“You’re missing quite the party in there,” he said.
Carrie gave him a rueful smile. “Just taking a small break,” she said, leaning over to snaffle a bit of his naan bread. “I’ll be back on the dance floor in no time.” Her high heels, Nate noticed, were already off her feet and on the floor beside her stool.
“I think your dad might have had enough of dancing, anyway.” Nate watched with some satisfaction as Carrie stopped midway through dipping his naan bread in the curry. She was just so much fun when she was surprised. “Ruth is running him pretty much ragged out there.”
“You met my dad?” Carrie asked, managing a tone of mild indifference as she finished dunking the bread.
Nate nodded. “He here to check up you?” He certainly hadn’t been invited, Nate knew that much from sticking address labels on envelopes one long evening a few weeks earlier.
“Something like that.” She sighed, and Nate decided it was probably time to stop teasing.
“Really?” Nate handed over an onion bahji. She looked like she needed it more than him.
Carrie instantly started tearing it to shreds, popping tiny strands of battered onion into her mouth. “He’s been talking to Anna. Who has apparently been telling him I’m in desperate trouble, making huge mistakes, and am never going to make a success of this place without her on board.” Carrie dropped the remains of the bahji onto his plate. “Basically he’s here to check if I’m going to need bailing out anytime soon.”
Nate glanced over at Stan, who was hovering close, shamelessly eavesdropping. The older man had his eyebrows raised, but he didn’t say anything. He did, however, put a pint of bitter on the bar in front of Nate, which Nate thought much more useful than any advice he’d been about to give, anyway.
“Well,” Nate said, slipping off his stool. “All I can suggest is that you find your way back to enjoying the party. And soon. You won’t want to miss the next bit.” Off her raised eyebrows and puzzled smile, he turned back to the bar. “Stan?” he called, and the other man looked up from pulling his next pint. “Are we all set up?”
Stan shook his head, but said, “It’ll be ready when you are.” Nate had expected Stan to be more in favor of the plan, but when he’d asked him for help earlier, he said he’d “had enough of love for one day,” whatever that meant. Nate didn’t much care, as long as Stan came through with what he needed.
Carrie looked adorably confused. “Good,” Nate said, pleased with himself, as he headed back into the ballroom.
If Carrie didn’t want to love him by the end of the night, he thought, then she probably never would.
* * * *
By the time Carrie had finished off Nate’s abandoned plate of food, and Henry and Izzie had come to relieve Stan behind the bar, the party in the main ballroom was really in full swing.
“After all those hours of dance lessons, I think I deserve a turn on the floor,” Stan said, holding out his arm.
“It wasn’t that many hours,” Carrie protested, as he led her out onto the dance floor.
“No?” Stan raised an eyebrow as he corrected her arm placement before the music started. “Perhaps it just seemed like it, then.”
Carrie made a silent resolve to step on his toes at the first opportunity.
The band struck up their next song, and Carrie relaxed into the dance, meaning her steps were far from perfect. Still, Stan led well, so mostly she could just get away with following him.
“I had an interesting conversation with your father earlier.” Stan’s words came out of nowhere, but they sounded like something he’d been planning to say for some time.
“Really.” Carrie didn’t want to offend him, but as he’d clearly noticed, she already had one father. She didn’t need any more fatherly advice. “I wouldn’t put too much store in what he has to say,” she said lightly. The last thing she needed was Stan telling all the others the Avalon was on the verge of bankruptcy. “He’s been talking to Anna. She’s holding something of a grudge.”
“We didn’t talk about the inn,” Stan corrected gently.
Carrie glanced up at him, a frown forming across her forehead. “Then what did you talk about?”
“You.” Stan smiled down at her. “I think you should consider the possibility that your father didn’t come here to check up on the inn. He came to make sure his little girl was okay.”
Suddenly, any satisfaction Carrie had felt about the success of her party drained away. “And I told him I didn’t need him.”
Stan nodded. “He’s worried about you, Carrie. He’s your father. He just wants to make things better for you.”
