Page 73 of Not Your Average Vixen
But she wasn’t. A lifetime of settling and playing it safe proved that.
She had to endure him for a few days, and then what? There wasn’t a future for them.
A knock on their suite door knocked her back into reality.
She put on her coat and grabbed her bag as Soren opened the door. He glanced back at her, then hurried into the hall to speak to whoever was there.
She followed him out. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, bird lady, I wanted to check on you and apologize about the gummies.”
Ah, Tanner, the drug dealer.
“You can’t leave those things lying around like that. What if one of the children found them?” she chided.
He hung his head with a sad, puppy dog nod. “You’re right.”
“Who eats those things around here anyway?” she asked as the trio walked down the hall and entered the main room.
“The retired Santas and Mrs. Clauses,” he announced proudly.
“They do?”
“Totally! Imagine spending like forty years of your life being a Santa and Mrs. Claus at a mall in Sheboygan. You’d want to chill out in retirement, too.”
Soren met her gaze. “The kid’s got a point.”
“So, Kringle is now a town with a bunch of stoned Mr. and Mrs. Clauses?” she queried.
“No, they don’t get blitzed and go all mental like you did. They eat one or two to take the edge off.”
Blitzed like you? How about unintentionally drugged?
She rubbed her temples. The shower had helped quell her pounding head, but talking to Tanner reignited her throbbing frontal lobe.
“Is there something you needed? We’re on our way out,” Soren said as he put on his coat.
“I was coming to tidy up and pick up your plate.”
Bridget reached for the doorknob, then froze. “Did you make my breakfast, Tanner?”
“Sure did,” the guy answered, back to all grins.
“You didn’t do anything to it, did you?” She turned to Soren. “Am I going to be stoned all day? I have way too much to do to be talking to eggs and stealing baked goods.”
Tanner put up his hands defensively. “Don’t worry, bird lady! I didn’t add any special ingredients to your food.”
Soren’s smirk was back. “Looks like you get to spend the day with me stone-cold sober,” he teased as they left the mountain house and headed toward the truck.
This man! Full disclosure. If he wasn’t such a wedding wrecking prick, she would have laughed. He was a curmudgeon, but he wasn’t totally without a sense of humor.
He opened her door, and she got in the truck. It was a sweet gesture, old-fashioned chivalry like something her grandpa Dasher used to do.
Did she like it?
It didn’t matter.
She pulled her planner and a pen from her bag as Soren started the truck, and they headed toward the village.
