My Secret Santa Clayton (Silver Ridge Christmas)

11. Clay

ELEVEN

Clay

The cold air nipped at my cheeks as I tightened the last screw on the old radiator. Laura Bennet had been nagging me about the damn heating system for weeks, and I was just about ready to call it a day at Whispering Pines Inn. My hands were still greasy when I pushed through the lobby doors, the festive wreaths mocking me with their cheer.

"Clay Hawthorne," Betty Thompson's voice cut through the hum of holiday tunes. I didn't even need to look up. Her footsteps clipped towards me, the sound too perky for comfort.

"Finished with the winterizing?" she asked, but it wasn't a question.

It was a trap.

"Yep." I kept it terse, hoping to dodge whatever bullet she had loaded in that smile of hers.

"Perfect timing!" She didn't even try to hide her glee. "You're just in time for the annual Gingerbread House competition!"

"Damn it, Betty," I muttered under my breath. I had about as much interest in frosting and gumdrops as I did in a root canal. But the look in her eyes said I wasn't getting out of this one without a fight.

"Come on, Clay. It's tradition!" Her hand latched onto my arm, pulling me toward the tables covered in candy construction materials. "It'll be fun, you'll see."

"Betty, really, I should be heading out." My voice was a half-hearted attempt at an escape. Maybe if I made it to the door, I could still avoid this whole fiasco.

She cocked an eyebrow, hands on her hips in a way that told me she wasn't buying my act for one second. "Clay Hawthorne, you and I both know you don't have any other commitments today.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but what was the point? She had me cornered, and somewhere beneath her meddling exterior, I knew she meant well.

It was just Betty being Betty—queen of the 'you'll thank me later' brigade.

"Fine,” I grumbled. "But after this, we're even."

"Promise." Her smile was too sweet, like the frosting waiting to be slathered on those gingerbread walls. I followed her lead, feeling the weight of inevitability settle over me. "Here's your spot. And I've found you the perfect partner!"

"Betty," I warned, but she was already off, her mission accomplished.

I let out a sigh as I scanned the room, and that's when I saw her. Grace. Standing there with that look that could cut glass, sizing me up like I was a misprint in her latest article.

My partner.

Damn it.

Across the room, Kat caught my eye, giving me a thumbs-up paired with a grin wide enough to swallow the room whole. Gabe sat next to her, smirking like he'd just pulled off the heist of the century. That's when it clicked—this wasn't just Betty being her usual matchmaker self.

This was orchestrated, a setup from the start.

"Hey, Clay!" Kat called out, her voice echoing across the lobby.

"Traitors," I hissed, going quiet as Grace sat beside me.

"Seriously?" Grace's voice was as sharp as the winter chill outside. "You?"

I raised my hands in surrender, the defensive gesture feeling inadequate against her glare. "Hey, I don't like this either. I didn’t even want to do this?—"

"Yeah, neither did I," Grace shot back, her eyes rolling with annoyance. She was decked out in her usual journalist armor—button-down, slacks, and those boots that meant business. "I came here to take pictures for the paper, and I somehow got roped into participating." Her hand cut through the air, motioning dismissively towards our supposed benefactors. “Hey, Betty? Laura? We really don’t want to?—”

But Laura was in her element, already at the front of the room with a clipboard clutched in one hand and an air of authority that demanded attention. "Alright, everyone!" she announced. "You've got two hours to finish decorating your gingerbread houses. And remember, it's not just about looking good—it's about structural integrity too."

"Great," I muttered under my breath, glancing at the mess of candy and frosting sprawled out on the table. It looked like a sweet shop had exploded.

"Structural integrity?" Grace scoffed, eyeing the pile skeptically. "It's a gingerbread house, not a skyscraper."

"Still, we should probably have some kind of plan," I suggested, reaching for a gingerbread wall, only to have my hand slapped away.

"Plan?" Her eyes narrowed, challenging. "Your plan is probably to slap it all together with a bunch of frosting and call it good." She snatched up the icing bag before I could grab it. "We're doing this my way."

"Your way?" I shot back, frustration warming my cheeks. "What, you gonna write an expose on poor construction practices?"

"Better than acting like a bull in a china shop," Grace snapped, squeezing out a dollop of icing with more force than necessary.

"Look, we're in this together, like it or not," I said, gritting my teeth. "So let's just get it done without killing each other, okay?"