Carrie slowed, then stopped dancing altogether. Across the dance floor, she could see her dad chatting with the mayor, of all people. “Do you mind if I...”
“Go ahead.” Stan released her hand and waist. “Apparently I owe Cyb a dance, anyway.”
Carrie dashed across the floor toward Peter, inserting herself into a gap between him and the Mayor. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, as politely as she could. “But I was hoping to get a dance with my father?”
Mayor Richards smiled indulgently, even as Peter looked at Carrie with surprise. Carrie reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him onto the dance floor.
Tucked up in her father’s arms, Carrie felt the whole evening come together. “I’m sorry I was difficult earlier,” she said as they swayed to the music.
Peter shook his head. “I’m sorry if you felt I was checking up on you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I am,” she assured him. “Really.”
“I can see that.” Peter waved a hand at the ballroom. “Everyone here tonight has been telling me what a splendid job you’ve been doing.”
Carrie looked up in surprise. “Really?”
“Really,” her father confirmed. “I even spoke with your accountant. He said cash flow is a little slow at the moment...”
“But it will pick up,” Carrie said firmly. “And everyone’s working so hard–Jacob in the kitchen, Nate in the gardens, even the Seniors...”
“Yes, I’ve been hearing a lot about Nate Green, too,” Peter said with a chuckle. “I barely recognized him when I met him.”
“He looks different from on the telly,” Carrie agreed, then added, “The Singing Gardener,” when her dad looked blank.
“I don’t recall the show.” Peter shook his head. “No, I meant from the summer he spent here working in the gardens. He must have been, oh I don’t know, all of sixteen then. He’s certainly a more responsible member of society now!”
Carrie froze in the middle of the dance floor. “Nate worked here? Before?” Images of the terrace in the moonlight, and a tanned hand on her cheek as the boy she’d been dancing with bent his head and kissed her, whirred round and round.
Peter nodded. “Yes. Don’t you remember? You stayed here for a week that summer, I’m sure.”
“I stayed here every summer, until I went to university.” Carrie’s voice sounded far away. How had she not remembered? She’d never known his name, she supposed. Nancy had always just called him Boy. It was thei
r joke. He was just someone she’d seen in the distance, working in the garden while she lounged around up at the inn. Until the night she’d snuck down to watch the dancing from the terrace, and he’d found her there.
Did he know? He must. He’d certainly known who she was, Carrie was sure. So why hadn’t he said anything? Had he forgotten?
The music had stopped, now, she realized, and Stan was up on the stage. “What’s up next?” her dad asked from beside her, apparently unaware of her distraction.
“I have no idea,” she said, faintly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stan said into the singer’s microphone, loud enough to bring the rest of the room to almost silence. For a horrible moment, Carrie was thrown back to the first dance night she’d attended there, when Stan had forced Nate to dance with her. Nate, at least, was nowhere to be seen. “I have a special treat for you now. One of our staff here at the inn, Nate Green, would like to sing us a song, one that’s very close to the heart of everyone here.”
And then Nate was on the stage at the microphone, looking directly at her, and Carrie was studying his face under the spotlight, looking for traces of the boy she’d known one summer long ago.
“Some of you might recognize me from a TV show I did a few years ago. It was called The Singing Gardener.” Nate quirked his lips in a smile, and Carrie felt it right down to her bones. “The producers thought it would be a good gimmick, because I used to hum and sing whenever I was weeding or planting. But tonight, I’d like to sing for a more important audience than a bed of petunias.”
The band struck up a familiar tune, and Carrie took a step back. “I’m just going to...” she muttered to her father, and moved over to the wall. She could feel Nate’s eyes on her as he began to sing, and knew everyone else had to be looking too. It was all too obvious who he was singing for.
“The very thought of you,” he started, his voice low and warm, resonating around the ballroom.
It was Nancy’s song, really, Carrie reminded herself. Not theirs. They’d danced to it once, under duress. That was all. It meant nothing, but her skin grew warm and flushed anyway. Nate’s gaze stayed fixed on hers, and she couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t giving the song another, deeper meaning. Just for her.