Fucking ridiculous name.
“You coming in or what?” a voice asked as it moved past me, feet crunching in the snow that had accumulated over the shoveled parking lot.
The older man’s arms were full of unwrapped toys as he made his way to the door, pausing to shoot a frustrated look over his shoulder at me until I ambled forward and pulled it open for him.
I moved in after him, expecting a blast of warm air, but it was almost as cold inside as it was out.
The door closed, and a shower of icicles crashed down outside.
The inside of the building was as bleak as the outside—exposed brick walls, dirty windows, and paint-and-oil-splattered floors from whatever this place had been before the charity took it over.
Wind whistled in from a busted window, and a woman stood just below it, trying to wrap a present with gloved hands, making the tape keep getting stuck to the material until she was leaning her head back and sighing at the ceiling.
The place wasn’t as packed as I thought it might be, considering it was right in the heat of the holiday season.
The economy was in a sticky spot. I guess people were tighter with their donations than usual.
Across from the gift-wrapping station was another long table. This one was lined with folding chairs. All but one was occupied by volunteers still in their jackets, hats, and gloves. In front of each of them were stacks of notebooks and steaming cups of coffee. Each of them had a phone pressed to their ears, begging strangers for cash.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
But it was kind of bleak.
How the hell would the truck be full enough to hide our merchandise?
I was about to turn around, haul my ass back to Lorenzo’s place, and tell him that we were just gonna have to figure out another way of getting our shit into the city, when an internal door burst open.
And there she was.
In a hideous fucking oversized red, green, and white chunky sweater with elbow pads. It was clearly meant for a man, and it swam on her tall, thin frame. She had it paired with a pair of green corduroy wide-leg pants that she had cinched tight with a black belt.
It wasn’t her weird-ass fashion choices that made me decide to hang around a little longer. Nah, that was all about her face.
She was gorgeous, almost pixie-like, with wind-blown black hair that fell just below her sharp jaw. Her high cheekbones were flushed from the cold, and there was a cute-as-fuck smattering of freckles over her nose.
From a distance, it was hard to be sure of the exact color, but she seemed to have dark eyes framed in thick lashes.
It didn’t look like she had a speck of makeup on, but she was still pretty enough to be a kick to the gut.
“How’s it going?” she asked the people at the table as she hugged a clipboard to her chest.
Damn, that voice.
It had a husky edge to it that gave me all sorts of ideas about what it would sound like in my ear with her body under mine, with her arms and legs wrapped…
Christ.
No.
“I got five grand out of that doctor,” one of the women said. “But only because I laid on the guilt thick.”
“Hey, whatever works,” the woman said, reaching for her clipboard to jot something down. “That’s two hundred more kids with a Christmas present. Good job.”
She checked in with the other people on the phone and stopped to compliment the wrappers before her gaze finally landed on me.
“Oh, hey,” she said, putting on a customer service smile as she walked closer. “Are you here to donate toys?”
“Nah. To, uh, volunteer.”
