Page 17 of Grumpy Glitter Christmas
As they headed toward the exterior door, Grant heard Jade and Felicity already making excited plans behind them.
“—need to figure out our cleaning schedule?—”
“—Mabel will want to help, you know she will?—”
Outside in the alley, the winter air was sharp and clean. The sun was already low, casting long shadows. Leo examined the door frame with the same careful attention he’d given everything else.
“Solid,” Leo said. “Just needs a good deadbolt. Standard residential will work fine.”
“I have a locksmith I use,” Grant said.
They stood in silence for a moment. Grant should go back inside. He had that loan committee meeting in—he checked his watch—ten minutes. But something kept him standing there in the cold.
“She’s taking on a lot,” Leo said, not looking at him.
“She is.”
“You don’t think she can do it.”
It wasn’t a question. Grant considered deflecting, but Leo seemed like the kind of man who’d see through polite evasion.
“I think she’s optimistic. Passionate. But this is a massive undertaking for someone whose primary experience is decorating homes and small businesses.”
Leo turned to face him, his expression thoughtful. “Your father gave my father a loan when every other bank turned him down. The numbers were shaky, but he did it.”
Grant said nothing, but his chest tightened. He remembered that loan. His father had fought the board for it.
“My dad was thirty,” Leo continued. “No collateral except his share of the family land. No business experience. Just passion and a dream about making the farm something special.” He paused. “Your father looked at him and said, ‘Steve, I believe you can make this work.’”
Leo’s warm brown eyes met Grant’s.
“And he did. Because someone believed he could.”
The words hit Grant like a physical blow. His father had been good at that—seeing potential in people, believing in them,giving them chances. It was part of what had made him such a beloved figure in this town.
Grant had spent sixteen years trying to preserve his father’s legacy. But had he preserved the wrong parts? Had he kept the rules and the traditions and lost the heart?
“Sometimes people rise to what you expect of them,” Leo said, heading toward his truck—a battered pickup with a Carter Reindeer Farm decal on the side. “Sometimes they surprise you.”
He paused with his hand on the door handle and looked back.
“That one in there? I’ve known her since grade school. She’s going to surprise you.”
He climbed into his truck and drove away, leaving Grant standing alone in the alley with his father’s ghost and his own carefully constructed doubts.
Grant pulled out his phone and called the locksmith.
Then he stood there for another long moment, the cold seeping through his expensive suit jacket, thinking about his father saying I believe you can make this work to a man with no collateral and a lot of heart.
Maybe Leo was right.
Maybe she would surprise him.
The thought was both terrifying and, inexplicably, thrilling.
When Grant returned to the lobby, Felicity and Jade were standing near the entrance, still talking in excited, overlapping sentences. Jade was holding the cookie box, which had somehow remained unopened during the entire ballroom tour.
“Mr. Whitaker!” Jade called out as he approached. “Before we go—cookies? They’re still warm. Gingerbread with vanilla glaze.”
