Chapter 10

ten

HARVEY

“ W ell,” I said, when Steven finally stomped out of the museum with a face like he was sucking on a lemon, “I don’t think he’s going to ask me to get back together with him.”

Sterling arched a brow. “You can do better.”

“I already have,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but I knew it landed wrong when Sterling removed his arm from around me and put a couple of steps between us. “I made it weird, didn’t I? Sterling, I know you’re leaving soon, but that doesn’t mean this doesn’t mean anything, right?”

He regarded me almost warily, as though he was afraid I was going to force him to express a feeling against his will. Between his buttoned-down emotional repression and my total lack of anything resembling it, it was amazing we connected on any level at all.

I plowed on. “I like you a lot, and I don’t think either of us should pretend there’s nothing her, just because it’ll be over in a few more days. That seems weird to me. If I like you, why shouldn’t I say it out loud? Shit. Am I making it even weirder?”

Sterling’s mouth quirked. “Maybe?”

That meant definitely, but I didn’t mind much because he clearly didn’t either.

“Anyway, the point is, I don’t think Steven will be bothering me much from now on.”

“Has he bothered you before?”

I wrinkled my nose. “It’s really weird. Like, firstly, I thought we were dating, but it turns out he was just cheating on his boyfriend.” I tried to keep my voice steady when I said that, but it was hard. I hated that Steven had made me a part of that. I hated that I’d missed the warning signs because I’d been so swept off my feet by Steven and his bullshit. “You’d think that since we were never really a thing, he wouldn’t give a shit that I don’t want to speak to him again, right? But when I found out, it was like he couldn’t see what the big deal was, and why I was so pissed. It was working , I guess, from his point of view, and it would still be working if I wanted it to. And he’s not wrong about that. But I’m not a cheater. I mean, I guess I kind of was?—”

“Not if you didn’t know,” Sterling cut in. “He was the cheater, not you.”

“I know. I know . But I still feel bad about it. How does it make sense that I feel worse about it than he does?”

“It makes perfect sense, because you’re not an asshole. He is.” He tilted his head, watching me intently as though to make certain his words were sinking in. He must have seen something in my expression that reassured him, because he gave me a soft smile. “I wasn’t kidding about lunch, by the way. I’d love to take you out to eat.”

“And I would love to let you take me out to eat, except Martha isn’t back yet.”

I was technically Martha’s boss, but I wasn’t a hard-ass or anything like that. Last year, we had to watch a video about workplace culture. Not just us; everyone who was employed by the town. And I’d learned that what we had happening at the museum was called culture slip. As in, we’d started out very professionally, but now we slipped in and out all day whenever we felt like it. But also, it seemed like the sort of problem I didn’t want to fix. If I started timing all of Martha’s lengthy breaks, she might stop covering for me when I wanted to go book shopping in the middle of the day or needed to dash out to get some emergency gingerbread. Or when I wanted to drive all over town helping my not-boyfriend track down his missing uncle. Our system worked for us.

“When is she due back?”

“‘Due’ is the wrong word for our workplace situation here,” I said. “Tell you what, how would you feel about a museum picnic? We can set up a blanket in front of the mechanical Santa—” I blinked at his expression. “Or somewhere else. The back room is nice and quiet. I just have to move the elf because I don’t want that creepy little guy watching me while I’m eating.”

“A museum picnic.” He sounded amused and dubious at the same time.

“Yeah, there’s a cheese board in the refrigerator.”

“You have a cheese board in your refrigerator at work?”

“Well, I have a collection of various cheeses that I have acquired at different times, which I can place on a single plate, yes,” I said. “Plus, I have crackers in my desk drawer.”

At that moment, the door to the corridor opened, and Martha stepped inside the museum. She peered at us from underneath her quilted hood. “Harvey, come and give me a hand with my shopping, would you?”

I hurried forward to help her.

“Thank God,” Sterling said. “Not that a museum picnic doesn’t sound great...”

I took Martha’s tote bag from her. “But?”

“But you can’t just have cheese,” he said. “You have to have charcuterie as well, and maybe some olives and artichoke hearts? And wine, obviously.”

“Best I can do is half a can of flat soda.”

He snorted. “I’m taking you out for lunch, Harvey.”

“Yeah.” I hung Martha’s coat for her, and grabbed mine while I tried to remember how old some of the cheese in the refrigerator actually was. It probably hadn’t all been blue when I’d bought it. “Smart choice.”

He snorted again. “Martha, would you like us to bring you back anything?”

