Suite Dreams Read online

What was I trying to prove here? I wasn’t Suzy Homemaker, and divinity was a lot of work: boiling, beating, setting.

  “How about dips? You like dips?”

  My grandmother had sent me a dip recipe that was super easy to make. Cream cheese, Rotel, onions, and dried beef. Mix it up and voilà!

  “Anything that a chip goes into is good by me.”

  And apparently he’d never met a chip he didn’t like. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought to bring him to a grocery store before. He was apparently a junk food junkie. We had three bags of chips, a couple of packages of cookies, and some peanut butter crackers in our cart.

  “Have you considered that we have to walk back to the dorm carrying all this stuff?” I asked.

  He swept his arms around and bent slightly, doing one of those poses that bodybuilders use to show off their muscles. Not that any muscles were showing since he was wearing his jacket. Still, the silliness of it in the grocery store made me laugh.

  He loaded various sodas and juices into the cart. I was beginning to wonder if I could have been a worse hostess, not considering that he might get the munchies.

  Get over it, Alyssa. You were totally unprepared for a guest.

  As we neared the checkout line, Jude plucked a bouquet of half a dozen red and white carnations out of a barrel.

  “I need these for my girl.”

  My heart did a little flip. Had I become his girl? I had this insane vision of him going down on one knee in the middle of the grocery store to present them to me.

  “Your girl?” I stammered.

  “Yeah, Molly.”

  My heart squeezed. How had I missed him meeting Molly? Then I thought of last night at The Chalet….

  “You mean Hailey?”

  His brow furrowed. “Gawd, no. Why would you think that? We’ll stop by and see Molly on the way back.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Not far.”

  He helped me put our groceries on the conveyor belt, then handed me some cash. “This should take care of my share. If you’ll handle the actual paying, I need to take care of something.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Suddenly he was Mr. Mysterious. And okay, maybe I was a little disappointed that the flowers weren’t for me.

  I watched his long strides take him toward Customer Service. Maybe there was a special Australian product he wanted them to order. He certainly wasn’t shy about asking for what he wanted.

  As I waited for our items to be rung up and bagged, it seemed like our quick trip to the store for a few items had morphed into stocking up in case of an apocalyptic event where we were the only remaining survivors. Not that there wasn’t some appeal to the idea of being totally alone with Jude.

  So again, who was this Molly chick?

  I paid for the groceries and began pushing the cart toward Customer Service. No matter how buff and strong Jude was, I didn’t really see how we were going to carry all these bags home.

  Wearing a big grin, Jude made his way back over to me. “I’ll push.”

  “Um, actually, we need to carry.”

  “No, we don’t. I got permission from the manager for us to borrow the cart. Great one, the manager.”

  “I bet you used your Aussie charm on him.”

  He winked. “On her.”

  I found myself smiling. Everyone fell in love with Jude. Was what I was feeling for him any different?

  Was it the novelty of Jude that made me wonder what it might be like to be more than a tour guide? Or was I falling for him? And had he fallen for Molly?

  “So where does this Molly live?” I asked again.

  “The park.”

  “What? She’s a homeless person?” Not that I’d ever seen any homeless people at the park.

  Jude laughed. “No, she’s the snowgirl we made.”

  He’d had more of a hand in making her than I had, but if he wanted to give me credit, who was I to complain?

  I was really hoping she’d still be there. I knew she hadn’t melted. Our weather hadn’t gone above freezing. But sometimes kids got carried away and destroyed things.

  But when we arrived, not only was she still there, but apparently she’d gotten married! There was a snowman beside her and three little snowkids in front of them.

  Jude was grinning broadly and I was laughing. Apparently Jude’s creation had caught someone’s attention and a community project had been born.

  “She’s got a family now,” he said.

  I was still laughing when he extended the flowers to me. My heart just sort of rolled over and started to melt.

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “Well, you know. If I try to give them to her, her husband might not like it. I don’t know if I can outfight him.”

  Maybe I wasn’t his first choice for the flowers, but I loved them anyway and clung to them. “Thanks.”

  “Just a small way to say thanks for the bed, really. It’s a lot more comfortable than the couch.”

  “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t suggest it sooner.”

  “You didn’t really know me, now did you?”

  Hard to believe, because in a way it felt as if I’d known him forever.

  We started walking back to the dorm, with the cart wheels squeaking.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Nah. Who’d have me?”

  I laughed so hard that the air rushed in, hurting my lungs. I wheezed, coughed. “Uh, any girl with eyes?”

  He grinned. “Thanks for the confidence.”

  “No, seriously, have you never had a girlfriend?”

  “I dated a girl for a while, but things didn’t work out.”

  “Is that the reason you took this trip?”

  “Nah. She was fun, but we were never serious. Our breakup was mutual. No harm, no foul. We had a good time, but it was never more than that.”

  I thought about that on the way back to the dorm. I’d had some good times with Rick. But that elusive something had been missing. I wondered exactly what the more was that Jude was talking about. And if I’d even recognize it if I had it.

  I hadn’t planned to spend the remainder of the afternoon cooking, but no one else was using the kitchen so we had it to ourselves. The dorm was eerily quiet. I wondered if anyone else was still here. Stephanie had headed home that morning. And I’d seen a couple of other people loading suitcases into cars.

  Sitting at the island, Jude was wolfing down the brownies that he’d asked me to make as soon as we got back to the dorm. It was late afternoon and I was preparing the stroganoff while the potatoes were baking.

  “I should have guessed that you’d be a dessert-first kind of guy,” I teased.

  He grinned. “Hey, why wait?”

  He cut off a small piece of brownie and held it out to me—the way a groom would extend a piece of wedding cake to his bride. I leaned over and he shoved it into my mouth. Double chocolate was indeed very chocolatey and doubly delicious when it was shared with a guy.

  “Are you going home at all over winter break?” Jude asked.

  I stirred the stroganoff and took a quick peek in the oven to see how the rolls were browning. “No, actually. My parents are off touring in their travel trailer.” I straightened and looked at him. “Have you ever traveled in a trailer?”

  He shrugged. “No, but it seems like a lot of work.”

  “It is, but my mom doesn’t like staying in hotels.”

  “She should try couch surfing.”

  I laughed. “She doesn’t like staying in hotels because she doesn’t know who’s been sleeping in the bed. So I don’t think she’s a good candidate for couch surfing.”

  “How about you? You ever think about it?”

  “I only just heard about it when Rick mentioned it a couple of weeks ago.” I turned off the heat on the stove and oven. “Until I met you, I thought it was just a really bad idea.”

  “And now?”

  I began setting the food on the table. “It’s been fun having someone I didn’t know sta