Love Finds You in North Pole, Alaska (29 page)

“Good-bye, sweet Olive,” Duke said, putting his back to the beautiful vista as he trudged toward the car.

Nodding, Bryce followed, glancing once over his shoulder.

Only Sam remained, still clutching the envelope that held Olive’s last words.

“Rest in peace, Olive Stone,” she whispered, “with the Almighty and His angels.”

“Amen,” Bryce said, hugging her from behind. “Amen.”

“Hard to believe it’s been three months since Olive died,” Bryce said, slipping an arm around Sam’s waist. “I don’t think she’d recognize the place.”

“I hope she’d be proud,” Sam said, smiling. “What the store looks like now is all thanks to that crazy list of hers.”

Chuckling, Bryce kissed the top of her head. “She was a list-making nut, wasn’t she?”

“I’ll say! I’ll bet I found a couple hundred of them while going through the desk and file cabinets.”

“God rest her beautiful soul. She was great at writing lists, but not too great with the follow-through. It took you to make it all happen, you little dynamo.”

“I’m just happy the place is turning a profit now.” She faced him and added, “Think maybe now it’ll sell, so you can open your carpentry shop?”

A quiet grunt was her answer, and Sam didn’t quite know what to make of it. She kept her questions to herself, though, because it was obvious that he’d made a concerted effort not to wallow in grief or self-pity. Quite the contrary, in fact… “So how’d you and Duke make out at the B and B today?”

“It’s finished, finally.”

“So he can open for business in the spring, just as he and Olive planned?”

Bryce groaned quietly. “I don’t know. Something tells me he’ll pack up and head back to Texas soon.”

“Oh, that’d be a shame!” Sam said. “But…I can’t blame him, really. He doesn’t know us all that well, and we’re all the family he has here. And besides, everywhere he turns, there are reminders of Olive and the life they might have had together.” She sighed. “It just breaks my heart, watching him wander around like a lost lamb.”

Bryce nodded.

“So,” she began, changing the subject, “when are you planning to make good on your promise?”

“Which one?” he asked, his heart suddenly pounding.

“You said you’d show me the aurora borealis in September, if the weather cooperated.” Arms akimbo, she added, “And it’s November already!”

Bryce chuckled. “So it is.” And glancing at his watch, he said, “What are you doing tonight?”

“Oh, please. You know better than anyone what I’m doing tonight.”

The brow above his eye patch rose slightly as he considered her comment. “I do?”

“I’ll be with you, of course, somewhere north of town, watching the aurora!”

And hours later, at two in the morning and bundled in a thick quilt on the hood of his car, Sam and Bryce leaned on the windshield and stared into a sky that seemed to throb and pulse with life.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful!”

“That’s what you said when I showed you Forever.”

“Well, that’s a whole different kind of beautiful. This,” she said, pointing to the waving, undulating green lights above, “this is just…well, it’s a miracle is what it is!”

“I’ve seen it hundreds of times, and I have to admit, it never gets old.” He gave her a quick, sideways hug. “You ought to feel really special.”

“I always feel special when I’m with you.”

Laughing, he mussed her hair. “No, goofy girl, I mean because the skies are putting on such a great show for you. September really
is
the best time to see it, so we lucked out big time, catching a display like this in November. We couldn’t have picked a more perfect night…clear and dark, with a full bright moon.”

“I’ll admit, I hoped we’d see more colors.”

“We might have…in September. But shades of green and gold are the norm. Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a glimpse of red and yellow or purple and blue.”

“Well, it’s amazing, positively amazing!” She sighed. “I hate to admit it, but I’m cold.”

“So I noticed, icy nose,” he said, kissing her. “Want to head back?”

“Guess we’d better. I have a group of school kids coming to the shop tomorrow. Field trip of sorts, so they can buy ornaments and whatnot as Christmas gifts.”

“Did you hear there’s gonna be a TV crew in town tomorrow?”

“Yeah” she said. “They’re supposed to film the field trip. And when I was at Dalman’s the other day, having coffee with Cora, I heard they’re filming the Santa Claus House and the Christmas museum, and if there’s time, they’ll even take a trip on the train. Exciting, huh?”

Bryce held open his pickup’s passenger door. “Um, I guess.”

“Not everybody in town shares your attitude, Mr. Scrooge.” With that, she closed the door.

And as he slid in behind the wheel, he said, “Pardon me if my enthusiasm doesn’t runneth over.”

“To each his own,” she said, giving him a playful jab to the shoulder. “You leave me no choice but to enjoy all these Christmas festivities enough for both of us.”

They were home before she knew it, and Sam wondered aloud how productive she’d be in a few hours, with so little sleep.

“You’re a buzzing ball of energy,” he told her. “If the electricity goes out tomorrow, the film crew can always plug into you and run their cameras for hours.”

“Always the comedian.” Then, as an afterthought, Sam said, “Pity you can’t conjure a little of that attitude about Christmas.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but Sam laid a finger over his lips, preventing it. “See you in the morning,” she said, popping a quick kiss to his lips. And hurrying into her own apartment, she waved over her shoulder. “Sweet dreams, Bryce!”

“Oh, they’ll be sweet, all right, but only because you’re bound to be in them.”

Sam handed the TV host a steaming mug of homemade cocoa topped off with whipped cream and a cherry. “You look frozen to the bone,” she told her. “Hopefully, this’ll warm you up.”

Grinning, Melody Malone wrapped her mittened hands around it. “What are you, a mind reader?” she teased.

Laughing, Sam handed a second mug to the cameraman.

