. It's modern, it's chic, and it's too skinny to collect dust. She'll love it, I promise.”

As she said the words, Piper felt a ping in her stomach. How did
she
know what Sarah might like anymore? She hadn't seen the girl since she was barely out of her teens. Same went for his other two sisters, and now there were nieces she'd never laid eyes on. She had some nerve thinking she had
any
clue what they'd like for Christmas.

After she'd dated Noah for two years, she'd started actually picturing what it might be like to have his nieces call her Auntie Piper. She felt a pain in her chest when she realized none of them would probably even recognize her anymore.

But for the past three hours, as they'd browsed shops and put fifty miles on his truck, she'd felt the seven years evaporate. Being with Noah felt—right. She'd laughed more in the past few hours than she had in a long time, and when he'd taken her hand earlier as he'd opened the truck door, she'd let him.

He pointed at a tiny set of framed prints on the wall, and she held her breath as he peered closer. “Are these yours?”

She nodded, bracing herself. Would he notice how different they were now? How … empty?

When she'd first met Noah, she'd loved nothing more than the nights when they'd eat dinner sitting on the floor of her studio apartment in the attic of Mrs. Grakow's old Victorian, and then have … dessert … in bed. Later, after Noah was asleep, Piper would pull on his shirt, grab a fresh canvas, and paint till sunrise.

She'd be exhausted, but it was better than sleeping. Better than the nightmares that assaulted her when she closed her eyes. Better than imagining her parents falling to their deaths, over and over and over.

The paintings she'd done back then reflected the afterglow, the new love, the awakening of senses, and they'd been beautiful, deep, thoughtful.

In the mornings, he had come to her, naked and gorgeous, and slid his arms around her, pulling her back to bed. They'd made love for hours—been hungry, thirsty … insatiable, and she'd walked around campus afterward feeling cherished, wondering how it was possible for her life to go from feeling so dismal to so hopeful in the span of six months.

For two years, it had lasted. For two years, she'd wondered if it was possible to be this happy forever. For two years, she'd imagined what a future with Noah Drake might look like.

And then he'd had his first accident. It hadn't been huge—not by his industry's standards, anyway. A broken kneecap, a slight concussion, not even an overnight hospital stay. But her stomach had clenched when he'd called from the ER, and it hadn't let go for weeks.

The second accident hadn't been his fault, but as she'd waited for the medevac helicopter to pull him off Mount Washington, she'd died a thousand deaths. The sound of the chopper had sent her into a panic, and she'd begged—
begged
—him to be done with this life. She'd never told him how her parents had died. How could she, when he did what he did? But every time he left the apartment with his backpack on, she flew into a cleaning frenzy afterward, just trying to use up the adrenaline shooting through her panicky body, convinced he might never be back.

The third accident had been the proverbial straw. Walking into the hospital, holding her breath in the elevator, seeing the bruises and bandages … had all been too much. It had taken everything she had to walk back out of his room that day, everything she had not to answer his phone calls and texts … everything she had to pile a month's worth of clothes into her car and head to a tiny motel in the Adirondacks so he couldn't find her.

Because she'd known that if she let him back in, he'd only continue to break her heart every time he walked out the door. She'd had to stay away from Echo Lake until he, too, was gone.

The day after she knew his flight had been scheduled to leave for Africa, she'd rolled back into town, tears coursing down her cheeks as she climbed the stairs to her empty, empty apartment. She'd pulled out a fresh canvas, uncapped her paints, and cued up her favorite playlist, desperate for the art to heal her.

But nothing happened.

The canvas stayed blank.

For seven years now, blank canvases had taunted her with their vast whiteness, their tiny hollows waiting for genius. Apparently, hers had fled the moment she'd called it quits on Noah, and it hadn't come back since. All she seemed able to do these days was create tiny four-by-four prints that tourists loved, but she hated.

And now he was going to see them. He was going to know.

She took a deep breath. “Those are mine, yes.”

“They're … great.” He leaned closer to study them. “Such detail.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You hate them.”

“No, I don't. Of course I don't! How would I hate them?”

“Noah, you still bite your lip when you're lying.”

“I do not.” He bit his lip, and she couldn't help but laugh. “Do I?”

“It's okay. I hate them, too. They're tiny and lifeless.”

He looked back at the grouping of four foliage scenes, tipping his head. “They're not lifeless. They—I don't know—they just maybe don't have the same life-
force
I remember.”

“I know.”

“So what else do you paint?” He looked around. “Do you have other stuff hanging here?”

Piper shook her head. If he only knew. There
was
nothing else anymore. “Just these.”

“No time?”

“Right.” She nodded, grateful for the easy out. It was kinda-sorta true. She spent twenty hours a week at Avery's House using her actual art therapy degree, and Mama B filled up forty more hours with waitressing shifts at Bellinis, so it wasn't completely a lie to say she didn't have time to create real art anymore.

Right.
It was totally a lie.

Noah pointed at a staircase heading down to the bottom floor of the art studio. “What's down there?”

“Workshop. This is a co-op, so most of the artists who display here have to play demo-dolly a certain number of hours per week.”

“Demo-dolly?” He smiled.

