The next morning a heavy frost still covered the ground. Kevin had spent a lot of Christmases in Evergreen, but this one seemed the coldest and snowiest of all. He pulled up in front of the inn to pick up Lisa. Before he could get out of the truck, she was already heading his way. She jumped into the passenger seat with a cheery, “Good morning.”
“Good morning. Thanks for coming with me.” He’d texted her this morning, thinking she might enjoy the decorating, plus they could iron out some of the plans for Daisy’s. He backed out of the driveway and headed over to Main Street. “I try to help out the church ladies when I can. I promised I’d hang wreaths for them today.”
“Sure thing. I’m a great helper.” She blew in her hands and rubbed them together. “It’s brisk out there today. Where are we headed?”
“You’ll see. It’s not far.” Kevin was pretty sure she’d recognize the way back to town. He pulled the truck along the side of the road, across the street from the church. “We’re here.”
“That didn’t take long.”
He got out of the truck, and so did she. He waited for her to come around to the street side of the truck, then took her hand and jogged across the street. The tiny Evergreen Church sat nestled between giant old cedar trees, just behind the town square across from the gazebo.
“It’s so pretty.”
He nodded. “Did I mention we might be hanging some of these wreaths outside?” Condensation formed a puff of smoke as he spoke.
“Uh, no, but I don’t mind.” As they got closer to the church, Lisa stopped. “With the snow and wreaths on the door, the church looks like it was straight out of a fairy tale. Quaint. Like a picture.”
“It’s a great old church. In the spring lots of couples show up in Evergreen just to wed in the church or over in the gazebo. There’s a storybook look and feel to the place that draws people in from all over, since destination weddings have become such a big thing.”
“I can see how that might be the case,” Lisa said. “I could imagine getting married in a cute little church like this. Not too big. Special.”
“It is.” It surprised him a little that a beautiful and caring woman like Lisa had never been married. Of course, maybe that was her choice, but she was definitely a catch.
“I’ll show you around,” he said. They walked inside through the tall fairy-tale doors at the front of the church.
He led her through a door to the right that took them downstairs into the basement, turning to spot her down the last step. “I’m usually out managing a job right up until Christmas, so I don’t always get this much time in town.”
The space was filled with boxes labeled “Christmas Festival Arts and Crafts” and plastic tubs stacked two and three high all around the room. There were several people down here moving things around and stacking things, presumably to make room for more.
“Hey, you guys,” Kevin said to Hannah and David.
“Hi,” they said.
Lisa looked under the lid of one of the tubs. “What is all this stuff?”
Hannah answered from across the way. “Every year at the Christmas Festival, we have our local arts and crafts fair. We store everything here before we set up the booths. Like these…” She grabbed a bright red knit hat with a pom-pom on top out of one of the boxes and tugged it onto her head. “Are my hats.” She posed.
“I love them.” Lisa admired a handcrafted snow owl she’d taken out of a box. It seemed to be made out of some kind of wood or buri needles. “That’s nice. There’s a lot of good stuff in here.” Lisa walked over to join Hannah and David, who was still holding that old key in his hand.
“This is one of the oldest buildings in Evergreen.” David held up the key. “I’ve tried the key on all the locks. So far. Nothing.” He was clearly disappointed, and Hannah gave him a hug. He dragged his feet as he walked over to the bell mechanism where Kevin stood.
Then David looked up. “Wow.”
Lisa joined them, and Kevin motioned for her to look up, too. From there, she could see straight up the tower to the bells that hung below the steeple.
“Wow. Beautiful.” She stood there staring at the bells for a long moment.
“Daisy always wanted to get the bells working again.” Kevin tugged on one of the heavy ropes, but it barely budged. “My dad tried for a while. But nobody knows exactly what’s wrong with the mechanism.” He eyed the cogs and gears. “It just stopped working one day.”
Lisa walked over to examine the gears and mechanisms that seem to be tied to the church bells.
