Chapter 11 #2
“He does.” Mary set the napkins beside the cups. “We work together at the ranch. He’s one of the good ones. Not that any of the cowboys aren’t but… just because he prefers the quiet doesn’t mean he can’t make room for noise when it matters.”
Natalie looked at her.
Mary only smiled and moved away to help a child whose cup of hot chocolate had become dangerously full.
Natalie stayed where she was a moment longer, staring at the marshmallows.
By noon, the ornament workshop had shifted from chaos to accomplishment.
Children carried their creations carefully toward the drying tables, parents arrived to admire crooked angels and glittering stars, and volunteers began the long process of scraping glue from places glue had never been invited.
Mark approached the supply table with a wooden ornament in one hand and glitter on his cuff that he had not noticed yet. “I think I was given this.”
Natalie looked at the ornament. It was shaped like a small barn, painted red, with two slightly uneven fence pieces glued along the bottom.
“Is that the barn you helped with?”
“It is. She gave it to me.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I just hope she doesn’t regret not keeping it.”
“She’s already feeling the Christmas spirit.” Natalie smiled broadly.
He glanced toward the girl, who was proudly showing her mother another ornament across the room. “She just needed more patience.”
“You helped her with that.” Natalie took the ornament gently and looked it over. “You know, for someone who claimed not to know anything about ornaments, you handled yourself well.”
“I’ve learned ornaments are small structures with unreasonable amounts of glitter.”
“That is not inaccurate.”
He looked down at his sleeve and frowned. “There really is glitter on me.”
Natalie pressed her lips together. “A little.”
“How much is a little?”
“Less than a Christmas angel. More than a sensible cowboy.”
“That is not a measurement of any kind.”
“It is in my world.”
Mark shook his head, but he was smiling. “Your world is strange.”
“Yet you keep coming back.”
His smile softened at the edges.
Around them, children laughed, chairs scraped, and volunteers packed up supplies, but the space between them seemed to draw quieter.
Mark reached for the ornament, his fingers brushing hers briefly as he took it back. “I suppose I do.”
The contact lasted less than a second, but it still stole her breath.
Natalie stepped back and reached for the supply bin because standing still suddenly felt unwise. “Well, temporary market assistants are apparently useful in multiple settings.”
“Craft warfare assistant now.”
“Ah. Aiming for a promotion, huh?” she teased.
“Does it come with hazard pay?”
“You already received a barn ornament.”
“Fair.”
She laughed, and he tucked the ornament carefully into his jacket pocket as though it were breakable treasure.
That did not help. Not one bit.
By the time Mark carried the heavier supply bins to her truck, Natalie had regained most of her composure.
Mostly because she had spent fifteen minutes reminding herself that good men existed in the world and noticing that one was good with children did not require her to imagine anything beyond the current moment.
Mark set the final bin into the truck bed and closed the tailgate. “Anything else?”
Natalie shook her head. “No. Thank you. You saved the day.”
“I supervised glue.”
“You prevented structural collapse in three ornaments and far more than one child’s confidence.”
“That sounds important.”
“It was.” She smiled up at him, unable to keep the warmth out of her voice. “You were wonderful with them.”
Mark looked almost embarrassed. “They needed help.”
Natalie tightened her grip on her keys. “You gave it in exactly the right way.”
He looked toward the church doors, where families were still drifting out into the sunshine. “My father always said if you do too much for a kid, you teach them you don’t think they can manage.”
“That sounds wise.”
“He usually is.”
Natalie tried not to imagine Mark saying something like that to his own child one day. She failed.
Mark looked back at her. “You got quiet.”
“I’m tired.”
He studied her for one beat longer than necessary, not pushing, not prying. “Then eat something before you go back to the shop.”
She laughed. “You sound very bossy for a temporary assistant.”
“I learned from you.”
“Impossible. I’m delightful.”
“You can be both.”
Natalie pointed her keys at him. “Careful, Mr. Clemons. That was almost charming.”
His mouth curved. “Moderately useful?”
“Very useful,” she corrected.
Mark’s smile stayed with her long after he walked back toward the church to help with the last of the tables.
Natalie climbed into her truck and sat there for a moment with both hands on the steering wheel. Dangerous. There was no other word for it now.
Mark Clemons with children was dangerous. Mark Clemons carefully tucking a crooked barn ornament into his pocket was dangerous. Mark Clemons telling her to eat before work because he had noticed she was tired was dangerous.
The fake dating had been supposed to make her life easier through Christmas. Instead, it was making her notice exactly the kind of man she had spent years praying she might someday find.
Natalie closed her eyes briefly. “Lord,” she whispered, “this was not in the rules.”
Then she started the truck before she could sit there imagining any more things that had no business feeling so possible.