reserves they were willing to sell. The statues were big, but not huge. One of them, the angel, had wings, so it required a much wider flask and a more intricate spruing structure.
“I’ll leave you with the key,” the man smiled wearily. Like us, he had the look of someone who’d been up late on Christmas Eve. “Lock up when you leave, and let me know how it goes.”
He looked at Brock, and the two men shook hands on the way out. “Give your father my regards,” the man said. “Happy holidays too, and all that jazz.”
“We’re grateful for this,” Brock told him. “Very grateful.”
“No worries,” the man smiled, waving back without looking as he left. “And good luck!”
Again I took stock of the room, which was absolutely cavernous. As big as it was though, I didn’t let it intimidate me. It was a lot like the place I worked in Buffalo, only on a much grander, more impressive scale.
“Alright,” Valerio cried, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “Let’s do this!”
I chuckled back at his boyish enthusiasm. “Take it easy,” I said. “There are a lot of steps.”
“So we can’t just fire up the furnace and chuck in some metal?” asked Kade.
I grinned back at him, thinking of the tears that had been in his eyes just yesterday evening. “No. It’s a bit more complex than that.”
So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours! I’d gone from being fired from my job and losing a big opportunity to sharing a very special Christmas Eve at Kade’s brother’s house. And then last night; the guys’ bomb-drop of a gift. I was practically crying afterward, and way too excited to sleep. Wanting nothing more than to get to Toronto as soon as possible, I spent the next five or six hours pouring and prepping a new wax figure to replace the one I’d broken back at work. They stayed up for as long as they could to keep me company, but one by one I watched as they dozed adorably off.
By six in the morning I was mixing plaster and curing a new flask, sprues, funnel and everything. By eight o’clock I was fast asleep in Kade’s arms, resting briefly as Brock and Valerio drove us across the New York-Canadian border and then through to Toronto. The city dawned big and beautiful, and uncharacteristically silent on Christmas morning. And while it was too early to check into our hotel, somehow Brock convinced the foundry’s owner to meet us down here and let us in, so we could at least get started on what I needed to do.
“If everything goes smooth I can finish one project today,” I said. “And then one tomorrow.”
“Sounds magical,” grunted Kade.
“Anything you need us to do,” said Brock.
The guys stood before me crossing their arms, waiting on my command. As I pushed the two oversized buttons that would fire up the induction furnace, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
“How about breakfast?” I said, even as my mind silently calculated the steps in the process. “And coffee?”
Valerio’s face lit up. “We could do that!”
“Good coffee,” I admonished him. “There are a lot of tea drinkers up here. They don’t take their coffee seriously enough. Keep that in mind.”
“We might have to settle,” Brock suggested. “Not many places are gonna be open. After all, it is Christmas.”
Looking down at the four-foot plaster-smeared box that would soon become a beautiful bronze statue, I stared back at them and grinned.
“The best Christmas ever, actually.”
Thirty-Seven
SLOANE
The view from the hotel wasn’t just nice, it was breathtaking. And the room wasn’t a room at all, but a multi-bedroom suite with a large central living space. We had our own kitchen, our own bar, our own everything we could possibly want. Only there were three bedrooms instead of four, so I’d be bed-hopping and taking turns with the boys.
I saw it as a fun little spin on them usually taking turns on me.
“We did good right?” asked Brock, pulling me to the window so I could look out over the waterfront and the lake beyond.
“Better than good,” I yawned tiredly. I smiled back at the others, dropping our bags just inside the door. “This is amazing.”
It was getting dark already. We’d finished casting my angel statue over an hour ago, and it had come out even more incredible than I thought it would. It still needed the sprues cut, and the seams sanded down and buffed out. I’d spend a few