Taste (Cloverleigh Farms, #7)(41)

“Well, what about us? What are we supposed to do?”

Gianni stretched out across the foot of the bed, head propped on his hand. “Don’t worry, I planned out our whole day. First, we’ll make snow angels for two hours, then we’ll go ice skating, and then we’ll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie dough as fast as we can, and then—to finish?—we’ll snuggle.” He gave me his most charming grin.

“Gianni!” I stamped my foot. “This is no time to quote Buddy the Elf. That isn’t prop snow out there, it’s the real thing! And this is a real emergency! We’re stranded here, and I want to leave.”

“I do too, but we can’t go anywhere until my car starts and the roads are clear, and that could be a while, so we might as well make the most of this unexpected opportunity to spend more time together.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “If you think I’m going to sleep with you again, you’re crazy.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Good.” Sighing, I dropped my arms and closed my eyes. “This sucks.”

“Come on. It could be worse.”

I opened them and stared at him. “How?”

“You could be trapped with someone a lot less fun than me. You could be trapped alone. You could be trapped in a burning building.”

“I guess this is preferable to that,” I muttered. “But I still want to leave as quickly as possible, so keep calling the towing company.”

“I definitely will.”

“In the meantime, I guess I could make some coffee.” I glanced at our kitchenette. “What should we do for breakfast? Gas station treats?”

“We could, but I asked Rose in the office what the options were, and she said we could snowshoe up the highway to her sister Mae’s diner. It’s open.”

“We don’t have snowshoes!”

“Rose said the motel owns some they rent out, but we can use them for free.”

“How come that diner is open but everything else is closed?”

“I asked that too, and she said Mae lives above the diner and has been open every single day for twenty-seven years. Apparently, it’s a point of pride.”

I nodded. “I wish I had some snow pants. That snow looks deep.”

“You don’t have to go. If you want, I can go and bring food back.”

“So that you can tease me about being such a princess that I can’t go out in the snow? Forget it,” I snapped, heading for the bathroom. “I can manage.”





Thirty minutes later, Gianni and I were trudging up the road with snowshoes and poles borrowed from Rose. The snow was a foot deep at least, and continued to fall in thick, heavy flakes, although the wind wasn’t as bad as it had been last night. Still, it was freezing cold, and I could hardly feel my nose, toes, or fingers after just a few minutes. My pants were probably going to be ruined. The good thing was that snowshoeing was hard work, so the trunk of my body stayed fairly warm.

Even so, I was happy when we reached our destination—an old, two-story house whose clapboards had been replaced with vinyl siding with an addition off to one side. A wooden sign out front read Mae’s Diner, Open 365 Days a Year. Several snowmobiles were parked outside the place, and it occurred to me we hadn’t seen a single car or even a plow on the road.

The front walk had been shoveled at least once this morning, so we took off our snowshoes and carried them up the steps onto the porch. Leaving them outside the door along with our poles, we entered the diner. It was a small place—really just one big room—with polished oak floors and furniture. Despite the fact that it was late January, Christmas lights were still strung up, shining in all their multi-colored glory. It was blissfully warm and smelled delicious, like bacon and savory potatoes and something sweet too, maybe donuts. My mouth watered as my toes thawed.

A plump silver-haired lady who looked a lot like Rose came bustling over to us, a coffee pot in her hand. “You must be the two Rose called me about. Come on in and sit wherever you’d like,” she said. “Not too busy this morning, so plenty of options.”

We thanked her, and I followed Gianni across the room to a booth where I slid in across from him. It was set for two, with upturned mugs on a paper placemat featuring different birds of North America. Mine was a tufted titmouse, which I hoped Gianni wouldn’t notice. After removing my hat and gloves, I unbuttoned my coat and pulled my arms out of the sleeves.

“Want me to hang it up?” Gianni offered.

“No, thanks.”

Mae came by a minute later with menus and the coffee pot. As she turned the mugs over and filled them, she chattered nonstop. “How about that snowstorm? One of the worst ones I ever seen, and I seen a lot. I wasn’t even sure Harold—that’s my son, he just lives across the street—would make it over to cook this morning, but he did.” She chuckled with pride. “Otherwise I’da been cooking and serving today. Sign says three-sixty-five, and I mean three-sixty-five. Never been closed a single day in twenty-seven years.”

“That’s what we heard from Rose,” said Gianni. “So what should I have?”

“The farmer’s omelette,” said Mae without hesitation. “With a side of breakfast sausage and toast. We make our own sausage here, and you don’t want to miss it.”