“I’m fine, thank you, dear.” She sent a pointed look my way. “I bring a packed lunch every day.”

“Martha’s trying to teach me how to be frugal,” I said. “But the sandwiches you make at home are never as good as the ones you buy. That’s just a scientific fact.”

Sterling laughed. “The Shack?”

“The Shack,” I agreed, and we headed out for lunch.

“So our next lead is Matty Jessup,” I said, moving my half-finished fries aside and setting my phone down on the table. “Who might be Cap Guy. Travis was supposed to get back to me on that after he talked to Bob and Linda, but he hasn’t yet.”

“He’s probably reinstalling the roof on an orphanage or something,” Sterling said. “That seems to be how things work in this town.”

“Uh-huh. I see what you’re going for, but the implication is that no other towns would fix their orphanage roofs, and it’s kind of hard to emphasize that we’re the weird ones when you’re painting everywhere else as being populated by the kind of people who would let orphans freeze to death.”

Sterling blinked at me. “Okay, I see your point.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “I should call the animal shelter.”

“That reminded you?”

“Some of the kittens might be orphans.” I pulled my fries close again and ate one. “So, there’s a Matty Jessup from Christmas Falls on Instagram, but his account is full of high school football players and cheerleaders, so I think he’s probably not the Matty Jessup we’re looking for.”

I showed Sterling my phone.

“I hope he’s not the one we’re looking for.” Sterling took my phone off me to have a closer look. “If this guy was a teen in the nineties, he should be on some sort of watchlist now. Is this the only Matty Jessup you could find?” He waited for my nod and gave my phone back. “Try Matthew instead of Matty. Guys who were Matty in their teens are probably Matthews or Matts by the time they reach fiftyish.”

“With keen insight like that, you and I could definitely start our own detective agency.” I closed Instagram and went to Facebook. “Score! There’s a Matthew Jessup in Christmas Falls. And—ha! Looks like Instagram Matty might be his son. And...Matthew owns a pool cleaning service. Huh. That probably doesn’t get too much business in December.”

“Probably not.”

I began to flick through Matthew Jessup’s public photos. I stopped at one, and showed it to Sterling. “Looks like he’s still working those seasonal Christmas jobs. That’s the waterfall.”

In the photo, Matthew was smiling at the camera. He was tall and bearded, his dark hair threaded with silver, and was leaning up against one of the red wagons that carried visitors from the parking lot to the modest waterfall the town had taken the second part of its name from.

We finished our lunch and walked back to the museum. Then we borrowed Martha’s car—a silver Ford Taurus that had rolled off the production line right about the same time that Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” was tearing up the charts—and headed off toward the waterfall.

Christmas Falls nestled into a loop of the river like it was getting a hug. Outside of town, just past the Christmas tree farm, the river cascaded over a series of bluffs and into a wide, sparkling lake. The waterfall wasn’t spectacular. The countryside around here was too flat for that. But it was picturesque.

We parked in the lot and joined a few other people waiting for a wagon ride to the lake. There wasn’t a lot to see here apart from a bunch of cars, some trees, and the sky.

“Hey,” I said to the woman selling tickets. “Is Matthew Jessup working today?”

“Sure,” she said. “He’s driving the boat.”

“Two tickets for the boat ride, please.” I waved Sterling out of the way before he could try to pay.

“I don’t think we really need to go on the boat ride,” Sterling said a few moments later as we waited for the wagon. Beside us, a toddler waddled back and forth, bundled up in so many layers he looked like the Michelin Man.

“I know, but it’s been ages since I did it, and it’s fun. Also, you have to go on the boat ride, Sterling. It’s in all the ‘Must-See Attractions in Christmas Falls’ articles online. Imagine if people found out you’d been here, and they asked what the boat ride was like, and you had to admit that you didn’t go on it. You’d be a laughing stock.”

His mouth twitched. “I think you are vastly overestimating the outside world’s knowledge of Christmas Falls and its must-see tourist attractions.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He looked as though he were about to say something else, then stopped. I wished I could kiss him right on the corner of his lips, where that serious line curved upward just a little. The wagon showed up then, and while the group surged forward, I couldn’t make myself move.

“Come on,” Sterling said with a laugh.

He took my hand. Didn’t look back, either, just tugged me gently with him, like it was a natural thing to do. Like we’d done it a hundred times before. Even when I stumbled forward and matched his stride, he didn’t let go. I would have peeled my gloves off and thrown them in a snowbank if I could have, just so there’d be less knitted fabric between his hand and mine.

