Page 6 of A Holly Brown Christmas
“I rarely wear anything that cartoonish and I felt weird,” he admitted with a boyish grin. Leaning back again, he nodded. “Okay, so you have a good memory. But I’m not sure how that’s going to help me with everything.”
Seriously? How could he not get it?
With a small huff and a stiff smile, she said, “I can make all the calls and talk to everyone about coming on and doing all the same stuff they’ve done for the last few years. And I can be there to make sure everything looks exactly like it’s supposed to. I’ll know if something doesn’t look right.”
“Oh. Oh, right. Okay. I get it.”
Relief washed over her. “This is all totally doable, Lucas. I can go back to my office and start making calls right now.”
His eyes lit up. “Really? You can do that? I don’t want to keep you from anything important.”
“I’m the head of my department and I have an amazing team. There’s nothing pressing that I need to be working on right now, so it’s not a problem to make some calls.”
“Holly, I…I don’t even know what to say. Thank you doesn’t seem like enough, but…thank you.”
Smiling, she stood. “You’re welcome. Now let me go pull files and make some calls and I’ll let you know how it goes!”
Lucas stood and walked her to the door, which she thought was adorable. “Thanks. If there’s anything you need from me, just ask.”
Reaching over and hugging him seemed wildly inappropriate, but that’s what she wanted to do. It was almost painful to simply smile and assure him she was going to do everything to help him save Christmas.
And yet she still gushed, “Together, you and I are going to save Christmas!”
He looked at her like she was insane.
Giggling, she shook her head. “I didn’t mean like you and I were totally saving Christmas as in the entire holiday, I just meant…”
“The party,” he said with amusement. “I got it.”
“I won’t let you down, Lucas! We’ve got this!”
Turns out, they didn’t have it.
Apparently, his mother booked all the contractors months in advance, and now they didn’t have availability. Lucas took that as a sign that this wasn’t meant to be.
But Holly had a plan.
He had a feeling she always had a plan.
“Okay, I have a cousin who is a caterer,” she told him when they both should have gone home for the day. “I called her and told her the menu and she said she could totally do it. I have another cousin who owns a bakery and she can handle all the desserts. No problem.”
He wanted to just wave the white flag, but she didn’t stop talking long enough for him to even try.
“I have calls in with three different florists. I emailed them photos of the arrangements we usually have—I had a bunch of them on my phone—and I’m expecting callbacks tomorrow.”
When she paused, he caught a hint of something. Disappointment? Uncertainty? Those weren’t things he normally saw in her. She was wringing her hands, biting her lip, and he figured she was gearing up to give him bad news.
“Just tell me the rest, Holly. I can take it.”
“I can get someone to hang all the outside lights; that’s not an issue. But the interior stuff? Um…I’m having a hard time. Do you know how many of those decorations belonged to your family and how much was brought in for staging?”
Lucas figured he must look like a deer in the headlights because he had no idea.
“We’ve always had decorations, but I never thought about where they came from.”
Now she was the one with the confused look. “Didn’t you ever decorate the tree as a family?”
“Um…”
