A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 11

eleven

KATIE

Katie definitely was hungry— she had meant to get breakfast at some point but had been too focused on working. “What are you doing here?”

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. His eyes widened as they scanned all the flowers in the room before they met hers again. “Well, after your stories about not wanting to accept help even when you need it, I figured that if I asked if you needed help with the flowers, you would say no.”

She scratched her forehead. “Yeah, I totally would’ve said no.”

“And you clearly could use help. I mean, I’m no expert, but this feels like a lot of flowers. So I figured I should just show up ready and willing to help.”

“I don’t even know what to say.” She wasn’t sure what to even think. It was hard to accept help, but this was help for Emmalee’s thing, not hers, so it made it easier. And as much as she would’ve said no if Connor asked if she wanted help, she was so glad that he made the drive from Denver to Mountain Springs and showed up without asking. She did need his help. And it would be so much more fun with him there. “Thank you. Really.”

“Anytime,” he said as he walked over to the table, gently pushed some cuttings away from a couple of spots, and set the bag down. He gave a little involuntary shiver. “You’re right— it does feel like a fridge in here.”

“Wait. How did you know where I live?” Her eyebrows were creased in confusion yet she couldn’t help but admire his strong face, the piercing blue eyes, the scar that ran along his jawline on the right.

“You said your roommate owned a little flower shop on Main Street, and there happens to be only one. So I went there, introduced myself, and asked for your address.”

And, of course, Emmalee recognized him, because she would recognize any hockey player, and she was probably ecstatic to know that one would be helping with her business.

“Extra points to you for being so thoughtful and resourceful.”

“Don’t forget bonus points for bringing food.”

“I never forget to award bonus points for food. How many, though, depends on what you brought.”

“Sandwiches and soup from The Cozy Cabin.”

“Are you serious?” Katie hurried to the bag, opened it, and did, indeed, smell the comforting goodness of The Cozy Cabin’s butternut squash soup. She hadn’t realized exactly how hungry she was until her stomach growled just knowing the delectable food was so close. “How did you know?”

“When we left the community center, you glanced over at the building. Your eyes widened just a bit and I heard a faint rumble from your stomach.”

She just stared at Connor. “For real?”

Connor chuckled softly. “No. I asked your roommate what you would most appreciate, and then I went there and got it.”

She smacked his shoulder playfully with the back of her hand. Then she pulled the items out of the bag. “Have you ever eaten at The Cozy Cabin before?”

He shook his head no.

“Oh, you’re in for a treat. Sit.”

As they ate lunch, Katie moaned a couple of times at just how good the food was. She might have been a little hungrier than she realized. But she was pretty sure she heard Connor moan a few times, too.

Katie told him about all that needed to be done— six more boutonnieres, eight bridesmaid bouquets, and a dozen centerpieces, and that wasn’t even counting all the pieces that Emmalee needed to do herself, like the floral swag and arches.

Once they finished eating, she taught Connor how to make a boutonniere, and they both started working on them. Katie couldn’t help sneaking peeks at Connor. This tall, muscled man normally glided across the ice in padded gear, fending off other players as he hit a puck with a stick.

Today, he sat at her kitchen table, surrounded by flowers, holding small, delicate ones in his big hands, trying to gently hold them while intently wrapping floral tape around a small stem. If she didn’t think that it would ruin the moment to pull out her video camera, she would’ve tried to capture it. Instead, she attempted to burn it into her memory because it might just be one of her favorite things she’d ever witnessed.

They had finished four of the six remaining boutonnieres when Connor said, “There is no way the two of us can do all those things you listed before we have to meet at your parents tonight. There’s a guy on my new team, Erik Henderson, that I’d like to become better friends with. Do you mind if I text him to see if he’s free to come help?”

The words “no way” sounded like a challenge. And she was always up for a challenge. The words “more help” were something her very core wanted to say “no” to.

But this wasn’t help for her; it was for Emmalee. There was only so much help that Katie could offer herself, and Emmalee was really never going to be able to go to bed tonight if she didn’t have lots and lots of help. It might not even be possible for her to pull it off before the wedding tomorrow. Besides, she liked the idea of playing a small part in Connor making friends with a teammate. “That would be great.”

