A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 3

three

KATIE

Katie pushed the door of the department store in Denver open and walked inside, her eyes finding the hanging sign overhead for the men's department before going back to the contract on her phone that she’d received from the legal department at the Glaciers. She was scanning it trying to find any clauses related to specific dates as she made her way back to the section where she was hoping to find some funny socks for her brother-in-law, Cory.

The spot for the name of the player she would be filming was blank, which was the source of the problem. Her dad had called to tell her about getting selected for this job weeks ago, and she really thought she’d know who her assigned player was long before now. Other videographers got their player’s names right away and were able to schedule events earlier in the month when things weren’t so tightly packed with Christmas.

She had even started seeing ads from the Glaciers using footage that other videographers had sent in. The ads usually cut between clips of two or three players, each being helpful with some Christmas activity in some town. Every time she saw one, it stressed her out that she didn’t even know who she was supposed to be filming yet.

And she was no longer sure how she was going to fit everything in. She already had scheduled videography jobs coming up with a couple of families to film their Christmas parties, as well as her own family’s traditions, and filming and editing the video she created for them.

Not to mention the stress she was feeling about the possibility that anything she filmed would get to the Glaciers too late for them to even use. And then what if it caused the Glaciers to lose faith in her and not want to use her for anything ever again? Plus, there was a player out there who wasn’t going to get much screen time if things didn’t start happening soon.

She was going to her parents’ house tomorrow night for their annual Santa Hat activity, though, and her dad had promised that everything would be set in stone by then, and he would let her know who her player was at the activity.

She skimmed past a lot of information on what types of things she should film, how many separate activities, and how much footage she would need to send to the team to be compiled into their campaign. There was an entire section that said they had editing rights and that anything could be cut, which she expected.

It included a player confidentiality clause that basically stated that if she discovered something personal about a player that they didn’t want disclosed, she couldn’t disclose it. She also couldn’t film him looking like a jerk. Probably because the purpose of this campaign was to raise the team’s image, not to make it worse. So, hopefully, the player she got assigned wasn’t a jerk.

Something hit Katie in the chest and then fell onto her phone. She picked it up to see that it was a new pair of wadded-up men’s underwear. Her head jerked up, her eyes searching for the underwear’s origination, and saw a big guy standing right in front of her. Two teenage boys a dozen feet away immediately sent another wadded-up pair through the air, tagging the man in the shoulder.

He spun around to make an escape, but unfortunately, his exit route led exactly where she stood and he knocked into her. Her breath escaped with a whoosh as the two of them fell toward the floor. She wasn’t sure how it happened, since he hit into her, but he managed to twist in mid-air so that when they landed, she was on top of him and was suddenly chest-to-chest with a large, muscular man.

She drew in a quick breath to replace the one that had been knocked out of her as her attention jerked to the mannequins that were crashing to the ground, one after another.

It was a moment before the shock of getting knocked down and of all the mannequins falling before it sunk in that she was laying on top of a man, his strong arms wrapped around her. And then another second before her eyes made it to the man’s face. And about one more for recognition to dawn on her, and then she narrowed her eyes.

It was Connor Greene. He was the one player that Katie knew on sight even without a lesson from Emmalee. Everyone in Mountain Springs knew him— the right wing for the Charlotte Thunderstorm, which was who the Glaciers must’ve played tonight if he was in town. A lot of people saw him as the golden boy who went from a small-town hockey rink to the National Hockey League. Of course, those people were always the ones who didn’t go to high school with him. If they had, they’d know he was a jerk.

Like he was at Katie’s very first high school dance. She’d been wearing a dress she’d borrowed from her older sister, Noelle— a dress she’d promised she would return in the same condition she borrowed it in. Connor was at the dance, too, and decided to pick a fight with someone. Before long, more than a dozen people were involved, and Connor crashed into the punch table, sending almost the entire bowl of punch onto Katie, soaking her from head to toe in a very staining red liquid. The entire school lost school dance privileges for four months because of the brawl.

She pushed herself off the man as the boys threw a last couple of pairs of underwear before running off. Katie got to her feet as Connor was pushing himself to a sitting position. She had seen a picture or two of Connor since that day in the high school gym, but she hadn’t seen him in person. It caught her off guard how good-looking he’d become.

