Chapter Ten

A few days later, Trudy sat in the library at the inn, watching Valerie Leighton lay out what looked like a thousand tubes of lipstick on her grandmother’s antique piecrust table. 

Trudy was already wearing a plain black dress and a glorious pair of knee-high, black leather boots that Valerie had brought over for her. 

The New Year’s Eve party at the community hall was tonight, and when she called Valerie to ask for a hand, the woman had practically flown to her side. 

Trudy had been hoping in the back of her mind that she would be attending with Ward Sullivan tonight, but that obviously wasn’t to be. She hadn’t heard a peep from him since the night of the festival. 

When she explained her situation, Valerie had assured her that if she couldn’t go with him, then the second-best thing would be to make him burn with jealousy, and that she was coming over immediately with supplies.

Valerie was the most fashionable person Trudy knew. She owned the jewelry store in Trinity Falls village, and lived in an apartment above it. She elevated the rural village like it was a Paris runway every time she decided to slink down the street for a coffee in one of her chic ensembles.

And now she was turning her skills on Trudy with a vengeance. It was Trudy’s good luck that they wore the same shoe size. 

“Let’s try Wicked Plum,” Valerie decided, sweeping up one of the lipsticks and facing Trudy. 

“Seems a little dark,” Trudy said weakly.

She had never worn much make-up. There was no point when she was running around the inn changing linens and leaning over a steaming pot of stew.

“It will bring out your hair,” Valerie said mysteriously.

Trudy didn’t fight her. The woman knew what she was doing. Though her hair was certainly not plum-colored.

Also, she could definitely wipe it off the moment Valerie was gone.

“So he took you out, showed you an amazing day, walked you to the door, stared at you, and then didn’t make a move?” Valerie asked as she applied the lipstick to Trudy’s mouth.

“Uh-huh,” Trudy replied, feeling a bit like when she was at the dentist’s office and they started asking her about business as soon as they had a handful of cleaning equipment in her mouth.

“Whoa, Trudy,” Chad said, walking into the room with a slight limp. “Look at you. Hey, Valerie.”

His voice softened around the jeweler’s name, and Trudy glanced over to see Chad gazing at Valerie in dazed way. 

It would almost have been comical if Trudy wasn’t so very fond of Chad, and so very certain that Valerie would never reciprocate his interest. 

Chad was kind-hearted, talkative, enthusiastic as a puppy, and wore his feelings on his sleeve. He was handsome, but in the rumpled, careless way Trudy associated with surfers in the movies.

On the other hand, Valerie was reserved to the point of almost seeming cold, until you got to know her. Her personal style matched her speech - crisp and minimalistic, with an edge to it.

​Trudy couldn’t imagine two more opposite people in all of Trinity Falls.

“There,” Valerie said suddenly, leaning back and smiling at her work like a cat looking at a bowl of cream.

“Looking sharp, Trudy,” Chad said, letting out a low whistle. 

She gave him a smile. Trading in the crutches for a boot had lifted his spirits, maybe that’s all it was and it had nothing to do with her fashionable young friend.

“Can I see now?” Trudy asked Valerie. 

“Not yet,” Valerie told her. “There’s just one more thing." 

She dug into her carpetbag and fished out a shimmering sheer scarf that reflected the firelight in all the colors of the rainbow. 

“Stand,” Valerie said in the tone of a drill sergeant.

Trudy leapt to her feet automatically at that tone of authority. 
She tried to hold still as Valerie lifted her hair to drape the scarf over her shoulders. 

When she had it where she wanted it, Valerie pinned the scarf in place with an antique-looking silver brooch shaped like a horse with a tiny green gem for its eye. 

“There,” Valerie said, looking Trudy over with as much satisfaction as if she had just given birth to her. “Now you can look.”

“I’ll just pop upstairs,” Trudy said. “I have a full length mirror on my closet door.”

She trotted up, bracing herself to hate her new look. 

There was nothing worse than trying too hard, in her book. It was better just to be yourself.

But somehow, when she opened the closet door, she was surprised and pleased at what she saw. 

The dress and boots were sleek and sophisticated, but the beautiful shimmering scarf with the little horse pin made Trudy feel like herself, but fancier. 

The lipstick actually wasn’t bad, and though she still couldn’t imagine how it would bring out her hair, she didn’t care. 

Humming to herself, she headed down the stairs and walked back toward the library.

She stopped just before entering though, because she could hear Chad and Valerie talking heatedly.

“I’m telling you, he’s a good guy,” Chad said. “He’s a gentleman. He just doesn’t want to push.”

“And I’m telling you that if a man is interested in a woman, the gentlemanly thing to do is to tell her so, or take some action,” Valerie lobbed back. “Not wait until the stars are in alignment or the universe gives him some stupid sign.”

“You can’t just kiss someone out of nowhere,” Chad said. 

“Why on earth not?” Valerie demanded.

Feeling like she might be overhearing something more than just an argument about her own love life, Trudy hurried in. 

“Thank you, Valerie,” she said. “I can’t believe what you’ve done with me.”

“I started with good raw materials,” Valerie shrugged, in what Trudy realized suddenly was a lovely compliment. “Ready to get this show on the road?”

“Very ready,” Trudy told her. “Chad, you don’t mind holding down the fort one last time?”

“What fort?” he asked. “These guests don’t even need us.”

He looked so downcast that she had to laugh.

“Don’t worry, love,” she told him. “We’ll have demanding guests in here in two days and you’ll forget all about this boring week.”

“Knock ‘em dead, Trudy,” he told her with a warm smile. 

She darted over and pecked his cheek before joining Valerie at the door. 

​“Don’t wait up,” Valerie quipped over her shoulder as they headed out into the cold, clear night.

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