A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 7

seven

KATIE

Katie waited for Connor in Mountain Springs’ Downtown Park, standing right between a snow sculpture of an alien wearing a Santa hat while decorating a Christmas tree and a pirate ship with Santa as the captain. Connor wasn’t late yet, but still, she wondered if he was going to show up after how things went yesterday.

Things at Mountain Springs Elementary School yesterday had been a disaster. The only genuine smile he had the entire time might have been the one he gave her when he first arrived and saw her. (Which was, admittedly, pretty fantastic and might have sent her heart a buzzing.) Yes, he also wore a smile when he went up to the first table to wrap a present with the fifth-grade boys— before they started smack-talking— but even that smile had seemed forced. Like he just hadn’t wanted to be there.

She’d expected him to be good with the kids, especially because he had been so great with her nieces when they’d presented him with the Christmas tree to keep in his hotel room. An average response to her nieces would’ve been to thank them, tell them they did a great job, and then set the tree down. But he got down to their level, made them feel like they’d decorated the tree the best he’d seen in his life and that they’d given him the greatest gift ever.

Where had that Connor been yesterday? Yes, the boys had been rude. But he could’ve just joked with them about their comments instead of acting like they were being serious. Laughed with them about it. Pretended to be having a great time, even if he wasn’t, so she could’ve at least turned off the audio and replaced it with something else.

As it was, she had no usable footage. The one part where he genuinely smiled at her? That shot had included no other people, and it was at an angle where it was impossible to tell that he was even in a school. She did try playing it in slow motion, though, just out of curiosity to see how it looked. His walk, complete with that smile, was amazing and looked epic. And, okay, she may have watched it through at least a dozen times.

Other than that, there really wasn’t anything she could send to the Glaciers. Her choice of footage would’ve been limited, anyway, because not all the parents had given permission for their child to be in the video, but she didn’t have any . She’d spent the night tossing and turning and spent this morning wondering how she was ever going to pull off this job.

She hoped that yesterday was an anomaly. That he wasn’t actually closer to being the kid who ruined the school dance back in high school than he was to being the guy she’d cooked a meal with at her parents’ house two days ago.

But if nothing else, at least she validated her decision to not just go on initial impressions of a guy and to wait for more evidence to know if he was someone worth being interested in.

She shook out her gloved hands and stomped her feet in the snow a bit to get more circulation and warmth to them. And to help her nerves. Maybe she just needed to pull Connor aside often tonight and do what it took to get him in the right mindset so she could get some genuine smiles out of him.

Or… maybe not. From the moment she first spotted him walking toward her from a parking stall, there was a great smile on his face. When he glanced around the park, it didn’t even fade. She didn’t realize exactly how stressed she’d been until she felt relief at that smile. Maybe today wouldn’t be the disaster that she feared.

When he reached her, she said, “So, I heard you won last night. Congratulations.” It didn’t explain yesterday, but maybe that was why he was smiling today. She pulled her camera from its case so she could get some footage of that smile in case it wore off.

“Thank you. It was a great game.” He glanced again at all the snow sculptures lit by landscape lights before his eyes were back on her. “You’re not a hockey fan?”

She looked at him, confused.

“You say you ‘heard’ we won.”

Yeah, she “heard” it from the announcers. And from Emmalee’s screaming. “Nah. I don’t usually watch.” Which was true, even if it wasn’t true last night. She hadn’t planned to watch, but then Emmalee brought home a bunch of flowers so she could watch on their TV in the living room while working. Katie had been at their table, attempting to edit the footage she’d shot during the day, trying to keep her attention off the game.

But she was curious. She had seen how Connor had acted at her family thing and had seen how he’d acted with the kids at the elementary school. Since the two glimpses she’d gotten of him didn’t match up, she wondered which version she’d see at the game. That curiosity won out, so she brought her laptop to the couch to watch while she worked.

She couldn’t really compare the Connor she saw on TV to either one. Although she did see the competitiveness that had come out during the cooking competition. And he did seem to truly love what he was doing when he was on the ice, even while in a fierce battle with another player over a puck. There weren’t any interactions with kids, of course, so she had nothing at all to compare there.

“Hey, um,” Connor said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’d like to apologize for yesterday. It was a hard day for a lot of reasons.” He looked like he wanted to say more but then changed his mind. But he added, “I imagine that made your job pretty tough.”

