by Amberlee Day
Three blocks and many chastisements from Kate later—though she did manage to serve her complaints with a chipper voice and smile on her face—they reached the high school football field, which currently functioned as the parade staging area. A dozen floats, muscle cars, and a marching band were spaced between a variety of jugglers, motorcycles, and color guard officers in uniform. And from what he could see, the town wasn’t very discriminating in who got to participate. One group appeared to be a large family dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and carried signs that said, “Vote Orange,” whatever that meant.
“Wow, Podunk—I mean, Harvest Ranch really knows how to throw a parade.”
Kate glared at him again. Ugh. He just couldn’t get off her bad side. “Why shouldn’t we? You think only New York City can put on a good parade?”
“I didn’t say that. You know, you don’t have to take offense at everything I say.”
“But you design what you say to be so wonderfully offensive. How can I resist?” she said almost sweetly enough for him to believe it was a struggle.
“We just have to get through this parade. Then when Brenda Lee gets here this afternoon, you don’t have to talk to me for the rest of the week unless I need to ask for extra towels or something.”
“Extra towels cost extra.”
He looked at her to see if she was serious, but it was hard to tell under those eyelashes. “Really?”
“Not normally, but for you, they’re extra.”
“Okay,” he sighed. Two more hours tops, and with luck he shouldn’t have to deal with Kate the Podunk inn manager anymore.
They made their way over to the biggest rig, which Kate assured him was the grand marshal float. Gloria Dudley and several others rushed over to greet them and started leading Kate right up to the float—which was good. Get her in place and leave her there.
“Wait a minute.” Gloria stopped Kate. “You have to bring Pumpkin up with you! She’s just as popular as you are.” But she quickly added, as if she’d realized she might have caused offense, “To the children, of course.”
“Of course!” Kate gushed in that horrible accent, but she privately turned a cross-eyed look on Freddie. He handed her the leash, but Pumpkin wouldn’t budge. Kate tried coaxing her. “Come on, dog. Pumpkin. Come on. Don’t you want to ride on the pretty float?”
But the dog wouldn’t move past Freddie’s side. He sighed. It wasn’t even his dog; it was Brenda Lee’s, for heaven’s sake. He patted the dog’s head. “Pumpkin, go.”
And thankfully, she went, following Kate in her red wig and getup onto the float—a twenty-foot-long flatbed. Gourds, apple baskets, corn, hay, and everything Freddie assumed was associated with harvest bedazzled the thing. To top it off, there was a shiny green John Deere tractor for Kate to sit in. The position of honor.
“Great pumpkin, that’s insane,” he muttered, just in time to turn and find that reporter at his elbow. Freddie jumped. “Ah! You startled me there, McGee.”
“Looks like you got her,” McGee said with glee, looking past him at Kate. “It’s really her, Brenda Lee Mitford.”
“In the flesh.” His conscience pricked at him. Poor choice of wording. “You can tell just by looking who it is. And I should formally introduce myself. Freddie Prescott of the Prescott Agency. I’m Brenda Lee’s agent.”
McGee’s mouth and eyes opened wide. “Well ... really? Nice to meet you, Mr. Prescott.”
“Call me Freddie,” he said, pumping McGee’s hand.
“I was right, too, wasn’t I? She’s staying at the Cornucopia.”
Freddie nodded. “She is at that, McGee. You figured it out.”
“I knew it, though I don’t know why she’d want to stay at that old place.”
Freddie couldn’t agree more, but he had to hold up his end of the bargain. He cleared his throat and prepared to lie his cold New York heart out. “Old place? Nah. You’re just so used to the ... charms, and quaint country atmosphere there at the Cornucopia Inn, you might not notice it anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe,” McGee said.
Freddie didn’t stop there. After all, he was trained to apply a positive spin when needed. He went on to give a glowing report of the hotel he’d tried to ignore in the last two days, before moving on to giving details about Brenda Lee’s schedule in town. He shared what drew Brenda Lee to write about Harvest Ranch, Virginia, and all kinds of details he’d been trained to give, along with a promise to McGee for an exclusive interview with Brenda Lee.
