Page 17 of No Business Like Snow Business

“Coffee is okay, I guess,” he said. “But I really love hot chocolate.”

I grinned and reached for the coffee. “Thanks for this. Don’t you have to work today?”

“Martha is coming in today,” he said. “She’s my best employee—well, she’s my only employee. But I swear it could be halfway through a nuclear apocalypse and she’d still show up for work.”

“She sounds very reliable.”

He laughed. “Oh, no. She’s not reliable at all, but she always shows up and she’s good company, so.” He shrugged, as though that settled it. “Okay, so let’s go visit Bob Hanks and see what he can tell us about Cap Guy.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said, gazing out the window as we headed away from downtown. Every house we passed had Christmas scenes in their front yards. Even in the day, the lights twinkled. “He might not remember.”

“But he might,” Harvey said, “and there’s only one way to find out. You’re a glass-half-empty kind of guy, aren’t you, Sterling?”

“Am I?”

“Hmm.” He threw me a smile. “I think you’re trying to be, to keep yourself from getting disappointed, but here you are all the same. There’s an optimist inside you somewhere. Otherwise, why come all this way chasing a couple of boys in a blurry photograph taken over three decades ago?”

A warm feeling spread through me at Harvey’s approval, although it was followed by a sharp stab of guilt, because while Harvey seemed certain my motives were unselfish, I wasn’t. I was a Van Ruyven, to begin with, and unselfish wasn’t written anywhere in our DNA. It wasn’t Freddy’s happiness I was chasing down in Christmas Falls—at least, not entirely. It was business too. I was the man who was going to one day take over the Van Ruyven empire. At the moment, everything in my grandfather’s will had gone directly to my father. One day, it would come directly to me. Sarah would get money, of course, more than she could probably ever spend, but the business side of things? All the family’s companies and trusts and properties and securities and investments would come under my direct control, just as long as no other Van Ruyven son turned up in the meantime with a claim of ownership.

So while a part of me very much wanted Freddy to have his happy ending, another part of me—the one my grandfather and my father would be most proud of—wanted to make sure that wherever Freddy had got to, he was going to stay gone. And in all honesty I couldn’t say which part of me had been making the decisions when I’d booked my ticket to Christmas Falls.

Bob Hanks lived on the outskirts of Christmas Falls, in a long ranch-style home with dark shingles on the roof. Like every other front yard I’d seen so far, this one was a veritable North Pole, complete with a life-sized sleigh and reindeer. On the other side of the driveway, there was a tableau of elves in front of a workshop backdrop, putting toys together.

The cold air bit at us when we got out of the car, and we walked briskly toward the front door. Harvey raised his hand to press the doorbell, but the door opened before he could do it.

The old man who opened the door wouldn’t have looked out of place in the workshop in the front yard. He was short and thin, and as wizened as a walnut. He wore green pants and a brightred knitted sweater, and his eyes sparkled from behind his thick glasses.

“Well, goodness me! Harvey Novak!” he exclaimed. “Come in, come in.” He stepped back to give us room to step inside, and then took his glasses off and squinted at me. “And you are?”

“This is Sterling,” Harvey said, and I stuck out my hand for the elderly man to shake. “I’m helping him with a family history project.”

That was one way of putting it, I guessed.

“Oooh! Is this like one of those adoption shows on the television?” Bob asked keenly. “Did one of my cousins leave a girl in the family way? My Uncle Stu’s boys were wild when they were younger, let me tell you, and you can’t hide anything these days with those FDA tests, can you?”

“DNA,” Harvey corrected with a smile.

“Is it?” Bob hummed, and reached up to pat me on the shoulder. “Well, if you’re looking for long-lost family, son, I’ve been married to my Linda for sixty-one years and never even looked twice at another gal.”

“Sterlingislooking for long-lost family,” Harvey said. “But his family, Bob, not yours.”

“Oh.” Bob’s brows lifted. He looked right at me. “Didyouleave a girl in the family way?”

It took me a few seconds to respond—not because the question was wildly inappropriate, which of course it was—but because I couldn’t even wrap my head around the thought. Aimee Gockstetter flashed through my mind. No danger there. “I…did not,” I said.

Bob burst out laughing. “I’m only kidding. Have a seat.”

He motioned to the living room, which seemed surprisingly devoid of Christmas, given the man’s outfit and former profession. There was a small tree in one corner with tasteful gold lights and minimal tinsel. A garlanded fireplace with threematching stockings and a couple of family photos on the mantel. Maybe after all those years at Blitzen’s, he’d lost his enthusiasm for Christmas, and only wore the green pants and the sweater to keep from being run out of town on a rail.

I took a seat on the cracked leather couch, and Harvey sat beside me, rather than in one of the armchairs.

I liked that.

Bob took the chair across from us. He leaned back, his arms on the chair’s arms, and said to Sterling, “So your family is from Christmas Falls? What’s your last name?”

I opened my mouth to answer and found myself oddly embarrassed. The idea of giving a name Bob Hanks wouldn’t know—or, best case scenario, would know through Freddy’s guy, and worst case through headlines about my family’s wheeling and dealing—seemed impossibly sad. I suddenly wished I had a name Bob knew because he used to bring my parents a home-baked, too-dry fruitcake every Christmas, which they never ate but always accepted with sincere gratitude. Or because my grandfather used to help him put up his lights each year, or my grandmother and Bob’s wife had run the town charity drive together, or whatever.

I wanted, for a second, tobelong.

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