Piper shrugged. “You know. Like at the glass place. They sit, they work, we watch. They probably hate it—because they're artists, and artists prefer not to be on display like animals in a zoo.”

“You speak like someone who's done the demo-dolly thing.”

Piper closed her eyes. The summer after he'd left for Africa, she'd done just that, and it had been hell, mostly because she'd had to sit there and pretend to create some sort of colorful masterpiece, when all she'd really wanted to do was open a big tube of black paint and dump it on the canvas.

She made a swiping motion across her face. “We do not talk of this lapse in judgment.”

Noah laughed. “So … do you want to go downstairs and watch?”

“I will not go see the monkeys, no.”

He came closer, raising his eyebrows playfully. “Do you fear the power of the pottery wheel?”

“God, Noah. No.”

God, Noah. Yes.

One rainy day, she'd convinced him to watch
Ghost,
and though he'd argued and rolled his eyes, the man had rewound the pottery-wheel scene no fewer than six times before dragging her to the bedroom. The phrase “pottery wheel” became code for “I want you naked,” and Piper had been continually amused at all the ways Noah had learned to work pottery into normal conversation.

“So you …
don't
want to go see the pottery wheels? Because I find them pretty amazing, myself.” A smiled danced at the corners of his lips, and his promise to keep things casual seemed to fly out the window.

“I do not. No.”

Oh, God. She so did. But how
could
she? What
was
it about him that made a part of her want to forget everything, and haul him off to … see the pottery wheels?

But another part of her clanged danger bells at an ear-splitting volume, forcing her back to their reality—that no matter how this weekend went, come New Year's, he'd probably be off on another assignment, while she'd be waiting tables at Bellinis and painting tiny, lifeless barns and mountains.

“Are you … ready to go?” Her voice sounded shaky, even to her own ears. She was dead sure he could hear it, too.

He paused, but didn't immediately answer. “Okay.” He reached for the bowl. “Let's check Paige off the list. She is definitely a bowl girl.”

Their fingers touched, and he nodded, holding the pottery carefully.

“I know. You are, too.”

Chapter 5

Twenty minutes later, Noah glanced over at Piper in the passenger seat, and was seized by a vision of her on a college road trip they'd taken from Boston up to Tuckerman's Ravine in New Hampshire. He'd been determined to ski the legendary slopes, risking life and limb, but when they'd gotten there, the sheer magnitude of the spot had scared her silly.

We're going to die,
Piper had said, and he'd reluctantly agreed. The snow pack had been iffy, and an avalanche was
not
on his bucket list. They'd strapped the skis back onto the car, found a little diner for lunch, and ended up falling into bed that night in a cozy inn just outside of town.

Better than dying,
Piper had said as they'd spread bubbles over each other in the huge claw-foot tub. He remembered feeling so—grown up as they'd shared that room, come down for breakfast in the morning, headed back up for one more time before they left for Boston.

He remembered looking at her in the passenger seat of his old Chevy, wearing a sweater just like the one she had on today, and thinking—
I'm going to marry this woman.

He swallowed, returning his focus to the road. Five minutes later, he pulled into a tiny roadside diner about an hour north of Echo Lake. Snow was spitting and the steely gray clouds were sitting low over the mountain they'd just come across, but hopefully they were in for just a passing squall. Perfect time to hole up at a little diner with a big coffee carafe.

The building sat low to the ground, and had definitely seen better days, but cheerful gingham curtains hung in the windows, and the parking lot was full. That could very well be because there
was
nowhere else to go out to eat on a Saturday afternoon in this area, but in his experience, a crappy-looking little diner with a full-to-brimming parking lot generally had the kind of food that stuck with you … in a good way.

“Do we dare?” he asked as he parked the truck.

Piper looked skeptical as she scanned the building, but she popped her seat belt and reached for the door handle. “This is how we used to find the best food, right?”

“Right.” He smiled. She remembered.

“And besides, I'm so hungry I could eat a cow.”

They trudged through the snowy parking lot and stepped inside the creaky door, and Noah breathed in the typical diner scents of bacon and coffee. As they sat down, a middle-aged waitress in a sloppy bun swiped their table with a wet rag and plunked down paper place mats and napkin-wrapped silverware.

“I'm Darla. You want coffee?”

“Please.” Piper rubbed her hands together and looked out the window. Temps were definitely dropping, and he wished he'd thought to check the weather report before they got this far away from town.

Piper squinted at the window, then pulled out her phone. “Was this snow predicted?”

“I was just thinking that.”

Darla returned with a hot pot of coffee. She slopped it into their cups with the grace of a lifelong diner waitress, and then set down a bowl of creamers.

“No cell service here, honey.” She pointed to Piper's phone. “We got a pay phone out back if you need to call somebody.”

Piper pocketed her phone. “Thank you. Any chance you've heard the weather for this afternoon?”

Darla stopped, her eyebrows up. “You haven't?”

Piper glanced at Noah, worried. “We came up from Echo Lake. Wasn't snowing when we left.”

“Well, I don't think you're getting back there tonight, honey.” She pointed out the window. “Twelve to eighteen inches in the valleys. More up here. Storm's stalled.”