A Mountain Springs Christmas

Chapter 15

fifteen

KATIE

Katie stood beside her mom in their big kitchen, cutting up apples for the pies while her mom rolled out the pie crusts. Three of her sisters had arrived with their families, so the place was already filled with a lot of action, a lot of noise, a lot of delicious scents, and enough Christmas decorations that everything felt exactly like Christmas Eve.

A couple of her nieces were folding the red napkins that went with the Christmas place settings into origami shapes based on some “YouTube research” they’d done, while all the littler cousins were either playing with a car set just under the big Christmas tree or piling on top of a couple of her brothers-in-law.

“You know,” Julianne said, leaning in to point at the apple Katie was slicing, “if you slice along there first, then— ”

“I’ve got this,” Katie said. She could do something as simple as slicing an apple without instruction.

She glanced toward the hall leading to her dad’s office, waiting for him to come out. And waiting for Connor to arrive— she really thought he would beat her there.

She heard the front door open and looked over to see Jack and Noelle come into the family room. “We just got to see the puppies!” Noelle said while holding up her phone, and Katie rinsed the juice from the apples off her hands and hurried over to see.

“Holly’s grandparents are over for Christmas Eve,” Noelle said, “but they let us come play with them for a bit.”

Katie leaned in to look at pictures of the little fur babies as Noelle swiped through them, several of her nieces and nephews coming in close to see, too.

“Three of the five of them already have their eyes open,” Noelle said. “Oh, see this one? She’s the one that’s going to be ours when she’s ready.”

“I’m impressed you two are willing to take on training a new puppy so soon after having a baby,” Katie said.

“Yeah,” Jack said, “we might be a little crazy. Funny story— we were babysitting Aiden and Holly when Bailey went into labor. When I called them to let them know, they thought it was Noelle who was in labor.”

“Oh, I wish I was,” Noelle said, putting a hand on her belly. “I’m ready to pop.”

“Happy birthday to Noelle,” her six-year-old nephew, Porter called out in the cadence of the poem The Night Before Christmas .

Katie, along with everyone else in the room called back, “and to Noelle a good night.”

She had just made it back to the kitchen to continue with the apple slicing when her dad came out of his office and headed straight toward her, a big smile on his face. She started grinning even before he got there. “You, my daughter, did an excellent job on those videos!”

As the head of brand management, her dad was one of the people who she knew would be the first to see the videos she submitted. “You like them?”

“When I first told you that you were being assigned the player who was traded, do you remember that I assigned them to you because I didn’t want to dump it on someone else last minute? That I didn’t think it was professional but that I knew you’d be forgiving of that?”

She nodded.

“That wasn’t the actual reason why. I didn’t want to tell you at the time because I didn’t want you to feel the pressure of it, but we assigned the new player to you because out of all the videographers we hired, you were by far the strongest at bringing out the emotion of an event through your videos.”

“I was?”

“The franchise is really excited about getting Connor, and they wanted a video that would really sell him to the hearts of the fans. And you knocked it out of the park, just like we guessed you would.”

She smiled widely as she took in a big breath that made her feel like she had grown an inch or two.

“It’s not my call what gets aired— Advertising and the GM get the ultimate say on that, but I’m betting they’ll love it and see the brilliance behind it. I also spelled it out for them just in case.”

“Thank you!” she said and gave him a tight hug. She was so deliriously thrilled that it was making her lightheaded. She heard the front door open, and she looked over to see Connor as he rounded the corner into the family room. She practically skipped over to him, wrapped her arms around him, and gave him a kiss.

“Wow, you are beaming.”

“My dad just watched the video I sent the Glaciers of you, and he loves it.”

“Of course he did. You’re very good at what you do.”

She grinned at him. Creating something that others appreciated gave her a high unlike nothing else. Her smile faltered just a bit, though, as she took in Connor’s face. “Is everything okay?”

He smiled, but it didn’t feel quite as genuine as his smiles normally did. “Yes, I’m fine. Everything is good. I’m just a little sore from yesterday’s game. I’m sorry for taking so long to get here— I decided to get chains on the tires of my rental car. And with the snow that has already fallen, I-seventy was moving painfully slow.”

“Happy birthday to Noelle,” her nine-year-old niece, Erika called out, and everyone else, including Katie, joined in to say, “And to Noelle a good night.”

“Oh, yeah,” Katie said, noticing the confused look on Connor’s face. “That’s a thing here.”

He nodded and grinned. As they were all working on dinner and socializing, Katie watched Connor with her family. Katie liked dating, so she’d had plenty of dates at family things over the years. Usually, they kind of hung back, being a spectator on the sidelines. Or stuck to her like glue. Or found one of her brothers-in-law to chat with. How was this man, who had only been in her life and in her family’s life for the past eight days, already fitting in with her family so well? Sure, it felt like much more than eight days, but it was still only eight days.

Since he’d arrived, he’d stood side by side with her, cutting vegetables for roasting, racing some teeny cars with the littler kids, playing a board game with the older kids, and chatting and joking around with all of her sisters, their husbands, and her parents.

