Page 48 of Grumpy Glitter Christmas
She just sent the two words and put her phone away.
Tomorrow was the gala.
Tomorrow, she would prove herself.
And maybe—maybe—she could figure out what to do about the man who’d broken her heart and then spent a week quietly trying to fix it.
But that was a problem for later.
Right now, she had a miracle to prepare.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Grant Whitaker arrived at the First Bank of Frost Pine Ridge at six-fifteen on Saturday morning. As he pulled into the parking lot, he noticed lights glowing from the ballroom windows—the exterior ones that faced the back alley.
Someone was already there.
He let himself in through the main entrance, his footsteps echoing in the empty lobby. The programs were still stacked on the welcome table—he’d alphabetized them last night before leaving, one of the small ways he’d been trying to help all week. Everything was ready. Perfect. Waiting for the gala that would start in twelve hours.
He walked through the back corridor and pushed open the interior door to the ballroom.
Felicity stood in the middle of the space with her clipboard and a thermos of coffee. She looked up as he entered, and even from across the room he could see the exhaustion—dark circles under her eyes, hair escaping from her bun, the same green sweater she’d worn yesterday.
She hadn’t gone home.
“You’re here early,” she said, professionally neutral.
“So are you. Felicity, did you sleep at all?”
“I slept.” She turned back to her clipboard. “I have seventeen items to verify before the caterer arrives, and I need to do a final walkthrough?—”
“Felicity, please look at me.”
She did, and the exhaustion in her eyes was almost physical. But underneath was something fiercer—determination. The look of someone who would not let herself fail.
“I’m fine. The gala starts in eleven and a half hours. By midnight tonight, this will all be over.” She took a breath. “But right now, I need to work. So if you’re here to talk about anything that isn’t directly related to this event, I need you to save it for later.”
Grant wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her she was running herself into the ground. But the brittle brightness in her eyes told him that pushing now would make everything shatter.
“What can I do to help?”
Surprise flickered across her face. “The programs need to be alphabetized and placed on the welcome table. They’re in the boxes on that table.” She pointed to the table in the corner.
“Consider it done.”
Two hours later, Grant heard raised voices from the ballroom. He found Meena, Leo, and Felicity standing beneath the massive tree.
The tree was dark. Completely, utterly dark.
“What happened?” Grant asked, cold dread settling in his stomach.
“Power’s out to the whole tree,” Leo said.
Meena looked up from her phone, panic barely contained. “The gala starts in nine hours. We cannot have a dark tree.”
“It could be a single bad bulb,” Grant said, his engineer’s brain automatically troubleshooting. “On older strand connections, if one bulb fails, it can break the circuit for the entire string.”
“I know. But Grant, we used forty-seven individual strands on this tree. Finding one bad bulb...” She gestured helplessly at the massive tree. “It could take hours. And we have the ornaments and tinsel already on. If we start pulling strands to test them individually, we’ll destroy the whole design.”
