Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
Rob
I’m not alone in the equipment bay when Whitney arrives the next morning. Kevin, the youngest of the bunch, has been volunteering while working construction with his uncle, but he wants to start trade school and get his electrical license. I’ve written him some recommendation letters for some scholarships he’s applied for, plus we’ve talked about his possible schedule because he wanted some reassurance we can make do without him sometimes (we can) and that he won’t lose his spot (he won’t).
After I introduce them, we make small talk for a few minutes—mostly Kevin asking Whitney about the big city—but he finally has to leave to pick up some things at the hardware store.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Whitney says once the sound of his truck’s engine fades away.
Her arms reach up to circle my neck and I pull her close for a very thorough first kiss of the day. Hopefully not the last, but just in case, I make it a good one.
“What’s on the agenda today?” she says once I’ve reluctantly let her go. “You said to dress warmly, but you didn’t say why.”
“We’re going to check out the sledding runs.” I tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Maybe we should go up to my office and figure out the rest.”
She laughs and pushes at my shoulder. “No, we do not need to go upstairs to your office because I happen to remember you keep a bed in there, and we have too much to get done today.”
“You’d rather go sledding than spend some time in that bed with me?”
“I’d rather spend time in that bed with you than do just about anything else,” she says, and I’m not surprised my body heats, but I’d rather my heart stayed out of it. The pang in my chest isn’t entirely welcome. “But we have to get through this list. Also, I thought you said your dad and his friends took care of the sled runs.”
“They do. But I like to check their work because sometimes they think a jump or a corner might add to the kids’ fun.” I shrug. “Which it does, right up until a kid gets launched into the air and his parents collide trying to catch him.”
“Did they get hurt?”
“No, but the mom wasn’t impressed by the dad yelling at her that he waved her off, signaling it was his catch, and if she ever watched baseball, she would know that. They divorced a year later.” I laugh at her expression. “Not because of the sledding. They really didn’t like each other very much, even before that.”
“So we’ll definitely make sure they didn’t add any jumps,” she mutters.
“And since it’s cold, it’s a good idea to make a couple of runs to help compact them so they’ll keep their shape when it warms up some.”
“I’ll enjoy watching you do that.”
I let that slide, even though Whitney is absolutely going down the hill on a sled today. It’ll be my reward for not being able to strip her clothes off.
Three hours later, her cheeks are rosy, and the sled runs are smooth. There are three runs built into the snow on the hill. There’s a shallow, shorter one for the littlest kids. Then a medium one that would get the most use. And on the steepest part of the hill, a slightly longer one for the bigger kids and occasional adult.
My father and his crew had indeed tried to put some small jumps in the steepest of the three runs. After some debate between Whitney and I—her coming down on the side of that run being older kids who want to have fun and me coming down on the side of safety—we smoothed them down some, but left slight bumps.
“We should have bought a few extra candy canes to decorate the top of the hill,” Whitney says, her hands on her hips as she looks it over.
“Well, here in Charming Lake, candy canes and sled hills aren’t a good mix.”
She snorts. “That sounds like a good story.”
“One year, the organizers thought it would be fun to use red food coloring diluted with water in spray bottles to make red stripes down the runs, so they looked like candy canes. It was cold enough when they did it so the red stripes set up nicely. But then it was unseasonably warm the day of the fair itself.”
“And the snow got mushy?”
“ Very mushy. Josie Crane went down on her stomach and lost her sled halfway down, so according to my mother, she went to school every day looking like a murder victim.”
She presses her gloved fingertips to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“In fact, a few years later, her coat turned up in the thrift shop and was bought to be part of a Halloween costume.”
“The sled tracks must have looked gruesome.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. “Very, from what I’ve been told. The town clerk gave a heads-up to the Department of Fish & Game and the state police in case somebody driving through town saw it, thought the worst, and called it in.”
“And I thought small towns were boring.”
“Nothing boring about the town’s children leaving a holiday celebration looking like survivors of a slasher flick. All winter, most of the kids in town ran around with red stains on their coats and snow pants.”
“And nobody bought the kids new coats?”
“Do you know how much good winter gear costs? When you have to save up and shop sales to get a decent coat, you’re not throwing the budget out the window for a little red food coloring. And because it was basically the entire town going through it together, it was like an inside joke, I guess.”
“And a fun story for future generations.”
“That’s the most important thing, of course.” I grin at her. “Okay, time to test it.”
“I’ll watch while you do the test runs.”
“So, if I come barreling down and I’m going to launch into the street, you’ll catch me?”
She frowns, looking at the plow berms along the curb. “Is that a thing that can happen?”