My heart was beating fast as we climbed into the wagon, and it didn’t slow as we headed toward the lake. A feeling I couldn’t exactly define tugged at my chest, something wistful but warm at the same time. Sterling kept hold of my hand during the short ride, our laced fingers resting on his thigh. We reached the lake, and I tried to focus on Matthew Jessup as he took our tickets. He was wearing a deerstalker cap, and one might think that’d make him easier to place as the guy from the photo. But nothing about him that screamed Cap Guy. I opened my mouth to…what? Ask him if he’d worked for Blitzen’s in the 80’s?

Also—and I knew this wasn’t very Trixie Belden of me—I suddenly didn’t care who Cap Guy was. I mean, I cared, for Sterling’s sake, but…that was the thing. I cared about Sterling. A lot. More than I had any right to. Part of me wanted to say that to him. Maybe not right here in front of all these tourists—though that might be a sacrifice the Hallmark gods demanded. But before he left Christmas Falls forever.

How would that help him, though, to know he’d be breaking my heart just by going back to his regular life? If I admitted the depth of my feelings for him, would I go from being a fun holiday fling to yeesh-remember-that-guy-who-was-kinda-cute-at-first-but-then-became-a-total-stalker?

Thousands of tourists came and went every year, but this place was home to me. Sometimes it felt like I lived inside a snowglobe, sheltered and…not confined, exactly, but accustomed to the limitations of my life. Sterling had come to my little corner of the world, and I was doing my best to show him what was so magical about it. And it seemed to be working. But I didn’t want to be just one of the novelties he encountered in Christmas Falls—quaint and vaguely charming, but easy enough to put back on the shelf when it was time to leave. He’d go back home, and I’d still be here, but I’d be different. I would see Christmas Falls differently, without Sterling in it.

“Harvey?”

“Huh?”

Sterling was studying me, and I could have studied him too. Forever. Except we were standing in front of Matthew Jessup, who was waiting for our tickets. Which were in my pocket. I fumbled them out and handed them to Matthew, and he gave us a cheerful “Thank you.” We sat on one of the benches.

“You okay?” Sterling asked.

“Yeah,” I said too quickly. “I’m fine.”

Sterling gave the briefest of nods as though he didn’t believe me, but said, “So what’s the plan?”

“The plan?”

“Yeah. Are we just going to ask him straight out if he’s the guy in the photo?

“That seems too easy.”

“But it’s literally the one question we came here to answer.”

“Sterling.” I stared somewhere in the vicinity of his coat pocket, rather than into his eyes as I’d planned. I felt him shift, and I made myself look up at him and say this to his face. “Whether or not Matthew is our guy, I really want to take this boat ride with you. Not just because it’s a can’t-miss tourist attraction. But because I want to do this with you .”

His forehead furrowed slightly, but his gaze softened. “Yeah,” he said.

Which…I wouldn’t have minded something a bit more than that. Sterling didn’t really do enthusiasm—except in bed—but I now had the glaring feeling I’d come on too strong. Or not strong enough, I wasn’t sure. I mean, he was the one who’d held my hand. Multiple times. And he hadn’t said no to coming to dinner at Grandma’s. So maybe we were on the same page, but I wanted to keep turning pages. Heck, I wanted to flip ahead to the end and make sure the characters got together and lived happily ever after and all that. Okay, I didn’t actually want to skip ahead, because I wanted to experience every single moment of Sterling’s and my imaginary journey to happiness. Together . But I needed to know it turned out alright.

It was frustrating, how slim our odds were. Painful, to know nothing was guaranteed. There was just now. There was just this stupid boat ride. And I didn’t know how to explain that to him, or whether I even should.

So I pulled off my glove and took his hand. It didn’t help things much, because he was still wearing his gloves. But it was still one layer closer to Sterling.

He tugged his hand out of my grip, leaving me surprised and mortified for a second. But it was only to yank off his own glove and then take my hand again. Our hands were a bit clammy, but the feeling of his skin against mine hit me everywhere, rippling down my spine, between my legs, even making my toes curl in my shoes.

Matty Jessup had stepped aboard the boat to give an introductory speech, and I, emboldened by how well the hand-holding was going, leaned against Sterling. Not as hard as I would have liked. Not with my head on his shoulder, or my arm around his waist. But enough so that he’d feel it. He squeezed my hand as we listened to the safety instructions.