She hoped that advertising and the GM of the Glaciers would decide to air the footage a lot. And that everyone would see the man that she saw and fall in love with him, too. Then, there would be no way that the Glaciers would ever trade him to another team, and he’d be around for a good long time. Because she wanted this man to be in her life always.

As they set all the dishes of food on the table and everyone made their way over, she wrapped her arms around his waist and smiled up at him. “You are pretty perfect. Do you know that?”

It was Christmas Eve and it was Noelle’s birthday. The conversations could’ve revolved around those two subjects as they ate prime rib and maple bacon Brussels sprouts. But since Connor was there, they revolved around hockey and what Katie was like as a kid— one of her family’s favorite subjects whenever she brought someone new to the family table.

“When Katie was born,” her oldest sister, Becca, said, “I was nine. Me, Hope, and Julianne are each only a year-and-a-half apart and Noelle is three years younger than Julianne. So she had a lot of sisters who really wanted to smother her with help.”

“‘Smother’ was definitely a good word for it,” Katie said, and her parents, especially, laughed.

“She tolerated it well enough until she was, what? A year-and-a-half?” Her mom looked at her dad and he nodded, so she continued. “Then one day, Hope was helping Katie to put on her shoes and Katie said, ‘No, I do it.’ And from that point on, she had to do everything herself.”

“And she does mean everything ,” her dad confirmed.

Was that really so bad? She got to be pretty independent and capable at a very young age.

Julianne pointed at Katie with her fork. “I’m pretty sure her first words were ‘No, I do it.”

Noelle nodded. “It kind of became her anthem.”

Katie grimaced and snuck a peek at Connor. He was chuckling along with everyone else, then said, “It’s probably why she’s so good at everything she does.”

“Thank you!” Katie said, feeling vindicated and giving pointed looks to her siblings. “Also, thank you for telling that story instead of the story where I got into the penguin habitat at the zoo that you told the last time I brought a date to Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, that was a good one,” Corbin said.

“No,” Ben said, “it was the chaos caused by getting her back out that made the story great.”

As everyone laughed, reliving probably both their enjoyment at hearing the story and at seeing her date’s expressions as they all told the story in detail, Connor leaned in close to her ear, tickling it and sending a happy shiver straight to her heart as he said. “I’m going to want to hear that story later.”

“And deprive my family the joy of telling it to you at some future family dinner?”

He chuckled. “Fair enough.” But something still seemed off, and she didn’t know what it was.

After dinner was finished and cleaned up, all twelve adults, ten kids, and her parents’ dog, Captain, made their way to the couches or the fluffy rug in front of it so they could watch Katie’s annual Christmas video. It was her favorite part of their celebrations because it brought everything together. All their activities, gatherings, and everyone’s thoughts. She could see how much it made their family bonds stronger and helped everyone to realize how grateful they were for each other.

She woke her laptop that sat on a shelf by the TV, turned on the TV, and went into her laptop’s settings to connect to it. It gave an error that it couldn’t connect using WiFi, and her brother-in-law Cory started to get off the couch, saying “I can help.”

“I’ve got this,” Katie said, a little annoyed.

“No, I do it!” Becca said, and everyone laughed.

Katie had just forgotten that she had put her laptop into airplane mode to minimize distractions while she’d been editing, and it only took an extra two seconds to turn the WiFi back on, and then everything worked.

In Katie’s defense, she kind of had a right to get bugged by everyone always wanting to help. They always assumed that since they were older, they knew more. And since she was the youngest, she needed extra help with everything, like she was incompetent. She wasn’t .

She brought up the video, made it full screen, pressed play, then hurried to her spot on the couch closest to the laptop, and snuggled in right next to Connor.

Since Jack and Noelle were about to become parents, she started by showing an interview she’d shot with the two of them a few weeks ago when they had decorated the gingerbread cars for the train at the side of the room.

“We are so excited because this is the first Christmas that we’ll be spending in our new house!” Noelle said. “We probably won’t be able to say that it’s our first Christmas with a new baby, but you never know when this little one is going to come.”

“But whenever he does,” Jack said, “we are ready. The house is all ready. His nursery is ready. We are… well, we’re not exactly ready, but we’re excited and as prepared as we can be.”

Noelle gave him the sweetest smile, then said, “And the timing couldn’t be more perfect if we had planned it. We fell in love this time of year, we got married this time of year…”

“Noelle’s birthday is this time of year…”

“Happy birthday to Noelle,” her dad said loudly, and everyone, including Connor, replied back with “and to Noelle a good night!”

It was bound to happen at that point in the video, so Katie had included a few seconds of Jack and Noelle just smiling at each other, not saying anything, so her family wouldn’t miss words while they said it.

And then, with almost perfect timing, if she did say so herself, Noelle said, “And now our baby is going to have a birthday at this time of year, too.”