“Thank you, Mr. Prescott,” McGee said, puffing out his chest.
“It’s Freddie.”
“You know, when I first met you, I wasn’t sure what to think. But you’re alright.”
“No, thank you, McGee.” Thank you for all the free publicity.
While they talked, the parade staging continued. Freddie kept one eye on Kate the whole time, and she didn’t look like she was doing too badly. She and Pumpkin sat on the tractor while children, band members, and others waiting for the parade to start took turns climbing up and posing for pictures with them. Thank goodness no one stayed close to her for very long, and the pictures were taken looking up from the ground, so not too close to tell it wasn’t the real Brenda Lee. Pumpkin, of course, was a professional at all this. And Kate did alright, though he could imagine that horrible accent every time he saw her bright red lips move.
Just one day. Things would come out alright if they could get through just this one more day.
Finally, at five after noon, the parade began. Orange and white fairy lights draped across the lead float where Kate rode. Freddie detached himself from McGee and followed along the sidewalk behind the onlookers, keeping level with Kate and Pumpkin’s float as it moved down Main Street. He wasn’t alone long.
“Hello there, you’re here for the festival, yes?” A middle-aged woman had joined Freddie as he made his way through the crowded sidewalk.
Freddie didn’t stop, since the parade still moved forward, but a quick glance told him this was an eager, chatty type. “That’s right,” Freddie said with a tone that he hoped was as discouraging as it was friendly.
But the woman kept up with him. “I’m Mrs. Lindgren. My husband is the former mayor; you may have heard of him,” the woman said all in a rush. He was walking fast enough that she sounded out of breath, but she managed to keep up. Too bad. “Didn’t I see you walking with Brenda Lee Mitford last night? You two looked pretty friendly. I told my husband, ‘I bet that’s Brenda Lee’s husband walking beside her, taking care of the dog.’ I’m right, aren’t I? You’re her husband.”
Freddie rolled his eyes. No use talking long to someone who wasn’t a reporter or festival organizer, not unless it was a photo op. The crowd kept him from walking any faster or he’d shake her off completely. “Nope, not her husband, ma’am,” he said over his shoulder, just as his phone buzzed. A call from Brenda Lee.
“Not her husband?” The woman’s voice dripped thickly with suspicion. “Special friend, then? Because I know she has a husband.”
Sheesh, squash those rumors now! More cheerfully, he told her, “No, ma’am. In fact, I’m just getting a call now from her ... her husband. We’re good friends, Brenda Lee’s husband and me. Hello?” he said into the phone.
With the crowd noise and music from the marching band not far behind Kate’s float, the real Brenda Lee’s voice came across as tinny and barely audible. “Freddie? Where are you? Why does it sound noisier there than here in Vegas?”
“It’s the parade. That—uh—substitution I told you about? It’s happening. Going not too badly.”
“She’s doing a good me? Not making me look like a loon, I hope.”
“Nope, not a loon.”
Kate threw a kiss at the audience. Maybe a little over the top, but not a loon.
“What’s the situation where you are?”
“Getting closer,” she said, but then he couldn’t hear anything else, only garbled echoes. Up on her float, Kate waved at the crow
d with one hand and kept hold of Pumpkin’s leash with the other. Kate wasn’t blowing her cover, anyway.
He stepped carefully around a couple of folding chairs set up right in the middle of the sidewalk. “Say that again?” he said loudly into the phone, but that woman behind him must have thought he was talking to her.
“I said, I wonder that her husband would send her all the way to Harvest Ranch with such a handsome man. Do they have one of those open marriages?” she asked, and Freddie’s irritation came out in a low growl.
“Come on!” he said a little too loudly at the woman, losing his patience. When someone in the crowd screamed, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.
