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Slowly, Valerie’s spirits began to lift, and as Clark reached up a hand to wipe away the final remaining tear that was clinging to her cheek, Valerie found herself leaning into his touch.
She wasn’t sure what her future would bring, but in this moment, here with this man, she felt happier and more fulfilled than she had in years.
* * *
Shelley sputtered, reaching forward to take a swig of the water in front of her to wash the horrendous taste out of her mouth as Sarah did the same beside her.
“What was that?” she croaked, turning to glare at William, who was trying to bite back a laugh.
“It’s awful, is what it is.” Sarah made a face, throwing a horrified look in her fiancé’s direction as she too tried to cleanse her tongue of whatever it was that they had just drunk.
“It was muddled juniper berry, espresso, and eggnog. I thought it would be good!” William argued, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment despite his still grinning face.
“Donotput that on the menu,” Sarah said forcefully. “If you do, we will never have another customer for the rest of our lives.”
William laughed and agreed before turning around and beginning to work on his next concoction while Sarah iced a few cupcakes and waited for her next batch of cookies to finish. Shelley had arrived about an hour earlier, wanting to bounce some ideas off of her two friends for how to drum up excitement in surrounding towns to get more business for the showcase.
Meanwhile, William had decided that it was the perfect time to try out some new holiday drink recipes and have both Sarah and Shelley try them out. Shelley had to admit that some of them had been quite good. But unfortunately for her taste buds, most of them had not.
“I know that everyone in town is excited,” Shelley explained, taking another big drink of water to try to banish the lingering taste of juniper berries. “But I don’t know if word has traveled even one town over. We’ll have tourists, just because it’s that time of year. But I was hoping to get people coming in just for the showcase.”
“We could make flyers!” Sarah proposed, moving her piping bag with a flourish as she put the final swoop of icing on the Santa Claus cupcakes she was putting on display.
“But what would we put on them? Just the fact that there is a festival?” Shelley asked, trying to envision doing that in a way that makes it enticing.
“I mean, people know that we throw amazing holiday events,” Sarah said, placing the cupcakes in the display case one by one. “I’m sure they’ll come no matter what.”
“Here,” William interrupted, turning around and extending a small taster cup to both women with a flourish. “A new one!”
Shelley eyed it warily and then brought it up to her nose to give it a delicate sniff. This one, at least, smelled better than the last one. She brought it to her lips and a delicious, sweet flavor exploded across her tongue.
“Now this one is a winner!” Sarah said, smiling at her fiancé as Shelley nodded her agreement.
William beamed at them, proud of himself as he turned to begin working on another thing for them to taste. The timer on the oven went off, chiming through the small space loudly as Sarah excused herself to go and retrieve the cookies. She returned a few moments later, carrying the hot tray and setting them on one of the cooling racks.
“I was hoping Valerie would come in,” she explained, shooting a look at the cookies. “I’ve been keeping gingersnaps in stock ever since she mentioned they’re her favorite. Don’t want our movie star to go without.”
At the mention of the celebrity’s name, Shelley perked up.
“That’s it!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers as an idea began to take place. “We have Valerie Bernard!”
Both William and Sarah shot her confused glances and Shelley shook her head.
“We can talk to her about potentially getting the word out about the showcase! We can theme the night around one of her movies, and we can have her act as a quasi-spokesperson. More people are bound to show up if they think they’re going to meet a movie star,” Shelley exclaimed, filled with excitement over the idea.
“I don’t know,” Sarah put in with a quick shake of her head. “I’ve been around Valerie a few times, and I think she wants to remain as anonymous as possible while she’s here.”
Shelley nodded, feeling a bit like the air had been let out of her balloon. “That’s fair, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, right?”
She watched her friends as the couple shared a look, some wordless conversation that she wasn’t privy to passing between them. After a brief pause, Sarah turned her gaze back to Shelley and gave her a soft, encouraging smile.
“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” she confirmed, making Shelley perk up all over again. “If you’d like, I can ask her if she wants to have a girls’ night one night? We could propose the idea to her then? And then just let her know if she doesn’t want to be involved, well, that’s entirely okay.”
“This is going to work,” Shelley said, nodding vigorously as a grin plastered itself across her face. “I just know it will.”
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
Valerie walked up to the wrought iron gate, peering toward the door of the house to see if it was, in fact, the correct one. She glanced down once again at her phone, at the GPS she had used to walk here using the address Sarah had given her the day before, and sure enough it said that she’d arrived. But the houses in this part of town were so closely packed that she was certain it would have said that for possibly all of the houses right in the area she was standing.