“Come on, Aunt Hannah,” David said. “Let’s go see if the people at the bank might know where this key goes.”
“All right. Let’s go.” She let him take her by the hand and drag her toward the stairs.
Kevin and Lisa waved as they left. “See you guys,” they said together.
Kevin looked up at the steeple with a sense of melancholy. These bells had meant so much to his mom. To everybody. They’d been part of the tradition in this town. He glanced over at Lisa, who was watching him. “You said you were born here, so do you remember the bells ringing?”
“That was so long ago. It’s all hazy. We moved around to so many towns, they started to blend together,” she said. “However, I do remember Evergreen the most: the snow globe, and the mailbox.” Her expression softened. “I remember Daisy.”
“Daisy.” Probably everyone would always remember Daisy. She was a special woman. “She was the one who took over the Christmas planning and the festival after my mom.” It was still hard to think about those times. The old familiar anxiety twisted in his gut. “Let’s go get these wreaths hung.”
He walked over to a stack of wreaths. Only eight. Not too bad. Next to them was a planogram of where the ladies wanted the wreaths to be hung. Kevin handed Lisa two wreaths to carry, then picked up the rest of them. “The sooner we get all these hung, then the sooner we can get back to the store and get on with our lives.”
“Sure.” Lisa led the way back up the wooden staircase. “When we’re done, I just need to make one more stop, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay. No problem. This shouldn’t take too long.” He liked her spirit. She seemed to be always planning the next steps she needed to take, and unlike so many people he worked with, she wasn’t looking to take a break.
Kevin eyed her as they walked out to hang the wreaths, wondering what else she needed to do this morning. He hoped she wasn’t one of those people that would be wanting to run back to the hardware store for supplies every day. He’d much rather start a list and do that all at once.
As if she read his mind, she explained. “I need to stop at the inn.”
“No problem.”
They were done hanging all eight wreaths in less than an hour. As soon as they finished hanging the wreaths, Kevin drove Lisa back over to the inn.
Michelle stepped through the front door of Barbara’s Country inn with a stack of cookie decorating supplies in her arms. The smell of fresh cookies filled the air.
“Knock, knock! Megan? I’m here to help with the—” Michelle walked into the kitchen to find David, Thomas and Hannah already gathered around kitchen island helping decorate cookies. “This is a nice surprise.”
Thomas nodded. “It is. Hi, Michelle.”
“Hi, everyone.” Michelle put her coat down and found a place at the island. “I didn’t know that you were helping out, too.”
“We’re keeping up the town tradition,” Megan said. “Pitching in on baking cookies for the festival.”
Michelle let out a laugh. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me about how many cookies we need. I ran this festival last year. I about had a panic attack over trying to get it all pulled together.”
“Plus, the ladies in charge of the food were snowed in,” Hannah added.
“Don’t remind me.” Michelle shook her head. Thank goodness it had all turned out wonderfully in the end. She wasn’t sad not to be the one running it this year, though.
Megan said, “Barbara told me to offer up the kitchen and pitch in however we could. So, when Hannah told me how many cookies she’d been assigned to make for the festival I told her we should make them here. So here we are.”
“And I brought helpers,” Hannah said.
David sat at the end of the island, meticulously decorating cookies. “I’ve done ten elves already! This is Donner, Blitzen, Dasher and—”
“Wait a second.” Hannah walked over and looked at the cookies. “Aren’t those reindeer names?”
“Yep. I like to keep Santa on his toes.”
“I see.” She turned and grabbed a cookie sheet to put in the oven. “Confusion in the North Pole! That’s how all the best cartoons start.”
Michelle took the only empty chair, which just so happened to be right next to Thomas. “Hello.” Just being this close to him made her nerves tingle. It really was too bad he was only in town for the holidays. It would be nice to meet someone like him who lived here.
“Hey there.” His smile lingered. “Glad to see you again so soon.”
