Chapter Fourteen

Hoofbeats?

Had Honey Brook hired a horse-drawn carriage as some kind of seasonal event? Mira could see appeal of that, but why on earth had they started it up so late?

There could be only one answer to that, and realizing it made her heart sink:

It was Marsh. It had to be Marsh.

As he turned the corner, she saw that she was right ... and that, if anything, she had underestimated him. A Victorian-style horse-drawn carriage would be too ordinary for the guy who had insisted on her spending weeks in a Galadriel costume. It would be too much of a guaranteed crowd-please for the genius behind all-day carol-oke. It would be too realistic and easily implemented.

Marsh had brought in reindeer . He was leading a whole string of them, guiding them by the halter on the lead.

A few problems instantly came to mind. No one on staff, Marsh included, was likely to have any experience corralling reindeer. And while the kids would start off besotted with Donner and Blitzen’s hairier, grumpier cousins, that infatuation might not last when the reindeer started pooping in the Honey Brook plaza—or, God forbid, nipped some little hand trying to pet them. Mira knew that certain regions domesticated reindeer, but she had the uneasy suspicion that Marsh hadn’t shopped around that carefully. He was the kind of guy who liked to get a good deal, even if that meant getting reindeer from the kind of sketchy dealer who would offer you a couple boa constrictors as a sweetener.

These reindeer looked distinctly jumpy. If they were uncomfortable here when everything was quiet, what would they be like when the place was hopping?

She couldn’t say they exactly fit with the general décor. Everything here was cute and cozy and colorful, and the reindeer—with their broad sides, huge bony antlers, and dusty brown-gray coloring—stood out even more than her Galadriel costume. They were wild and real in the middle of a fantasy land. No wonder they were uncomfortable.

Poor things! She hoped they were feeling more cranky than scared.

She looked at Wade.

“I’m pretty sure those are for you,” she said.

Wade was staring at them with a very eloquent expression that said he was thinking everything she was.

“That fortune cookie did say you’d have an interesting week,” she added.

“It’s been interesting enough already. It doesn’t need this.” He lowered his voice even more, as if to make doubly sure Marsh wouldn’t hear them, and said, “They’re not going to like me. They’ll smell my bear.”

Mira had a hard time imagining anyone or anything not liking Wade.

“Bigfoot didn’t,” she pointed out. “He liked you right away.”

“Housecats don’t know what polar bears smell like. Reindeer do. Polar bears don’t like eating reindeer, they won’t really go after them if they can get much else, but I can’t see that being too reassuring.”

No, probably not. And, of course, while she was sure that Wade had never chomped on any reindeer, she couldn’t blame them for tarring him with guilt by association.

“I’ll talk to him,” Mira said, patting Wade on the shoulder.

Wade had rescued her enough already: it was time for her to try to save him (and the reindeer) from an awkward run-in. She slipped out of the wrapping paper booth and strode across the shadowy plaza, making a beeline for Marsh.

Apparently he’d been too distracted with shepherding the reindeer to notice her, because when she said, “Mr. Marsh?”, he almost jumped out of his skin.

As soon as he saw it was her, the alarm was replaced with a scowl.

“Mira. What are you still doing here?”

“You asked me to finish the presents people left for overnight wrapping.”

Did he not even remember ?

“I would’ve thought you’d finished that a long time ago,” Marsh said, with a little smirk. He glanced at the wrapping paper booth, and even more dark amusement crept in when he realized who else was still here. “But I suppose you were ... distracted. I’m not paying you to flirt.”

What an asshole. He wasn’t paying her for tonight’s overtime at all, and he knew it. She had been letting it slide because the bonus was so close she could taste it, but now she was sorely tempted to remind him that if he felt so strongly about the sanctity of the workplace, he could damn well follow all the labor laws.

Since he wasn’t, and she and Wade were pitching in tonight for free, they didn’t have to hurry. All that mattered was that the job got done before morning.

Her long silence must have reminded Marsh of the sticky legal position he was in here, because he cleared his throat and stopped looking so smug.

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 with real snow.

“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 to have to 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. He did have 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 Marsh why she 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.”

Because there were about a trillion presents left to wrap, but you don’t know that, because you’re too busy planning pie-in-the-sky publicity stunts like surprise reindeer to actually manage this place.

Once again, those gritted teeth came in handy.

“We’re almost done,” Mira said, and she escaped back to Wade.

He was, in fact, finishing up the very last present. Appropriately enough, it had glittery reindeer paper.

“Bad news,” she said. “I tried to convince him that you had a reindeer phobia, but he didn’t buy it.”

“I heard that part,” Wade said. At least he sounded amused rather than disappointed. “I looked it up. It’s a real thing, for the record. Tarandophobia.”

“Marsh is not sympathetic to tarandophobes. Or shy reindeer who might not want to be part of a public display, getting swarmed by kids. Those were the only approaches I could think of. He wants a Santa with reindeer, and he doesn’t care if it’s bad for Santa or bad for the reindeer.”

No surprise there.

“I’ll think of something,” Wade said. “Maybe if I splash on enough cologne, they won’t pick up my polar bear’s scent at all.”

“And I’ll try to keep them away from you. Marsh wants you to pose with them, but he’s almost never around during the day. Hopefully he won’t notice if you keep your distance.”

Wade crossed his fingers, and Mira did the same, tipping her hand towards his until their fingers touched. His smile warmed her down to her toes.

He said, “That sounds like a plan. And now ....” He stuck a glossy red bow on the last present and stowed it away in its locker. “We can head out for the night. Do you want to go to my place? I was wondering if you’d like to meet Fiona.”

“I’d love to meet Fiona,” Mira said, and she meant it: Wade’s pictures of his tuxedo cat meant she was already half in love with the little kitty. She meant the follow-up even more: “And maybe we can even think of one or two other things to do.” She went up on her tiptoes to pant a lingering kiss on his lips. “You know—bake cookies, trim a tree, roast chestnuts ....”

One of these days, she thought, they probably would get around to all that.

But not tonight.