"Fine," she huffed. "Just don't mess it up."

"Wouldn't dream of it," I replied

But the truth was, working alongside Grace, even on something as trivial as this, felt like stepping into a minefield blindfolded—exciting, dangerous, and stupidly heart-pounding.

"Damn this frosting," Grace muttered, gripping the icing bag like it had personally offended her. I couldn't help a short chuckle, which earned me a glare.

"Here," I said, reaching for the bottle of peppermint schnapps intended for the hot chocolate. "Let's make this more bearable."

"Wait, what are you—" she cut herself off as I unscrewed the cap and poured a generous amount into my mug. The sharp scent of peppermint tickled my nose.

"Like you said, let's find a way to enjoy this." I raised my mug in a half-hearted toast.

Grace rolled her eyes but couldn't hide the smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She grabbed the bottle and filled her own mug, then tipped it back. Her face contorted into a grimace as she swallowed the boozy hot chocolate.

"Ugh, that's awful," she gasped, setting down her mug with a thud. "It's like Christmas came in a bottle and then died."

"Sounds about right," I agreed, taking a cautious sip. The taste was like swallowing a candy cane that'd been soaked in gasoline. I made a face, but the warmth spreading through my chest wasn't unwelcome.

"Okay, maybe this will help," Grace said, rallying herself. "Now, let's see if we can put this house together without it collapsing again."

"Or without us collapsing," I added, raising an eyebrow. We both laughed, the tension easing just slightly. With peppermint schnapps fueling our efforts, even the disaster that was our gingerbread house seemed a little less catastrophic.

"Hey, before we go any further with this...masterpiece," I said, picking up a gumdrop and examining it as if it held the secret to life itself, "I've still got your truck. Been meaning to return it, but I fixed it all up."

"Keep it as long as you need. It's not like I'm hauling lumber or anything," she replied, her attention on squeezing out an even line of icing along the gingerbread wall.

"Always thought of you as a woman on the go,” I muttered. “You should have it back.”

“I mean…I am, I guess. A woman on the go, I mean.” She paused, looking up at me with those keen eyes that saw too much. "So, what's life been like for you since high school?"

The pivot felt strange, but also perfectly natural. This was the first time we’d really talked since we met up again—and it was an opening to heal some hurt.

I shrugged. "Joined the Army, then the Marines. Saw some things. Came back."

“Where were you deployed?”

“Afghanistan, three years.”

“When?”

“Let me think…would have been mid-2010s?”

She let out a surprised laugh. “Huh. I guess we were there at the same time. I was covering the war, embedded with the Army.”

"Really?" I couldn't hide the astonishment in my voice. Grace, the girl who used to be afraid of spiders, had been in a war zone. "Guess we both ended up far from Silver Ridge for a while."

"Guess so." She gave a half-smile, dipping her brush into food coloring.

We fell into a rhythm then, decorating the gingerbread house while swapping stories about desert heat and sand that got into everything. We talked about the camaraderie, the fear, and the longing for home.

And something…well, it was like building a bridge between us.

Even if the gingerbread house we were building was trash.

For the first time in a long time, talking to Grace felt right. There were no accusations, no bitterness—just two people who'd seen too much trying to make sense of a world that had once seemed so simple.

"Look at this mess," Grace chuckled, holding up a cookie wall that had more frosting on it than the actual paper plate beneath it. "You'd think after dodging gunfire, I could build a damn gingerbread house.”

"Hey, don't look at me," I grinned back, "I'm just the muscle here. Delicate artistry was never my thing."

"Clearly, Picasso." Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she glanced over at my side of the roof, where the icing sagged. “And here I thought you were in construction.”

"Ouch," I laughed, reaching for a gumdrop to cover a particularly bad spot. "But you’ve gotta forgive me; working with cookies isn’t even close to the same as working with lumber and tools.”

The back-and-forth felt good. Too good, actually, and I found myself wondering why we ever stopped talking like this. The room around us faded away; it was just Grace and me and our pathetic gingerbread disaster.

“I would much rather be eating them,” she said, then gestured at a gumdrop. “Honestly, I think?—”

She stopped as she accidentally tugged on the gumdrop a little, her eyes wide.

“Grace?”

That’s when I realized why she’d gone still; because that gumdrop had been holding our whole fragile house up. And when she’d gone to eat it…

…well, the whole thing crumbled.