Page 50 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
“I mean it. I never would have done any of this without you, Jack.”
He laughed lightly. “I think you might have, Jenna. You’re a strong woman.”
“No, I really wouldn’t have.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Not to get all soppy or sentimental, but I’m really…” She paused again, her throat working, as the lighthearted mood turned serious—and intense. “Really grateful that you pushed me. Challenged me and helped me. Today definitely wouldn’t have happened without you, and I’m so thankful for that. For you.” She blushed and ducked her head, and as her cheeks went even pinker he thought he’d never seen her look so lovely.
“Well…” He found he didn’t know what to say. Actually, he did know what to say, but he didn’t know how to say it. He barely knew how tofeelit. She was talking about the mercantile, but he felt so much more. He’d changed the store, but she’d changedhim, Santa suit and all. He wanted to tell her that, to explain everything or maybe just get the words out, but they were lodged in his chest and all jumbled up in his throat, and in any case, now was not the time to say them, when he was half-dressed in a Santa costume and they had the whole town out there. Besides, today had beenhermoment, not theirs.
But he hoped their moment might come sometime soon.
“Jack?” Jenna prompted, a little uncertainly. “Why are you staring at me so ferociously?”
Was he? He let out a little laugh. “Sorry… I’m just so proud of you.” And then he pulled her toward him and kissed her, both because he could and because sometimes actions were better than words.
* * *
So what hadthatbeen about, Jenna wondered as she left Jack in the church to finish changing. He had seemed as if he’d been about to say something, but then he hadn’t. Judging from the way he’d been scowling at her, she wasn’t sure it had been a good thing. Or was she just still paranoid, because that was all she knew and even though today had been so very wonderful, some part of her was still bracing for the worst?
She wouldn’t let herself overthink it, Jenna decided as she went back out to the village green to join the festivities. The mood of the evening was jovial, and a little ramshackle, with kids running up and down the street and Liz Cranbury’s little chihuahua barking like crazy, almost as if in accompaniment to the unsteady rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” that Starr’s Fall’s three-piece brass band was playing in one corner of the green.
Jack came out to join her, and she slipped her arm through his. “This is really quite something,” he remarked, and Jenna laughed.
“This beats anything you’d see in New York, doesn’t it?” she teased, and he nodded seriously.
“Absolutely.”
“Even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?” she challenged.
“Definitely. Who needs giant balloons, marching bands, and clown crews,” he exclaimed, sweeping his arm toward the straggling scene, “when you have all this?”
“Fred Byars on the trombone is kind of sensational,” Jenna remarked just as that instrument let out a sound like a sheep bleating or maybe giving birth.
“It’s all fantastic,” Jack proclaimed.
She shook her head slowly. “And to think you almost chose Litchfield over this.”
“To think you dared me to,” he reminded her, and she smiled at the thought of how awful they’d been to each other. It felt like a long time ago now; it had become part of their story, their meeting.
They walked along the village green, saying hello to various people they knew. Rhonda was dishing out hot chocolate from a massive tureen, her scrawny arms flashing fast as she barked at someone to go easy on the squirty whipped cream she’d provided. Main Street looked magical, strung with lights, store windows glimmering from within. Jack squeezed her hand, and Jenna squeezed back, and then her heart felt as if it were expanding to fill her chest.
This was happiness. This washope. No paranoia, no dread of the future, no regret for the past. Just this… and everything that this moment encompassed.
She loved her life in Starr’s Fall, she realized with a wonderful ferocity. No matter how suffocating it could sometimes seem, with everyone and their cousin up in her business, she loved this town—and her place in it. She might have come limping back here because she’d had no other place to go, but she was so very glad she had—and that she’d stayed. There was no other place she’d rather be.
She squeezed Jack’s hand as they stood on the edge of the village green and, tilting her head up to the starlit sky, Jenna watched the first snowflakes begin to fall.
* * *
It was still snowing when she and Jack walked back to the mercantile, big, fat flakes drifting down in the dark like something out of a movie. Jack was holding her hand, swinging it slightly as they walked along through half an inch’s dusting of snow.
Jenna felt tired in a happy, satisfied sort of way, replete from the food she’d eaten, the work she’d done, the friends whose company she’d enjoyed. And Jack… Jack most of all, by her side pretty much the whole evening—smiling, laughing, holding her hand, touching her back, giving her teasing looks, being the best Santa that ever was… because she’d asked him. She’d reveled in it all, in the simple joy of being important to another person.
“Good day?” Jack asked her as Miller’s Mercantile came into sight ahead.
“Yes, a very good day.” Jenna squeezed his hand. “But, full disclosure, I don’t think I should have eaten that funnel cake.” She pressed one hand to her middle. “It was so delicious, though.”
“It was, as was the hot chocolate,” Jack replied with a chuckle. “Though I think Rhonda might have been lacing the hot chocolate for the grownups. There was a decided rum aftertaste.”
Jenna laughed. “That sounds like Rhonda.”