She tried to keep her cool, happy to have cookies to focus on. Her hand shook slightly. Why did he make her so nervous, in a schoolgirl sort of way? Thankfully, Lisa and Kevin walked in at that moment.
“What’s going on here?” Lisa stopped at the table to examine all of the gooey frosting and gorgeous baked cookies the decorating party had already produced. “Wow, look at these. It smells so good in here.”
“My secret recipe,” Hannah said. “My grandmother taught me how to bake these when I still had to stand on a stool to reach the counter.”
Kevin stepped behind David and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “That’s a lot of cookies.”
“Want to help us?” David asked.
“I don’t think we have time.”
“Well, actually,” Lisa said. “I have to ask you a question, Megan, but Kevin here I’m sure would like to help decorate.”
Kevin dropped his head to his chest, laughing. “Sure.” He peeled out of his coat and slid between David and Hannah.
Michelle picked up the cookie Thomas had just finished decorating. “I like your crown.” She wasn’t totally sure if that’s what it was, but it was her best guess.
“Ah.” He turned the cookie the other way around. “That’s… a reindeer.”
She’d have never guessed that in a million years. She looked at the cookie again. “Oh. A reindeer. Okay.” She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but he took it well.
“No, no, I’m genuinely terrible at decorating cookies.” He didn’t even seem to mind that he was bad at it, which was kind of refreshing. Some guys couldn’t admit a mistake or a shortcoming, no matter how small. She’d dated enough of those types of guys.
At least Thomas was giving it his best effort, and his son sure seemed to be enjoying it. If being bad at decorating cookies was one of his flaws, she could certainly deal with that.
In the foyer, Lisa and Megan stood near the box of Christmas decorations that were still on the foyer table.
“It’d be just for a few days,” Lisa explained. “I just want the store to have some Christmas decorations, you know? So what I’d do is I’d put these in the garlands around the door.”
“I have a lot of them, so you’re welcome to take some.” Megan seemed tickled to be included as she handed Lisa the box of ornaments.
“I’ll take good care of them and return them as soon as we’re done.”
“I’m not worried about that. I have plenty of them around. I’m glad they’ll be put to good use.
“Thank you so much.” Lisa carried the box back to the kitchen. “These are going to look so beautiful. It’ll make a huge difference.”
“You’re welcome.”
As they headed back toward the kitchen, laughter flowed out into the hall. Lisa turned to Megan. “I think they’re having fun in here without us.”
“Sounds that way.” Megan followed the joyful noise back into the kitchen.
Lisa held the big holiday box of ornaments in her arms. “Okay. I’m ready to go.”
“Okay.” Kevin put down his hand-decorated cookie. “Ready to head back?”
David tilted his head up to the two of them. “Why would you do that?”
Kevin wiped his hands clean. “We’ve still got a lot of decorating and painting to do.”
David eyed them suspiciously. “Isn’t frosting cookies just like painting and decorating rolled into one?”
The kid has a point.
Everyone laughed.
“That’s my boy,” Thomas said with pride.
“I think he’s gotcha there,” Lisa said to Kevin.
Kevin looked over at David’s decorated cookie. He smiled, checked his watch, and agreed. “Yeah, sure. All right. Fine. We’ll do three cookies each, then we head out of here.”
“Deal.” Lisa set the box of ornaments on the counter, and then pulled up a seat.
David beamed. “Awesome.” He lifted a green piping bag and added holly to the hat of another elf cookie.
Kevin sat back down next to Lisa, gently bumping her shoulder with his as he got back to work.
Michelle shook red sprinkles onto a bell-shaped ornament. “So, how are you enjoying Evergreen?” she asked Thomas.
“It’s…very homey,” Thomas said, looking relaxed.
“Well, you know Evergreen has a way of keeping people in town. Mostly.” She gave Kevin a pointed look.
Kevin stammered. “Hey, I go where the work is.”
“Don’t I know it,” Thomas said. “I’ve been trying to get him for years to come work on my operation on my logging site in Maine.”
