“I will find room in the budget for overtime.”
“The students are always well behaved, but I will convey the importance of Friday’s visitors to our teachers as well.”
“Perfect.”
“And the float will be stunning. An inspired work of art.”
Dr. Rothschild drew her lips back. “I knew I could count on you, Mr. Finkenbinder.”
“Always.”
She stood and held out her hand.
He thought about bowing and kissing her knuckles, but he shook it instead, then opened the door and escorted her out. As she walked through the double doors, he glanced at his watch. Lunchtime. He never left the school during the day. Ever. But today, he’d make an exception.
Ellie hummed as she pushed the miniature white pumpkin down on the sharpened dowel rod, nestling it among the feathered corn tassels. It contrasted with the brown grapevine wreath structure and deep purple ribbon. Purple had been the most popular color this year. She hadn’t always thought of it as a fall color, but obviously someone did.
She twisted the pumpkin, adjusting the angle of the stem. A little touch of green would really make this wreath pop. Where had she set that ivy? Not on the worktable. Not under it. Not on the counter by the cash register. If only Fink were here to keep her organized.
Ah, Fink. He’d looked so handsome this morning. She’d forgotten what rough stubble felt like on her fingers. Had she ever known? She certainly had never felt that tingle in her hand, the swirling of heat in her stomach, the feeling of rightness in her soul.
She picked up a section of ribbon lying on the table. Watching it shimmer in the light, she twirled in the small space between the worktable and the wall, observing it ripple and undulate in the air. Dancing in the small space to keep it waving.
The shop bells tinkled as the door opened. Her foot caught on the doormat. She knocked a can of corn kernels over as she grabbed at the table to keep from falling. They crashed to the floor and splattered.
Capable hands seized her waist, preventing her fall. Helping her stand. Steading her.
Fink.
Her eyes widened. “I was just…” thinking of you.
“Yes?” he asked, without releasing her.
“Finishing this wreath.” She indicated the purple-ribboned wreath, which had escaped her near-fall unscathed. His familiar spicy scent teased her nose.
“Beautiful,” he said.
She shivered and whispered, “You didn’t even look at it.”
“Look at what?” His gaze dropped to her lips, which she suddenly realized were dry. She touched her tongue to them. His fingers tightened on her waist.
“The wreath.”
“What wreath?”
“The one I was just finishing. You said it was beautiful, but you didn’t even look at it.”
“I wasn’t talking about the wreath.”
She swallowed. “What were you talking about?”
He opened his mouth.
She moved closer.
Shaking his head as though waking from a dream, he stepped back, dropping his hands from her, shoving them in his pockets. He leaned a shoulder against the open door.
“I have a huge favor to beg of you.”
She leaned a hip against the table. Her knees were not overly steady just yet. “I just realized you should be in school. Did you get fired?”
He snorted. “No. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
He took a deep breath, as though needing to focus his thoughts. “You know I’ve applied for the superintendent position.”
“Yes.”
“Well, in order for me to secure the position, we need to improve the float. I should have listened to you to begin with, and I’m sorry.” He met her eyes. “I was hoping you would help me do the first design. The one I have the picture for?”
“Last time my idea was a complete disaster.” She fingered the ribbon in her hand, looking down at it.
“We didn’t have directions. I’ve got to go back to school, but I can see if I can find something on the internet, or maybe the shop teacher, Mr. Woods, might be able to draft me something up.”
She looked up. “So you’re asking me, not demanding that I do this to keep my daughter out of detention?”
He paused, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and meeting her eyes. Humbly. “I’m asking. As a friend. For a favor.”
“I have an interview with a potential employee scheduled for tonight at seven thirty, but after that I’ll do everything I can to help you.”
“Thanks. I owe you.”
Caught in his eyes, she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t answer. But she knew her face was shining with a full-on smile. She’d be seeing him again tonight. They’d be working together. She felt like twirling her ribbon again, but resisted the impulse. She’d wait until he left.
“Well, I’d better get back to the school. I’ll be out this evening. Eight?”
“Yes.”
He made no move to leave.
Each beat of her heart filled her chest with fervor until it threatened to burst.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and clenched them at his sides.
She twined the ribbon through her fingers.
He took a step closer.
Excitement shimmered in her chest. She leaned toward him.
He closed the distance between them. His hands slid up her cheeks moving into her hair.
His scent surrounded her. Tingles pulsed on her skin. Her knees quivered and her heart rate soared. Time seemed to stop and the world shrank to only them as she touched her tongue to her dry lips.
Fink seemed mesmerized by the movement. Keeping his eyes fixed on her lips, he said, “I thought I might kiss you goodbye?”
She gave a shallow nod, but it was all he needed. He pressed his lips to hers. Just a touch, but sensation rocketed through her body.
He dropped his hands, spun on his heel, and was gone before she opened her eyes.
Chapter Nine
Fink floated on air the rest of the day. He remembered to tell the janitorial staff about the school and grounds for Friday, and sent a group email to all the teachers about the visitors. He went through the motions of his job, but Ellie and the way the sunlight had hit her face and hair this afternoon when he walked in filled his mind. Her beautiful eyes. The delighted expression on her face when she saw him. He could come home to that every day. Easily.
