Page 5 of Mad About Yule

His mouth tugs into a dismissive frown. I guess Griffin isn’t in thelove itcolumn.

I should have been more specific when I told Kat I needed a new handyman. I need someone interested. Invested. Definitely not someone who’s going to make me doubt this whole project with one twitchy eyebrow.

I let him into the warehouse and pull my coat a little closer around myself. The uninsulated walls and bare cement floor leave the warehouse an icebox this time of year. With the flip of a switch, the fluorescent lights come on high overhead, flickering to life one by one, revealing my dreams laid out piecemeal in the cavernous room.

“All the decorations for the festival are stored in here.” I step farther inside, waving my arms vaguely. “We planned to do all the work on the Winter Wonderland here, too. It’s big enough to hold the buildings when they’re done, kind of a staging area before we take them to town square on the day of the tree lighting.”

Griffin follows me into the warehouse, one hand jammed into his jeans pocket against the cold, the other lazily holding his coffee. I try to see the warehouse through his eyes. It isn’t much to look at. A sheet of plywood laid over a pair of sawhorses form the workbench. Next to it sits a pile of two-by-fours and a stack of uncut plywood, the main components of the buildings I have planned. All just plain wood now, but in my mind, they’ll come together to create Christmas magic.

With any luck, Griffin will see it, too.

“It’s freezing in here,” he says.

Or not.

“We can turn on the industrial space heaters if we need to.” I flash him a smile. I want to look reassuring and calming, but I probably look more like Buddy the Elf grinning his head off.

“Space heater’s a fire hazard with all this lumber,” he says.

You would know about fire hazards. Not that I dare say that out loud.

He scowls around at the supplies. I need to win over my volunteer, or I don’t have much hope of him making the buildings I dreamed up. If he thinks the project is too much—or worse, too little—he might decide not to get involved. I might have to turn to my mother for help after all.

Ha, no way. If it comes down to it, I’ll build the Wonderland myself.

I shudder, imagining the bloodbath. So many power tools. So many severed fingers.

“We’ll just use the space heaters as a last resort, then.” I follow him on his circuit of the warehouse, watching his face for any sign of—well, it’s already too late to hope he might be impressed. I would settle for less disdain, but the scowl stays on his face.

“Pretty basic supplies,” he says, walking by the boxes of metal fasteners, shingles, and buckets of paint.

Again with the brush-off. Most of my volunteers at leastwantto be part of the festival. Somehow, I got stuck with the least-invested person to do the most important part.

“Then it should be an easy job for you.”

His mouth curls at that—Smile? Sneer? I can’t tell—but he goes on looking through the warehouse like a drill sergeant inspecting pathetic recruits. In addition to all the wood for the buildings, I rounded up the town’s old holiday decorations from storage units far and wide. Six-foot-tall candy canes lean against one wall next to a haphazard assortment of lighted wire snowmen, wreaths, and bells. A few items turned up broken and too expensive to replace, like the plastic reindeer team that each have a crushed leg, but I found enough to make a merry, vintage scene.

“How many buildings?”

“Five. Sort of a mini elf village.”

He cuts his eyes to me. “Elf village?”

“It is the North Pole.” I smile again, but he doesn’t return it. Mine crumbles away. “I’ve got blueprints, so you don’t have to worry about any of the designs.”

He looks over the collection of power tools, most of them borrowed from my original handyman. “Where’d you get the designs?”

“For the buildings? I designed them.”

He stops to toss a skeptical look over his shoulder. “You designed all the buildings for this?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a degree in architecture or something?”

“No. I just like art.” I’d minored in studio art in college, paint nearly every day, and run a store devoted to all things crafty, but I don’t feel like telling him any of that. “I referenced old Christmas movies when I came up with the building ideas. You know, for the nostalgia.”

He doesn’t seem moved by the image. “Right. Let’s see the plans.”

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