Chapter 6 #2
A viable solution. He had a viable solution. The ballroom could actually be used. His grandfather’s ballroom could host a gala again.
The relief was immediately followed by a sharp spike of anxiety. Strangers would be in here. Unsupervised. Working on the floors, touching the chandeliers.
“We’ll need access to the space,” Leo was saying. “Starting this weekend if you want the heaters running early next week.”
“After hours access,” Felicity added quickly. “I still have the lobby to decorate, so I’ll be working double-time.”
Absolutely not.
“I’m not providing unsupervised access to the bank building,” Grant said, his voice firmer than he’d intended.
Leo walked toward the far wall, apparently unbothered by Grant’s refusal. “There’s an exterior door here. Leads directly outside, right?” He tested the handle. “Used to be the loading entrance for events.”
Grant had forgotten about that door. It had been locked for decades.
“If that door’s functional and you give her a key,” Leo continued, examining the frame, “she can access the ballroom without entering the main bank. You keep the interior door to the bank locked from your side. She works in here, you’ve got security separation.”
He looked back at Grant with those steady, warm brown eyes. “Problem solved.”
Grant looked at the exterior door, then at Felicity, then at the door again.
A key. He would be giving Felicity Adams—a woman who had contaminated his vault with glitter forty-eight hours ago—a key to his grandfather’s ballroom.
But Leo’s solution was sound. She wouldn’t have access to the main bank. Just this space. And if he didn’t give her access, the project failed. And if the project failed, Meena’s corporate oversight would intensify. And the branch might close.
He was trapped by his own logic.
“I’ll have a locksmith replace the lock by Friday,” he said, the words tasting like defeat and something else he couldn’t quite name. “You’ll have a key by Saturday morning.”
“Thank you,” Felicity said, and her voice was so genuinely grateful, so full of relief, that Grant felt an unexpected warmth.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said quickly, needing to reestablish some distance. “You still have to actually pull this off.”
Leo gathered his tools—flashlight, voltage tester, tape measure — all disappearing back into various pockets with practiced efficiency. “I’ll email you a quote tonight. Equipment can be delivered Friday if you approve it tomorrow morning. You’ll want the heaters running by this weekend.”
He looked at Felicity. “This is a big job. You sure you’re ready for it?”
Felicity lifted her chin, and Grant saw the same determined fire he’d seen when she’d pitched her vision that morning. “I’m ready.”
Leo nodded once, satisfied. “Then you’ll be fine.” He turned to Grant. “I’ll check that exterior door from the outside before I leave. Make sure the frame’s solid for the new lock.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Grant said.
As they headed toward the exterior door, Grant heard Jade and Felicity already making excited plans behind them.
“—need to figure out our cleaning schedule—”
“—Mabel will want to help, you know she will—”
Outside in the alley, the winter air was sharp and clean. The sun was already low, casting long shadows. Leo examined the door frame with the same careful attention he’d given everything else.
“Solid,” Leo said. “Just needs a good deadbolt. Standard residential will work fine.”
“I have a locksmith I use,” Grant said.
They stood in silence for a moment. Grant should go back inside. He had that loan committee meeting in—he checked his watch—ten minutes. But something kept him standing there in the cold.
“She’s taking on a lot,” Leo said, not looking at him.
“She is.”
“You don’t think she can do it.”
It wasn’t a question. Grant considered deflecting, but Leo seemed like the kind of man who’d see through polite evasion.
“I think she’s optimistic. Passionate. But this is a massive undertaking for someone whose primary experience is decorating homes and small businesses.”
Leo turned to face him, his expression thoughtful. “Your father gave my father a loan when every other bank turned him down. The numbers were shaky, but he did it.”
Grant said nothing, but his chest tightened. He remembered that loan. His father had fought the board for it.
“My dad was thirty,” Leo continued. “No collateral except his share of the family land. No business experience. Just passion and a dream about making the farm something special.” He paused. “Your father looked at him and said, ‘Steve, I believe you can make this work.’”
Leo’s warm brown eyes met Grant’s.
“And he did. Because someone believed he could.”
The words hit Grant like a physical blow. His father had been good at that—seeing potential in people, believing in them, giving them chances. It was part of what had made him such a beloved figure in this town.
Grant had spent sixteen years trying to preserve his father’s legacy. But had he preserved the wrong parts? Had he kept the rules and the traditions and lost the heart?
“Sometimes people rise to what you expect of them,” Leo said, heading toward his truck—a battered pickup with a Carter Reindeer Farm decal on the side. “Sometimes they surprise you.”
He paused with his hand on the door handle and looked back.
“That one in there? I’ve known her since grade school. She’s going to surprise you.”
He climbed into his truck and drove away, leaving Grant standing alone in the alley with his father’s ghost and his own carefully constructed doubts.
Grant pulled out his phone and called the locksmith.
Then he stood there for another long moment, the cold seeping through his expensive suit jacket, thinking about his father saying I believe you can make this work to a man with no collateral and a lot of heart.
Maybe Leo was right.
Maybe she would surprise him.
The thought was both terrifying and, inexplicably, thrilling.
When Grant returned to the lobby, Felicity and Jade were standing near the entrance, still talking in excited, overlapping sentences. Jade was holding the cookie box, which had somehow remained unopened during the entire ballroom tour.
“Mr. Whitaker!” Jade called out as he approached. “Before we go—cookies? They’re still warm. Gingerbread with vanilla glaze.”
She opened the box, and the smell hit him immediately. Sugar, ginger, vanilla, butter. His stomach responded with an embarrassing growl.
But his suit. The crumbs. The gray wool cost more than most people’s monthly car payments.
“That’s very kind,” he said carefully, “but I have a meeting in—” he checked his watch, “—seven minutes. Perhaps another time.”
“Of course.” Jade’s smile didn’t dim. She was either genuinely unbothered by his refusal or too polite to show disappointment. “Well, they’ll be at the bakery if you change your mind. Buy one, get the second free for anyone working on Gala prep.”
She and Felicity headed for the door, already back to their planning.
“—Saturday we can start mapping out the lighting—”
“—Leo said he’d check on equipment delivery personally—”
Their voices faded as the door closed behind them, and Grant was left standing in his silent, pristine lobby.
Mrs. Finch was watching him from her station, her expression inscrutable.
“That went better than expected,” she said, which for Mrs. Finch was practically effusive praise.
Grant just nodded and headed back toward his office.
Through the window, he could see Felicity and Jade getting into Felicity’s car, still talking animatedly.
Jade’s hand reached over to squeeze Felicity’s shoulder—a gesture of support so natural it was clearly habitual.
Leo’s truck pulled up alongside them, and he rolled down his window to say something that made both women laugh.
Friends. Real friends. The kind who showed up for each other without being asked, who offered help without expecting anything in return, who squeezed shoulders and brought cookies and drove across town in trucks with no heat just to provide moral support.
Grant sat at his desk and pulled up the contractor budget spreadsheet.
His office was quiet, orderly, exactly as it should be. No laughter, no overlapping conversations, no easy camaraderie. Just him and his perfectly organized files and his expensive, crumb-free suit.
Leo’s words echoed in his head: Sometimes people rise to what you expect of them.
Grant had spent sixteen years expecting the worst. Expecting failure, expecting risk, expecting disappointment. Protecting his father’s legacy by keeping everything frozen in time, locked away, safe from change.
What if he tried something different?
What if he expected—just this once—to be surprised?
He looked at the budget spreadsheet, then at the faint shimmer of glitter still visible on the corner of his desk, catching the late afternoon light like a small, defiant star.
Against all logic and professional judgment, he approved the full four-thousand-dollar equipment order.