Maybe the woman in the movie had once dreamed of career success but had moved on to a different kind of happily ever after. Holly thought for the first time in a long time about her parents’ love story. As a child, she’d asked about how they’d met, and they always told her that their hearts had sought each other out, her dad from the North Pole and her mom from the human world. They’d been together ever since. It seemed so easy, with none of the soul-twisting angst that humans used to portray love.
She shook her head but continued to watch the love scene on the screen with interest. The protagonist and the love interest shared a passionate kiss on the beach. Lightning flashed in the background, and Holly’s thoughts turned to Ash and walking close to him in the forest. But she tried to stay focused on the fictional characters, not her real-life issues. Both were confusing, but one she wouldn’t have to think about after she left the theater.
When the movie ended, Holly quickly got out of her seat, passed down the few rows behind her, and walked back into the lobby. The bright light greeted her harshly, but her eyes adjusted instantly.
“What did you think?” the teenage attendant asked as Holly walked by. “I got the feeling you hadn’t seen it before.”
Holly nodded. The young woman was observant.
“The cinematography was lovely,” Holly said. The wordcinematographyhad jumped into her mind inexplicably. It was probably her magic feeding her a vocabulary word she’d never needed to use before.
The girl’s mouth twitched at the corner, and she looked puzzled, but she wished Holly a good evening.
Holly continued to think about what she had watched as she exited the theater and carried on down the sidewalk. She’d noticed one of the elderly women wiping away a tear at one point, and she wasn’t sure whether it was out of happiness or some other complex emotion. Normally, anywhere other than in Emerald Hollow, her Cheer meter tipped her off to that. She snuck another look at her watch, which was still stuck stubbornly at full.
A few other people were out and about, but the street was fairly empty on a weekday afternoon. She glanced at the time and turned toward the street that would take her back to the Emerald House.
As she turned the corner, she ran smack into Ash.
ChapterTen
Holly nearly tripped out of surprise. Similar to how people never walked into the reindeer, even though they were invisible, there seemed to be some kind of magnetic field that stopped people from touching her while she was working.
Ash reached out quickly and steadied her, and his hands rested on her arms for a few moments as they stared at each other. Her heart stuttered like a penguin skating across the ice for the first time.Why did he appear here just now, when I’ve been trying to tuck away any uncertain thoughts about relationships?
“Hey, Holly. Sorry about that. You good?” Ash asked, his molten brown eyes still studying her with concern.
“I’m fine. Thank you. I guess I should watch where I’m walking.” Her meter was going wild, a rapid vibration making heat spread across her wrist. She ignored it and put on a bright smile as she gently extricated herself from him. It was impossiblenotto smile around him, as he seemed to carry the charisma of the entire town on his shoulders.
“Me too,” Ash said, holding up his phone guiltily. As he slipped it into his pocket, it buzzed. “How did your sightseeing go?”
“It was nice. The shops here are lovely.” Holly was struck once again by the flecks in his warm brown eyes.
“But you’re still on the hunt?” he asked, looking at Holly’s empty arms.
“I guess you could say that. All the shops were great, they just… didn’t have what I was looking for.” She shrugged, wishing she had thought to purchase something to maintain her cover.
“And what are you looking for?”
His tone was so sincere that Holly nearly answered honestly. The words were out of her mouth before she could fully process them. “Do you know if there’s anything… unique about this town?” Something was causing all the Cheer there—something very out of the ordinary. Maybe there was no one better to point her in the direction of its origin than a local.
Ash tilted his head, looking at her strangely. “Unique… how? Good? Bad? Downright ugly?” A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and she bit her lip to suppress a grin.
“I can’t really explain it. I just get the feeling that there’s something… different about Emerald Hollow. Something in the air, maybe?” She tried not to groan after she said the words. He would think she was a mystic or something. She wasn’tmysticalso much asmythical.
“We do have the fountain of youth tucked away in the woods,” he said smoothly.
Holly’s eyes widened with surprise, then she saw the tug at the corner of his mouth again.
“Okay, I deserved that. Never mind. It was a weird question.”
But Ash was looking at her strangely again, almost as if he could sense that the question she’d asked wasn’t exactly what she wanted to know.
“The closest thing this town gets to magic is our Christmas faire.”
Holly’s heart rate picked up. Maybe Ash was giving her the answer she’d been searching for after all. “Christmas faire?”
“Oh yeah. We’re almost as famous for that as we are for the fall festival. Actually, this year, we’ve put in for a national contest called the Best Small-Town Christmas Faire. We’re in the running to be sponsored by Hallmark next year. The company is sending out a rep and everything. I have a ton of work to do for it, but I’ve got big plans.”
