One Snowy Night (Sweet Home, Alaska #1) - Patience Griffin Page 0,51

moved she’d tucked the fabric in the back of the closet so it wouldn’t be a reminder of the moose that had snatched Izzie’s years away from her.

Hope had a feeling that if she didn’t do something constructive with the fabric now, Izzie would nag her in her dreams tonight. Her sister would play the dead card and say that Hope shouldn’t bury the fabric . . . especially since she knew what it felt like to be buried. It wouldn’t be the first time Izzie had gone there. To avoid her sister’s chastisement, Hope spread out the fabric and measured. “Just enough to make the curtains and maybe a small throw pillow, too.” Donovan’s interior designer was probably going to hate it, but Hope decided to take the fabric back to the lodge to show him, assuming he had returned by the time she got there.

When she pulled into Home Sweet Home Lodge, Donovan’s car was there, alongside Rick’s. Rick had probably come back to pack a bag. If it had been any other two people, she’d have been sure they were yucking it up at her expense. Hope McKnight the housekeeper. She knew they weren’t mean like that, but Hope felt humiliated anyway.

She grabbed the moose fabric from the back seat and went to the lodge’s front door and knocked.

The door opened, and she smelled . . . was that pizza?

“Hey.” Donovan seemed in a better state of mind than when he’d left her earlier.

“A couple of questions,” she said. “First, what is it you want me to do this afternoon?” Hope couldn’t stop her mouth from watering at the scent of garlic.

“Come in.”

“In a second, I will.” She wanted to ask this next question in private. “Your flyer listed the hourly rate, but it didn’t say when or how often payday was.” She tried to sound casual. Tried not to sound desperate.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Daily! “Weekly would be fine,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what. Speak to Rick about whatever works for you. He likes to feel needed.” This last part Donovan said loudly over his shoulder.

He clearly had no idea how embarrassing all of this was for Hope.

“Don’t look like that,” Donovan said. “It’s Rick’s job. For the life of me, I don’t know why he gets a kick out of W-9s and such.”

“Okay.”

Donovan stood back and Hope stepped inside.

Rick came out of the kitchen carrying a pizza stone and set it on the dining room table. “Hope, join Donovan for lunch. I’m leaving in a moment and our boy here hates to eat alone. Especially since he went to all the trouble to make this marvelous pizza.”

She couldn’t stop herself from angling to the side to get a better look. It really was a masterpiece: sausage, pepperoni, and black olives piled high with oozing strips of mozzarella layered on top, and spinach leaves perched around the circumference of the pan. The man should open a pizza parlor in Sweet Home.

“There’s plenty,” Donovan offered.

Hope stopped staring at the pizza and held up the moose fabric, trying to ignore her stomach’s rumblings. “I brought fabric from home for Wandering Moose Cabin. That is, if you want it. I don’t know if you noticed, but the curtains have outlived their usefulness. I can make the curtains tonight and bring them back tomorrow. With your approval, of course.”

Rick beamed. “See! What did I tell you? Hope is our girl!”

Hope wanted to say she hadn’t been anyone’s girl in a long, long time.

Donovan touched the fabric. He was probably thinking of the accident, too, and gave her a sad sort of smile. “I think it would be great. You don’t mind using your own fabric for the curtains?”

“Not at all.”

“You can’t make them on your own time, though,” Donovan decreed. “I bet one of the sewing machines in Nan’s studio still works. If not, run home and bring your sewing machine back here. You sew on my time.”

Donovan fingered the fabric. “I really love the idea of decorating each cabin according to its name. Do you have any more of the moose fabric, enough for a quilt?”

She shook her head.

Rick was standing at the table, cutting up the pizza. “Don, you should take Hope to Anchorage or Fairbanks to pick out fabric. Get the lodge fixed up right.”

“No,” Hope said. She couldn’t believe Rick had put Donovan in that situation. He wouldn’t want to take her anywhere. “Really, I don’t mind making the curtains at home tonight with