“Not if my dad and his friends got the angles right. See how they all flattened out at the bottom? But…it’s always a possibility, especially if it’s a cold day.” The horror on her face makes me laugh. “Because it faces a side street, we close that one for the fair, so nobody either hits or gets hit by a car. And there are always parents milling around the bottom, ready to catch runaway sleds.”
“Fine.” She sighs and yanks the red plastic saucer from my hand. “You don’t even have a real sled. These things are a menace.”
“They’re also more fun.”
She goes down the smallest run first, letting out a shriek at the top, but laughing at the bottom. Her excitement for the second one makes me laugh, but she hesitates at the top of the steepest run.
“What if it spins around so I’m backward?”
“That makes it even more fun. Haven’t you gone sledding before?”
“Of course I have.” She frowns down at me from the top of the hill, her hands in their familiar spot on her hips. “It’s been a few years, you know. Do these saucers ever go up and over the edge of the runs? How many funny stories do you have about that?”
“Not a single one.”
“Because it doesn’t happen or because the stories don’t have funny endings?”
I shouldn’t laugh at her, but I can’t help it. If she’d seen the places Jace and I used to sled—trees whizzing by in a blur—she’d probably hyperventilate. “As soon as you’re at the bottom, we can go warm up.”
That came out more suggestive than I intended. I’m not sure how she took it but, either way, it gets her butt on the saucer.
There’s a heart stopping moment when her saucer rides high on the sloped wall of the run, just as she’d feared. But, despite the high-pitched squeak that comes out of her mouth, she stays calm and uses her body weight to correct the sled.
Right at the bottom, though, it spins and throws her into the snow, where she laughs so hard, she can’t get up. Since I’m also doubled over with laughter, I can’t really help.
When I do get myself under control and go to help her up, Whitney’s already on her hands and knees. She pushes to her feet and I’m just about to take her arm when she steps forward, hits an icy spot, and ends up in my arms.
Both of us are laughing, and it takes all of my strength to keep us upright. And when she steadies herself and tips her face up—red from laughter and the cold and her eyes sparkling—I don’t even think about it. I just press my lips to hers.
She kisses me back before snuggling against me. “You’re very warm.”
“Let’s grab the saucer and get out of here.”
Because she was such a good sport, I drive straight to the General Store. I run and grab two coffees while she sits in the warm vehicle.
“I used to go sledding with my mom,” she tells me after taking a tentative sip of the hot liquid. “We had one of those old toboggans—you know, the wooden ones with the metal runners—and we’d fly on that thing.”
I actually turn off on a side road to take a longer route back. Whitney rarely talks about herself, and I want to know everything about her.
“There was a great hill near us,” she continues. “But we’d only walk all the way back up a couple of times. Then we’d pull the toboggan through the woods, collecting pinecones and whatever else struck our fancy.”
“We have a couple of those toboggans at the inn. One of them is extra-long and my mom used to take pictures of all four of us sitting on it.”
Once we’re back at the station, she sets her coffee on a workbench and takes out her notebook while I put the saucer back in the Christmas Fair pile.
“Your family will be knocking out most of what’s left on the list, I guess. The wrapping and stuff. We have all the forms and everybody knows where they’re supposed to be.” She gives me a sideways look. “Honestly, you could easily have done this without me.”
“But it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.”
“That’s a compliment I don’t hear often.”
I hold up my hands. “Then people aren’t getting to know you.”
She smiles, her cheeks flushing a pretty pink. “Penny’s leaving after breakfast tomorrow and she said I might have a few hours of peace before the family starts arriving.”
“When is Donovan due home?”
“Friday. He’s cutting it close for the fair, but once that deal is off his desk, he’ll have a much lighter workload in the weeks after the baby’s born.”
“So, a lighter workload for you?”
She laughs. “Except for the deluge from the after-the-holidays crowd when after-the-holidays actually arrives.”
“Speaking of crowds.” I lean against the truck and shove my hands in my pocket. “The inn’s going to be full of my family until the fair is over and they’ll expect me to take part in some of the goings-on.”
“Oh.” She catches her bottom lip with her teeth in a way that makes me want to kiss her. I’m getting used to that, though, because everything makes me want to kiss her. “I’d rather not…”
She lets her words fade away, but I know where she was going with them. It’s disappointing, of course, but not surprising. Especially since one of my family members is her boss. “I get it.”
When she hooks her finger over the neckline of my shirt, I let her pull me close. “Maybe they’ll ding the sleigh while working on the other float and it’ll need some quickie paint touch ups. Maybe we should go up to your office and discuss it.”
I growl and claim her mouth with mine, trying to drown out the ticks of the clock counting down to this woman leaving me.