Page 5 of Sweet Valentine
She acquiesces with the skepticism smothering the, “Uh, sure,” she answers with.
“Three things I like about you? I… like your imagination and drive. Seeing what you have built into such a unique experience born out of joy. It’s inspiring. That’s one. Two—” Colton holds out two fingers, clearing his throat again, “—I like how kind you are. A lot of folks can be nice, especially in this town, but not everyone is… Yeah. So. That.” He risks a look at her out of the corner of his eye. Lamely, he settles for, “Also, your perfume. You smell good.”
Sheriff Colton Rhodes may not be a loquacious man. But Patty Sullivan has always been a lover of words. There are many things she has struggled with in her life—no matter how memory or social media may attempt to distort that fact—but talking isn’t one of them.
So why does he make her speechless?
How?
COLTON
Patty’s laughter sounds like the ridiculous windchimes hanging from the Whispering Willow’s door. “My perfume?” Her breath catches in her throat, and when he hears it, his brain short-circuits over it. That, Colton thinks, can’t be good.
But it feels it. Itfeelsgood to just say?—
“You smell like candy canes,” Colton taps into the reserves for his audacity to tell her. Her laughter softens over it, past the hitch of a breath he wouldn’t miss no matter what his profession was. He’s still a man. “Your turn.”
Patty is quiet—but it isn’t a vacant silence. Colton couldn’t put it into words if he’d tried. He isn’t remotely a man prone to hyperbole—but he could swear he canhearher think. Yet, when Patty speaks, it’s confidently, without pause, factual and straightforward, even in her dreamy voice: “One, I like your hair. It’s thick and dark and fickle. Like it can’t make up its mind between black and brown, with those grays encroaching already. Two, your sense of integrity. There aren’t too many people I’ve met in the world who are so solid that their faith in what’s right and good and honorable couldn’t at least be tempted. And three, your uniform. I like it. You look dashing. Even if you walk around like Scrooge.”
“Scrooge?” Colton barks a laugh.
Patty nods very seriously, before her nose scrunches. “McDuck. Donald Duck’s uncle.”
That elicits another chuckle from him. Colton isn’t sure if he finds her unexpected reference more amusing, or that he immediately gets it. This time when he nudges her, she nudges back. He hands her back the card, already having memorized the prompts. “Biggest fear?” he asks.
“You first,” Patty decrees.
Colton shoves his hands in his pockets, and considers it. “Maybe that it will always feel this way.” He doesn’t mean for it to be a vague answer. In fact, it happens to be the most honest thing he’s said out loud in all his years, Colton thinks. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t recognize it sounds like one. His mouth opens again, ready to add – to clarify, no matter the unease already creeping its way into his chest. Patty says, so softly, “I understand that one.” He doesn’t understand how, or why, but he doesn’t doubt it.
“For me,” Patty adds, after a beat, “it’s probably the opposite, in a way. That the best days are gone, and I’ll never feel that way again. Not so young. Not so carefree and still courageous enough that it’s effortless to forget there’s a cost for everything.” Colton listens, riveted. An unease burgeons in his belly over her words. Constantly vigilant, he’s always telling the townsfolk to be. And he, himself, doesn’t even notice a few minutes after, that they’ve come to a standstill at a gazebo.
“The third,” he says definitively. “I don’t believe in a single ideal date. A date should be about the person you are with; whoever asks, makes the plan. Am I just old-fashioned?”
Patty shoots him a grin—and, for the most part, it still reaches her eyes. “Yeah,” she teases. It’s warm, though, so there’s no offense to be taken. “But I am, too. Most people don’t believe it. Understandably. It isn’t easy to comprehend walking contradictions.”
Colton considers her. “Are you sure you didn’t write the poem?”
Patty turns on her heel, walking in a slow, perusing circle around the gazebo. “If I was a part of setting up the Love Quest shenanigans, I wouldn’t bother to pretend to look for the next clue, would I?” She challenges. Then, undercuts it went she jumped two feet in the air, screeching: “Under the bench! It’s under the bench!”
She rushes up the two narrow steps up into the gazebo a single, ornately-edged bench the color of a dove sits. Reaching beneath it, Patty plucks away another tiny envelope. This time, it’s pink as a blush on a girl’s cheeks. She nearly rips it out, beginning to read—or perform, to be honest—another poem:
You’ve found the spot where love once bloomed,
A sheltered space where hearts consumed.
But now the task is up to you,
To craft a verse both sweet and true.
Take your candies, let them guide,
And share the thoughts you keep inside.
When your words and hearts align,
Maplewood Grove will show its sign.
Patty is taken aback by another impromptu poem. Her brow arches, wrinkling. There is a dimple in her chin, he notes, not for the first time. She shoots Colton a look, combing his features for giveaway sentiments while his warm eyes rove over the text. He knows the roll of his eyes is caustic, abrasive. “That’s what the candy is for? Are they just making everyone do this stuff?”