Somehow, up on the float, Pumpkin had heard him. He’d said come, and come she did. She leapt over the float’s nearest stack of pumpkins and was pulling to get off the flatbed truck and over to Freddie. A messy enough sight that he’d consider it a big publicity flub, if it weren’t for the fact that Kate still held on tightly to the leash. Any second now, she’d be pulled face-first onto the pavement.
Freddie’s stomach dropped to his feet. Kate was about to be seriously hurt. He shoved his phone in his pocket and did the only thing he could do.
“Look out!” he yelled to the people in front of him, who thankfully were seated on a blanket low to the ground and ducked when he leapt over their heads. He nearly tripped and was ready to do another rolling save but stumbled out of it, reaching the float just as Pumpkin won the tug-of-war and dove off the float, taking Kate with her.
For a moment, everything moved in slow motion: Pumpkin flying off the float, Kate vertical in midair, her red-lipsticked mouth open in shock and her eyes glazing over as she realized what was about to happen. Something passed over Freddie’s heart in that split second, something that told him to do anything necessary to protect Kate, anything at all.
He didn’t think he was going to reach her in time until she was already in his arms. Somehow, by some miracle, he had her. He fell backward onto the street, cradling her to his chest. It wasn’t his most graceful landing, but he curled around her and soon rolled to a seated stop. He hadn’t caught his breath yet before he exhaled, “Kate! Are you alright?”
Fistfuls of his shirt balled up in Kate’s hands. Otherwise, all he could see was the top of her red wig, which somehow hadn’t come off. He couldn’t tell yet if she was hurt, and he was trying to free one of his hands to tip her face toward him when she turned her head. Her skin had gone sheet white, and he suddenly noticed how delicate she was, how very breakable. Her velvety brown eyes, surrounded by the clownish fake eyelashes, clung to his, wide with fear and brimmed with tears. Her lips parted, but she didn’t make a sound. And inside Freddie, his heart spoke to him again, and this time he listened carefully.
This woman, who really was lovely no matter how much he mocked her dress style—who, frankly, he was using to help cover up a publicity nightmare—touched him. He remembered how her lips had held soft amusement when he’d gone the wrong way through the inn’s revolving door, and how her eyebrows had dipped, smiling at herself, when she’d done something silly. And how far she was willing to go out of her comfort zone to help give her parents’ inn a little boost, and to help him, a stranger. This wasn’t an ordinary woman, and he wanted her to be okay.
“Are you hurt?” he asked again, softer.
The fear on her face dissolved, and she bit her lip. “You saved me. Thank you.”
He chuckled, pushing his new feelings slightly to the side but not completely away. “I wouldn’t have had to save you if you’d just let go of the leash.”
She released one of the hands holding tight to his shirt and showed him: the leash was tied on to her wrist. That self-deprecating, apologetic, but still a bit sassy smile altered her face and pierced his heart again like someone had shoved a hot poker there. “I was afraid she’d try to run away.”
He burst out laughing, though whether out of relief or giddiness over the way he felt when she looked at him that way, he really couldn’t say.
***
Kate had never been so embarrassed in all her life. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There was that time when that white-haired British actress, dame something or other, had come into the spa nail salon where Kate was working to fix a broken chair, but she was so starstruck that she told the woman to have a seat—in the broken chair. That was the fastest she was ever fired from a job and booted out the door.
But it was humiliating to be dragged off the Harvest Festival parade’s grand marshal float by a dog, and nearly detrimental to her years spent with braces on her teeth. But Freddie catching her was ... something else. Something else entirely, and she couldn’t describe it as unpleasant.
“Thanks for the ride back,” Freddie told old Mr. Copely through the open car window, waving as the retired history professor drove away from the inn. “That was a seriously long parade.”
“It always is,” Kate sighed. “Nice of them to feed us dinner again, though.”
“And introduce us to every former committee member in the history of your town.”
“It’s been a long day,” Kate agreed, looking up at the street view of her inn. Her near-painful experience today made her look at the inn with fresh eyes. Funny how time had changed the once bright exterior to a peeling, faded façade. Through the glass doors, she could see Virgil at the desk. Even though she couldn’t see what he looked at so intently, she knew it would be his laptop and his decade-long attempt at the great American novel. Nice that some things didn’t change.
