Emmy, trying to quash the rabbit’s indignation, promised, “You can pet my bunny later.”
They were both silent for a moment.
Karl’s lower lip quivered and he bit it, eyes watering as he tried not to laugh, but then it burst from him. He sat on the bed, pulling Emmy close so he could hide his face against her stomach and howl with laughter. “I’m sorry!” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, it just sounds so innuendo-y!”
Emmy sighed dramatically. “Yes, I know. There’s just no way around it.”
Her attempt at sounding long-suffering apparently worked, because Karl’s laughter redoubled. He was still chortling when they went downstairs, and started laughing again when Emmy transformed into a rabbit and hopped up into his arms. He kissed the furry top of her head and said, “Oh, I love you,” just as he walked out the door with her.
Emmy squeaked and nearly fell out of his arms, despite the fact that he had her in a completely solid grip. That wasn’t fair! He couldn’t go around saying things like that when she was stuck as a rabbit, unable to shift because she was in public! She squeaked again, genuinely huffy, and Karl’s eyes widened like he’d only just realized what he’d said.
“Oh dear. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drop that on you when you can’t talk. But I’m not taking it back, either. You’re perfect, Emmy, and I really do love you even if we’ve only known each other two days, and I promise to shut up now so we can talk about this later. Also you are so soft.” He nuzzled her head again, and Emmy’s rabbit—and therefore herself—flattened its ears happily.
It’s fine, her rabbit told her.You can use words later. Right now…
Right now it pressed her head hard against Karl’s chest, as close to a hug as a rabbit in someone’s arms could offer, and her mate squeezed her back very gently. Emmy’s entire soul seemed to goawwwwwwat the embrace, and she was suddenly content, even happy, to be carried out across the green to the Easter egg hunt.
CHAPTER14
Karl was right. No one really noticedwherehe’d come from, when he arrived carrying a thirty-pound fluffy bunny in his arms. A good thing, too: there were hundreds of people gathered in the square. Not all of them had kids with them, either. A lot of them were adults of all ages, many decked out in their Easter Sunday best, who had clearly come to enjoy watching the kids engage in the town Easter egg hunt. The streets had been blocked off, making it clear that the hunt would take place all over the surrounding storefronts as well as the square.
Something funny happened to his heart, a quick unexpected twist. Virtue was nothing like he’d imagined, but he effortlessly understood why Emmy loved it so much. They clearly worked toward making it a vital, community-oriented town, with activities meant to bring everyone together as often as possible. The giant bunnies, chicks, eggs, and smaller baskets scattered around the enormous town square had children dancing in front of them impatiently, obviously waiting for the hunt to begin. Several of them had parents who were acting like blinders, holding their hands to the sides of their kids’ faces so they couldn’t look around and get a head start. Most of those kept ending up in little bouts of chasing each other back and forth, laughter pealing across the square.
It couldn’t, Karl thought, have been a more perfect morning, all light blue skies and warm sunshine to make the egg hunt as much fun as possible. And he was carrying the Easter bunny, which brought a whole horde of children running his way, shrieking and squealing with excitement. They ranged from itty bitties just barely able to walk to kids in the low double digits. One of the smaller ones, a girl of four or five, gasped, “Is that therealEaster Bunny?” as Karl carefully knelt to put Emmy on the ground.
“What do you think?” he asked the girl. He was a little worried about Emmy, surrounded by so many kids, but she sat on her haunches, which made her as tall as many of them. They all surged back with cries of delight, surprise, and caution, and the girl who’d asked very tentatively reached a hand out to greet Emmy with.
She sniffed the girl’s hand and thumped a back leg. The girl’s eyes lit up and she threw herself at Karl for a completely unexpected hug. “It is! Itisthe real Easter Bunny, mister! Look! It sniffed me!”
Karl, smiling, put the girl on her feet. “I think you might be right. Why else would she be here, if she wasn’t the real Easter Bunny?”
One of the older kids gave him a knowing look, and Karl winked back at him. A few of the very tiny children shrieked and fell over as Emmy hopped around, greeting them all, but the older or more confident kids petted her fur and cooed over how soft and fluffy she was. Then Emmy sat up again with a brisk shake, and even the older kids fell back, eyes wide, like they understood she had to get down to business. They cleared a path to the tremendous Easter basket at the end of the square, and Emmy hopped toward it, her plushy tail high.
Donna, with an expression of enormous relief, opened a door in the basket as Emmy approached. The giant bunny bounced up a small set of stairs inside, and emerged at the top with an Easter basket held in her teeth. A shout went up around the square, and to Karl’s astonishment, the kids around him splintered away from him, suddenly no longer interested in the real live Easter bunny, but wholly dedicated to finding all the eggs and goodies that they could. He sidled over to Donna, whose smile was fixed in place as she popped her eyes at him. “What did youdo,” she hissed. “Emmy has never been less than an hour early for the egg hunt before! There’s usually time to take pictures!”
A rather vivid memory of what they’d done leaped to Karl’s mind and he was quite certain a blush rushed up his face. “We overslept,” he said in as small and dignified a voice as he could manage.
“Hah. I bet you did. Fine, just don’t do it again next year!”
Karl felt himself blushing even harder. “Yes, Deputy.”
“Oh, I like him,” Donna called up to Emmy. “He respects my authority.”
Emmy peered down over the edge of the Easter basket, her ears and nose twitching. Both Karl and Donna laughed before the deputy tilted her head. “You can climb up there with her, if you want. There’ll be kids around for pictures as soon as the little ones start to get tired of hunting, but you can take a minute. Get the lay of the land and everything.” Her eyebrows shot up. “Justthe lay of the land. There is no ‘if this basket is rocking, don’t come knocking’ here, you understand?”
“Oh my God. I promise I would never.” Karl ducked through the Easter basket’s door, testing the steps cautiously, but they seemed to be more than sufficient to hold his weight. He crawled up and found Emmy lying in the bottom of the basket, purely human. He could see several inches up her skirt to a delicious curve of thigh, and strongly reconsidered his promise to Donna before squirming to Emmy’s side so he could steal a kiss. “Is it dangerous for you to have shifted in the basket? What if someone’s watching from an upstairs window or something?”
“I thought I’d better risk it so I could say I love you too.” Emmy’s smile was bright and pure and beautiful, so beautiful Karl thought his heart might stop with it. “I can’t believe you dropped that on me when I was a bunny!”
“I didn’t mean to! It just came out! It’s okay?” he asked more quietly. “Even though we’ve only known each other a couple of days?”
“It’s perfect,” Emmy promised in a whisper. “That’s what fate is for. True love, eyes meeting, all of that storybook fairy tale stuff. It’s perfect.”
Karl stole another kiss and then, feeling amusingly bunny-like himself, rubbed his nose against Emmy’s. “There are about three hundred kids out there. Are they all going to come get pictures with you?”
“I’m afraid so. We don’t do official pictures since everybody’s got cameras on their phones, but there’s a donation box that goes to storing the decorations—”
“Iwonderedif you made them new every year or if there was a warehouse somewhere with alarmingly large Easter eggs in it year round!”
