He hastily redirected the whole conversation: “What do you think of my surprise?”
The reindeer looked at Mira with mournful eyes. They seemed to be asking her,Can you believe the position we’re in here? We’re supposed to be somewhere withrealsnow.
“I ... like them,” Mira said, deciding that she needed to ease her way into this with a little diplomacy. “Very seasonal.”
Marsh preened. “They’re the last touch the Christmas Village needed to really become a masterpiece.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“They’ll be on display through tomorrow and Christmas Eve,” Marsh said, like that was enough of an answer.
“Right, but ... they might not want to just stand around? And the kids might bother them.”
She had hoped that her initial flattery, as admittedly halfhearted as it had been, might grease the wheels a little and make Marsh more inclined to listen to her. But she’d been wrong. The second she wasn’t saying what he wanted to hear, his whole expression turned sour. It was the expression of a guy who felt that his genius was going tragically underappreciated.
“Well,” he said crisply, “you elves will just have to make sure that doesn’t happen. You’ll have to find some way to distract the children, or show them how to interact with the reindeer in a safe way. You’ll figure it out.”
He tugged at the reindeer’s halters, getting ready to lead them away. Either he had an improvised pen set up out of sight, or he was just going to tether them somewhere in the plaza and hope for the best.
Mira didn’t know what to do besides follow him.
“Are you going to want Wade to interact with them?”
“Our Santa?” Marsh gave a disdainful chuckle, but it turned out that he was laughing at the idea of Wade being Santa and not, unfortunately, at the idea of Santa teaming up with his reindeer. “Of course. He can pose with them for pictures.”
It would sound weird to say that Wade wasn’t sure the reindeer would like him, since Marsh would just say there was no reason they wouldn’t. And under normal, non-shifter circumstances, that would even be true. She had to come up with something better than that.
“There’s a problem, though,” she said, trying to buy for time. The impatient look on Marsh’s face said she wouldn’t get too much of it. Luckily, an idea suddenly clicked into place. “Wade ... has a phobia. About reindeer.”
Marsh treated her to a flat, unimpressed stare. “He has a phobia about reindeer.”
“It’s a real thing!” Mira said, keeping her fingers crossed that that was actually true. “Obviously, it doesn’t come up a lot when you live in California, but—now it has. He’s really, really nervous about having them here.”
“Well, he’ll just have to get over that.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy.”
“It’s going tohaveto be that easy,” Marsh said, trudging further into the shadows and leading the reindeer with them.
Mira reluctantly trailed along, which at least meant that she finally saw where he was going. Hedidhave an enclosure set up for them ... sort of. He was going to put them in what usually served as the toddler’s enclosed play area. That wouldn’t create problems or disappoint the littlest of the kids at all!
“You can help him,” Marsh continued. “I can tell you two love to spend time together when you’re supposed to be working, so you are now officially in charge of making sure nothing goes wrong with these reindeer over the next two days. Your bonus depends on it.”
Mira bit back a sigh. Not for the first time, she wondered if it would make any difference if she told Marshwhyshe needed the money so badly. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so hard on her?
But even if she had only been sticking it out in this job for a little extra spending money, purely for kicks, Marsh’s willingness to vent his frustration on her would still have sucked, and it would still have been unfair. And she didn’t exactly want to spill her guts to someone like that.
So instead, she just sighed.
“I’ll do what I can to keep things in order,” she said, resigned to her fate. “But you know I’m not a professional reindeer wrangler.”
“I’m sure you’ll do your best.”
The subtext there was clear:Because your job depends on it.
Mira gritted her teeth. Two more days. No, it was really only one and a half more days. Honey Brook would close early on Christmas Eve.
“Now finish wrapping those presents,” Marsh said, waving her along as he opened up his improvised pen. “I don’t know why it’s taking all night when you have extra help.”