“John O’Toole,” he said. “Happy to meet you. And thanks for the cup o’ heat.”

Sam grinned. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Think the rest of the crew might like a cup?”

“No question in my mind. We’re Californians,” John said, “totally unaccustomed to this kind of cold.”

Laughing, Sam said, “I’m from Maryland myself. This is my first winter here, and so far, it’s been a doozy.”

“I assumed the place was covered in ice and snow pretty much all year.”

“That’s what most people think. I got here in May, and believe it or not, by the middle of June, I was wishing my apartment had air conditioning.”

“Maryland, eh, ” John said. “So what brought you to North Pole?”

The memory of her breakup with Joey flashed in her head, followed by her brothers and parents chorusing, “You’re going
where
?”

“Work
brought
me here, but the place and the people are magnetic. I can’t seem to tear myself away. I manage Rudolph’s Christmas Emporium,” she said, pointing at the storefront. “That guy over there, chatting with Melody in front of the Santa Claus House, is Bryce Stone, the owner.”

John chuckled. “Is that patch for real?”

“It is. Earned in Afghanistan.”

“Well, if Tinsel Town ever revives cowboy westerns, he’s in like Flynn with an eye patch and a name like Bryce Stone!”

It
was
a powerful name, Sam thought, watching him. But why not? He was a powerful man, and—

“So do you think you’ll stay in North Pole?”

Sam nodded. “Definitely.”

“That’s no surprise. I heard how you turned that little store into a thriving business in just a couple of months.”

“Who spilled the beans?”

“Curt, the barber. Amazing how much that guy knows about this town…and everybody in it.” John stood and handed Sam his empty mug. “Well, I’d better get back over there,” he said. “Looks like Melody’s ready to start. What time does your field trip begin?”

She glanced at the nearest clock…a red and green elf whose hammer moved up and down in time with the second hand. “Fifteen, twenty minutes. But I’m sure they won’t mind waiting. It isn’t every day they get a chance to be on a national TV show.”

“Don’t worry,” John said, waving as his boots hit the snow-covered walk, “we’ll be on time. I’ll make sure of it.”

As it turned out, John was a man of his word. Melody and the crew squeezed into Rudolph’s to film the kids as they shopped for their families’ Christmas gifts. Sam couldn’t help but wonder, as John’s camera panned the shelves, how
her
family would feel, finding out this way that she managed the place. Maybe Bill had let it slip, once he got back home, that she’d been passed over for the chef’s job and taken this one to keep the wolf from the door.
And maybe you should make a phone call, today, so they won’t be shocked when friends and neighbors call to say, ‘Hey, I saw your daughter on that house and garden channel!’ ”

“That’s a wrap,” the director announced. “Have you lined things up with that guy at the Santa Claus House?” he asked Melody.

“Only thing missing is you,” she said, grinning. Grabbing her fur parka, the host shrugged one arm into it, then the other. “I don’t know how you manage it, day after day, year after year,” she said to Sam. “Being Alaskan is…well, it’s
cold,
that’s what!”

“I can’t say yet that I ‘manage it.’ This is my first winter here. I might not be cut out for it.”

Melody gave Sam a quick once-over. “Oh, something tells me you’re gonna do just fine. In fact—”

“She’s more than cut out for this life.”

Everyone turned toward the deep, resonant voice. “Bryce,” Sam said, smiling. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough.” And as the TV crew and school kids filed out of the shop, he slipped his arms around her waist. “Promise me somethin’, will ya?”

“Depends…”

“Don’t ever go all Hollywood on me, okay?”

Giggling, she said, “But I thought you liked your girls tall and willowy, blond and green-eyed.”

His brow furrowed. “She has green eyes?”

Sam gave his shoulder a playful slap. “Oh, please. The way you were staring at her during the interview, I’d think you could tell me how many eyelashes there are on each lid!”

Bryce kissed her forehead, a long, lingering kiss that sent Sam’s heart into overdrive.

“I guess she’s okay…in a too much makeup and hairspray kinda way.” And holding her at arm’s length, he added, “But she’s nowhere near as gorgeous as you.”

“Aw, I bet you say that to all the—”

A scream, followed closely by a ruckus outside, interrupted them, and they raced to the door. “Holy moley,” Bryce said, “somebody let the reindeer loose!”

They ran to the Santa Claus House, where a small crowd had gathered around Melody, who lay flat on her back in the snow.

“What happened?” Bryce asked.

“She thought it would be cool to ‘interview’ the reindeer,” the shopkeeper explained. “I warned her they didn’t much cotton to all this noise and activity, but she said something about Snow White genes.”

“Snow White—”

“All animals love her,” Paul explained, rolling his eyes.

The host scrambled to her feet and, giggling, asked Sam, “Any idea how to get reindeer poo out of fur?” But before Sam could answer, she said to John, “You got that on film, I hope….”

“Does Santa wear a red hat?”

“Whew,” she said, fanning her face. “We’ll need to do a voice-over, but that’s gonna be a hoot for our viewers!”

“Have the reindeer escaped before?” Sam asked Paul.

“Couple times, but they’ll make their way back. They always do…eventually.”

She glanced down the street, where a couple of them pawed the snowy ground in search of grass. Grinning, she nudged him with an elbow. “And if they don’t, will you have to round up a posse to herd ’em home?”

“What bus did this tender-footed Easterner ride into town?” he asked Bryce.

“It wasn’t a bus,” Sam corrected, “it was a—”

Thankfully, Paul and the others were too preoccupied with herding the animals back into their pen to notice when Bryce planted a big juicy kiss on her lips. “Promise me something else?” he asked.