style="font-size:15px;"> “Your car?”
“Yeah, I parked my car here,” he pointed to an empty space in front of Town Hall, “earlier today and now it’s gone. It’s a rental.”
“It got towed, then.”
“Towed?”
“We don’t allow cars in town during the festival. It ruins the illusion.”
Kate almost laughed as she said it, but quelled the urge to do so by crossing her shivering arms over her chest. Everyone with half a brain knew no cars could come into town during the festival. It was on every brochure and article ever written about their little Christmas town; plus, the Martins made a tidy penny renting out their field as a parking lot during the winter. Yet another source of income they’d lose if this guy managed to go through with his plan.
“You should be thanking me, then. I’m modernizing the place already.” His tone managed to be smug even as she wondered if the slight shrink of his shoulders meant he may not entirely believe that. “Who do I call about getting it back?”
What arrogance! She’d come out here to give him a piece of her mind and he had the audacity to ask her about his car?
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere until you give us some answers.”
“With all due respect, I don’t owe you answers.”
“Oh, really?”
“For my years of service focusing on profitable divisions of his business, my uncle left me the company and I’m doing my best to protect his legacy.”
“His legacy? Look around you! This is his legacy!”
She said is when she supposed she should have said was. Though, in Kate’s estimation, a man’s legacy didn’t die with him; it was a living, growing thing that outlasted him and stretched as long as other people cultivated it. Mr. Woodward would only really die if they let this festival die with him. It was yet another reason Kate continued to fight even when this arrogant jerk couldn’t stop staring down the bridge of his nose at her like she was no more than a receipt stuck to the bottom of his shoes.
“This festival isn’t profitable.”
“Maybe not in money, but—”
“What other kind of profit is there?”
Kate opened her mouth and closed it twice, not because she didn’t know the answer to his question, but because she knew it wouldn’t move him. He was a numbers and cents guy. Telling him what the festival lost in funds it more than made up for in revival of the human spirit probably wasn’t going to do anything other than make her out to be some silly, sentimental woman.
Which she was. But she just didn’t want him thinking it.
“No?” he asked. If she were the fighting type, she might have punched that smug, condescending smirk of victory off of his face, but she refrained. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now, tell me who I call about the car.”
“I could.” Rather than violence, Kate decided to deal in bitingly sweet sarcasm. “But I have to do what’s best for my town, just like you have to do what’s best for your company. And I don’t think it’s good for us to have a lunatic like you out on the road.”
“If I hear you out, will you give me the number?”
She’d meant her quip about him driving around town as a joke, but he responded as though they were finally speaking the same language: the language of transaction. In some ways, Kate had to admire him for that. He was as single-minded in his determination as she was; they shared a sincere faith in the rightness of their cause. Sure, he couldn’t have been more wrong, but at least he believed in something, even if it was just the power and importance of money. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I’ll consider it.”
“Then I’m listening, Miss…?”
“Kate.”
“Kate.”
It must have been a strong, random winter wind sending chills through her body; it couldn’t have been the almost tender way he said her name. She coughed and tightened her arms across her chest, hoping the pressure would stop the sensation.
“What should I call you? Scrooge McDuck, or…?”
To her surprise, he laughed. It wasn’t an evil movie villain laugh or anything, just a nice chuckle with a warm ring to it. She dismissed how much she liked it as a fluke. Even cold, unfeeling statues sometimes look almost human in the right lighting.
“You can call me Clark.”
Kate didn’t repeat his name as he did hers. It somehow felt wrong to call him by his first name; she felt more comfortable calling her former high school teachers by their first names than she did calling him Clark. It was such a wholesome, all-American kind of name. Clark Kent. Clark Gable. Clark Woodward wasn’t the correct third for that trio.
“Listen.” All of Kate’s strength went into fueling her empathy for this man. Focusing on her friends and family would just leave her angry and bitter; focusing on him would give her a much better shot. Most men liked an appeal to vanity. Maybe it would work on him. “I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. But your Uncle Christopher was a good man. He believed in this town. I mean, your family basically built this place. The library is named after you. The school auditorium. The football field. The gazebo in the park, for goodness’ sake. It’s all yours. You can do whatever you want with it—”
“Great. You understand where I’m coming from.”
“No. I mean, yes, but you don’t understand where I’m coming from.” He raised an eyebrow, which she took as a sign to continue. “You have a town full of people who stare at your name every day with hope. And gratitude. Are you going to betray all of these people? Take away their livelihoods?”
“I don’t know any of these people. I don’t care about any of these people.”
Those two statements landed on Kate’s jaw like a string of one-two punches. What kind of man just…didn’t care?
“If they want jobs, they can herd cattle like the rest of my employees, but I can’t waste money on this Christmas foolishness for another day.”
“But your uncle—”
“I am not my uncle!”
It was a roar, a statement to the heavens; the force of it almost knocked Kate back a step. Somehow, she managed to hold her ground even as she couldn’t quite understand the nerve she’d struck. Everyone wanted to be Mr. Woodward; he was as kind as he was insanely rich. The perfect combination. What kind of man hated a man like that?
“Clearly.”
The sharp flash of emotion dissolved as quickly as it appeared. Clark straightened his jacket.
“I think I’ve heard enough. You can go ahead and give me that phone number now.”
“One
