Page 56 of No Business Like Snow Business

Thisplace!

It was still a few weeks until Christmas, but you’d never know it because Santa’s Village went so hard. I wondered what theplace looked like the rest of the year. I knew the town also held events for Christmas in July, but did they do it to this extent? I was looking forward to finding out.

I made it around the carolers and hurried up the steps of Festival Hall. I held the door open for an elderly couple who were leaving, weighed down by gift bags from the Arts and Crafts Fair, and then stepped inside the warmth of the building.

I laughed when I got to the door of the museum and saw the sign:Back in 5 minutes.But almost immediately there was a touch to my shoulder, and I turned to see Harvey beaming at me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He leaned forward a fraction, and by the time I realized he’d been going for a kiss and leaned in to meet him, he was already pulling back again. I laughed at our awkwardness and Harvey, his nose wrinkling, did the same. Then he pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the museum door.

“It really was just five minutes this time,” he said. “I had to go next door and buy some of Patty Frobisher’s fudge. It’s to die for. It sells out the second the locals realize it’s there, so I had to get in fast. You snooze, you lose.”

We stepped into the museum, and I took off my coat and scarf. “And where’s Martha?”

“Still buying fudge,” Harvey said.

“You couldn’t take it in turns?”

“It’s like a Black Friday sale when word gets out about Patty’s fudge, Sterling, and I’m not even kidding. You don’t wait when you get word there’s fudge. Yourun.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that nobody comes to the museum because it’s never reliably open?”

Harvey wasn’t offended. He sat on his desk and pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. “Um, no, because three quarters ofour visitors are tourists, and they don’t know that the sign is an exaggeration.”

“A lie.”

“An exaggeration.” He held the paper back out to me. “Fudge?”

I sat beside him on his desk and took a piece of fudge. It was mint chocolate, and melted in my mouth. “Oh, wow! This is great!”

“Worth running to get it, right?”

“Yes, actually.”

Harvey smiled and popped a piece in his own mouth. He knocked his shoulder against mine. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too.”

“Did you call your dad?”

I hummed.

“And how did that go?”

“About as well as expected,” I said.

Harvey’s expression pinched with worry. “Are you okay?”

“I am.”

“Really? Because you just chose me, and Christmas Falls, and unemployment, over everything else in your life.”

I thought of my phone call with Sarah and shook my head. “Not everything. Besides, I have savings, and my grandfather left me a small inheritance.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I have a feeling our definition of ‘small inheritance’ is very different.”

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