Freddie took a spot by her side, his arm brushing hers, and a shiver of awareness rushed through her. Ever since he’d saved her from faceplanting on the pavement, she’d seen him in a different light. Partly because he’d put himself in harm’s way to help her, but it was more than that. There was something else between them now, something special that hung in every look they shared.
“Wow. This place looks even better at night,” he wisecracked, looking up at the fluorescent “Cornucopia” sign above the door. “Just like a biker bar.”
Yes, something new, and tender. Not that he didn’t still despise her inn, which she loved all the same, thank you very much, but that special something was there nonetheless. “All the better to find on a lonely dark night,” she quipped in as positive a tone as she could manage, which was pretty positive. She was feeling pretty good.
He shook his head and began to walk through the revolving door, but Kate touched his arm at the same time Pumpkin whined. Freddie looked at them both, the nighttime lighting making his dark eyebrows look even more pronounced and debonair. His eyebrow cocked when he realized why she stopped him.
“Dogs don’t like revolving doors,” he said with a sigh. “Right. Come on, then, let’s go through the alley.”
“Thanks again for catching me today,” Kate told him as they meandered along the sidewalk.
Passing along the corner, she inhaled deeply. The festival grounds were only a block away, and she could already smell the churros, her favorite autumn scent. She could hear music and see the Ferris wheel from here. They’d spent the afternoon at the old grange hall at the former committee members meeting, but tomorrow she promised herself she’d make it over to the heart of the festival, and that promise filled her. Her heart swelled with the beauty of the moment, her beloved Cornucopia Inn, and walking with a handsome man—a heady combination.
“Well, I had to catch you, didn’t I?” He made light of it, but his voice was softer than when he’d truly been dismissive of her. The difference settled into her as pleasantly as the cinnamon-sugar air. “I had my client to think about. If you’d hit the floor and your teeth had all been knocked out, you’d have to have called your family dentist, and he would have seen who you really are, and the whole thing would have been blown.”
“True.” She followed along with his lighthearted reasoning. “Although I probably would have also broken my nose, so maybe Dr. Rachet wouldn’t recognize me. That might have kept my ide
ntity a secret.”
He scrutinized her nose, which she’d always assumed was a reasonably acceptable nose, and made a face. “If your dentist didn’t recognize you, surely your plastic surgeon would have.”
“My ... I’ll have you know I do not have a plastic surgeon.”
“No? I would have thought for sure you’d have one.”
“No, sorry to burst your bubble,” she teased, “but altering a perfectly good nose is not a Harvest Ranch practice. Maybe it happens in New York, but here we know a good thing when we see it.”
He let that drop, which she took as a win, though the prolonged look he gave her left the air between them charged. Or was she just getting caught up in the moment?
“I probably would have tried to catch you anyway,” he said. “After all, if you’d landed on your head your wig would have come off, and that would be the worse outcome of all.”
“Truly horrible thought,” she agreed in earnest. “At least Brenda Lee’s identity is protected.”
“It is.”
They turned down the dark alley. One section in the middle that was pitch black, but you could still see the outline of the largest overhanging branch, the edges illuminated by the fountain lights ahead. She and Freddie ducked at the same time to avoid walking into it.
They walked around the corner, and it struck her just how magical the courtyard was. The trees in their autumn glory glowed from beneath, making it feel like the whole place was in a golden canopy. Strings of orange lights sparkled off the water, and the sound of the bubbling fountain captivated Kate as they both stood watching it for a moment. This place could really be so beautiful at times. Surely it was worth saving.
Freddie finally cleared his throat and pointed at cabin seven. “This is me. Do you live in one of the cabins, then?”
Funny, she hadn’t noticed the awkward shyness between them until she heard it in his voice. Pinpoints of electricity tingled her skin. She pointed back at the lobby. “Our residence is in the main building, that end behind the desk.”