Lisa jerked her head toward Kevin. “Maine, huh?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking about it,” he said.
Michelle noticed the passing look on Lisa’s face. One of disappointment, maybe.
“I’ve got some expanding to do. Trying to get a traveling man to settle into a permanent post is proving to be quite tricky.”
Kevin lifted his cookie to add dragées to it. “I promise I’ll let you know soon.”
Thomas nodded like he’d heard that before. “Mmhmm.”
Michelle tried to lighten the moment for Lisa. “What about you, Lisa? Where’s home?”
“I was a military kid, so we moved around a lot. I guess that’s why I’m on the go all the time. I have a place in Boston, but I travel quite a bit for work and…I don’t know. I haven’t really connected to a place that I love yet. Not since I was a kid.”
Not since Evergreen. Michelle would put her money on it.
Kevin held his Christmas tree-shaped sugar cookie up for Lisa to see. He’d iced it with green frosting, then put a gold sprinkle star at the top. Golden garland zigzagged from top to bottom, with silver dragées for ornaments very precisely spaced on the branches. It was actually one of the best ones on the table.
“Wow,” Lisa said.
Kevin looked proud. “Any job worth doing is worth doing well.” He placed his cookie next to Lisa’s. Same shape, but very different decorating styles, Michelle noticed. Lisa’s were good, but Kevin’s was precise. Which didn’t surprise Michelle at all.
He teased Lisa with a little lift of his brows and a smile as he started to decorate his second cookie in exactly the same manner.
Hannah and Megan swapped cookie sheets in and out of the oven, and Michelle and Thomas teamed up on their decorating. He held the cookies and she frosted and shook sprinkles on them, which was bringing much better results for him.
The table was filling up with Christmas trees, snowmen, wreaths and all shapes of sugar cookies and gingerbread men, too. With each cookie, they were all starting to conquer the art of squeezing frosting through the pastry bag. Hannah picked up two matching sugar cookies in the shape of ornaments that she’d just finished and held them up like earrings. David danced his reindeer-named elves across the table in a lighthearted line dance that had everyone laughing.
Thomas decided he was ready to try decorating another cookie on his own, so Michelle let him have at it. He moved slow and methodically, taking time to spread a thin base layer of frosting first, then adding the details.
A couple minutes later he lifted a cookie that looked more like a blob dripping with frosting, jimmies, sprinkles, and candy-coated chocolates down the front. “How about this?” he asked, looking for Michelle’s approval.
She took a deep breath. After the “crown” incident she was almost afraid to guess. At least now she had the advantage of knowing which cookie cutters they were using. She eyed it closer, not wanting to embarrass him. The three candy-coated chocolates down the center might be buttons, but that white blob at the top of the hat was the giveaway. “That is supposed to be an elf, right?”
“Yes!” Thomas clearly considered that a win. He almost seemed about to take a victory lap.
She reached over to inspect the over-decorated cookie a little closer, and their hands touched. Her heart jumped, and a chill chased through her. Did he notice it, too?
He received a round of applause for his improvement on this cookie from the others, while her heart applauded his touch. Hopefully the clapping and cheering was enough of a distraction for her to pull herself together before anyone else noticed.
“Thank you very much,” Thomas said beaming. “Thank you. Success.”
Kevin’s phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket to read the text message. “Oh. Hey. The guy has the beam up and secured at Daisy’s,” he announced. “I think we’re all set. We should get back, Lisa.”
“All right. Great.” Lisa handed the cookie she was frosting to David. “Finish that up for me, will you?”
“Sure.”
“And stop by the store to try out all the locks there later,” she suggested.
“Don’t worry, we will,” Hannah said. “We’re running out of places to check.”
Michelle was grateful to be a part of this group today. That little spark between Lisa and Kevin seemed to be contagious. She was feeling the same with Thomas. Funny that she’d known Hannah for so long and never met him before. Timing is everything.