The next several clips were of her nieces and nephews and her sisters and their husbands. She liked sitting in the spot at the edge of everyone so she could see all their faces as they watched the video. It was how she determined whether she hit the mark on what she chose to include, and seeing them enjoy it was the best kind of payment for all her work.

The clip came up that she’d gotten of Aiden sitting next to Connor on the hay ride, with him saying. “My uncle Jack fell in love on this hay ride two Christmases ago,” and she felt Connor chuckle at the memory. Then it cut to Jack and Noelle all snuggled up together, Jack kissing Noelle’s temple. Then she had the part where Aiden said, “And my mom fell in love” with Holly interrupting to say “with my dad” before Aiden finished “last Christmas,” and showed Rachel and Nick sneaking a kiss as they walked from the hay ride toward a house they’d be caroling at.

She had debated including the part where Holly said, “Maybe you can fall in love this year,” followed by a clip of her and Connor together. But they hadn’t actually said the L-word to each other yet. She wasn’t sure why because she definitely felt it. Maybe it was because eight days— even if it felt like it was fifty— just seemed too soon.

Plus, if she had included every clip of Connor in this video that she wanted to, a good fifty percent of the video would be just him. To keep herself from doing just that, she put all those clips in a separate video to enjoy later.

Instead, she went to a clip of her parents saying how much they enjoyed seeing their family grow and find love and happiness and watching everyone figure out what they were really good at.

She also included a clip she got of Holly saying that Bailey had five of the cutest puppies, then showed those puppies. She figured that since Jack and Noelle were getting one of those puppies and that Rachel and her family were keeping at least one, those puppies were going to be in family Christmas videos for years to come.

Her stomach started getting fluttery as one of her favorite parts came up— all four of her sisters standing side by side, near the end of the Santa Hat activity. Hope said, “The most surprising thing about this year’s Santa hat activity was that Katie drew dinner and it was really good! ”

She grinned at Connor and he grinned right back and then gave her a quick peck on the lips as everyone in the room laughed. She was already enjoying that trophy sitting on a shelf in her living room, and she was going to proudly display it all year.

She also included an interview she’d gotten with Connor. It was right after Erika and Sadie had presented him with the tree their family had decorated so he could have it in his hotel room. Connor had a very wide, very genuine smile on his face, and he was clearly thrilled about the tree he was holding.

“This might be the coolest thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you for making such an awesome tree and for giving it to me.” Katie glanced at Becca and her family and could see that they were all beaming, just like they had that night. “And I would like to thank Reid and Elizabeth and every single member of the Allred family for inviting me into your home and into your family’s traditions before you even knew me. It means a lot to have a family to celebrate with when I can’t be with my own.”

A chorus of Aww s sounded in the room. Connor put his arm around Katie and pulled her close, kissing the side of her head. Every time Katie watched this part while she was editing and as she was watching it now, she felt the same emotions she had felt when Connor had gotten down to Erika’s and Sadie’s heights and thanked them— like she was being swept off her feet.

She had only known Connor for a few hours at that point, and she was already more gone for him than anyone she’d ever dated. Did she know that night how hopelessly in love she was about to fall?

She always included in the video an interview with herself, and in this clip, she had taken on the hay ride, she’d handed the camera to Noelle, who aimed it back at Katie. “One of my favorite things this year has been how Connor sang so enthusiastically while we were caroling that it inspired Captain to do the same.”

And then she showed a clip of Captain caroling, seeming to pour his soul into it. At hearing it, Captain sat up from where he was nestled among the kids on the floor and sang right along with himself. Everyone’s laughter made her smile. That was what she went for in these videos— a trade-off between the laughter and the Aww s.

“That,” she said in her interview, “and being with everyone as we watched the skits at the Santa Hat activity.” She cut to a clip of Julianne and her family pretending to be on a Christmas cooking show, just as Ben “stirred” his dough using a battery-powered drill, their four-year-old’s eyes going wide as he stirred his with a socket wrench. Everyone laughed now and in the video clip, and in both places, she could easily pick out Connor’s laugh the most. She loved that laugh.

She ended with her parents saying how much they loved spending Christmas with everyone and got a hearty applause. This was why she made videos. Not because she got praise, but because it led everyone to feel all the emotions that compelled them to clap enthusiastically. They weren’t clapping for her; they were clapping for the experience that they enjoyed. And that was everything she hoped for.

All the little kids had bedtimes soon, so her dad slipped out to grab the sleigh bells he kept in the garage and ring them in front of the house, causing all the little kids to jump up and scramble to gather everything they had brought, put on their coats and shoes, so they could hurry home and get in bed before Santa arrived at their house.

Connor pulled Katie close, his arms wrapped around her, and she snuggled into him. She was still feeling the high of her dad watching the videos she’d submitted to the Glaciers of Connor and of her family watching the Christmas video. But the last few days had been insanely busy, and she was exhausted. It was wonderful to just relax and melt into him, feeling the strength of his arms. He kissed along her jaw, and when he got close to her ear, he breathed, “You truly are incredible at what you do.”

His words sent goosebumps all over her body. “Thank you,” she said and pressed her lips against his.