Read Online A Holiday Romance by Carrie Alexander - Free Book Online

accustomed to monotony. But she’d always been careful to hide her boredom from her mother, a sweet soul who’d hated being trouble for others.
    Alice yawned again and checked the clock. Almost midnight. So much for her plan to check out the resort’s nightlife. They’d been working on the cake for hours, long enough to stop worrying that Kyle Jarreau would return.
    She’d insisted on staying.
    Because they’d needed her, she told herself, stopping for a moment to stretch her arms. Just like her mother had needed her all those years. Or her brother, Jay, to step in and babysit his kids. And Susan Queeg, the friend who ran the bakery on a shoestring.
    Alice was used to being needed. It was easy, even comfortable. Certainly much more comfortable for her than stepping into a nightclub on her own.
    “You okay?” Rivka asked.
    “Uh-huh.” Alice frowned. She’d fallen into old habits at the first opportunity. Here she was, backstage once again. Supporting, not participating.
    “What’s that like—teaching?” Rivka had finished with the orchids and was now building the cake with Fred’s help. They were a Mutt-and-Jeff pair, Rivka short, round and bespectacled, Fred tall and skinny with a goatee and spiked hair, tinged purple. Or puce, as he’d pointed out, holding one of the roses to his chin for comparison.
    “Teaching. Hmm.” Alice had reached the point of tiredness where her thoughts wandered in all directions. It wasn’t difficult to push aside the uneasy sense that she’d taken a wrong turn and was circling around her old life like a hiker lost in the woods. “I haven’t taught full-time for a while, but I liked it. I taught elementary school. Fifth grade. The kids were so curious about everything.” They’d given her the feeling that her life was an adventure, too.
    She sat upright. She hadn’t thought through her motives before, but now it seemed obvious that this trip was her attempt to recapture that old feeling of adventure. And the desire remained. She hadn’t lost her way, only allowed herself to be distracted.
    “I couldn’t handle that,” Rivka said. “Fred’s nothing but a big old kid and he gets on my nerves.” She placed the top tier, then climbed down from the chair she’d been standing on, stepping back to take a look.
    “Crooked,” said Fred.
    They argued good-naturedly until Rivka caught Alice in another yawn. “You should go. I’ve kept you too long.”
    “Thanks, but I’ll stay. I want to see this through to the end.” She might be an easy touch, but she wasn’t a quitter.
    “We’ve only got a few more hours of work, putting everything together. I’ll probably get in trouble with the boss as it is, keeping you here this long.”
    “He’ll never know.”
    “He knows everything,” Fred said.
    “And he has no compunction about handing out walking papers,” Rivka said. She looked leery for a moment. “But I’m safe. We’re already shorthanded.” She and Fred exchanged a grin. They’d admitted to Alice that they weren’t exactly sad to see the back of Chef Chavez.
    “Don’t count on it,” Fred said. “You know the stories.”
    Alice was all ears. “Stories about Mr. Jarreau?”
    Rivka peered at her through the smudged lenses of her wire-rimmed glasses. “Um, maybe we shouldn’t—”
    Fred was less guarded. “Everybody knows. He’s ruthless. He even fired his own—”
    “Zip it,” Rivka said.
    Fred laughed. “You’re not the boss of me.”
    “Ha! I am so the boss of you.”
    Alice tried to redirect the banter. “I don’t want to get you two in trouble, but I’d rather not leave until we’re finished.” She bit her lip. Why couldn’t she be this stubborn about making over her life? After all, she’d come here to be carefree!
    Was she fooling herself? Was caregiving her true nature?
    Rivka filled a pastry bag with white frosting. “But it’s your vacation, Alice. You’re supposed to be out dancing.”
    “I was nervous about going