It probably would have been more romantic to take this ride in the evening, when the sky was dark and streaked with winter clouds, and the lights of Christmas Falls shone all along the lakefront. But then we would have had to deal with all the tourists, every single one of them with their phones raised, capturing crappy, blurred night shots of the lights. This way, our boat was only half full, and the Christmas lights strung along the rails still twinkled against the soft gray of the sky. Sterling had, at some point, subtly leaned against me as well, and even with the chill coming off the lake, I wasn’t the least bit cold.

I tuned out Matty Jessup’s voice, and focused on the hum of the boat and the warmth of Sterling by my side. I sneaked a couple of glances at him to check if he was enjoying himself, but mostly I just relaxed and trusted that he was. I watched the lakefront cottages flash by and tried to see the town as Sterling might. Did he have moments like this in New York, where he walked along the city streets, taking in all those New York sights like—I didn’t know, exactly, but skyscrapers and statues and rats eating pizza—-filled with a sense of pride and belonging? It didn’t sound like it, from what he’d told me of his life back home. But surely he must, or else why did he stay there?

And if he didn’t, would he consider not staying there?

Only in Harvey Novak’s Fantasy World.

But I lived in a picture-perfect postcard of a town, where rich boys with flawless cheekbones dropped from the sky, so I was allowed to imagine the sort of neat and tidy love story that ought to fit a place like this.

Sterling leaned in and whispered, “Your Christmas facts are a lot better than his.”

I laughed softly. “Well, to be fair, Matty has to keep his facts tourist-friendly. Not sure what the TripAdvisor reviews would be like if he got into the Yule Lads of Iceland, or the Pooping Log of Catalonia.”

“The…what?”

“Later,” I whispered, digging my elbow lightly into his side and then using that as an excuse to snuggle closer.

His lips were right at my ear, his voice suddenly lower and more gravelly than I’d ever heard it. “Later, we might be too busy with other things to discuss the Pooping Log.”

Hearing the words “Pooping Log” from Sterling Van Ruyven’s mouth was so unexpected and bizarre that I couldn’t even respond right away. My body, however, responded immediately to the idea of sharing a bed with him again—my skin prickling, my blood suddenly hot enough it felt sharp in my veins. “Too busy having dinner with my Grandma, you mean?”

I enjoyed the alarm in his voice when he said, “That’s not tonight ?”

“No, I figure Grandma and I need time to prepare. We’re going to pull out all the stops, you know. But maybe tomorrow?” Because it felt good to plan another tomorrow with him.

“Will that give you enough time to pull out all the stops?”

“I’d say at least three-quarters of the stops.”

“I was promised all.”

“Three-quarters would still be more than you could handle, trust me.”

“You don’t know what I could handle.” For a second, he sounded so relaxed, so playful, so completely himself that my heart nearly burst. And then I had to shift uncomfortably, because no, I didn ’ t know what he could handle, but I sure as hell wanted to find out tonight at The Pear Tree Inn. His thoughts seemed to be going the same direction, because he gave an embarrassed snort and squeezed my hand again. I squeezed back.

I was leaning so hard against him that I felt his phone vibrate through the pocket of his coat. He immediately stiffened but made no move to retrieve it.

It kept buzzing.

“Do you need to get that?” I asked.

He hesitated, which meant he absolutely thought he did. But then he shook his head. “No. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

Ten minutes later, when we were getting off the boat, his phone had gone through two more rounds of buzzing. And even though he hadn’t checked it yet, Sterling’s jaw was set.

“Excuse me, Matthew,” I said, dragging Sterling over to him. “Great tour. I’m Harvey, from the museum. I’m doing a research project, and I was hoping if you could tell me if this is you.”

Matthew looked at me expectantly, his gaze switching to Sterling when Sterling pulled the photograph out of his pocket. Matthew took it, squinting at it. “Nah, that’s not me, sorry.”

“Do either of them look familiar?” I asked.

He hummed. “That’s a Blitzen’s cap. Bob Hanks might know.”

I tried not to let my disappointment show. “We already checked with him. Thanks.”

“This guy,” Matthew said. “The blond. He looks a bit familiar. What was he called? Gabe. Gabe Brown?”

“Gabe Baum,” I said, my disappointment growing. I forced a smile. “No, it’s not him. Thank you, though.”

Sterling’s phone buzzed again as we walked toward the parking lot, and, with a sigh, he let go of my hand to reach into his pocket.

My heart sank as he looked at the screen and his expression darkened.

Sterling stuck the phone back in his pocket and looked up, jaw tight. “I may have to take a rain check on dinner with you and your grandmother,” he said brusquely.

And just like that, I knew I wasn’t going to get my picture-perfect ending.