Not that becoming more eye-pleasing on the outside changed anything. She put a hand on her hip. “Well, it looks like not much has changed. People still want to throw stuff at you.”

She caught a glimpse of confusion on his face before she turned on her heel, leaving him in her dust as she exited the store.

The next evening, Katie pulled up in front of her parents’ extremely decorated home in Mountain Springs. Even though it wasn’t quite 6:00 yet, it was already dark, making the explosion of lights over the entire house, on every tree, and lighting up every decoration in every area on their big front lawn even more impressive. There was a part with a large nativity complete with all the animals, another with Santa’s village, an area with giant Christmas tree ornaments, and a group of nearly life-size carolers.

Before she got out of the car, she sent a text to Emmalee.

Katie: I’m sad you’re not here with me for Santa Hat night!

Emmalee: I am sad, too!

Although to be honest, I was a little intimidated by the whole thing and was kind of wishing there was someone you’d want to take as a date.

Katie: Emmalee! Did your grandpa really fall? Or was that just an excuse not to come save me?

Emmalee: He really did fall. And I really was the only one close enough to get him to the hospital. No way I would’ve left you high and dry without a good excuse. Are you sure there isn’t someone you could ask as your date with zero notice?

Katie: Nope. I’m just going to be on my own solo team. It’s going to be awesome.

It wasn’t going to be awesome. It wasn’t the type of thing one would ever choose to do solo. Maybe her family would give her a five-minute head start as the only unmarried, couldn’t-get-a-date sibling.

She walked into the just as elaborately-decorated inside and hugged her mom, her very pregnant sister, Noelle, and Noelle’s husband, Jack. Then she hugged her sisters, Becca, Hope, and Julianne, along with their husbands and a total of ten nieces and nephews. And her parents’ black lab, Captain. And in the process, she confirmed at least three times that she was, indeed, there without a date.

Her dad walked out of his office down the hall, a phone to his ear, and from what she could hear over the sound of everyone, she guessed it was a work call he was finishing up. Since she had a moment, she sent a quick text to Emmalee that she’d been meaning to send. Katie had videoed a wedding proposal last night in the pine trees and snow at the edge of town and didn’t see Emmalee before she went to bed. And then with the craziness of Emmalee’s grandpa falling, she had somehow forgotten to tell her best friend about what happened last night.

Katie: So, I’m guessing the Glaciers played the Charlotte Thunderstorm last night? Because guess who I ran into— or, I should say, guess who ran into me— in the men’s underwear section at a department store in Denver?

Connor Greene!

She pressed send, imagining what Emmalee’s reaction would be just as her dad hung up the phone and called everyone to gather around. Maybe she should’ve waited to tell Emmalee the story because she wasn’t going to get a chance to respond for a bit. She did glance at her phone when a text from Emmalee came in, though.

Emmalee: The Glaciers played the Washington Hydra last night…

Katie was still furrowing her brow in confusion at Emmalee’s text when her dad started talking.

“Before we get started on our annual Santa Hat competition, I have a few announcements I need to make. Katie, this first one is mostly for you.”

Katie perked up, remembering that she was going to find out which player she would be videoing tonight.

“The reason why we couldn’t tell you which player was yours sooner is because the GM told me they were working on a trade. I knew you could handle getting started a little late with the player who Mountain Springs was getting, so I had the new player assigned here. The trade took longer than they expected, though, which gives you a much smaller window to get all the filming done. I’m really sorry about that.”

A smaller time frame to do the filming, she could handle. But a new player ? It felt like a stone had just dropped into Katie’s stomach. She glanced at the phone that was still in her hand.

“Anyway, the trade went through, and the new player flew in last night. If any players had a connection with any particular town in Colorado, we tried to assign them to that area. I assumed that the new player we’d get wouldn’t have a connection to anywhere in Colorado, but… Surprise!”

No, no, no .

“He actually does have a connection with Mountain Springs! Noelle, I think that you might have gone to school with him. It’s Connor Greene!”

