Page 39 of Fall Surprises
"Yeah."
She hesitated, then leaned in close. "Find me later?"
"Count on it."
I watched her head toward the makeshift stage area, champagne in hand. The way she moved through the crowd of revelers, confident in her element—I was in deeper than I'd planned.
The smart thing would be to let her go tomorrow. To chalk this up to a wild week neither of us had expected. But as she raised her glass to toast the crowd, catching my eye, I knew I wasn't going to be smart about this.
Hell, not even close.
Chapter Nine
Sam
The party had become something I couldn't have imagined this morning. Through the French doors leading to the terrace, I watched couples swaying under strings of lights that turned the October night into something from a dream. Inside, the dining room pulsed with music and laughter, locals in elaborate costumes mixing seamlessly with the original wedding guests. A group of teenagers dressed as various Disney villains had commandeered one corner for an impromptu dance battle while Tony filmed gleefully.
I stood near the dessert table—Gus's autumn trifles and pumpkin cheesecake bites disappearing faster than we could replenish them—and let myself breathe for the first time in hours. We'd done it. We'd actually pulled off the impossible.
"There she is!" Mayor Theodore Snowcroft swept toward me in his Dracula cape, his wife Edna beside him in a Victorian vampire gown that put most wedding dresses to shame. "Sam, my dear, this is magnificent!"
"Thank you, Mayor—"
"Theodore, please." He clasped my hand warmly. "What you've accomplished here tonight—turning disaster into triumph—that takes real talent. Real grit."
"This is the event of the year," Edna added, her eyes bright with amusement. "You've given Wintervale something to talk about for decades."
My throat tightened unexpectedly. "I had a lot of help. The whole town really came together."
"That's what we do here," Theodore said simply. "We take care of our own."
Our own.The words lodged in my chest as they moved on to congratulate Rory. Not even a full week in Wintervale, yet people were treating me like I belonged. Like I was already part of this place.
The evening had reached that golden hour where the formal party began shifting into something more intimate. The caterers from town had started packing up the elaborate food stations, though plenty of desserts remained. The jazz quartet had given way to the DJ's more contemporary playlist, and the dance floor had thinned to just the diehards and the couples too lost in each other to notice the late hour.
Through the crowd, I spotted Stormi and Blaze on the dance floor. She'd ditched her Maleficent horns, her blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders as she laughed at something he said. Blaze—miraculously sober after multiple pots of coffee and Jake's emergency bacon sandwich intervention—was looking at her like he was seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her.
Making my way over during a break between songs, I noticed how his hand rested protectively on her lower back, how she leaned into him without the hesitation that had marked their earlier interactions.
"Having fun?" I asked Stormi.
She turned to me with pure delight lighting up her features—so different from the tears that had dominated the past two days. "Sam, I can't thank you enough. When Raven left, I thought everything was ruined. But this—" She gestured to the party around us. "This is better than any wedding."
Blaze wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she didn't pull away. "Sam's a miracle worker," he declared, his Texasdrawl less pronounced now that he wasn’t slurring his words. "And Stormi here's been keeping me from making a fool of myself all night."
"You're doing that on your own, cowboy," she teased, but there was affection in it.
I gave her a subtle thumbs up behind Blaze's back, and her answering smile could have powered the decorative lights strung across the garden. Sometimes love found its way despite—or maybe because of—disaster.
"Samantha! There you are!" Diana Sharp materialized beside me in a sleek black pantsuit. No costume for her—I realized she'd been the only one to skip the dress-up element entirely, too focused on business to play along with Halloween festivities. "We need to talk."
She steered me toward a quieter corner near the windows overlooking the garden, where jack-o'-lanterns flickered among the shadows. Through the glass, I could see Cass adjusting one of the heat lamps on the terrace while Rory directed the placement of additional blankets on the outdoor furniture.
"What you pulled off tonight was nothing short of genius," Diana began without preamble. "The transformation, the crowd management, the narrative pivot from disaster to triumph—I've worked with planners who've been in the business thirty years who couldn't have managed this."
"Thank you, I—"
"I want you on my team." She pulled out her phone, fingers flying across the screen. "I'm having the network put together an official offer. Full-time position as my senior event coordinator. You'd handle every single one of my TV events—premieres, wrap parties, publicity stunts, award show after-parties. The works."
