Sitting here, watching Holly manage festival logistics with quiet competence while carefully maintaining emotional distance, I realized I was falling for her in ways that had nothing to do with teenage nostalgia and everything to do with the woman she’d become. Smart, resilient, genuinely caring, and apparently committed to keeping me at arm’s length, even after our kiss.
The question was whether I was brave enough to risk everything I’d worked for professionally to find out if she felt the same way. And whether she was brave enough to trust someone new when the last person she’d trusted had betrayed her so completely.
The snow was still falling outside, and Everdale Falls looked like a perfect Christmas paradise. But perfection, I was learning, was a lot more complicated than it appeared on the surface.
Twenty
HOLLY
Right Call, Wrong Time
I’d been lyingawake since ridiculous o’clock, hyperaware that Declan was sleeping approximately fifty feet away and trying not to think about the way he’d kissed me under the mistletoe two nights ago.
The awkwardness of yesterday’s coffee shop meeting hadn’t helped my insomnia. We’d both worked so hard to maintain professional distance that the entire conversation had felt like a carefully choreographed dance around the obvious attraction that was making festival planning increasingly complicated.
I knew the phone call he received rattled him more than he let on, but the question I didn’t want to ask was why. Too personal, too intimate, too… everything I was trying to avoid.
My phone rang a little after eight, interrupting my attempts to not rub one out while thinking about hot lawyers and their drown-in-me blue eyes.
“Holly Winters,” I answered, not recognizing the number.
“Ms. Winters, this is Carol Pruitt from Hartwell & Associates,” said a crisp, professional voice. “I’m calling aboutthe marketing director position you have shown interest in on our website. Are you free to chat?”
Chat?
My blood spiked unnaturally hot as it sank in. Chicago. Hartwell & Associates was an upcoming PR firm that was hitting the trendy niche, in ways that made my previous firm wildly envious. Everyone at my old firm threw their resumés at it, just to see what would happen.
“Yes, of course,” I said, sitting up straighter in my ancient childhood bed. “Thank you for calling.”
The call was the lifeline I’d been waiting for. A chance to reclaim the career that Patricia so casually torpedoed when she fired me only a couple of weeks ago. I swung my legs out of bed, pacing the small rectangle of my bedroom rug as Carol Pruitt described a role that sounded like it had been written specifically for me—dynamic, creative, focused on building community engagement for national brands. It was everything I had been trying to do at my old job before they decided “safe and boring” was a better marketing strategy.
“Your portfolio is impressive, Ms. Winters,” Carol continued, her voice all business. “Particularly the campaign you developed for the Lakeside Arts Festival. It showed a real knack for grassroots promotion.”
“Thank you,” I managed, my voice steadier than I felt. “I’m very proud of that work.”
“We’d like to schedule a formal video interview. Would you be available on December 23rd at 9 AM? I realize it’s right before Christmas, but Ed really wants to get this squared away.”
My heart thumped. The last day of the festival. “Yes,” I said without missing a beat. “That sounds perfect.”
“Wonderful,” Carol said. I could practically see her beam over the airwaves. “And between you and me,” she droppedher voice conspiratorially, “Ed has tailored this position to meet your expertise. You’re a shoo-in.”
I blinked. “Oh, that’s great,” I said, wondering what I did to deserve this luck.
“Speak to you soon!” Carol chirped, and we hung up.
I placed my phone on the dresser and peeked around the edge of the curtain at Declan’s house. Back to Chicago.IfI got the job. That I was a shoo-in for.
Everything I’d thought I wanted, dangling at exactly the moment when staying in Everdale Falls was starting to feel like a possibility for reasons that had nothing to do with career advancement and everything to do with the man currently putting a bag into his car in the driveway next door.
I frowned. He was wearing a navy wool coat that made his shoulders look even broader than usual, and his hair was slightly messy in the way that suggested he’d also had trouble sleeping.
The sight of him preparing to leave sent an unexpected spike of panic through my chest. The idea of him driving away felt like losing something I wasn’t ready to give up.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I banged on the window to get his attention. He looked up with a frown. I held my hand up and he nodded.
I pulled on jeans and a sweater in record time and flew down the stairs in my Christmas socked feet.
“Holly?” my mother called from the kitchen. “Is everything okay?”
