Page 32 of The Grump Who Stole Christmas
“Kay-Kay!”
She frowned and made this growly sound in her throat.
“Fine,” she said. “If that’s how you want to play it, Paul Bunyan.”
“Did I impress you with my ax?”
Her face blushed.
“Ax,” I repeated. “Not ass.”
“I knew what you meant,” she snapped.
“No, you didn’t,” I teased. “I think you were checking out my ass when I was bent over.”
“That would be very unprofessional of me, now wouldn’t it?”
“Sometimes that’s how those high-powered executives roll.”
I used to work with a lot of them who never got the memo on #metoo. One more reason to leave that rat race behind and look for something profoundly more simple. Like cutting down a tree for a mother and her son for Christmas.
There was nothing better than that.
Except maybe sparring with Kristen Kringle.
“What brings you out to the tree farm today?”
“You told me to come. I want to see the one profitable operation we’re running right now. You’re doing more than selling trees out here.”
“I’m selling a Christmas experience,” I told her. “Come with me.” I glanced down at her shoes first. I didn’t need her tramping around out here in a pair of fancy shoes, but I was pleased to see she’d worn a practical pair of snow boots.
In fact, everything she wore looked practical. Her down winter vest, her wool hat and scarf. The leather gloves she wore on her hands.
“You really are from these parts aren’t you?”
She gave me a funny look. “I told you I grew up here. That old guy back at the house where you’re living is, in fact, my father.”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I know. It’s just sometimes hard to reconcile the woman in front of me with that woman I met by the side of the road with the spiky shoes and the cashmere coat.”
“Hmm.”
“What?” I asked.
“Not many Christmas tree farmers would recognize cashmere. My dad sure wouldn’t.”
“I’m not your average Christmas tree farmer,” I said, as we walked between the rows of trees, avoiding some of the people who were poking around searching for that one perfect tree.
We stopped at the front gate to the farm and I pointed over to the booth I had set up just inside of it.
“Oh, I didn’t notice that when I came in. That’s new,” she said, walking over to it.
The booth had been my idea. Again, all adding to the experience. A one-stop shop for your Christmas-tree-cutting-down needs.
“Hot apple cider, hot chocolate, hot apple cider donuts…and the money makers. Spiked homemade eggnog, spiked Irish Cream, and peppermint schnapps.”
She whipped around to stare at me, but I already had her question covered.
“All perfectly legal, as long as it’s homemade and not intended for wide distribution. I had to get what amounted to a brewery license and everyone is carded before serving. The kid stuff I get about thirty percent markup, the adult beverages one hundred and twenty-five percent markup.”
