Page 33 of Lighting Up Christmas

What would that take?

Riley snuck a peek as Zhang paced beside her, fitted black pants, camel-colored turtleneck cashmere sweater, and a long, camel-colored wool coat that swirled, punctuating each fluid step. With his chiseled features, stony expression, and thick hair springing back from his face and falling to his shoulders, he could have been a sullen, bad boy model.

He should have looked out of place in the small town, especially as locals didn’t dress so stylishly as many had physical jobs—agricultural, first responders, construction, and other trades. Zhang looked expensive. Not one of the guys. Weird. She’d thought men in tech didn’t generally scream fashion. Didn’t they all wear hoodies and jeans even though they were multimillionaires?

Was he a millionaire?

It made him seem even more outside her realm of experience.

She couldn’t imagine Zhang sitting on a yoga ball in a hoodie.

The image was ludicrous.

His whole demeanor screeched elegance and refinement and a don’t touch vibe that made her perversely want to touch.

So Riley tried to keep her elbows and hands to herself as she sipped her treat and they walked side by side. It was such a beautiful night. Cold but crystal clear. No wind. She tilted her head back and drank in her fill of stars.

“It would be spectacular on your property tonight,” she mused, letting the night wash over her.

She didn’t miss the quick look he shot her.

Oh. Heat flushed through her. That had sounded like an invitation. Ugh. She bet a lot of women invited themselves places with Zhang, especially if he were a millionaire.

“I was thinking about the stars,” she said quickly, wanting to save a shred of pride. “It’s so remote up there I bet the stars can really show off. Not that Bear Creek has a lot of light pollution, but we are close to Medford. I remember one time I got to go to an overnight summer camp, and one of the counselors told a Native American creation story about god being mad at people, so he slammed a bowl over the world and the raven poked holes in it to provide some light.”

Oh. Fantastic. Now she was really rambling.

“Ummmm, tell me your thoughts on your winery website.” She smiled widely trying desperately to reel her ricocheting thoughts back in.

What was it about this man that made her want him to see her not as an electrician but as a friend, a woman?

Waste of her time.

But Riley—who’d had three loud, opinionated, more-than-a-little-wild brothers and two male cousins attempting to boss her, along with a quieter, pragmatic father who’d hidden his grief in work—had blazed her own path. And she hadn’t often played it safe or expected.

They crossed the empty street and walked into the dark park. The town planned to use old-fashioned gaslights to line the newly constructed walking and biking trail that skirted the river for a couple of miles to the old mill, but the money hadn’t been raised yet.

“The park along the trail toward the covered structure is where I wanted to create my Christmas Light Garden,” she said. The disappointment still hung heavy on her shoulders. She turned toward the dark stretch of trail, almost picturing it.

He regarded her. “Why not do it?”

“I presented my plan to the city council, but the mayor shut me down.” Riley sighed. Zhang didn’t care about this. “That’s the thing about smaller towns. It’s hard to reinvent yourself. People get stuck in the past, who you were instead of who you are. They only see the way it was instead of what it could be.”

“You are trying to reinvent yourself?”

“I am.” She wondered a little at the seriousness of his tone. “My business, especially. My dad and uncle are great electricians, but they want to stay in their comfort zone. I want to expand. Do more commercial work, get into landscape lighting design. I teach a class in the electrician certification program at the community college every semester and I also take classes when I can. That’s how I learned more about landscape light design, but mostly I learn by doing.”

“Like website designs?”

She smiled. “I love learning, teaching myself how to do things.” She needed to pull herself back from her disappointment about the garden. “Let’s walk,” she said. “It’s so pretty during the day, and at night it feels so isolated and mysterious. When I walk along this path at night, I can hear several owls calling out to each other.”

“You walk along the creek at night?”

“When I can. Or early morning. Definitely on the weekends. I love to watch the wildlife. It brings me peace and inspires me for the lighting design scenes I make. I take pictures and videos of animals to try to capture their movements and activities in their habitats.”

“So this light garden is something you’ve thought about for a long time?”

“Yes, but more abstractly. It took me a long time working with different materials and coordinating the light program to make anything that was worth looking at,” she admitted. Her dad had said she was wasting her time and that it would never work. “But this year is the first year of the Christmas market, and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to pitch it only… I’m not giving up though.”

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