Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
But it had a window. A big, beautiful window that looked out over the town square, offering a perfect view of the First Bank of Frost Pine Ridge.
Felicity sat at her desk, the morning sun streaming through the glass, and stared down at her planner.
It was a thick, well-loved thing, its cover decorated with stickers she’d collected over the years—a glittery unicorn, a motivational quote about sparkle being a state of mind, and a coffee stain that looked vaguely like a Christmas tree if you squinted.
She’d already gone through two highlighters and a full pack of sticky notes, and she wasn’t done yet.
The gala was in three weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours, not that she was counting obsessively or anything.
She opened to a fresh page and wrote in her neatest handwriting:
Frost Pine Ridge Winter Gala - Master Timeline
Then she stared at the blank space below it, took a deep breath, and began.
Week 1: Foundation (Days 1-7)
Finish lobby decorations
Install lobby tree
Coordinate with Leo on ballroom systems (heating, lighting)
Begin ballroom cleaning
Finalize entertainment schedule (Fix the Choir Situation)
Check in on auction donations with Meena
Week 2: Execution (Days 8-14)
Complete ballroom cleaning/fixes
Install ballroom tree & lighting
Set up auction display area
Final lobby touches
Dress rehearsal (???)
Day 14: The Gala
She added sub-tasks in different colored pens. Green for completed items. Yellow for in-progress. Red for “why in the world did I agree to this.” There was a lot of red.
She looked out the window at the bank. From this angle, she could see through the large front windows into the lobby.
Even from here, she could see through the large front windows into the lobby.
The bank looked exactly as it always had—pristine marble floors, somber teller counters, that one sad ficus in the corner that seemed to embody Grant’s entire approach to joy. Beige. Orderly. Lifeless.
The empty corner where the tree would go looked particularly forlorn, just a taped-off square on the floor.
It looked like a blank canvas. Like a sentence waiting to be written. Like her entire career, if she was being honest with herself—full of potential, waiting for someone to believe it was worth the investment.
“Okay, Sparkle & Spruce,” she whispered to the empty room. “Time to be legitimate.”
She surveyed the supplies she’d need for today—spools of ribbon, boxes of battery-operated candles, zip ties, floral wire, her good scissors—and began the precarious process of cramming them all into her tote.
The bag bulged alarmingly, but after some strategic rearranging (and sitting on it to compress the contents), she managed to zip it mostly closed.
“This is fine,” she told herself, hefting the overstuffed bag onto her shoulder. It weighed approximately forty pounds. “This is totally professional.”
She took one last look at her tiny office—her unprofitable, impractical, ridiculous little office—and felt a surge of fierce affection for it.
“Two weeks,” she said aloud. “We can do this.”
She walked down the creaky stairs, out onto Main Street, and headed toward the bank, her breath forming small clouds in the cold morning air. Snow from last night dusted the sidewalk, and the string lights crisscrossed above the square twinkled in the bright winter sun.
It was going to be a good day. She could feel it.
Or at least, it was going to be a productive day. That was close enough.
The bell over the bank’s entrance gave its polite little jingle as Felicity pushed through the heavy glass door, staggering slightly under the weight of her overstuffed tote bag.
The zipper had given up somewhere between her office and here, and a spool of gold ribbon was making a slow escape attempt.
The lobby was quiet—just the soft hum of computers, the muted conversation of a teller helping a customer, and the conspicuous sound of Ida and Ruth settling onto their customary bench with an air of people who had front-row tickets to a very interesting show.
Grant was standing near the teller counter, reviewing something on a tablet with Mrs. Finch. He looked up as Felicity entered, his expression neutral but his eyes tracking her movement across the marble floor.
“Ms. Adams,” he said, his tone formal. “You’re early.”
“I have a schedule to keep,” she said brightly, parking her cart near the half-decorated Christmas tree corner.
She pulled out her planner and opened it with a flourish, angling it so he could see the color-coded chaos.
“Week One, Day One: Complete lobby garlands, install support brackets for tree, coordinate final lighting scheme, and confirm entertainment schedule.”
Grant stepped closer, his gaze scanning the meticulous pages. His eyebrows rose incrementally—a seismic shift for him, practically a standing ovation. “This is... actually quite thorough.”