Between thinking about Ellie, he also researched different ways of building the float. By the time he ran into the shed to escape the cold drizzle that evening, he was confident he had plans ready that would work.
Ellie and a young, maybe college-aged, man looked up when he burst in.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were here.” He’d figured they’d be up at the office/shop. Or maybe the house. He turned to walk back outside into the drizzle.
“Stay, Fink. We’re almost done,” Ellie called.
He stepped back in, closing the door behind him.
She turned to the man at her side. “As I was saying, this is the shed where we keep most of our tools.” She waved her arm around, indicating the loaded shelves. “Have you ever used a chainsaw?”
“Nope.” The kid scratched his head. “Didn’t have much need of one in the development where I grew up.”
“Okay. You’d have to learn how. The customers are given handsaws to cut their trees down with, but if we have a big order to fill—sometimes we’ll load several tractor trailers, especially at the beginning of the season—a handsaw just doesn’t cut it.”
Fink smiled at her paronomasia, but the kid didn’t seem to notice.
“Aren’t they kind of dangerous?” The boy shifted on his feet.
Ellie stopped. Fink bit back a snort at her dumbfounded expression.
She ran a hand over her frizzed-out hair. “Well, yeah. You have to be careful.”
“I thought working on a Christmas tree farm would be kinda fun. I didn’t realize
I’d have to cut down trees. Isn’t that like destroying Mother Earth?” He bunched his lips together and crossed his arms over his chest.
“We plant new ones. It’s fun.”
Fink coughed to hide his laugh. Saying “it’s fun” through clenched teeth like Ellie just did made her sound like a parent saying spinach really does taste good. “But it’s work too. You said you worked at the fast food place in town?”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you quitting?”
“Those idiots schedule me to be at work at five thirty in the morning. Normal people don’t get out of bed that early. And it’s only minimum wage.” He slouched against the tractor.
Ellie shook her head. “Have you ever driven a tractor?”
“We had a lawnmower when I was little, but my mom would never let me run it.”
“You’d have to learn that too.”
Fink dealt with kids like this all the time and was impressed Ellie didn’t roll her eyes.
“It’s kinda big.”
“Yeah. So.” Ellie slapped her hands on her pants. “I think that’s all. Christmas tree season starts the day after Thanksgiving, although we might have a few big orders to fill before that. I’ll give you a call if we’re interested.”
“Okay.” The kid started to turn away, but stopped when Ellie held out her hand. He looked at it for a minute like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then shook it gingerly.
“Thanks for coming. Can you find your way back up to the parking lot? I’ve got some work to do here.”
“Uh, it was that way?” He pointed in the exact wrong direction.
Fink spoke up. “I’ll walk him back up.”
Ellie gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks. Would you bring Harper and Wyatt back down with you?”
“Sure. Have you had supper yet?”
“I’ll run over to the house and grab a bowl of stew from the Crock-Pot. Have you eaten?”
“Yes.” He wanted to reach out and put his arm around her. Her shoulders drooped and there were dark circles under her eyes. A stab of guilt touched his heart. He had asked a lot of her this week. And she had done her best at everything he’d asked. If she’d complained, he hadn’t heard it. But he didn’t touch her. He might end up kissing her again.
Instead of doing what he really wanted to do, he followed the kid out the door.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back. If Ellie went and got stew, she must have gobbled it down fast, since she was on the wagon, dismantling it when he walked in with Wyatt and Harper. When she saw them, she hopped off with an armload of gourds.
His eyes widened as she placed them back in the groups he had organized, rather than tossing them down wherever. The pumpkins, too, were lined up in neat little rows. She must have done that for him. Because she knew he liked things to be in order. He tucked that idea away to be brought out and examined later.
She stood and smiled at him. He grinned back at her, then placed his briefcase on the back of the wagon and snapped it open. Ellie, Harper, and Wyatt gathered around the back of the wagon.
First, he pulled out the top paper—the completed project. The big moon glowed on the back of the wagon, silhouettes of a man and woman standing face-to-face leaning into each other, but not quite kissing, were solid black against its yellow glow. A dirt road cut through green-and-yellow bucolic fields and seemed to fade off into the bottom of the moon.
“We’ll place hay bales here for the king and queen to sit on and throw candy.” He pointed to the back of the wagon. “Then we’ll have a banner on the back with an advertisement for your farm.”
“If we can build that, it’s going to look amazing.” Wyatt stared at the picture.
“We’re going to figure it out, or die trying,” Ellie said.
Fink’s chest warmed. “Well, I just so happen to have this.” He shuffled the papers, pulled out a blueprint to build the base, and laid it on the bed of the wagon so everyone could see. They all bent over it. “I also have this.” More shuffling produced three more papers with directions and dimensions on building the moon and covering the base with the scene depicting a dirt road running off in the distance, the massive moon rising directly over where the road disappeared into the horizon.
“This is way too complicated.” Wyatt stepped back, shaking his head. Harper nodded.
