Tanya Michaels: Mistletoe Hero

“All right.” Seated on the couch, looking every bit the elementary school teacher with reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, Lilah tapped her pen on the clipboard she held. “Let’s look at the preparations, figure out where the gaping holes are and try to spackle them in.”

The repair metaphor made Arianne think of Gabe. And last night’s encounter. If she’d used a more subtle approach, might he have accepted her invitation? Not that it mattered-Ari didn’t do subtle.

Curled comfortably in a wicker-framed papasan chair that faced the huge back-wall window, fall festival cochair Quinn consulted her own clipboard. “Food is covered. Pete and Vonda and a few of their friends from the senior center are going to run the bingo tent for us. Vonda already went around town, getting people to donate prizes.”

Arianne laughed at that. “She probably terrorized them until they gave her whatever she wanted.” It was impossible to say no to the fiery seventysomething who, like Arianne and Quinn, had been a bridesmaid at Lilah’s wedding last winter. Arianne adored the elderly woman.

Lilah read from her list. “We have some kids from the high school taking care of music for us, and a lot of moms have volunteered this year. The difficult part will be organizing them all. The Kerrigans are setting up the tables and coordinating the judges for the jack-o-lantern contest. Brenna and Adam promised to be in charge of face-painting. Ari, can we put you down to work the kissing booth?”

“Sure, why not? It’s for a good cause.” Most of the guys in Mistletoe were harmless. They’d donate their dollar to the school and give her a quick peck before disappearing into the festival crowd to try their hand at a skill game or purchase food. The fact that Arianne had two looming brothers-who had apparently used up all the good height genes in her family-dissuaded any wiseacres from trying anything inappropriate at the booth.

Every year, Whiteberry Elementary, where both Quinn and Lilah taught, hosted a fall festival fundraiser. They held it downtown because the parking at the school itself was too limited, and local businesses helped sponsor the activities. Quinn and Lilah had agreed to cochair this year’s festival committee. They’d somehow dragged Arianne and their mutual friend Brenna Pierce along for the ride, although neither of them worked for the school or had kids enrolled there. Brenna, however, had been excused from this afternoon’s meeting. By Thanksgiving, her work schedule would be jam-packed with holiday pet-sitting, so she was taking advantage of a quiet few days now to go with her boyfriend to Tennessee and visit his three kids.

“Honestly,” Lilah said as she scanned her sheet, “we have the majority of it covered. But there are some minor construction and wiring issues we’ll need help with. I’ve already drafted Tanner. I wish we had more active dads in my class this year. The mothers are great help when it comes to the bake sale and signing up for story circle, but there aren’t many who are comfortable with power tools. Or capable of heavy lifting. We’re shorthanded on muscle this year, especially since the PE coach broke his arm last weekend.”

“I don’t know what he was thinking.” Quinn shook her head. “A man his age jumping at a skateboard park!”

Arianne pinned Quinn with a gaze. “Weren’t you supposed to be getting us more muscle, in the form of the cute new teacher Mr. Flannery?”

Quinn held up her hands. “I will, I swear. I just didn’t have the opportunity yet. He was out today with the stomach bug that’s been going around the classes.”

“Patrick Flannery?” Lilah grinned. “He is cute. Maybe you should take him some soup and well-wishes.”

“Nah,” Arianne said. “You can do the well-wishes over the phone without risking germs. Plus, if you ask him for a favor when he’s feverish, he may agree simply because he’s too delirious to come up with an excuse.”

“Machiavellian,” Quinn said with admiration. “I bet you can get a guy to agree to anything!”

“Not so. Just last night…” It occurred to Arianne that maybe she didn’t want to share the story of how Gabe Sloan had shot her down. Not because she was embarrassed-it wasn’t that big a deal-but because her friends might read too much into it. “Hey, why am I the only one without a clipboard here? I feel cheated.”

Lilah rolled her eyes at the non sequitur. “Fess up, Waide. We want the rest of the story.”

“I asked Gabe Sloan if he wanted to have dinner with me,” Ari admitted as casually as she could.

It was a good thing she had perspective on the matter. The same could not be said for her friends. Lilah’s eyes doubled in diameter, and Quinn flopped back in her chair so hard the wicker base wobbled.

“Gabriel Sloan!” they chorused. It was hard to tell whether they were appalled or delighted. They definitely weren’t nonchalant.

“Oh, fine.” Ari sighed. “Get it all out of your systems. Anyone want to gush about how dreamy he is? Someone prank dial him while I doodle our names together in a heart on my clipboard. Oh, wait, I don’t have one.”

Lilah reached down to smack Ari lightly on the back of the head. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were interested in him. Do your brothers know about this?”

Before Ari could explain that this had been a onetime invitation, not serious interest, Quinn protested, “It’s not like she kept it a secret. She’s been commenting since summer how sexy he is.”

“I do recall mentioning that a couple of times,” Arianne admitted. And who could blame her? No one in town disputed his quietly wicked appeal-it was part of the basis of the scandal. Although, personally, Arianne felt Shay Templeton was more than equally to blame. Few ever voiced that opinion, though. Probably out of respect for the dead.

“So why did he turn you down?” Lilah asked, dragging Arianne back to the present.

“Said something about my not being his type.”

The other two women looked outraged, talking over top of each other in their haste to stick up for her.

“But you’re-”

“A Waide! Everyone in this town-”

“Beautiful. I couldn’t get my hair to look like that-”

“-loves you. Who does he thinks he is?”

“Is he blind?”

Arianne giggled. “Well, thanks for the outpouring of support, but I wasn’t losing sleep over it. Maybe I’m really not his type. He’s entitled to feel that way.”

“Huh.” Quinn rocked back in her chair, thoughtful. “For a guy who looks like a walking magnet for any female with a pulse, I can’t remember the last time I heard he was dating anyone. What do you suppose his type is?”

They were all silent for a moment, and Arianne wondered if her friends were also thinking about Shay Templeton. God, she would have been about my age when she died . Arianne was sure that, at some point in her childhood, she’d seen the woman, but she’d never had real reason to take notice.

Ari looked at Lilah, the oldest of the three of them. “Do you think the story is true?”

Lilah shrugged. “Depends on which version you mean.”

The Templetons had been a wealthy, tempestuous couple, known for loud fights in the dining room of the country club. One valet reported stumbling across them while they passionately made up in their parked car. Mr. Templeton had been nearly forty, a decade and a half older than his wife, and devoted to the law firm in which he was partner. Gossip ran that whenever Shay got to feeling neglected, she would shower affection on a chosen young man, playing to Templeton’s one insecurity to provoke his jealous attention. But, as far as Arianne knew, none of the men she’d flirted with had been as young as sixteen-year-old lawn boy Gabe Sloan. One story had Gabe shooting Mr. Templeton in a jealous rage, with Shay falling down the curved staircase to her death as she and her lover tried to flee. Other citizens scoffed that Gabe wasn’t even at the house at the time the gunshot was reported. The end result remained the same-Shay Templeton had a broken neck and Mr. Templeton had been shot with his own revolver.