Julianne’s husband, Ben, and Becca’s husband, Corbin, high-fived each other. Cory pumped his fist and said, “Yes!” Most of the kids were jumping up and cheering, even though— except for maybe three or four of them— they had no idea what they were cheering for. They were just excited about group excitement. Jack looked to Noelle to gauge her reaction, while all five sisters looked at each other. The four of them had the same wary expression on their faces that Katie knew she wore.

Actually, hers was much more than wariness. She wasn’t even sure what it was, because a mix of many emotions was swirling through her. None of them good. All of which made her feel both tense and twitchy at the same time. And, oddly enough, made her jaw feel tight.

Her dad continued talking, although a little more cautiously, as if trying to figure out the mix of positive and negative emotions he was sensing. “He practiced with the team today, and I had a good chat with him after, where I explained about going to a town to do Christmas events for a video. He seems like a good guy. I asked him about his Christmas plans, and he was really feeling bad that he wouldn’t be able to go home for Christmas because of the storm coming in and the lack of flights.”

Katie mentally crossed all her fingers and toes, silently hoping that the next words out of her dad’s mouth wouldn’t be what she could guess they would be.

“So, I talked to your mom, and we decided to invite him to stay with us over the three-day break they get for Christmas.”

And there it was. The person in all of her high school— all grades included— that she liked least of all was going to be invading their family Christmas.

“So, Katie, I guess it was a good thing that your plans for a teammate for this activity fell through because I have someone else for you to partner up with.”

“What?” Katie nearly shouted as a knock sounded on the front door. “Dad, please tell me that you didn’t invite him to come tonight.”

“Why? I thought it would be a great chance for the two of you to get to know each other before you have to start filming him. It might make it easier to, you know, dig deep in your video and show the real Connor. Since he’s new to the team, it’ll give fans a chance to connect with him more. Oh, and there’s the man of the hour right there!”

Katie’s dad held out his arm and she turned to see the tall, muscular man who had crashed into her at the department store.

This was a nightmare come to life.

He’d started strolling into the room looking plenty confident, but as his eyes roved the room, his stride became more hesitant. It seemed like he was gathering puzzle pieces and slowly snapping them together. And then his eyes fell on Katie, and she could swear that she could actually see color leaving his face. His feet shifted ever so slightly, and she could tell at that moment that a part of him wanted to turn around and leave and that all of him was suddenly regretting saying yes to her dad’s offer.

Instead, though, he walked all the way up to her dad, shook his hand, then shook her mom’s hand and thanked them for inviting him.

Her nerve endings seemed to tingle at seeing both the strong, confident walk and the slight show of vulnerability. Why? Why? Why wasn’t her body getting the memo that she didn’t like him? This man was a jerk in high school. Why the fluttering?

It was probably because when he knocked into her at the department store, he had twisted to make sure he fell first, protecting her. She was just feeling that. Protection appreciation. Nothing else.

Her dad started introducing him to everyone. When he got to Noelle, Connor said, “We went to high school together, right?”

“Yep. We had U.S. History together for the first half of our junior year.”

Connor kept a smile on his face, but Katie could see the wince behind it, too. Then her dad motioned to her. “And this is my daughter, Katie.”

Connor shook her hand, but the guy’s face was pretty easy to read, so she could tell that he was racking his brain, trying to figure out if he knew her in high school.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“From last night?”

She ignored the raised eyebrows from practically everyone else in the room. “No, from high school.” She paused when there was still no recognition in his expression. “I was a freshman at that Christmas dance.”

Connor didn’t ask which one— they both knew which dance she was referring to. It was a low blow to bring it up, but also, it was oddly satisfying to see the look on his face.

Connor dipped his head a bit and scratched the back of his neck. “I’m really sorry about that.”

Her dad didn’t seem to know which dance they were talking about, and she didn’t expect him to. He had five daughters, so there were a lot of school dances. She could tell that he sensed the awkwardness yet needed to press on anyway. “I’m glad you’re here and have been introduced— again, apparently— because Katie, here, is the videographer that is assigned to you for the Christmas player promotions I told you about earlier today.”

The new expression that crossed Connor Greene’s face? That one was even better.