Felicity blinked. “Did you just compliment my organizational skills?”
“I said it was thorough,” he corrected, his tone measured. “I didn’t say it was realistic.”
She snapped the planner shut, clutching it to her chest like a shield. “It’s realistic if we both commit to making it happen. Two weeks, Grant. Fourteen days. That’s what we have.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he nodded once, sharp and decisive. “Then we’d better not waste time.”
It wasn’t exactly a rousing declaration of partnership, but coming from Grant Whitaker, it felt like one.
For the next three hours, they worked.
Grant held the ladder while Felicity climbed up to drape garland along the top of the teller counter. He handed her zip ties and floral wire with the efficiency of a surgical nurse. When she asked for the “medium gauge wire, not the thin stuff,” he knew exactly which spool she meant.
It was... not terrible. It was almost—and she barely dared to think it—pleasant.
“Higher on the left,” Grant said from below, his hand steadying the base of the ladder. “There’s a gap.”
Felicity adjusted the garland, tucking in a stubborn pine bough. “How’s this?”
“Better. Now secure it before gravity reasserts itself.”
She grinned, twisting the wire into place. “Gravity is a real buzzkill.”
“It’s a fundamental law of physics, Ms. Adams. It doesn’t care about your aesthetic vision.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. My aesthetic vision transcends physics.”
From the bench, Ida’s voice rang out, clear and delighted. “Look at them, Ruth. Teamwork makes the dream work!”
Ruth’s quieter voice followed. “You’ve been waiting all morning to use that phrase, haven’t you?”
“Maybe I have. It’s relevant!” Ida declared.
Felicity’s cheeks warmed. She didn’t look down at Grant, but she could feel the weight of his presence below her—solid, steady, reliable. Her stomach did a strange little flip that had nothing to do with being six feet off the ground.
“Can you hand me the next section?” She asked, her voice a little too bright.
“Of course.” His hand appeared in her peripheral vision, holding the garland. Their fingers brushed as she took it, and she felt the same jolt of static electricity from before—small, insignificant, impossible to ignore.
She cleared her throat and got back to work.
An hour later, they were wrestling with the string of fairy lights that would wrap around the main support column near the entrance.
Felicity had laid them out on the floor in what she thought was a logical configuration, but somewhere between planning and execution, they had achieved sentience and decided to form a knot of truly impressive complexity.
Grant crouched beside her, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his brow furrowed in concentration. “This is irrational,” he muttered, tugging at a loop that only tightened further. “Lights are inanimate objects. They shouldn’t be capable of malice.”
“And yet,” Felicity said, trying to work a strand free from what appeared to be a Gordian knot made of spite and copper wire, “here we are.”
“I thought you were good at problem-solving,” she added, shooting him a sidelong glance.
“Financial problems,” he said, his tone dry. “These lights are operating on pure chaos theory. I suspect entropy is personally involved.”
She laughed—a real, surprised laugh that echoed in the quiet lobby. “Did Grant Whitaker just make a physics joke?”
“It’s a fundamental property of the universe, not a joke.”
“But you said it to be funny.”
He paused, his hands stilling on the wire. A muscle in his jaw twitched—she was learning to recognize that as his version of amusement trying to break through the permafrost. “Perhaps.”
They worked in silence for another few minutes, their heads bent close together over the tangle of lights.
Felicity could smell his cologne—something clean and understated, like cedar and winter air.
She could see the small scar on his left hand, a thin white line across his knuckle.
She wondered absurdly how he’d gotten it.
“Got it,” she said finally, pulling a crucial loop free. The entire knot loosened, the lights falling into a somewhat more manageable coil.
“Well done,” Grant said, and there was genuine approval in his voice.
She looked up, startled, and found him watching her with an expression that was almost..
. soft. For a heartbeat, the noise of the bank faded—the hum of computers, Ida and Ruth’s stage-whispered commentary, the distant sound of the vault lock clicking—and it was just the two of them, crouched on the floor, surrounded by lights that caught the winter sun streaming through the windows and threw tiny rainbows across the marble.
Then Grant cleared his throat and stood, brushing off his perfectly creased trousers. “We should get these installed before lunch.”
“Right,” Felicity said, scrambling to her feet and trying to ignore the flush she could feel creeping up her neck. “Before lunch. Definitely.”