“Help me figure out where we’re going to store four dozen pies and six trays of cookies overnight without them getting stale or frozen,” Holly said, consulting her notes. “And convince Mrs. Johnson to coordinate pickup instead of delivery, which she’s going to hate because it means getting up early.”
“I can handle Mrs. Johnson,” I said. “She likes me because I helped her install her new garage door opener one summer a few years ago.”
“You installed Mrs. Johnson’s garage door opener?”
“I offered to help, and she brought me lemonade and homemade cookies for three hours,” I admitted. “It was barely labor—more like social visiting that happened to involve power tools.”
Holly’s smile was warm and genuine, the first unguarded expression she’d given me in days.
“You’re good at this,” she said. “The community stuff. Making people feel like you care about them.”
“I do care about them,” I said simply. “I grew up here. These people are important to me.”
Something shifted in Holly’s expression, a softness that hadn’t been there before.
“Is that why you came back?” she asked quietly. “Because you missed the community?”
The question was personal in a way that went beyond festival logistics, and I had the sense that my answer mattered to her for reasons that had nothing to do with vendor coordination.
“Partly,” I said honestly. “I missed knowing my neighbors, missed being part of something smaller and more connected than anonymous city living. But mostly I came back because I needed to figure out what I actually wanted instead of what I thought I was supposed to want.”
“And have you? Figured it out?”
I looked at Holly—beautiful, competent Holly, with her analytical genius and her defensive walls and her vulnerability she tried so hard to hide—and realized that I was starting to.
“I’m getting closer,” I said carefully.
Before Holly could respond, my phone buzzed with another call, this time from an unknown local number.
“Sorry,” I said, glancing at the screen. “I should probably take this—might be a vendor.”
But it wasn’t a vendor. It was Mrs. Harrison, calling in a panic because the community center’s heat wasn’t working properly, and could we please come check it out because three hundred people couldn’t attend a Christmas festival in an unheated building.
“We’ll be right there,” I assured her, already standing up and gathering my planning materials.
“Heat emergency?” Holly asked, reading my expression.
“Heat emergency,” I confirmed. “And apparently we’re the designated problem-solvers for all festival-related crises.”
“Good thing we work so well together,” Holly said, and there was something in her voice—warmth, appreciation, maybe even affection—that suggested our limits were going to be tested again very soon.
As we headed toward another crisis that would require close collaboration and problem-solving teamwork, I realized that Matt’s information about Derek had changed my perspective on Holly’s guardedness, but it hadn’t changed my growing feelings for her. If anything, knowing what she’d been through made me want to prove that not everyone would betray her trust.
The question was whether Holly was ready to risk trusting someone again, or if she was going to keep maintaining a wall around her until I gave up and returned to New York.
Either way, we had a heating crisis to solve, which meant more time working closely together while pretending we weren’t attracted to each other.
Some limits, apparently, were harder to maintain than others, especially when they involved Christmas festivals, community crises, and beautiful women who made you want to be a better man while riding her so hard the whole neighborhood would hear her scream your name.
Sixteen
HOLLY
Near Misses and Racing Hearts
The community center’sheating system had apparently chosen the most dramatically inconvenient moment possible to stage its rebellion. With snow starting to fall outside and the temperature dropping ever closer toward single digits, walking into the building felt like entering a very festively decorated refrigerator.
“This is not good,” I said, my breath visible in the air as I surveyed the silent heating vents. “Three hundred people cannot celebrate Christmas in a building that’s colder than the outdoors.”
