“What the—that’s not—she’s mybaking partner, she’s certainly not,you know.”
Eli grinned and disappeared into the crowd to chase after his brother.
Dammit.
I was not thinking about Merrie likethat. I refused. She wasn’t even my type.
Really? A cute girl with a nice rack is not your type?
No. No way.
It’s the Christmas stress.
And the fact that I was going to have to throw away my trash.
I looked at the dog; he licked his lips.
Don’t feed him the paper plates. That is not good dog owner behavior.
But I was sorely tempted to. My other option was paying someone to put the plates in the trash can.
I stepped up to the nearest elf. The mouth opened. I braced myself as I tossed the trash in.
Nothing happened.
“Hm, maybe someone tore the voice box out of this one,” I said to Kringle.
Then the elf screamed, “MERRY CHRISTMAS.”
“I need a fucking drink.”
I wandered through the Christmas market. People were selling eggnog with rum, Glühwein boiled with spices and sugar, bourbon Christmas hot chocolate, and hot toddies. Was there a bar around here that wasn’t serving something Christmas flavored? I just wanted a whisky—on the rocks, of course.
All the chaos of the Christmas market made me overheated. Even Kringle was looking a little warm in his thick fur coat.
I jerked his leash.
“You need to run off all those potatoes and paper products you ate,” I told the dog, tugging him down Main Street. The sounds and music from the Christmas market faded away as we jogged closer to the entrance to the art trail.
The trees, bare of leaves, had been strung with lights, making the trail feel like a pathway to some other realm. The fresh snow in the trail muffled the sounds, and I sank into the blessed cold and silence.
Even Kringle, lazy as he was, perked up. I set a quick pace, my back easing as I ran down the trail, Kringle loping beside me.
The trail connected the Svensson PharmaTech headquarters to the Harrogate convention center in a renovated factory complex on the other end of town.
Deeper into the trail, the lights faded out, and only the moonlight lit our path.
“You couldn’t do this in a big city,” I told the dog.
His breath clouded around his muzzle as he bounded through the snow. We were a few hundred yards from the convention center when something crashed through the woods. Kringle barked as a reindeer bounded out of the trees onto the path. The sight should have been majestic, the reindeer lit up by the moon and backdropped against the snow.
Except the reindeer was munching on a bratwurst, and someone had hung Christmas ornaments from his antlers.
That was it for Kringle. He sat down in the middle of the trail as if to say, “I’m done.”
I dragged him along over the snow a few feet.
“We’re close to the end of the trail. Then it’s a few blocks to the condo,” I pleaded with the dog. The reindeer watched it all as he slowly chewed on the bratwurst. I took a step toward the reindeer, wondering whether it was worth it to fight him for the snack to bribe the dog.
