Page 8 of Holiday Hideaway
Her phone dinged with another incoming text.
I’ll take my chances. Car is at Joey’s Garage. I took a look under the hood and discovered it needed a new alternator. Tell your “maintenance man” I said Merry Christmas.
Tilly didn’t know whether to curse or rejoice in George’s generosity. What would it take to dislodge this guy?
His phone rang, and, as usual, he put the call on speaker.
“Hey, babe.”
So it was the fiancée, the stunning (according to Ruth) Vanessa. She wasted no time getting down to business. “George, I just checked in your closet, and your tux isn’t there.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Did you remember to pick it up from the cleaners after Callie and Mike’s wedding last month?”
“Maybe?”
“George! I texted you about picking it up. I set an alarm on your phone to remind you, just in case.”
“I got busy,” he protested.
“You need the tux for the ball. For which I am the committee chair. Which is in three days.”
“Can’t I just wear a suit?”
“No! It’s a black-tie ball. Not a blue-suit-and-brown-shoes ball. And it feels like you’re deliberately trying to sabotage the most important social event of the year.”
“I’m not trying to sabotage anything. I’m up to my ears in old-house crap. Can’t you just pick up the tux from the cleaners?”
“I could. If I had the claim check. Which I don’t.”
“It’s probably in the Jeep. I’ll find it, I’ll get you the claim-check number, and you can pick it up. Easy peasy.”
There was a long pause. “George? Do you realize how important this ball is to me?”
He sighed. “I get it, Vanessa. I’ll do my best to get back in time.”
When Tilly heard the back door open and slam shut, she tiptoed to the window overlooking the backyard. Sure enough, his legs were sticking out of the driver’s-side door of the Jeep as he tossed items onto the winter-barren yard: fast-food wrappers, foam coffee cups, an energy drink can, a pair of ski boots, a tennis racket, a gym bag, and a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.
Her phone dinged, and she looked down at the newspaper photo Ruth had forwarded. George, a.k.a. Sticks, was devastatingly handsome in a tux, dark hair spilling over one eye. The gorgeous blonde on his arm was beaming, looking radiant in a low-cut silver gown that put all her many assets on full display, but George, poor George, looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
“She’s gonna kill me,” George muttered, absentmindedly munching on a stale doughnut hole. The tux was the least of his problems. A small chunk of plaster had fallen from the kitchen ceiling, and for the first time, he noticed brownish water stains above the upper kitchen cabinets. He set off in search of a ladder. No time like the present, right?
He found the extension ladder leaning against the barn’s outside wall.
George peered inside the barn, the musty odor awakening in him all those long summer days spent playing with his cousin and sisters when his grandparents were living. As hedragged the ladder toward the house, he idly wondered who might buy the Crowe’s Nest. A family, he hoped, who would love and restore the house, instead of a bitter old bachelor like his Uncle Gus.
By the time he made it around to the front of the house, the sun had sunk lower in the sky, dropping the temperature, and dark-tinged clouds scudded by, lending his mission a new sense of urgency.
George stepped backward and considered his strategy. The climb up to the porch roof didn’t look too challenging, but from there, he’d need to haul the ladder up and onto the porch roof before he could reach the steeply sloped roof over the attic.
No problem,he told himself. His gym had a rock climbing wall, and he regularly achieved Power Zone workouts on the Peloton Vanessa bought him for his birthday after she’d half-teasingly, half-seriously accused him of getting a dad bod. “We need you ripped and Nantucket ready come July,” she’d said, patting his abs.
“You can do this,” he chanted as he ascended the ladder. “You’re a rock star.”
But when he stepped onto the porch roof and made the mistake of looking down, he nearly swooned. It was a straight drop of fifteen feet, easy.
“Shake it off, George,” he told himself in the same stern tone his favorite Peloton instructor used. He grabbed the ladder and, inch by inch, managed to drag it up the front of the house.
