“You’re right,” I said finally, because this bickering was going to get us precisely nowhere. “I apologize. I wasn’t trying to criticize the festival or the town. I was just thinking out loud about possibilities.”
Some of the tension left her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Why did you?” I asked gently.
Holly was quiet for a long moment, tracing patterns on the legal pad with her pen.
“Because everyone keeps talking about what I used to be good at,” she said finally. “My organizational skills, my attention to detail, all these things I supposedly did well in high school and college. But what if that person doesn’t exist anymore? What if getting fired, duped and evicted proved that I was never as competent as people thought?”
The vulnerability in her voice hit me harder than I expected. “Holly, that’s not?—”
“So when you start suggesting improvements to something I haven’t even figured out how to handle yet, it feels like confirmation that I’m not up for this.” She looked up at me with eyes that were too bright. “Like maybe everyone was wrong about my capabilities, and you’re just being polite about helping the incompetent hometown girl.”
The incompetent hometown girl.The way she said it, like it was an established fact rather than her own insecurity, made me want to shake her.
“That’s not how I see you at all,” I said firmly. “Holly, you organized that entire list in an hour. You thought of details I missed, identified problems I didn’t even know existed. You’re not incompetent—you’re exactly what this festival needs.”
“But you still want to change things.”
“I want to contribute something useful,” I corrected. “Not because what’s already here isn’t good enough, but because working together should mean bringing our different strengths to the project.”
She considered this, her expression softening slightly.
“What would you say your strengths are?” she asked.
“Research. Problem-solving. Dealing with difficult personalities.” I paused, choosing my next words carefully. “And I’m good at seeing potential that other people might miss.”
“Potential in festival planning?”
“Potential in general,” I said, meeting her eyes directly. “Including in brilliant, capable women who’ve temporarily forgotten how brilliant and capable they are.”
The compliment—and the implication behind it—hung between us for a moment. Holly’s cheeks flushed, but she didn’t look away.
“So,” she said finally, “tradition plus innovation. Honoring what works while being open to what might work even better.”
“Exactly.”
“I can live with that,” she said, and her smile was small but genuine. “As long as you promise not to suggest we replace the Christmas tree lighting with a laser light show.”
“I promise,” I said solemnly. “Though I make no guarantees about the petting zoo.”
Her laugh was surprised and bright, and the sound of it made something warm settle in my chest. This was the Holly I wanted to see—quick-witted, funny, capable of finding humor even in moments of tension. Those traits were sorely lacking in the New York circles I tended to mingle in and now wish I hadn’t. Every woman before that moment wasn’t what I wanted, even though I’d convinced myself it was. I thought I wanted sophisticated, smooth, cool, but none of them intrigued me anymore.
“Okay,” she said, pulling the vendor list back toward us. “Let’s compromise. We keep the core traditional vendors but add two or three new ones. Small changes, carefully considered.”
“That sounds perfect.”
As we bent over the planning materials again, working through logistics with the easy collaboration that had been interrupted by our disagreement, I found myself watching Hollymore carefully. The way she chewed her pen when she was thinking. How her handwriting got smaller and neater when she was stressed. The little satisfied sound she made when she figured out a particularly tricky scheduling problem.
She was beautiful, obviously, but it was more than that. There was something about her focus, her competence, the way she approached problems with both creativity and practicality, that was genuinely attractive in a way that had nothing to do with nostalgia or proximity.
This was dangerous territory. Holly was Matt’s sister, my co-chair, someone dealing with her own professional and personal crisis, who didn’t need the complication of her business partner developing inconvenient feelings.
But as she looked up at me with a smile that was pure satisfaction at having solved the vendor placement puzzle, I realized that inconvenient feelings might be the least of my problems.
I might already be halfway to falling hard for Holly Winters.
And that was going to complicate everything.
