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“Didn’t anybody tell you?” Clark asked, cocking his head to the side and allowing his mouth to tug up into an uncharacteristically sly grin. “Not everything you see in movies is real.”
She turned to shoot him an amused smile, which made Clark’s heart rate pick up. But before he could say anything else, the sound of someone clearing their throat just a few feet away interrupted them.
Derek was standing in the doorway of the living room, eyes flicking between Clark and Valerie with an amused, knowing smile. Clark shot him a silent look, willing his friend to not say anything about the way that he was behaving. Clark wasn’t what anyone would typically call a chatty person. He wasn’t standoffish either, but he was careful with his words. But something about the woman before him made him feel like he could begin talking and never stop, if only just to keep her around longer.
“Valerie, you remember Derek,” Clark said, pointing to his friend and hoping that by acknowledging his presence, it would stop Derek from embarrassing him.
Derek raised one hand in a small wave of greeting, which Valerie returned.
“I remember,” she answered quickly. “The one with all the dogs, right?”
Derek nodded. “Sorry about them, by the way. You were gone before I could give you a real apology the other day.”
Valerie waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all right. They just scared me a bit. It’s not like I expected a group of wolves to be running down the aisle of a hardware store.”
Clark watched Derek as he spoke, remembering his friend’s earlier words about how he’d found her a bit standoffish. Although he didn’t know why, it suddenly felt very important to him that his friend change his original impression of her. So Clark waited, allowing the two of them to talk without interruption in the hopes that it would give Derek a little bit more time to form a solid impression, giving his friend the chance to warm up to her.
Derek laughed and shook his head. “Those crazy beasts wish they were wolves. But they are sled dogs.”
“Oh!” Valerie’s face lit with recognition. “You’re Colette’s cousin! The one she told me about who owns the dogsledding business.”
“One and the same,” Derek cooed, and Clark didn’t miss the slight swell of pride in his friend’s expression.
“You’ll be seeing me around, then. I want to try that out before I leave Snowy Pine Ridge."
“We’d be happy to have you,” Derek answered, his eyes moving from Valerie over to Clark. His lips tugged up in another knowing smile as he said, “Speaking of leaving, I need to get home to the wife. So I’ll head out. You two crazy kids take care now.”
Derek said his goodbyes to each of them before walking toward the door, and Clark was thankful that Valerie’s back was to him, and she didn’t see when Derek winked at Clark before vanishing out the door.
“So what’s the deal with this place?” she asked, drawing Clark’s attention back to her.
She had her hands on her hips, looking around with open curiosity.
“We’re renovating it,” he explained, motioning for her to walk along with him as they ventured through a few of the rooms on the first floor. “There’s a family in town whose house was damaged severely in the last winter storm. The snow caused the roof to cave in. And we’re going to fix this place up for them, turn it into their dream house.”
“And what are you getting out of it?” Valerie asked quickly, and Clark stiffened, his steps faltering as he stopped to look at her.
They were standing in the middle of what was supposed to be the dining room, just off the kitchen. The narrowed, skeptical glint was back in her eyes, and he could see it in her face that Valerie truly thought that he was only doing this because it would benefit him.
“Because they’re members of our town,” he said, like it should be obvious. “Members of our community. We help our own around here.”
The last bit of the hardness that had remained on Valerie’s face since the moment she had walked up to the house fell, her lovely features relaxing into something a little softer.
“I can’t believe that things like this are actually real,” she said with a soft chuckle, shaking her head a little.
“Things like what?”
“Small-town charm, helping your neighbor, the golden rule, that kind of stuff. Stuff that I’ve only ever seen… well… in the movies.” She huffed out a quick laugh.
"I guess some things in the movies are true,” he said with a grin, and her answering smile felt like a reward.
“Am I going to get to see the rest of the place?” Valerie asked after a brief pause, arching her eyebrow at him.
Clark nodded, finding himself at a sudden loss for words as he turned and started showing her the rest of the rooms. In the kitchen, she walked over to the counter, running her fingers along the dusty surface while he talked about the butcher’s block tops they were going to put on.
But even as he explained it, something in the back of his mind kept nagging him. Something about what Valerie had just said, about not seeing this level of kindness within her community before, and he couldn’t quite let it go.
“What you said about this place,” Clark began hesitantly. “Golden rule and whatnot. You aren’t used to stuff like that?”
