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CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Clark shot off a text to Valerie before stuffing his phone back in his pocket as he walked out of Sweet Thing Bakery with a coffee in hand. He had wanted to spend a little more time with her the night before, after the showcase, but she’d been distracted and claimed she wanted to go back to her hotel room. Her texts had been a bit short and distant ever since, and it had Clark feeling a little worried.
Almost as soon as he dropped his phone in his pocket, it buzzed with a new text, and he had to fish it out all over again. He opened the response from Valerie and smiled. He’d asked if she wanted to meet up, and she said yes. She was at the town square looking at the Christmas tree and invited him to meet her.
“See?” he muttered to himself as he began walking quickly toward where he’d indicated in her text. “Told you everything was going to be all right.”
But Clark realized he had spoken too soon as he stepped into the town square and spotted Valerie. She had the same look on her face that she’d had the night before. Worry coursed through him all over again.
A halfhearted smile tugged at her lips as she caught sight of him, waving at him to join her on the bench in front of the tree.
As Clark plopped down beside her, he offered her a sip of his coffee and she accepted it, leaning her head on his shoulder as they both sat and stared at the tree.
“Rudolph Hutchins was in love with my mother,” Valerie said with a sigh, and shock coursed through Clark as the words settled in.
“What?” he asked, dumbfounded by the news as he made sense of what had been said.
“He told me last night at the rink,” she explained, the same far-off note to her voice as she spoke. “She came to Snowy Pine Ridge years before I was born. Stayed here for a while it seems. They met and fell in love, then she came back to California to marry my dad.”
He felt her shrug one shoulder as if it was all no big deal, despite the strange tone of her voice.
“How are you feeling about all of that?” Clark asked, turning his head so that he could look down at her where her head still rested on his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it ever since I found out. My mom was devastated when my dad left. I might have been young, but I remember enough of it. And she struggled with being a single mother so, so much. Then, when she got sick, I could tell she got even lonelier. I did everything I could, but it wasn’t enough.”
She took her head off his shoulder, turning her body on the bench so that she was facing him, and Clark did the same. His heart hurt for her as he looked at the worry and concern on her face, hating that she was feeling like this.
“I can’t help but think if maybe she would have been better off, ifwewould have been better off if he’d come and found her.”
Clark nodded, not able to argue with that logic. Especially not when the thought seemed to be hurting her so much.
“I can’t imagine how hard that was for the both of you,” he said honestly. “But there’s also a possibility that he didn’t know, not in enough time to actually do anything about it. Or maybe he did know and he was terrified. There could be a thousand reasons for him not finding her.”
“I know,” she said simply. “And whatever his reasoning, I’m not mad at him at all. You know what they say about hindsight. But I still can’t stop thinking about how different things could have been.”
Clark nodded. “I think that’s normal. Considering every what-if after a big revelation like this is always natural. Do you want to talk to him about it?”
“I do,” she admitted. “Because regardless, we both loved the same person. I don’t want to feel so alone in this, and I want to know his side of things. But I think I just need a minute to get my head around it.”
“Also normal,” Clark said, looking down at her.
She seemed to have perked up a bit now that she’d gotten it all off her chest, and she gave him a soft smile.
“Thank you,” Valerie murmured, leaning up to brush her lips against his before settling back against the bench.
“For what?”
“Just allowing me to vent.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Any time.”
She let out a breath. “Well, I appreciate it. It helps.”
Clark gulped nervously before grinning at her, hoping that what he was about to do went exactly as planned.
“I don’t have to be in the store today,” he told her. “One of my employees is running everything. Do you want to go back to my place and watch a movie? I can cook, or we can order food. Whatever you want.”
“Will there be coffee?” she asked, looking greedily at his coffee cup that he still held in his hand.
