Page 26 of Snowflakes and Sparks

I was on the phone with Dean, who’d called me mere seconds after I sent him the selfie of me and Alex on the Ferris wheel. It had been two days since we took that picture and the memory still made me smile.

“Oh, honey, you are so smitten.”

“I am not.”

“Sure. You can’t shut up about his kissable lips, but he’s just a friend, right?” Dean teased.

I let out a sigh and twirled a strand of hair around my finger. “Even if I wanted to, hypothetically, kiss him, I couldn’t. We live thousands of miles apart, Dean. There’s no way this could ever work, so there’s no use kissing the guy. I need to be sensible about this.”

“Whatever you need to hear to keep yourself fooled, Suze. Anyway, I’ve got some news and I’m afraid it’s not entirely good.”

I sat up a little straighter. “What do you mean? It’s about the store manager’s job, isn’t it? Did Linda decide not to retire after all? You know, she’s been going on and on about how she doesn’t know what she’ll do with all of her free time once she’s retired. She’s going to stay at Got It Covered until she’s a hundred years old, isn’t she?”

“Jeez, relax, woman,” Dean laughed. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

“Kate’s been doing job interviews. She told me not to tell you, but who is she kidding? Of course I have to tell you.”

“Job interviews? What are you talking about?”

“It’s nothing you have to worry about, honey. Kate says it’s just a formality. The board of directors was afraid that not making the job public would result in a lawsuit. Equal rights for all and all that.”

I scoffed. “That’s nonsense.”

“They don’t want to take their chances. Apparently, some dude sued a grocery store last month for promoting one of their employees without doing job interviews first. The guy claimed it robbed him of the chance to get his dream job and that it was discrimination to not interview people who worked at the store already. He said it was a case of favoritism.”

“So you’re telling me that because some crazy fool spread around some insane ideas, I have to deal with… competition from outside? What if there’s someone more qualified than me? And why didn’t Kate tell me personally? It must be because she’s got something to hide, right? Oh gosh, this is bad.”

“It’s going to be fine, trust me. But I just thought you had a right to know.”

“Why?”

Dean hesitated before he spoke. “So that you’re prepared in case Kate isn’t telling the truth after all.”

A wave of panic washed over me. “Don’t say that. This job is what I’ve been working for all these years. It’s why I’m here in this cold remote town where they don’t even serve veggie burgers,” I cried out.

“You’re right, that is harsh.”

I rubbed my fingers over my forehead. “I have to make sure that the Old Pine Cove store does extremely well. That way, Kate won’t have an inch of doubt about who to hire for the job. I don’t care if she says these job interviews are nothing more than a formality, it’s still business. The board cares about stuff like turnover and ROI and profits more than they do about me.”

“If anyone can make a success out of a local store, it’s you, honey. You go kick some snowy butts out there. I’ll send you updates.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Oh, and Suze?”

“Yes?”

“Give that Alex guy a big kiss for me.”

I hung up and put my phone on the counter. This was not how things were supposed to go. I should’ve never left L.A. Don’t they say that proximity is key? Yet here I was, far, far away, not able to do anything or talk to Kate in person.

I thought through all the ideas I’d come up with so far to give the store a boost. They weren’t enough. I had to think bigger. Bolder.

The calendars we were making for the Snow Ball would undoubtedly appeal to a lot of people, not just the ones visiting the town. I could sell them on our website. Heck, I’d sell them on every continent if I had to.

I opened my laptop and started doing my research. After several emails and phone calls, I had a pretty good picture of the costs involved in printing and shipping the calendars worldwide. Even if we donated a small amount for every calendar sold, they’d still be quite profitable. The photo shoot was already planned anyway, so having more copies would only lower the initial costs.

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