She just blinked at him. He apologized and acknowledged the position it put her in? If she was keeping score, that would’ve earned him some extra points. And not that she’d give extra points for attractiveness, but his nose, which was now red from the cold night air, made his hazel eyes pop. And that 5 o’clock shadow along his jaw looked rather touchable.

“Thank you. Here’s hoping tonight goes much more smoothly.”

Like every night in the weeks leading up to Christmas, there were plenty of people in the park. Some were walking around, looking at the sculptures. Others were admiring the elaborate setup of Santa’s village or riding the small train that circled the village. Some were looking at the life-sized nativity, and some were lined up at the hot chocolate gazebo.

Connor glanced at Santa’s village and said, “Please tell me that I’m not here to put on an elf costume to help Santa.”

Katie tried to hide a smile as she turned and started walking, Connor joining her. “I heard that the town’s one and only costume was completely destroyed by a barbarian. No— we are going to that building just between the hot chocolate gazebo and the nativity.”

“The community center? What’s in there?”

How had she forgotten even for a moment that he used to live in Mountain Springs? He knew where everything was. It was his eyes. They distracted her. “All of the gingerbread houses that were submitted for the competition. You are going to judge them.”

“Oh. I wish someone would’ve told me— my Gingerbread House Judging Certification has lapsed and I didn’t get it renewed.”

“I’ve heard the renewal process is a real bear,” Katie said.

Connor nodded. “So many classes…”

“And so many terms to memorize…”

“And the certification test takes hours.”

“And there’s only so many hours in a day,” Katie said.

“I feel like you really get me.” He gave her a look that was part teasing, part something else. She wasn’t sure what, just that it made her suddenly aware of her own heartbeat.

“Don’t worry.” Katie patted him on the shoulder. “That NHL jersey with your name on the back came with an honorary certificate.”

“Whew!” He brushed the back of his hand across his forehead. “That’s going to save me some embarrassment here in a minute.”

Katie snuck a peek at him as they walked and smiled. She liked a guy who didn’t take himself too seriously.

When they had almost reached the community center, a boy who looked like he was probably five years old came running up to Connor and said “Are you number seventeen?” It surprised her that Connor was already being recognized since he’d only been on the team for three days, but he was wearing a Glacier’s coat, so maybe that helped.

Connor stopped and gave all his attention to the little boy, who was dressed in a puffy coat, gloves, and a knit hat with a big pom on top. “I am.”

Katie immediately pulled her video camera out, just in case. She held it up just a bit, wordlessly asking the boy’s mom for permission to get the exchange on video, and the mom nodded quickly, her focus going back to her young son. She started filming from behind the child, so she was getting Connor’s face and not the kid’s, but the more the little boy talked, the more she moved to his side so she could get all his animated expressions and gestures.

“I watched you last night and you did awesome! ‘Specially that one part where you got that pass and took the puck down the side going swish, swish, swish back and forth, and that defender was right on you, so you turned around backward! Swish, swish with the puck, and he couldn’t keep up and went down ! And his skate nearly took out you, too, but no. You just turned around and swoosh !” He threw his arms up into the air. “Right into the net! It was so awesome! And the crowd was screaming so loud. We were only watching it on TV, but I’m pretty sure that we were screaming louder.”

The boy’s arm motions as he told about the play and his excitement were pure gold. So were the expressions crossing Connor’s face as the boy talked. And all the Christmas festivities in the park were the perfect backdrop. She couldn’t have planned a better composition for the shot.

“Wow— you really know a lot about hockey. Do you think you’ll want to play?”

The boy puffed out his chest. “I already do.”

“I bet you’re pretty good at it.”

As they talked, Katie noticed a second, much quieter boy who was holding back from the conversation a bit. He looked like he was about twelve years old, and if she had to guess, he was the animated boy’s brother.

She was surprised at how quickly Connor noticed the boy and pulled him into the conversation. “Do you play, too?”

The boy immediately lit up and stepped forward. “I do. Right-wing, just like you.”

She suddenly wondered if the boy was the older brother that the girl at the present wrapping station yesterday was referring to. If she was his sister, she didn’t see her nearby, though.

Connor chatted with the two brothers, and when the older one asked for Connor’s advice about what he should do if he wanted to play in the NHL someday, Connor gave it. He told him to focus on the fundamentals, not get caught up in complaining, work hard, and get the best grades possible. Yes, as a way to get into a college where he had a better chance of being drafted, but also because hockey was about a lot more than skill on the ice, and getting good grades helped prepare for all of that. Katie was pretty impressed by his answer. When she glanced at the boys’ mom, she saw the woman was not only impressed, but grateful nearly to the point of tears.