When they finished the last of the boutonnieres and got the boxes of them moved to the kitchen counters, they worked side by side to clear the table of all the debris and get everything gathered for the centerpieces. She was just about to start explaining what they needed to do when there was another knock at the door.

This time, Connor was the one to answer it. And instead of a hockey player on the other side of the door, it was four of them. The one with sandy blond hair at the front, who Katie was pretty sure they called Henderson, said, “These loafers weren’t doing anything productive, so I convinced them to come, too. Can we all help?”

Connor turned to her with an eyebrow raised in question and a grin on his face that made her suddenly wish she knew what he looked like as a ten-year-old.

“Of course! The more the merrier.”

One of the guys gave an exaggerated shiver and said, “Feels like a hockey game in here.”

A second added, “Except for the flowers.”

“Nah,” the first one said, “it just means we played well. Like when fans throw flowers on the ice after figure skaters do their thing.”

It wasn’t long before she had five— five! — NHL hockey players around the table in her little apartment. Katie filled the short but wide, clear, circular vases for the centerpieces with water, plant food, and cranberries. Then she set it on the table where she showed one player how to cut and place floral tape in a grid pattern over the opening to support the flowers they’d be putting in.

Three players, Connor included, were taking a stem at a time, removing extra and damaged leaves from the stems and any damaged petals from the buds, cutting the stem diagonally at the base, then placing them in a big bucket of water with flower food in the middle of the table.

The fifth player was preparing the spruce and eucalyptus stems for the base.

As they worked, Katie grabbed her phone and took a picture of the five of them hard at work and texted it to Emmalee along with the words More help showed up . Emmalee texted back a gif of someone screaming with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Emmalee: I’m closing the shop at four. Sooner, if I can get the last person to pick up their arrangement earlier. Please, I beg of you, DO NOT LET THEM LEAVE BEFORE I GET THERE.

When they finished the prep work, Katie gave them each a vase and moved the extras to the counter. Then she taught them how to make a centerpiece based on the picture that the florist sent. She started with the base of greenery— the spruce and eucalyptus— then added five focal flowers, which for this, were red and white amaryllis that were striped like a candy cane. Then she added the red roses and dahlias, giving tips on how to arrange them and when to cut the stems. She finished it off with some fern pieces and a few pine cones.

They watched with amazing focus. Was that an athlete thing? And then they all got to work. She took the moment to grab her video camera and started filming. They worked so intently that she wasn’t sure they’d even noticed that she’d pulled out the camera.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she captured these five big, strong, athletic men who were known for their brute strength and relentless aggression on the ice as they hunched their broad shoulders over her kitchen table. They all had their brows furrowed in focus as they tended to delicate petals and stems with their big, calloused hands, choosing with great care where to place each one. These titans of the rink were doing such a gentle task. The sight of it was disarmingly charming. It was a dance of contrasts, and it was absolutely beautiful.

One of the players, a guy they called Calloway, placed his final amaryllis and said, “My mom would be so proud of me right now!”

Then one she was sure was named Bradshaw said, “Mine, too.” Then he brought two fingers to his lips, kissed them, and held them high in the air. “Love you, Mama!”

Connor was the closest to him, and he glanced over and said, “Oh, did you lose your mom?”

Bradshaw shook his head. “No. She just told me when I was a kid that not only did she have eyes in the back of her head, but she had eyes in the back of my head, so I better make her proud whenever she wasn’t around.”

Henderson, the player that Connor had texted to come help, reached over and ruffled the back of the guy’s hair. “Is that why you have this shaggy mullet? To cover the eyes?”

Bradshaw smoothed it back down. “You know it.”

Katie was chuckling right along with them and trying very hard not to shake the camera as she did.

Davis studied his centerpiece, which was looking pretty good, and said, “I think I’ll take my little girl with me to get some flowers so we can make a centerpiece for Christmas dinner. My wife will be blown away.”

It hit Katie that all these men were used to having cameras on them, so even once they did notice that she was filming, nothing changed. They continued to make jokes and rib each other over floral choices. The tough veneer of the hockey players seemed to melt away.

