Page 34 of A Cozy Christmas Escape

He made quick work of spreading the ointment across her skin and bandaging her fingers, having Valerie flex when he was done so he could make sure they were secure. Just as she was about to thank him, when her hand was still in his as he inspected his handiwork, he did something that had her mouth popping open in surprise.

Clark, seemingly satisfied with the way that the Band-Aids were holding up, dipped his head and kissed the back of her hand with a flourish.

Valerie couldn’t help herself. Once the initial shock of what had just happened, she threw her head back and barked out a laugh.

“What was that for?” she asked through the bouts of laughter.

“I guess that’s more appropriate for royalty than celebrities,” Clark said, the apples of his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “But oh well.”

He shrugged one shoulder as if it was no big deal, nodding his head back toward the area they’d been working in.

“Are you all right to work some more? Or do you want to call it a day?”

“I’m good,” Valerie answered quickly, suddenly incredibly reluctant for her time with him to end. “I’ll just be more careful.”

Clark nodded, leading the way back to where they had been working. And as Valerie fired up the handheld sander once more, running the thing over the wood of the banister in slow, easy circles, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander. She focused on her work more than she had before, because the last thing she needed was more injured extremities. But while she did that, she also thought about Clark.

The man was a conundrum. Shy at times, bold at others. He laughed easily and had a wicked sense of humor. Everything that she learned about him had her more and more interested. And she would have to be blind not to notice how attractive he was.

Valerie’s head snapped up, her eyes darting away from the tool in her hands to Clark for just a split second before going back to her work, a sinking sensation hollowing out her stomach as realization washed over her. In her search to belong a little more in Snowy Pine Ridge, she had somehow found something else entirely different. And that something was a crush on Clark Mitchell.

CHAPTERELEVEN

Shelley turned the key on the Zamboni, shutting the giant machine down, the absence of its loud hum making her ears ring for a second. She climbed down from the chair, hopping down onto the ground before walking forward and taking a look out at the rink. The ice was perfect and gleaming, just begging to be skated on. And as was occurring so often these days, Rudolph was nowhere to be found.

A bolt of concern flashed through her once again, so strong that Shelley had trouble stifling it down. She felt like the old man was growing more and more withdrawn by the day, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t figure out the cause of it.

Shelley glanced at the far side of the rink, eyes landing immediately at the large digital clock. There was still thirty minutes until the class began, which meant Rudolph would usually be behind the counter with the skates, spraying them down with another layer of disinfectant and murmuring about germy children while he smiled to himself. But of course, the area was empty.

Wondering where he was, she walked around the ice rink, glancing everywhere she could think of for any sign of him. But there was none. When she had finally ran out of places to look, she realized that if he was there, there was only one place left, and that was in his office.

Shelley turned down the long hallway at the back of the building, the one with doors lining either side. She knew this area by heart, knowing which doors led to cleaning supplies, which led to the bathrooms, and which led to storage. But it was the door at the far end that she was looking for.

She didn’t knock, knowing that if he was inside, the grumpy older man would more than likely not answer her regardless. So instead, she just grabbed the doorknob and gave it a twist. It turned easily, the door swinging open with a low creak as it let her in.

Her eyes scraped over the small, cramped space, immediately noticing that he wasn’t there. Shelley let out a sigh of disappointment. She wasn’t even sure what she had been going to say to Rudolph.

She knew that confronting him about how much he was regressing likely wasn’t the best course of action, but she was tired of waiting for him to snap out of it. Shelley was just about to close the door and try to think of a plan to get Rudolph back out of his shell when something caught her eye.

There was a small, white piece of paper lying face down on the floor by his desk. But it looked like it had been swept off by an errant gust of wind, likely even when she had opened the door just moments before. Scrawling handwriting was on the paper, but from where she was standing, she couldn’t make out what it said.

Shelley threw a glance over her shoulder, making sure that no one was around to see her as she darted forward. She didn’t want Rudolph to come in and think that she had been snooping through his things, so she knew it was best if she put the paper back up on his desk.

But as she closed in on it and then bent down to pick it up, she realized that it wasn’t paper at all. The feel of it was waxy, and the white of it was a bit discolored with age. And as the texture and the print on it began to register, she realized that what she was looking at was the back of a picture.

You can skate circles around any guy in town. I love you. —Paula.

That was what had been written on the back of it, and Shelley’s brows knitted together in confusion as she read them. Curiosity flared within her, and even though she knew that Rudolph probably wouldn’t like it, she flipped the picture over.

It was an old one, that much was for sure, with the colors muted and the edges crinkled from age. There was a young man and woman in the picture, with their arms slung around each other’s shoulders as they grinned widely at the camera. The man was definitely a young Rudolph, but Shelley had no idea who the woman might be. There was no one in town named Paula, not that she was aware of. But still, there was something about the woman’s dark hair and the shape of her face that looked vaguely familiar.

Had this picture been taken in Snowy Pine Ridge? Or somewhere else? She peered at the background, trying to get a clue as to the location, but it was too vague and out of focus to give her any real hints.

She wondered if perhaps this was from the old man’s hockey days, and she was about to go digging for more clues when the sound of a door slamming shut somewhere in the rink brought her to her senses. With a jolt, she set the picture down on Rudolph’s desk and hurried out the door, shutting it gently behind her.

She wasn’t sure if it was the man himself, or if it was one of the kids showing up early to their class. But the one thing that Shelley knew for sure was that she didn’t want anyone to know that she had been thinking about snooping in Rudolph Hutchins’ office.

Disappearing into the bathroom, she stopped at the sink and turned it on, washing her hands just for something to do. Shelley had been in Rudolph’s office a thousand times before, and she had never seen that picture. Not once. So that meant it was a new addition to the desk.

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