“You don’t have to,” Elda said.
“Sure he does.” Holly went over to the candy table and surveyed what was left—Bottle Caps and Runts and orange slices and jelly beans. She listened as the sound of Danny’s crutches faded into the distance. Holly had a showstopper to build—for the win, for her grandmother, for herself and her pride. She was letting Elda have the guy, but she didn’t need to give her everything.
Chapter Nine
Wednesday, December 20
Danny took a few deep breaths as he organized the gingerbread house materials on the table in front of him. The second round of the competition was due to start at Mags’s Diner any minute. The place was currently closed for business, open only to those who wanted to watch people build gingerbread houses for one hundred and twenty minutes. Tables had been spread around the room with space for two teams at each one.
Holly was across from him, sharing his table. Just Holly. Elda hadn’t been able to make it. Her family needed her help with some plumbing emergency in her grandma’s house.
“Good luck today,” he said. Holly, too, surveyed the materials in front of her. Their task for the second round was to build a traditional, four-walled gingerbread house. It seemed simple, but sometimes the simplest things were the easiest to screw up, and Holly was no gingerbread expert. “If you need any help—”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “I built, like, four of these in the garage last night.”
“Okay, but still. Those kits weren’t all that great—”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, never even looking at him once.
Danny felt like he’d been slapped. He thought he’d made some headway with Holly the past few days. She’d started looking at him less like an annoying bug she wanted to kill and more like a helpful bug she’d let live in her garden. But now he was getting the murderous vibes again, which seemed to have resumed right after he’d asked Elda out. He hadn’t meant to cause any drama. Plus, he’d assumed Holly was okay with her cousin dating him. She’d put Elda’s number in his phone after all.
His upcoming date with Elda was giving him hives. He grabbed his pencil from behind his ear and scratched as deep into his cast as he could. They were so good together on the phone, but in person deafening silence took over. When Holly left the two of them alone in the garage yesterday, they literally sat in silence until Danny finally handed Elda the architecture book. And it wasn’t charged, sexual tension-filled silence. It was just silence.
“Shoot!” Danny nearly fell off his chair. His cast had just devoured another pencil tip. He probably had five of them in there now.
“You okay?” Holly’s glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose, and she glowered over them like a stern schoolteacher. The way her brow dipped down to a vee between her thick, perfectly arched eyebrows was a thing of beauty, which was a dumb thing for him to think, because this girl obviously thought he was annoying. Why couldn’t his brain transmit that information to the rest of his body?
“Fine.” He held up his pointless pencil. “Broke another one.”
Holly plucked a pen from her purse and handed it to him. “Merry Christmas.” The hint of a smile on her face faded almost immediately, but Danny had caught it.
Grinning, he looked at the pen she’d given him. It was from Purdue University. “Is this where you’re going—?”
He was cut off as the mayor tapped on his microphone to announce the start of the second round. After Mayor Sandoval finished his spiel, he pressed play on his favorite Christmas mix, which was just hour upon hour of Mannheim Steamroller working itself into a frenzy. As if Holly’s presence hadn’t caused Danny enough disturbance, the music put him on edge almost immediately. He glanced at Holly. She had pushed up the sleeves on her sweater and flipped her glasses on top of her head to appraise each piece of gingerbread, checking sizes and angles.
“Maybe you’re better at this than you let on,” Danny said. People always talked to their tablemates during this round of the competition. They had two hours. What were they going to do? Stand there listening to Mannheim Steamroller eviscerate “Carol of the Bells” for one hundred and twenty minutes?
“Building gingerbread houses?” Holly ran a finger across the edges of one gingerbread rectangle. “Not really, no. Like I said, I practiced a bunch last night.”
Danny examined his own gingerbread. Usually focus wasn’t an issue for him, but today he struggled. He drew in a deep breath and counted to three, running through all the steps in his gingerbread house building plans—erect the walls, let them dry, pipe the windows and doors—
“And I…I’m a sculptor,” Holly said, after a moment.
Okay, so, maybe they weren’t going to sit here in silence for two hours. Danny didn’t know how to respond to this tiny fissure in her aloof facade. It was the first concrete bit of information she’d told him about herself. And it was impressive, the fact that she was a sculptor. It was something different, unique. “Are you going to study art in college?” He waved the Purdue pen at her.
She shook her head, glancing up. Since her glasses were out of the picture, Danny could see that her eyes were brown, like Elda’s, but with flecks of green and yellow that added depth. She’d painted her eyelids a bright orchid, which contrasted all the colors in her irises. “No,” she said. “I’m too practical for that. And I want to make money. Sorry. I know that’s not the sexy answer.” She grinned at him, for real, like she didn’t totally despise him.
“So what’s the practical thing you’re going to study?”
“Ar—” She clamped her mouth shut, and something resembling panic filled her eyes. But she recovered quickly, erasing all memory of that smile from her face. “Management,” she said.
Danny pointed to his own cheek. A spot of icing had landed right by Holly’s nose. She wiped at it but missed.
“May I?” Danny asked. The day the Page girls first came in to Santabucks, Elda’d had a spot of chocolate on her face, and it hadn’t occurred to him to tell her to wipe it off, let alone offer to remove it for her. But all he wanted right now was any flimsy excuse to touch Holly.