Page 3 of Ice Palace Prince
Chapter 2 - Lowell
~September~
Iwalked through the warehouse, occasionally pausing to chat with employees. But I didn’t let them distract me for long, I had work to do.
Finally I reached the corner where we stored the materials and equipment that we didn’t need often. I weaved my way through until I reached a series of covered stacks, and pulled back the tarp on the first one.
Underneath were the materials for the Winter Village and Ice Castle. Technically they belonged to the City of Valle Granja, but we had agreed to store them as part of our donation to the event.
The annual festivities were still new, only coming up on the sixth year, but were immensely popular. We’d built the sets the first year from donated and scrap material, but once it was clear that it was going to become a tradition we’d changed plans and constructed everything for reuse year after year.
The design of the village had been my first major project as an architect with the family construction firm: create buildings that could be taken apart and stored, then easily reassembled the following year.
My solution had been a consistent design of colorful a-frame cottages. They went up quickly and down again with ease. Just as important was that they were all cute.
The design was a hit, and rather than the nearly two months of donated and volunteer time it had taken to erect the first Winter Village at Civic Plaza, we could now transform the space in under three weeks, and with far better results.
I started on my visual inspection, looking for any signs of rodents or damage, and was glad when it appeared that everything was in good order. Then I turned to make a note of what would need to be moved in order to access the set and transport it.
Satisfied that we wouldn’t need to make any sort of major repairs, I headed out to my work truck.
Today was the planning day for the Winter Village, which meant two things: that I needed to be prepared for any additions this year, and that I was going to have to keep my cock under control as I spent several hours in the presence of the stunning Sean Billings.
If I thought I’d had a crush on him in high school when we were on the debate team together, it was nothing when compared to how bad it was now. Granted, I didn’t know a single alpha in high school who hadn’t been interested in Sean. Even the ones who preferred women would openly admit that they’d go for him if given the chance, and it was no surprise. He was gorgeous and smart. Tall, slender, blond, blue eyes that a man could drown in, kind to everybody, and at the top of the class.
Adulthood had only made him more radiant, and, because of that, he’d been labeled the prince of the ice palace since the event’s inception.
Unfortunately, I didn’t stand a chance—even if he was rumored to still be single—mostly because of my gender. It was well known that he preferred female alphas, and had been the boyfriend of our high school’s cheerleading team captain—a fact she flaunted whenever it was just the alphas around.
I pulled into the underground parking lot closest to Civic Plaza, grabbed my tablet, and headed towards where I’d seen a group of people near the civic center.
“Hey Lowell,” called one of the supervisors of the events department, Elaine. “Good to see you.”
I smiled and increased my pace until I reached the group.
Besides Elaine and Sean, I recognized people from several other city departments. There was a coordinator for the traffic division, as well as a representative from the police, public works, and even somebody from the mayor’s office.
“Am I the last to arrive?” I asked, glancing at my watch.
Elaine laughed and waved it off. “You are, but you’re still a couple minutes early.”
I smiled. “Glad to know I wasn’t keeping ya’ll waiting.”
She turned to the reps from the traffic division and the police. “You guys said you had some changes for this year’s layout?”
The men nodded, and I listened in as they described how they thought there were ways to both improve flow around the event, and make it safer for everybody. We reviewed the layout from previous years and they pointed out where there had been bottlenecks.
I was about to suggest some changes, when Sean spoke up.
“There is one more thing to consider, besides the flow changes,” he stated with the same confidence he’d always displayed in debate practices. “Due to the number of requests received over the past two years, we’ve also contracted to bring in an artificial ice rink. We think it makes sense to have it be in the central plaza area, but we’re open to moving it to deal with those flow issues.”
The announcement sent us into another round of discussion. Finally we pulled out a clean version of the site map and started penciling in the design of the Winter Village. We shuffled things around, keeping both power and parking lot access in mind until everybody was satisfied.
The results were simple and classic. The Ice Palace stage would stand at one end of the plaza, facing the civic center at the far end. The village buildings would form a wide oval between them, circling the ice rink.
Plans decided, almost everybody headed back to their respective offices, leaving me to start walking the site.
I’d thought I was alone, until I saw Sean lingering where we’d been.