The more she filmed, the more she could tell that beneath everything, these were people with depth that went well beyond anything in the rink. They were brothers. They were friends. Even though Connor was new to the team, they had a shared experience as elite players who were at the top of their sport that bonded them even before they became teammates.

Since Connor was the player she was assigned to film, she spent a good amount of time zooming in on him, focusing on the way he bit his bottom lip when he concentrated. The way his left brow raised. The look on his face of… what was it? Focused contentment? The way he would put a flower stem in the vase and then look at it from the right and the left, adjusting it in small amounts before deciding that it was right.

After a good long moment of filming him, he looked straight at the camera— at her— and smiled. One side was raised just slightly more than the other, and he had a little sparkle of amusement in his eyes. His expression was mesmerizing. He picked up a flower by the stem and held it out toward the camera. She had been zoomed in enough that the auto-focus switched to the flower, bringing it momentarily into crisp clarity and blurring him, before she put the focus back on his face, blurring the flower.

That, combined with the expression on his face was perfection. She couldn’t wait to pull this footage up on her laptop later.

She didn’t know if the Glaciers could use footage like this, especially since it wasn’t one of the scheduled events she was supposed to film and it included more teammates than just the player she was assigned to film. But this moment with five professional hockey players making floral arrangements felt like something that needed to be documented, regardless.

About the time they all finished their second centerpiece, which meant that all twelve were finished, Emmalee came bursting through the door, like too many things had been keeping her back and she was finally free. As soon as she flicked the door shut with her foot, her hands flew to her face. “Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight. Thank you so much for coming to help!”

She went around the table, looking at each arrangement, complimenting them on what a great job they did. Calloway pulled out his phone. “I’m putting this on social media!” He switched the camera into selfie mode and twisted it so he could get both his face and the floral arrangement in the shot. The other four did the same.

“The bride and the groom are huge hockey fans,” Emmalee said. “They are absolutely going to go nuts for this! Can I tell them that you guys made them?” They all said yes, so she had them write their names and jersey numbers on a piece of floral tape that they stuck to the side of the vase so she could make a card to go with it on the tables tomorrow.

By the time Emmalee finished complimenting them, they all seemed more than ready to take on making a bridesmaid bouquet each. She suspected that it would give them additional bragging rights that they were all strangely excited to have.

At some point, she ordered pizza, and it showed up as they finished their bouquets. They all ate as they admired their work, bragged about their new skills, and smack-talked about whose was the best. Even though the temperatures in the room made the pizza go from perfectly warm to “fresh from the fridge” cold much too fast, the mood in the room was light. Fun. And something she wished could happen every day.

Especially the Connor part of it. As they all talked and laughed, his eyes kept finding hers, and he kept giving her that same smile. The one that told her that her heart was definitely in trouble.

After Emmalee thanked everyone profusely, Connor’s teammates said goodbye, and Connor asked Katie if she wanted to ride over to her parents’ for the hay ride in his car. Even though her head was telling her to pull back, her heart was saying “Grab every extra moment you can with this man!” So she told him yes.

As they walked out to his car, he said, “I’m really glad you let me come help today, even though you probably would’ve chosen to do it by yourself.”

She definitely would’ve chosen to do it by herself, for sure, but she wouldn’t have preferred it. “Today was fun. And the help lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.”

He stopped walking and studied her before holding his hand out flat near the top of her head, squeezing one eye shut like he was trying to gauge her height. “I can tell. You’re taller now than when I arrived.”

She chuckled, then met his eyes. “Thank you for everything today.” Her voice seemed to come out with all the sincerity she was feeling.

He held her gaze for a long moment. Long enough that something really sparked between them. And something was happening to her heart. She was falling hard. And then the man glanced at her lips and something happened to her stomach, too. And suddenly, all she could think of was kissing this man. Grabbing him by the coat and planting her lips on his.

But then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his keys, and pressed the button to unlock his car. Then he gave her that smile that was melting her just a bit more each time and opened her door. So she gave him a smile right back and got inside.