Page 50 of Touch the Sky

“So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I ask while we’re both untying leads. “Are you going back to your parents’ place?”

She shakes her head. “I thought about it, but they’re still busy with their whole downsizing the house thing, and as much as they’d love to see me, I don’t want to put them through the stress of hosting a holiday. I decided to just book a few clients on and use the long weekend as a chance to get some extra hours in.”

I make a face. “Well, that’s not very exciting.”

She chuckles. “No. No, I guess it’s not.”

“You should at least come to the Balsam Inn dinner,” I tell her.

We’re both lingering at the hitching rail. There are only two horses left to return to the barn.

“There’s a dinner?” she asks.

“Yeah, on the Sunday. We’re planning on a big outdoor meal. Bonfire. Beer. The works, you know?”

She grins. “That sounds really lovely.”

“Well, that’s that,là.” I clap my hands together. “You are invited, and you can’t say no.”

She brushes her hair out of her eyes. “Okay. That’s that.”

I stare at her forehead, and I wonder what it would feel like to do that myself: brush her hair out of her eyes for her.

I wonder what it would feel like to run my finger along her jaw.

Then I shake my head and turn to start untying the final lead ropes, bringing this evening with Tess to an end.

Chapter 12

Jacinthe

“Câlice de criss! Are you trying to kidnap me or something?”

Maddie’s fingertips dig into my arm as she drags me down the hall at Balsam Inn. She pounced on me like a ninja the second I walked in the front door.

“Yeah, basically,” she says in a cheerful voice.

“I know how to walk,” I remind her. “You don’t have to pull me around like that.”

“I have to make sure you don’t escape,” she tells me, chipper as ever.

I’m about to ask what the hell I’d be trying to escape from when we turn the corner into the kitchen. Natalie is standing beside the island, gripping the back of a chair that’s clearly meant for me.

Before I can start yelling for help, the door to the backyard opens, and our cook, Carolyne, comes inside with a dish towel slung over the shoulder of her Harley Davidson t-shirt and a bandana tying back her bleach blonde hair. A faint smell of cigarette smoke slips inside the kitchen along with her.

“Ça va, les filles?” she asks in her raspy voice.

She’s somewhere in her fifties and looks more like she should be working at a biker bar than a cozy countryside B&B. You’d never guess she makes all the guests’ pancakes into cute little animal shapes and always shows up with hand-picked wildflowers to decorate the breakfast trays.

“Oh, sorry, Carolyne,” Natalie says in French. “I thought you were already gone for the day.”

Carolyne mimes waving a cigarette around. “Just having my last ciggie before I hit the road. Can I help you with anything?”

“No, no,” Natalie assures her. “We just needed somewhere to have a quick chat all together.”

Nothing good has ever come of anyone saying, ‘Let’s have a quick chat.’

I try to take a step back towards the hallway, but Maddie tightens her grip on my arm.