“It looks that way. But…I’ve been doing some research, and if we get giant pieces of hardboard, there won’t need to be much support to get the moon that high because it won’t weigh much, even though it’s huge. Same with the ‘walls’ of the base. The only things I was unsure of were how to get a light to shine on the moon, and how to get that picture on the hardboard. I think it’s too late to order screen printing.”
“Mom can do it. Easy,” Harper spoke up.
“She can paint that scene?” Fink tried not to show his astonishment.
“She can paint anything. She’s an amazing artist.”
Ellie tilted her head to the side, her lips pulled back. “If that’s as big as it looks, it’s going to take a massive amount of paint. And time.”
Fink shook his head. “I was afraid of that. Maybe we could look into the screen printing.”
“That’s going to be expensive,” Ellie stated.
“I know. But there is a budget for this and I might be able to get more.” Dr. Rothschild was pretty eager to impress her visitors. “But since we don’t have to buy any lumber….”
“I think if I had maybe twelve, eighteen hours, I could do it.” Ellie twisted a stray strand of hair. “But this is Wednesday night. I don’t know where I could find the time.”
“Where are we going to get the hardboard?” Wyatt spoke up from Fink’s other side. “Won’t that be expensive?”
“Good question,” Ellie said. “I have some particle board around here. Maybe a few sheets of plywood, but not enough and no hardboard.”
“Mrs. Herschel’s brother works at the hardboard factory outside of town. Turns out this weekend they had a machine malfunction and cut the sheets an inch or so too short.” Fink adjusted the papers on his briefcase. It had been a stroke of tremendous luck that Mrs. Herschel had overheard his conversation and suggested hardboard. “They’ve got a dumpster out back and it’s full of perfect sheets that are just a little too short for specs. Which wouldn’t matter to us at all. The top pieces might be a bit wet from the rain yesterday, but we can dig down. He said there was a ton, and anyone was welcome to go and take what they wanted.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes at him. “You just suggested we pick stuff out of a dumpster?”
“Hardboard.” Honestly, he was surprised that this woman who walked around perpetually disorganized, dodging masses of junk, would take umbrage at the idea of pulling something out of a dumpster. “The store manager wouldn’t keep it out for us.”
“I can’t believe you suggested dumpster diving.” She moved her hands in a now-I’ve-seen-everything gesture.
“It’s just hardboard.” Fink’s nervousness morphed into irritation. He had beaten down his compunctions on rooting through what amounted to trash so that they could do this project. He was the neat freak. Not her.
“But there could be needles or vomit or, or, anything in there.”
Fink’s chest ballooned with that familiar, strong emotion. He almost welcomed it. He noticed the color and lights in Ellie’s eyes, and wondered if she felt it too.
He stepped toward her. Raising his voice, he said, “I spent all this time researching and all you can do is complain?”
“I’m not complaining. I’m just shocked.” Her voice had raised to not quite a shout.
“Well, I didn’t see you coming up with anything.” He finished closing the distance between them and stood directly in front of her. That feeling, not exactly anger, but big and large and gripping, burst inside him.
“That’s because I don’t have massive amounts of time to sit around and twiddle my perfectly manicured thumbs.” She stepped up on a pumpkin by her f
eet. Her face was now even with his. Her finger jammed in front of his nose. Possibly she was in the grip of the same emotion he was.
“Lady, your hands don’t know the meaning of the word manicure,” he shouted.
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” she shouted right back, looking him straight in the eye. Her chest heaved in and out. She touched her tongue to the corner of her lip.
Anticipation lit his insides. This was where they grabbed each other and…
“Mom. Mr. F. Please.” Harper pushed herself between them, a hand up in front of both their faces.
What was it about this woman? She got him hot faster than anyone he’d ever met. He’d actually been enjoying that argument.
“Seriously guys. I think that dumpster diving for hardboard sounds like a load of fun. And I think Wyatt would help me. But I’m afraid to leave you two alone. I thought you were kissing Monday night when we walked in, but now I think it’s possible you two were putting some weird, twisted WWE moves on each other.”
“I kinda thought the whole scaffolding falling down was suspect,” Wyatt offered hesitantly. “It makes more sense to me that they were fighting and crashed into it.”
“It’s a shame I can’t leave my own mother alone with the high school principal. What kind of adult am I going to turn out to be?” Harper crossed her arms over her chest and mock glared at her mother. Not disrespectfully, but half-playful, half-annoyed.
Ellie stepped down from the pumpkin, reminding Fink of a queen descending from her royal conveyance. But her apology was sincere. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper.”
“Boy howdy,” Harper said. “And I don’t even think you two were insulting each other at first. Not on purpose. Mom was just saying she couldn’t believe you were going to these extremes to make what she wanted. And you were just saying you’d put a lot of time into it.”
They eyed each other. Why did he have such a hard time controlling himself around this woman? His lips lifted at the thought. She grinned back at him.
The kids must not have noticed their cheesy smiles, because Wyatt said, “I have an idea about the painting. Uncle Fink can leave school and come here and work on the farm, waiting on customers and whatever, for Mrs. Bright. That way she can come down here and paint.”
Harvest Moon Homecoming Page 7
