Not one man. Not one shifter.
Three. Three, tall, hot, and gorgeous men. They were all in some pictures together, but the linked profiles had their individual pictures and profiles as well. I searched, but it never said what kind of shifters they were. All of them wore sweaters; that had to mean they lived somewhere cold, like me.
They loved to read and hike and camp.
They owned a toy factory? Interesting.
They were well-traveled, and I couldn’t name a country not on their list of places they’d been. Their ages varied, but all were near mine.
Did I mention they were some of the most handsome men I’d ever seen?
Oh, there it was. They were reindeer shifters. I didn’t even know reindeer shifters existed. Nothing about that bothered me. Instead, I found it interesting.
I needed to think about this. I forced myself to get up and do some chores and not touch the app for the rest of the day.
I’d wanted to delete the memories of last night and that app as soon as I got up, but now, seeing those men, well, maybe I was being too hasty.
If the app worked for Maria, maybe this was my chance at love.
I had a lot of thinking to do.
Something had to change. I felt like a flat, blank piece of paper lately. Nothing happening in my life. I moved through a cycle of work and boredom, always wishing for and hoping something would come along and snap me into the life I’d imagined I would have by now.
In the meantime, I was lonely and empty. Not because I expected someone else to fulfill me but because I craved friendship and companionship, the kind that came with the intimacy of having a lover. A best friend. Someone who saw all of me.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to find all of that on an app, not with the first match the algorithm put me with, right?
Chapter Four
Blitz
The second day we were home, we reopened the shop. As always. We were so deep in a rut, we didn’t see how we’d ever climb out. Day one, get the house organized. Day two, the toy factory. Out back of the house, we’d converted the old barn into our workplace. Although we weren’t technically in hiding like the North Pole, we did enjoy keeping the rural ambiance, so from the outside, the barn was just that.
But inside, we had created an entirely different ambiance from its former existence as a horse and cow barn or the toymaking facilities we’d observed up north. As Santa pointed out, there were modern applications for things, and while the North Pole was barely dipping in a toe, we prided ourselves on the most up-to-date equipment. And all the tech we could get our hands on. Another reason for the barn appearance—we were gone for two months a year, and despite the excellent security system, our laser cutters and 3D printers, among other things, were very valuable.
“Blitz, can you run the start-up sequence?” Comet, who ran the 3D printer most of the time, was sitting at a screen. “I’m downloading all the orders that came in while we were gone.”
“Oh, sure.” We all had training on everything, even if some of us were better with one thing or another. “How many orders are we talking?”
“Hundreds.” He tapped away at a keyboard. “Even though we inform everyone that we take our winter vacation in November and December, some of them don’t seem to believe it.”
“Most people can’t afford to take that long off. We couldn’t either.” Those were the hardest months of the year. “Let’s see if Iremember all of it.” I brought up a screen on my desk and began. “Is there anything in particular they want?”
“Video games, for one. They want me to design some custom ones again. After we did it last year, people got very excited.
“No wonder. I don’t know that there’s another way to get anything like them.” The first day was always like this. Getting back in the game, setting up the jobs.
Comet sent the orders to my device as well, and we discussed them. What we had, what we needed to order, when the customers needed the items. This early in the season, we weren’t really expecting much for Christmas. Although it was our biggest holiday, some of our clients were still trying to get something very last minute for Valentine’s Day or Easter. And, of course, toys we needed to fill the shelves of small shops all over the country and even beyond.
Dash arrived then and we went to work on dividing the tasks and setting up. As always, we chatted as we worked, about anything and everything. These were the kind of friends who were always fun to be with, and who would always have my back.
That was part of what made our business work as well. We were in a unique position with our part-time job at the North Pole, so it made perfect sense that we would do a job together the rest of the time. And we’d spent enough time around the elves to appreciate the joy that could come from toy making. Not that we were in competition. Nobody could compete with the magic infused in anything that came from Santa’s toy shop.
“Remember what it was like before he met the Mrs.?” Dash asked, watching the laser cut through steel like butter.
“I do.” We’d been there before they met. “Not always jolly. A good boss, but not nearly as happy as he is now.”
“Do you think we’d be nicer, jollier if we were to meet our mate?” Comet said. “Are we making things harder by wanting to share?”
