“Then we’d better get started.”
Her head snapped up. “You’re not upset?”
“Upset won’t fix anything.” I started sorting through the debris, separating items in decent shape from the rest. “Panic won’t either. We work with what we have.”
“I can’t believe you’re being so calm about this.”
“One of us should be.”
She stared at me for a moment, then burst into hysterical laughter. “You’re right. I’m freaking out, aren’t I?” She started gathering broken ornaments and tossing them into a trash barrel. “Okay, what do we need to do first?”
We worked to rebuild Santa’s workshop from whatever materials we could find. Carla proved resourceful, fashioning new decorations from spare fabric and repurposing broken ornaments into something functional. I handled the structural repairs, reinforcing the backdrop and the throne area that had also been in the shed. We’d needed the function hall for a midnight wedding last night.
“Hand me that hammer,” she called from across the room, where she was attempting to reattach garland to a support beam.
I brought it over, and she immediately put me to work holding things in place while she secured them. The close quarters meant constant contact—her hand brushing mine as she reached for supplies, her shoulder bumping my arm as we maneuvered around each other, the occasional full-body collision when we both moved in the same direction.
Each touch sent awareness shooting through me, heightened by the stress and adrenaline of our race against time.
“Becken, can you… Oh.” She’d turned to ask for something just as I moved behind her, and suddenly we were pressed together, her front against my chest, my hands on her waist to steady us both.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Then she cleared her throat and stepped away. “Sorry. Can you hold this while I nail it down?”
“Of course.”
We returned to work, but the tension between us had ratcheted up another notch.
Finally, we stepped back and studied it.
Carla leaned into my side, swiping hair off her face. “It looks…wonderful.” She glanced up at me. “Thank you for your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
I wanted to put my arms around her, hold her, tell her everything was going to be alright, but I wasn’t sure where this was going between us. Instead, I stepped back and peered around. “What else needs to be done?”
With one last lingering look I couldn’t interpret, she walked over to point at spots on the town square map spread across a table she was using as a desk. “The crowd barriers need to be positioned here and here to funnel people in a weaving line toward the function hall.” Her sleeve slid up enough to show the golden mating mark on her wrist, and my jaw clenched. “That way, families with small children can see without being pushed by those around them.”
I forced my attention to the logistics. “Let’s go through the entire project and make a list of what we still need to do.”
“Alright.” She slid a pen and a pad of paper my way.
“What about security checkpoints at both ends of Main Street?”
“Dungar’s handling that. He’s got volunteers stationed every fifty feet.” She traced the parade route with her finger. “Theparade will enter from the west, circle the square twice, then return to the starting point except for you. Santa, that is. You’ll stop the sorhoxes out front and come inside to sit with the children for photos.”
She sighed. “I think the only problem we don’t have is with the sorhoxes. Peeka and Thrakul have been responding well to the crowd noise training.”
With the help of Max and a few of his school friends, we’d spent the past few days preparing the sorhoxes for the parade, exposing them to increasingly loud sounds and chaotic environments. Carla had proven surprisingly good at reading their moods, suggesting adjustments to our approach that showed real understanding of their psychology.
“They trust you,” I’d told her yesterday after she’d successfully calmed Thrakul during a particularly difficult training session.
“They trust you,” she’d said. “I’m just following your lead.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. The sorhoxes had started responding to her voice, her touch, her presence. She’d earned their respect through patience and consistency, the same way she’d earned mine.
“I’ll call Ruugar and ask him to make sure the barriers are set up outside,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“What else?”
