girl’s did in The Exorcist. “That’s not a job. Not for me.”
Alex let out a low chuckle. Which sounded normal. Maybe she’d imagined his lack of being in the moment? “You do it for eight hours a day and get paid, right? What do you call that?”
“My dad calls it a labor of love. And no, I’m not getting paid, so that description works. I’m laboring—happily—because I love them. Long overdue payback for he and Gram nursing me through chicken pox, a torn ACL, and, you know, being a teenager.”
It wasn’t the stock answer she would’ve given a month ago. One based on years of running away.
Habit. Resentment.
But it was the truth now. Which was confusing. A core belief was changing. Had changed.
What was she supposed to do with that awareness?
She angled out the bottle of peppermint schnapps. How the night would unfold was still undetermined. But a snowy night called for spiked hot cocoa, no matter what else happened.
Alex tugged a corduroy elephant from under his hip. Underhanded it across the room onto a high-backed rattan chair. “So are congratulations in order?”
What a loaded question.
“Unclear,” she said tersely. Sydney poured hefty shots into both steaming mugs.
“It isn’t a good job?”
“It’s a very good job. A dream job.” Damn it, they’d barely begun discussing this, and already she was forced to disclose a scary revelation. “I’m just not sure if I want it anymore.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Funny. You don’t look old enough to be having a mid-life crisis.”
“Thanks for that.” Guess it was a good thing she’d put on the red, fleece-lined cold-shoulder top that laced up the back. And kept slipping off one shoulder. “I just…it would…I’d have to be away from here if I took it. All the time.”
“Here?” Alex’s brows shot up, incredulously. “This tiny town you warned us to get out of immediately?”
Smart-ass. Shouldn’t they have to date for at least, oh, a year before it was safe for Alex to fight by throwing her words back at her?
“Yeah, yeah.” Sydney brushed aside the needlepointed elephant family pillow she’d painstakingly made for Kim a million Christmases ago. Sat down next to Alex with one leg curled under her. “I’ve had a change of heart about being gone so much.”
“Ah. Your grandmother? Her brush with death hit home? You’re re-evaluating the time left you can spend with her, along with the rest of your family?”
Darn it. The man wasn’t just a smart-ass. Alex was simply smart.
“Huh. That makes me realize we’ve never talked much about your job pre-inn, either. Any chance you were a hotel psychotherapist?”
He bobbled his mug, he laughed so hard. Barely kept from spilling cocoa onto the sea-grass rug beneath the table. “No. No chance whatsoever.”
“Why’s that funny? Aside from not being a real thing, except for maybe in Hollywood. Are you anti-therapy?”
“Not at all. I, well, I don’t have a college degree. My parents died when I was a freshman. Had to drop out to be Amelia’s guardian.”
It was much more poignant and powerful to hear straight from him than when Amelia had told her the story. She’d never imagined that he hadn’t gone back and finished the degree. Talk about loyal. And selfless. Because it was quite telling that Alex didn’t say he dropped out because of money. No, he did it to help his little sister finish growing up.
“You’re a good man, with an amazing heart,” Sydney said softly.
“I try. That’s all any of us can do, right? So without a degree—merely my observational skills—was I right? About your family being why you won’t take the dream job?”
Maybe. Not that she’d decided yet.
Maybe not? The only thing Sydney knew for certain was that she was confused.
So she deflected. Not at all artfully. With, in fact, the subtlety of a sledgehammer through rice paper. “This is a topic I’m not prepared to think about, let alone talk about. Let’s shift focus. You…do you want to be here right now?”
Alex slurped at his cocoa. Gave an approving hum at the schnapps addition. “Yes. Why?”
“I wasn’t sure. When you first got here. You seemed very in your head. Or maybe I don’t know you well enough yet to read you right?”
He took another slow sip before answering. Equally as slowly. “Believe me, Sydney. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than here with you.”
The snail-like tempo he’d suddenly adopted said otherwise. At least partially. “While I want to believe that’s mostly seduction talking? It feels more like there’s someplace you definitely don’t