This was the Connor she’d hoped she’d find for her videos. And this is the kind of man I had hoped to find for me , a voice in her head whispered.

I am working! she hissed back to the voice. But it didn’t stop the fluttering that was going on in her heart and the buzzing in her mind.

The boys sounded like they were finishing up, so she quickly asked their mom if she could call her about using the footage.

As she and Connor neared the community center building, she said, “You’re really good with kids.”

“You said that with an awfully straight face for someone who saw me in all my frustrated glory yesterday.”

Katie lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “This feels more authentically you than yesterday did.”

Connor studied her for a moment, but she couldn’t read the expression on his face before he opened the door and they walked inside. The mayor and his eleven-year-old daughter, Breanna, were waiting to greet them and walked them to the room with the gingerbread houses. He explained that one of the tables had entries from elementary school-aged kids, one from middle school, one from high school, and two tables contained entries from adults. Connor needed to pick a winner from each age group.

Without even getting closer, an obvious winner from each table stood out as being way more impressive than the others. If he wanted to, Connor could’ve pointed out those four, been done in thirty seconds, and headed back toward his hotel in Denver moments later. She could kind of picture the Connor from the school yesterday doing exactly that.

But he didn’t. He listened as the mayor explained Mountain Springs’ tradition and how hard everyone worked. The mayor gave him a stack of cards that he could write on if he wanted to take notes on an entry to refer back to.

Connor looked down at the cards. “And what happens to these after?”

“We typically give them to the person who created that gingerbread house.”

Connor tapped them against his hand a couple of times. “How long do I have to judge them?”

“We announce the winners at eight-thirty, but the doors open for people to come in and look at them at eight. So…” he looked down at his watch, “you have about thirty-seven minutes.”

“And how many entries are there?”

“Forty-one.”

Connor looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Okay, so about forty-five seconds each, and that still should give us a few minutes at the end.” He pulled out his phone and went into something. Then he turned to the mayor’s daughter, who had been looking kind of bored but was trying valiantly to patiently wait for her dad, and held his phone out to her. “Do you mind being my timer?”

“Sure!”

“Okay, when I get to the first gingerbread house, push this button. When the timer goes off, say ‘Next!’ and press the repeat button. It’s up to you to keep me on track to get through all of them. Are you up for it?”

“I sure am.”

The moment Connor got to the first one, Breanna pressed the timer, and he spent a few seconds studying it, then he wrote the entry number on the card and started writing something about the gingerbread house. When Breanna said, “Next!” he moved on to the next one and did the same thing. Was he really going to write a note about the gingerbread house to every person who entered?

Yep. It looked like he was.

She’d thought she’d gotten a good sense of who Connor was that night at her parents’, but everything at the school made her question it. Was this who the man really was? He did seem at home, natural, outside with the kids just a few minutes ago and now as he wrote on each card, where he hadn’t at all yesterday at the elementary school.

She got some good footage of the houses in focus in the foreground with Connor blurred in the background and plenty with the focus on Connor as he studied the gingerbread houses, noticing details, and writing on cards.

A few times as she was filming, he looked right at her and smiled, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was a smile meant for the camera or for her. It wasn’t just a happy smile or an “I’m enjoying helping out in this community” smile. If she read it right, it was an “I like you and I’m glad you’re here” smile. Maybe even an “I’m attracted to you and really want those lips of yours on mine” smile.

But she could be imagining it. She would definitely be spending time rewatching some footage tonight.

When he had finished the final one, the mayor said, “Well, did you decide which ones are the winners?”

“I guess. There are four that definitely could be called ‘the best.’ But look at this one over here. It arguably isn’t ‘better’ than that one, but look at all the details they put in. All the creativity. And check out the backside— there’s a ladder leaning against the house, with the string of lights hanging off, like they weren’t quite finished yet. And look at this one over here. Same thing— so much uniqueness and so many fun details. This one, too. There’s a second one in each category that also deserves recognition.”

Katie owned a business in a creative field. She worked part-time for her roommate in a creative field. Watching Connor notice creative details and appreciate them was doing things to her heart that she couldn’t explain. Maybe because she’d never quite had it do that. All she knew was that she was glad she had the camera rolling at this moment because she would definitely be watching it over and over.

And when he offered to personally donate prizes so that a second “Creativity Award” could be given to the entries that were clearly showing it in abundance, the buzzing in her heart and the buzzing in her mind seemed to click into sync.