Page 62 of Clued in to Love
Marissa didn’t wait for further instructions. She weaved through a maze of scaffolding where volunteers were gluing red rose petals and pinecones to floats. The construction area reminded her of woodshop class in high school. There were heavy chainsaws at work cutting log slices and drills securing two-by-fours together.
The light station was the size of Marissa’s bedroom. Pallets of lights had been stacked ten feet tall. Temporary shelving had been constructed to house more lights. They were labeled by color, size, and design.
“I had no idea so many specialty holiday lights were in circulation,” William said, reading labels for tiny reindeer lights and red and yellow grape clusters.
“One of the vineyards must be using those,” Marissa replied.
“Right, but what’s our clue?” William stood in the center of the makeshift storage area as if expecting a clue to drift down from the rafters.
“No idea.” Marissa was stumped again. The lights were clearly well organized and stocked for specific floats. There wereeven labels with float assignments. “This is supposed to be a challenge. An activity. Do you think we’re supposed to deliver boxes of lights to the assigned float or something?”
“Maybe.” William shrugged.
They stood silently for a few minutes while observing the staging area. William wandered over to the rafting float. Marissa went in the opposite direction to check out the ski jump.
Five volunteers concentrated on different sections of the float. One was securing yards of thin cotton sheeting to resemble snow over a hill constructed from plywood. Another glued beaded glass sequins to the top to make it look like the snow was sparkling with ice crystals. A third was positioning a ski dummy in the chair lift.
“Excuse me,” Marissa said to the volunteer working on the snow sheeting. “Are you in need of Christmas lights by chance?”
“Lights? No. Not yet. Why?”
She nodded to the light storage area. “I’m trying to figure out the next clue in the scavenger hunt, and I thought maybe it had something to do with lights.”
“You’re on the right track, but in the wrong spot.” The volunteer used a nail gun to tack the cotton to the plywood frame. “Over that way. You can’t miss it.”
Marissa followed their direction to the other side of the light section. She let out a small “Oh no.” There had to be at least a million strands of gnarly, twisted lights to unravel. Giant balls of wound-up lights awaited them.
They were going to be here for hours.
The volunteer grinned. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Marissa’s heart sank. She went to find William, who was still chatting with the team working on the whitewater float. “I found our next task.”
He broke off his conversation and fell into step with her. “Great work. Lead the way, Grazing Table.”
“I don’t think you’ll say ‘great’ when you see what we have to do.”
He raised a brow with amusement. “I take it that means we don’t need to deliver lights?”
“Nope.” Marissa shook her head and thrust her index finger dramatically at the tangled monstrosities in front of them—six-foot-tall balls of wadded-up Christmas lights. “Uh, I think we’re supposed to tackle these.”
He gave a mock gasp. “Untangling lights? So festive and nothing says holiday spirit like shared suffering.”
She shot him a look, trying not to smile. “Suffering is my middle name.”
He smiled. “Well, I guess we have our work cut out for us.” William tugged off his jacket and rolled one of the balls toward them. “Like the clue said earlier, we’re going to learn a lot about each other through the process of untangling these.” His eyes twinkled with a touch of mischief. “I’m up for it. What about you?”
Marissa couldn’t stop the surge of heat rushing up her cheeks. She wondered if William would notice. Hopefully, he would just think it was hot in here. Yeah, they were going to get to know a lot about each other because untangling this holiday mess was going to take all day.
THIRTY-SIX
HILARY
Hilary gaped at Ben. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying here.” He folded his arms across his chest in a protective stance.
Why hadn’t she checked the hotel first? Ben had been at the same hotel the entire time she’d been frantic to find him. It made sense. It was downtown. It was close to the gym, and they had stayed there on numerous special occasions—their anniversary, date nights, and holidays. It was just like Ben to choose a place with sentimental value.
